Operation Featherweight: Month 8, Week 2, Day 7.

Last night the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) released an audio message accepting the recent pledge of allegiance by Nigeria's Boko Haram. The short message by ISIL's leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi announces that the caliphate has expanded to west Africa now that ISIL has allied with Boko Haram. It then urges any supporters who can't travel to Syria or Iraq to travel to Nigeria instead.

Over the past six years Boko Haram have been fighting against solely the Nigerian army. As with in many African nations the Nigerian army has been kept weak to avoid it mounting a coup meaning that Boko Haram have been able to challenge this poorly paid, poorly motivated and poorly equipped fighting force. However towards the end of 2014 Boko Haram started mounting cross border raids into Cameroon and Chad.

This turned Boko Haram into a regional threat and the African Union (AU) recently authorised a multi-national force to fight them. That force includes troops from Chad who have fearsome reputation having more then proved themselves alongside French forces in the 2012 war in Mali. Although that multi-national force has only really started to begin operations in the last couple of weeks or so it has already got Boko Haram frightened and they are clearly looking towards ISIL in desperate need of support.

Currently there is an Islamist war going on in Iraq and Syria. There is also a small Islamist war going on in Egypt and another Islamist war going in neighbouring Libya where ISIL are formally operating. Then of course there is Boko Haram's Islamist war going on in Nigeria which has been fuelled by the 2012 Islamist war in Mali. There is also an Islamist war in Yemen and yet another Islamist war in Somalia which occasionally spills over into Kenya and Uganda. Finally there is the conflict in Ukraine which is being driven by a different stripe of fascist.

We are of course supposed to believe that all these wars are happening spontaneously and independently of each other rather then being the work of a small group of nations who seem to be at war with everyone else. By pledging allegiance to ISIL and having that pledge accepted Boko Haram have now formally linked the two largest Islamist conflicts together making it near impossible to deny that the two are connected.

So it seems to me that ISIL's acceptance of Boko Haram as allies has been  begrudging at best. Mind you the way the US are fighting ISIL at the moment the move could well provide Boko Haram with an extra degree of protection.

13:00 on 13/3/15 (UK date).