Implications of ISIS attacks in Nigeria: Challenges facing the organization in West Africa

Ahmed Adel

Nigeria has witnessed violent terrorist attacks by the ISIS-affiliated Boko Haram group. Violence escalated last week as the organization carried out an armed operation that killed 25 soldiers and 40 terrorists in battles between security forces and ISIS in the northeast of the country.

According to AFP, ISIS launched an attack on a military base near the town of Baga on the banks of Lake Chad, killing 20 Nigerian soldiers and five Chadian soldiers in violent clashes that also resulted in the deaths of 40 terrorists.

The group carried out a terrorist attack earlier this week during a funeral in a village near Maiduguri, the capital of the northern state of Borno, killing 65 civilians.

The upsurge of terrorist operations comes in the wake of the announcement by the Nigerian presidency on July 30 of the defeat of Boko Haram after a period of 10 years. Now fighters from the Islamic Maghreb and West Africa, especially from Libya, pose a major threat to the country.

Joining elements of the organization

In a study by the UAE’s Future Research Center entitled “Why is ISIS creating new groups in Africa?” the terrorist organization’s goals of moving the battlefield to Africa were monitored after ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi announced a new group in Africa while accepting the allegiance of another group in Burkina Faso and Mali, suggesting that these groups will play a key role within the organization during the next phase.

But there are targets that the terrorist organization seeks to achieve by announcing the establishment of new groups in Africa, especially at this time when the organization’s leaders are trying to develop their strategy by targeting new areas around the world, following the loss of the organization’s strongholds in Iraq and Syria.

The French newspaper Le Figaro in mid-April 2018 prepared a full report on the situation in Africa, which was a source of concern for the intelligence services of African countries, especially Chad, Niger, Ivory Coast and Nigeria, after a meeting with the intelligence services in these countries with their regional counterparts.

The French investigative journalist Georges Malbrunot, who was a former hostage of a terrorist group, wrote in an article about the movements of ISIS in Africa, pointing out that before ISIS’s recent defeats in Syria and Iraq, the terrorist organization had sent about 15 Iraqi trainers to Nigeria, according to French military and intelligence sources, specifically to the area of ​​Adamawa in northern Nigeria, and took six months to train members of the ISIS-affiliated Boko Haram group the techniques of fighting, dealing with explosives, and the manufacture of hand weapons, including rocket launchers.

Implications of the evolution of terrorist operations

Hisham al-Najjar, a researcher in Islamist movements, said: “The significance of the development of terrorist operations by ISIS carries three important messages. The first is dispelling the declaration of victory over the organization and Boko Haram and proving the opposite, with the organization and operations there to prove the contrary, which opens up room for continued support and recruitment.

Najjar said that the second is to continue the stage of establishing an alternative organization and caliphate in Africa.

Thirdly, there is a challenge to ISIS, represented in wrestling with its collapse and sending messages of its survival and continuity, and this can only be achieved by the implementation of new operations.

Najjar confirmed that a number of field trainers who had been in Iraq and Syria had been transferred to organize pro-ISIS groups in Africa.

He believes that the organization is trying to attract new elements by employing these operations, including by entering into alliances and cooperative relations, and this can only be achieved by proving itself as a party having a presence and being influential in the equations of power.