Thread by @JoeWSJ

Abubakar Shekau, the fundamentalist warlord who turned Boko Haram from an obscure sect into a jihadist army that killed 1000s across 4 nations is dead, according to officials, mediators & calls intercepted by a spy agency seen by @drewhinshaw & I.

THREAD
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Shekau's death-if confirmed-removes one the world’s most brutal, effective and little-understood terrorist leaders: a contemporary of Bin Laden, Baghdadi and Zarqawi, who outlived them all.

The insurgency's cackling face for 12 yrs, his death has big consequences for the region.

Globally, he was best known for the 2014 kidnapping of the 276 schoolgirls that sparked the global #BringBackOurGirls campaign.

His death has been erroneously reported several times before and there has been no official confirmation from Nigeria’s govt, Boko Haram Islamic State.

The Journal was able to review transcripts of geolocated, intercepted calls between insurgents discussing his suicide, alongside audio messages from a longtime mediators between Shekau and the government reporting him dead.

Sources say Shekau died on Weds when 100s of Islamic State (ISWAP) fighters reached his base in the Timbuktu triangle of Sambisa, not far from where the Chibok hostages had once been held.ISWAP had turned several of his senior lieutenants. Surrounded,he detonated his suicide vest

Under Shekau, Boko Haram became a militant movement that kidnapped tens of thousands of children, forcing them into battle or marriage. Like Charles Taylor or Joseph Kony, he was the singular figure driving a war in which children fought, vanished from their homes, and died.

Pursued by the air and manpower of more than seven foreign militaries, he evaded capture inside forest hideouts too remote for a steady phone connection while marshaling the power of the internet to catapult his brand of extreme violence onto the world stage.

“Shekau has been the longest lasting terrorist leader in the world; perhaps the world’s least understood warlord and its most underestimated,” says @bulamabukarti. “This is a huge moment for Nigeria.”

His death could unite feuding jihadist factions. Or allow peace talks with commanders who long viewed him as an intransigent obstacle. “The urgent activation of[peace talks]is required, to capitalize on the window created for mass surrender and disarmament,” one govt memo said

Known to followers as “the Imam,” the bearded and irascible Shekau was a top target in America’s drone wars. In his camps, followers would scoop up shiny wrappers as small as a bouillon cube to avoid surveillance planes, former hostages and members told us.

Paranoid of assassination,he slept in a flak jacket, executed followers for a whiff of disloyalty & vowed to kill any visitor carrying a cellphone.Nigerian soldiers, Chadian troops & South African mercenaries all failed to penetrate his maze of trenches,mines & tunnels in Sambisa

U.S. drones flown from Cameroon spotted his camp in 2016, but subsequent Nigerian airstrikes missed their target, accidentally killing at least 10 of the Chibok schoolgirls instead, according to Nigerian officials and several of the hostages who were later released.

Yet Shekau was also a creature of the social-media age, videotaping his diatribes for an online audience. In his sermons, he appeared to feign lunacy, gyrating against machine guns and insulting deceased historical figures from Abraham Lincoln to former Margaret Thatcher.

Those who met him would say it was an act, to taunt the authorities: “I laugh when people call me insane,” several Chibok students recalled him saying when he addressed them in 2015, a stack of Qurans balanced atop his lap. “I behave strangely just to infuriate Nigerians.”

For some the countless bereaved whose lost loved ones to his violence, news of his death brings hope. “We hope it brings down the senseless killings,” said Abba Modu, whose 6-year-old daughter was killed by the sect last year. “Especially the women and children.”

To learn more please read our story and follow our coverage in the coming days.

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