Al-Qaida's goal of creating an Islamic caliphate spanning the Muslim world is limited to a pocket of lawless boltholes controlled by separate factions.
The country boosted security on its 500-mile border with Iraq in July, deploying thousands of troops to back up border guards after the jihadis captured Mosul, seized swaths of territory including Anbar province, and announced a caliphate straddling the border with Syria.
Nigeria's militant Islamist group Boko Haram has sworn allegiance to Islamic State, which rules a self-declared caliphate in parts of Iraq and Syria, according to a video posted online.
He dropped out of school and isolated himself, but, via the internet, developed new attachments, to a world far away, to an ideal of earthly perfection, the caliphate run by Isis.
Accordingly, he wrapped his outburst of deadly rage in an Isis flag, and claimed he was acting on behalf of the caliphate.
On Saturday, the Boko Haram leader, Abubakar Shekau, pledged his group's allegiance to Islamic State, which rules a self-declared caliphate in parts of Iraq and Syria, raising fears that the conflict largely restricted to north-east Nigeria could suck in Isis fighters from north Africa.
Boko Haram's campaign to impose a medieval Islamic caliphate on Africa's most populous nation has killed more than 3,000 this year.
The original included a sentence stating: 'These beliefs include advocating a caliphate …' The words 'under plans considered by the last government, and likely to be included in Cameron's proposals' have now been reinserted into this sentence at the author's request.
The al-Qaida leadership may be exploiting that anger over foreign policy, and really be after a caliphate.
In a Sunday Telegraph article Cameron warned that Isis has declared an "extremist caliphate" that could soon lead to a "terrorist state on the shores of the Mediterranean and bordering a Nato member [Turkey]".
Therefore, [Isis's] road to the caliphate runs through the kingdom of Saudi Arabia".
