US Defense Secretary Ash Carter Says "Our Effort Against IsIS Could Expand To Include Boko Haram in Nigeria

Speaking 2 days ago, the US Defense Secretary Ash Carter made this remark after news came that Boko-Haram has requested partnership with ISIS and the later promptly accepting. A partnership that means the war against terror also needs to adapt.

“This AUMF [Authorisation for Use of Military Force] could apply to operations in and around Libya,” Carter said, “depending on whether or not they met the criteria” of allegiance to and coordinating with Isis to attack the US or one of its partners.
Iraqi forces poised to recapture Tikrit from Isis

The hearing came as a Iraqi government forces and Shia militias advanced towards the centre of Tikrit in the largest operation against Isis since its lightning it conquered large areas of the country in a lightning offensive last summer. The assault on Tikrit has been backed by Iran, but the US-led coalition has not been invited to participate with air strikes.

Senators on the senate foreign relations committee all expressed their support for the authorisation, but the hearing raised many looming questions of US strategy in Iraq and Syria without easy answers for Carter, secretary of state John Kerry, and general Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff.
Kerry tried to downplay the suggestion that an already open-ended conflict could take on yet more dimensions. “As of now in its current state, merely by pledging or flying the flag,” Kerry said, “there’s no decision made or even contemplated that [Boko Haram] would be covered.”


What remains to be addressed is if the people of Nigeria can take that risk and have their country turned into another Iraq and Afghanistan, or trust the Nigerian Military to address this new and deadly partnership.