section_path: Relationship with other militant groups/AQAP, AQIM and Boko Haram
section_name: AQAP, AQIM and Boko Haram
paragraph_text: AQAP, AQIM and Boko Haram
  
  In June 2012, General Carter Ham of the U.S. Army said that al-Shabaab, al-Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), and the Nigeria-based Boko Haram were attempting to coordinate their activities, including in funding, training, and explosives. In 2011, Boko Haram's first suicide bomb attack had been preceded by a public statement warning that "our jihadists have arrived in Nigeria from Somalia where they received real training on warfare from our brethren who made that country ungovernable", which analysts understood as an allusion to cooperation with al-Shabaab. However, in the view of some observers, most consequential are al-Shabaab's links to al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). AQAP is based in Yemen, which has longstanding ties to Somalia, and analyst Katherine Zimmerman told the U.S. Congress that AQAP "almost certainly provided the equipment or the expertise" for al-Shabaab's 2016 laptop bomb.
  
  A so-called Islamic State has emerged in our land and stated to attempt to divide our Mujahidin, weaken our strength and carry out assassinations against our own. We have been ignoring their wicked behaviors for some time to give them a chance to change, but they have continued their wrongheadedness. Our senior command has ordered our fighters to attack and eliminate the 'disease' of IS and uproot the tree that would be used to undermine the fruits of the Jihad.