Northern Nigeria is facing an ascendant ISIS insurgency, drawing Washington into the fray.
Since the jihadist insurgency in northern Nigeria began 13 years ago, the conflict has drastically changed in scope, amid concerted counterterrorism efforts from the Nigerian government, countless jihadist ideological splits, and international interventions. The 2020s began with ISIS and other terrorist groups on the back foot, but a change in tactics and fortunes has sent them back on the offensive in the last couple of years, turning the country into one of the foremost fronts in the Global War on Terror.
Alexander Palmer, a fellow in the Warfare, Irregular Threats, and Terrorism Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told the Washington Examiner that ISIS in Nigeria is “on the march, they are increasingly active, and they’re increasingly threatening military targets,” with a large-scale military campaign ISIS calls “Camp Holocaust.”
Why has ISIS seen a change in fortune after years on the back foot?
The insurgency in northern Nigeria is notable for the frequency and scale of ideological disputes triggering violent internal conflicts. Over the past few years, northern Nigeria’s main ISIS affiliate, Islamic State West Africa Province, has emerged as the primary jihadist threat.
ISWAP has had varied success since splitting from Boko Haram in 2016, but the Nigerian military has been able to largely contain the threat in the first half of the 2020s. Liam Karr, an analyst for the American Enterprise Institute’s Critical Threats Project, explained that the Nigerian military had been able to degrade ISWAP through its “Super Camp” strategy.
The strategy had Nigerian forces reduce their number of vulnerable small forward operating bases, instead consolidating their strength into fortified camps, effectively garrison towns, which were much more difficult to attack and overrun.
While it is difficult to specify a timeline due to the disjointed nature of the fighting, Karr and Palmer both agreed that ISWAP underwent a major change in tactics over the past one or two years that has given it momentum, as seen in the success of its “Camp Holocaust” campaign.
“There’s been clear, clear escalation this year and last year with the overrunning of some of these larger military facilities,” Palmer said, and pointed to the killing of Nigerian Brigadier General Oseni Braimah in April as a particularly major escalation.
“That’s a significant development, that’s pretty unusual, and that reflects the growing boldness and growing strength of ISWAP and their confidence in directly confronting the state’s military forces, which are widely considered to be some of the most capable forces in Africa,” he added.
ISWAP has adapted to the Nigerian military’s “Super Camp” strategy by gathering larger forces for single attacks, launching strikes at night, and using new drones, Karr explained. Taking advantage of ISIS’s networks, ISWAP has invited ISIS trainers from the Middle East to train its fighters in drone tactics, United Nations reports suggest.
“It’s just a pretty typical pattern of battlefield evolution, where the Nigerian Army came up with this new strategy that worked for a while, eventually the insurgents figured out a way around that, which again just speaks to why there aren’t military solutions to these,” Karr said. “You can get better at the military stuff, but eventually the insurgents will figure out a way to adapt to that.”
Sibling rivalry
The jihadist insurgency in Nigeria took on a global component in 2015 when the main jihadist group Boko Haram’s leader, Abubakar Shekau, pledged allegiance to ISIS. Remarkably, the following year, the two organizations fell out, as Shekau’s approach was considered too radical even for ISIS.
The main contention was Boko Haram’s ultra-takfirism, holding that anyone not actively trying to join the group was an enemy.
“It basically means that Boko Haram’s view is anybody who is not actively joining us is an enemy, which is why they’ll slaughter anybody and everybody, including Muslims who are in towns where the government is at,” Karr explained. “ISWAP is a little bit more diplomatic in the sense that they target collaborators, they target civilian militias, but they try to maintain good relations with ordinary Muslims, especially those who will agree to pay taxes.”
ISWAP split off from Boko Haram, and the two have since fought each other with a ferocity equalling that of their fight with the government. Shekau blew himself up with a suicide vest during a battle against ISWAP in 2021, severely weakening the group and ensuring the dominance of ISWAP.
Another ISIS affiliate, Islamic State Sahel Province, also operates in Nigeria, but is mainly focused on operations in Niger to the north.
Nigeria stretched thin
Karr and Palmer both pushed back against suggestions that the Nigerian military was incompetent in fighting ISWAP and the other jihadist groups, arguing instead that it was overstretched and fighting a difficult battle.
“They’re stretched pretty thin, it’s a big country, it’s been dealing with violence of a lot of different types for a long time… they are also dealing with significant cross-border problems,” Palmer said, pointing to ISSP in particular.
The withdrawal of Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger from the Economic Community of West African States has further harmed efforts, given jihadists’ ability to stage attacks from the three unstable countries, then retreat back before being caught or neutralized.
“In addition, counterinsurgency is just really, really hard,” Palmer said. “It’s not enough to just be able to kill terrorists, which the Nigerian military is able to do. You also have to sustain presence in these areas, you have to be able to build ties with the local community, and you have to separate the terrorists over the long term from their base of support.”
The different religious, ethnic, cross-border, and political factors at play “make this a really complex environment to navigate, and it would be unrealistic to expect really rapid progress against any of these groups, in my opinion,” Palmer argued.
Washington to the rescue?
Despite counterterrorism being one of Washington’s primary foreign policy focuses since 9/11, a large jihadist insurgency in Africa’s most populous country has gone less noticed than might be expected.
“Until recently, the violence in Northern Nigeria has not been seen by the United States as a core interest, the way that it sees, in Africa in particular, the Al Shabaab insurgency [in Somalia],” Palmer said, explaining that Somalia’s location next to vital shipping lanes makes the presence of an Al Qaeda affiliate more central to U.S. interests.
Boko Haram, formerly the head of jihadist violence in Nigeria, was seen as more local in character and focus, despite “Shekau’s brief dalliance with the Islamic State.”
“It was much more local. It had a real tendency toward kind of banditry and raiding and less political, more criminal activity, and so it wasn’t seen as an international terrorist threat, the way that some of these other groups were,” Palmer added.
The major change in U.S. interest was largely the doing of the second Trump administration, which has been especially concerned about ISWAP and other jihadist groups’ atrocities against Christians.
“The recent counterterrorism strategy says that the first US interest in Africa is to prevent external operations against the United States,” Palmer said. “The second interest is to protect Christians, and the administration has made a lot of the treatment of Christians in northern Nigeria.”
He also noted the possible contribution of the loss of a major counterterrorism partner in Niger, which had been viewed favorably by the intelligence community. Nigeria’s status as a growing power with the largest population on the continent also gives the U.S. good reason to help out.
U.S. help in recent months has mainly been limited to drone strikes, training and advisory to Nigerian troops, and intelligence sharing. Palmer and Karr both said that U.S. help wouldn’t be a “silver bullet,” but could be highly valuable.
“It remains to see if it’ll be decisive in the long run, but this sort of thing is certainly helpful,” Palmer said. “Nigerian intelligence personnel have told journalists how helpful it is to have U.S. targeting intelligence, and the United States maintains the world’s most skilled armed forces.”
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“I certainly think that it plays a big role in enabling the Nigerian military to do more stuff, or be more effective than it otherwise would be, but it’s not going to solve the issue … you can’t just drone strike your way out of this,” Karr argued.
“So intelligence sharing and drone strikes and special force raids certainly can help you take out certain leaders and help mow the grass, and maybe help contain it, but it won’t actually be decisive in solving it, because that’s something that’s not a military solution,” he added.