What Plans Does Boko Haram Have For Nigeria?
Updated: 5:35pm UK, Monday 05 May 2014
By Lisa Holland, Foreign Affairs Correspondent
The abduction of more than 200 schoolgirls in Nigeria has well and truly put Boko Haram on the terror map.
They are a group of militants already well-established in their aims and their successes - but the scale of this attack is unprecedented.
Their name in their local language means "Western education is sinful".
You can see how embarrassed and alarmed the Nigerian government is by its attempts to underplay the gravity of what has happened.
Initially, the government said most of the abducted girls had been safely rescued - now it has emerged from figures collated by parents and teachers that over 200 girls remain unaccounted for.
The girls, aged from 16 to 18, were abducted from their boarding school where they were taking exams and are thought to have been taken to remote forest camps run by Boko Haram in the north east of Nigeria - a region already under a state of emergency because of a breakdown in security.
The students had been recalled for exams after being sent home for four weeks when the school shut down because of the state of emergency.
The whole episode has exposed the impotency of the Nigerian military in dealing with Boko Haram and its failure to protect its own citizens.
Borno is one of three states in the north east under a state of emergency - a geographical area which accounts for a sixth of Nigeria. That alone tells you what the government is up against.
The military has had to halt aerial bombardments against the militants in their forest camps - for the safety of the girls.
The abduction plot has proved to be a clever one for Boko Haram both in self-protection and self-promotion.
Over the past year the Boko Haram has increasingly targeted civilians, with an estimated 1,500 people killed in attacks blamed on the group. That compares with 3,600 between 2010 and 2012.
Boko Haram wants a pure Islamic state in the north of the country, ruled by sharia law.
Its five-year struggle is now seen as the main security threat in Nigeria - Africa's leading energy producer.
The government had claimed the extremists were cornered in the north-east of the country - but that claim was shattered by an explosion at a bus station in the capital Abuja on the same day as the abduction, which killed at least 75 people and wounded 141.
In March 2012, some 12 public schools were burned down in a single night, with as many as 10,000 pupils forced out of education.
The group now appears to have broadened its horizons, though it is a group bent not necessarily on attacking western interests but on enhancing its own.
The bold abduction indicates the group is growing in confidence and in its ability to carry out spectacular al Qaeda-style attacks.
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