What do they want?

Here's where things get complicated.

As all of this has been going on, Boko Haram has for the most part kept quiet. So in the absence of any solid, verifiable demands, speculating about the group's true aims has become a national--if not international--obsession.

In the choosing of churches as targets for bombings, many see an attempt to drive a wedge between Christians and Muslims and perhaps push Nigeria into a civil war fueled on both sides by religious extremism.

Some observers, struggling to come to grips with the dramatic growth in both the sophistication and frequency of attacks, have begun to suspect the influences of external groups bent on opening a new front in the Global War on Terror. In August 2011, General Carter Ham, the head of the U.S. military's Africa Command, claimed Boko Haram was collaborating with the Algeria-based Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. And a report published by the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence in November 2011 suggested that Boko Haram may have also forged links with Somalia's Al-Shabab.

Others counter that while there is some anecdotal evidence of contact between Boko Haram and AQIM, the latter's primary objective has always remained the overthrow of the government in Algeria and there is no proof of operational coordination. They point out that links to Al-Shabab--currently tied up at home simultaneously battling Ethiopian, Kenyan, and African Union troops--are even more tenuous.

Though Muhammad Yusuf advocated the establishment of an Islamic state in Nigeria, his grievances were always deeply rooted in the local politics of Boko Haram's native Borno State. Some northern dignitaries argue that the group is hardly more ambitious today.

In a video posted on YouTube on Jan. 15, 2012, Abubakar Shekau--Yusuf's deputy, previously believed killed in the 2009 violence--resurfaced to deliver a warning to President Goodluck Jonathan and Christian leaders. It was clear from his message that the group's primary motivation remained its quest for revenge for the government crackdown. Earlier, in a secret meeting with former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo in September 2011, Boko Haram representatives had asked that the government withdraw its troops from Maiduguri, rebuild its destroyed mosques and pay traditional compensation to the families of those killed in the 2009 violence. Hardly the stuff of global jihad.

If all of that wasn't convoluted enough however, there is also a growing belief--particularly in the north--that much of the current violence has little or nothing to do with Yusuf's disciples. This theory holds that while a small number of nihilist, Islamist elements certainly exist in the north, Boko Haram has become little more than a brand name, a murky confluence that now also includes criminal opportunists as well as disgruntled political bosses and their henchmen. "Boko Haram has become a franchise that anyone can buy into. It's something like a Bermuda Triangle," said Borno State Governor Kashim Shettima.