Its full Arabic name, Jama’atu Ansarul Muslimina Fi Biladis Sudan, means: “Vanguards for the Protection of Muslims in Black Africa.”

Ansaru announced that it split from Boko Haram in January 2012, claiming that Boko Haram was “inhuman” for killing innocent Muslims as well as for targeting defectors. The move reflected the developing divisions between al Qaeda and the ISIS trends at the time.

The context, or the politics, if you will, is local. Ansaru says it is fighting to restore the “lost dignity” of the Sokoto Caliphate, which was founded in 1804 by the Fulani Sheikh Usman dan Fodio in northern Cameroon, northern Nigeria, and southern Niger, and lasted until the United Kingdom and France colonized the region and introduced Western education and Christianity later in the 19th century.

Unlike Boko Haram, which is notorious for its indiscriminate shootings and bombings, Ansaru, which says it eschews the killing of fellow Nigerians, prefers a more calculated approach: kidnapping and killing foreigners.

The group was founded by little-known Abu Usmatul al Ansari (sometimes written Abu Ussamata al-Ansary), believed to have been trained by AQIM in Algeria. But his name is rarely mentioned in connection with Ansaru attacks. It’s the 47-year-old Khalid al Barnawi, another AQIM-trained jihadist, who gets most of the credit.

Al Barnawi, captured last Friday, has been regarded by many of Ansaru’s militants as the “active” leader of the group. The jihadist was labeled a “global terrorist” in 2012 by the U.S. government alongside his lieutenant, Abubakar Adam Kambar, another AQIM-trained Ansaru militant who was killed. The U.S. government has offered a $5 million reward for “information that brings to justice” al Barnawi.

Al Barnawi, along with another Algeria-trained protégé known as Abu Muhammed, led the al Qaeda group that kidnapped and later killed British national Chris McManus and an Italian engineer, Franco Lamolinara, in Nigeria’s northwestern state of Kebbi.

In a proof-of-life video showing the two hostages blindfolded and kneeling in front of three masked militants, a previously unknown group, al Qaeda in the Lands Beyond the Sahel, which experts believe evolved into Ansaru, admitted that it was responsible for the abduction.

The video was sent to the Mauritanian-based Agence Nouakchott d’Information (ANI), which usually receives AQIM videos. The jihadists also employed the same Mauritanian negotiator that AQIM used in a number of previous kidnappings, this time demanding $6 million and the release of prisoners in West Africa in return for the two hostages.

Since AQIM was formed in 2006, the group has sought to expand its operations from southern Algeria southward into Mali, Niger, Chad, Burkina Faso, and Nigeria with the aim of targeting foreigners in the southern Sahel.