Military has made ‘enormous gains’ over ISWAP

The military has recorded significant victory against Boko Haram and members of the Islamic State in West Africa Province (ISWAP), according to some security experts.

Gilbert Kansas, a professor at the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism Herzliya, Israel, said available intelligence shows that what is now left of ISWAP are a “bunch of disgruntled fighters facing hunger and logistics challenges so much so that some of its members now enter communities to steal food and other essentials to keep their lives running”.

“What is left of ISWAP now is not a fighting force but that of a group of young men struggling for survival from the harsh realities of lack of food essentially. They have been highly factionalized, and the bulk of the attacks you notice in recent times are carried out in their mission to look for food in some of these villages,” he said at a conference.

“In Nigeria, the Nigerian Military did a pretty good job of breaking the ranks of the ISWAP group within a record time. This is cognizant of their affiliations with other terrorist networks around the world. From available information at our disposal, the ISWAP group has not been able to get that critical support it requires from the network to sustain their activities.

“This is a rare feat that agrees with the Game theory in Counter-Terrorism operations that underlines the interface between factions within a terrorist organization, and the interplay between diverse agents, as well as capturing the strategic interplay between terrorists and targeted governments. The Nigerian Military has indeed done well.”

Howard Grant of the Department of War Studies, Kings College, London, shared the same view.

He said the strategic objective of the ISWAP was to establish domains in Nigeria and four West African countries at the end of 2019.

“If we understand the dynamics of international terrorism, we must indeed admit that the feat recorded in Nigeria is outstanding with the manner the Nigerian Military has been able to break the ranks of ISWAP and within a record time. Some other countries facing such challenges have not been this lucky. I believe that the Nigerian experience should serve as a reference point in effective counter-terrorism operations,” he said.