After Grisly Mosque Attack, Nigeria’s Boko Haram Terrorist Group Calls Out Obama

[Time]

Konduga is a tiny community on the banks of a river in northeastern Nigeria. Its residents are mostly farmers who are accustomed to a simple life filled with days that pass like the one before. That has recently changed, as an insurgency waged by Islamist terror group Boko Haram has spilled over from the heart of the war, in nearby city Maiduguri, and into the rural reaches of Borno State, where Konduga is located. And on Sunday morning, things changed irrevocably for the worse. Gunmen burst into a mosque where scores of people were praying and started shooting, leaving at least 44 dead. A day later, Boko Haram released a new video taunting the leaders of the United States, France, and Israel. In the battle against Boko Haram, vigilante groups working in Maiduguri and outside of the city calling themselves the Civilian Joint Task Force — modeled after the Joint Task Force of soldiers and police fighting Boko Haram — have entered the fray. They pursue and hand over suspected Boko Haram members to the military in an effort to make their communities safer. The vigilantes have the blessing of Nigeria's government and some are armed. But their guerrilla campaign may have also angered Boko Haram. (MORE: Inside Boko Haram's war.) "The mosque attack was likely a form of warning to Muslims to not cooperate with the joint task force, both the civilian and the regular ones," says Virginia Comolli, a research associate at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. "And this is a probably a form of retaliation for the civilian joint task forces operating in the area, which are growing in prominence and confidence." Now that the Nigerian government has declared a state of emergency in three northeastern states (including Borno) while it wages its most extensive air and ground operation to root out Boko Haram, bodies are piling up again, except for the most-wanted one: that of Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau. The United States government is offering a $7 million reward for information leading

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