The recent joint offensive by the United States Africa Command (AFRICOM) and Nigerian forces killed at least 175 fighters from the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP).
Officials described the operations as one of the biggest blows yet to ISIS-affiliated networks in Africa. Among those eliminated were senior commanders, including Abu-Bilal al-Minuki, who oversaw ISIS’s global operations, and Abd-al Wahhab, who was responsible for propaganda, the Nigerian government said.
The campaign also dismantled checkpoints, weapons caches, financial networks and command centers, striking at the insurgency’s logistical backbone. Nigerian President Bola Tinubu publicly thanked US President Donald Trump for decisive leadership, underscoring the political significance of the campaign, AFRICOM said. The killing of Abu-Bilal al-Minuki is expected to disrupt ISIS’s operations, recruitment and finances, analysts at the Washington, DC-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) said.
The offensive comes against the long backdrop of Boko Haram’s insurgency and ISIS’s expansion in Nigeria. Boko Haram was founded in 2002 by Mohammed Yusuf in Maiduguri, Borno State, initially as a religious movement advocating strict Sharia, according to the UN Human Rights Commission.
After Yusuf’s death in police custody in 2009, the group escalated into full-scale insurgency marked by suicide bombings, kidnappings and mass killings. The abduction of the Chibok schoolgirls in 2014 remains one of its most infamous acts, according to the US Army–affiliated Countering Terrorism Center.
In 2015, Boko Haram pledged allegiance to ISIS and evolved into ISWAP. That shift brought changes in tactics, with ISWAP focusing more on military and governance targets rather than indiscriminate civilian attacks, and expanding operations across the Lake Chad Basin into Niger, Chad and Cameroon. As ISIS lost ground in Syria and Iraq, parts of Africa—including Nigeria—became a new theater for the group, the BBC reported.
Northeastern Nigeria remains the epicenter of the militancy, with porous borders enabling cross-border logistics through Chad, Cameroon and Niger. The Lake Chad Basin’s terrain allows concealment and mobility for insurgents. Despite a reported 75% reduction in US forces in Africa over the past decade, Nigeria continues to be treated as a priority theater, with AFRICOM supplying intelligence, precision-strike capabilities and training, CSIS says.
ISWAP has repeatedly regenerated leadership and recruited locally by exploiting weak governance and humanitarian crises. Civilian displacement remains a pressing concern, and there is a significant risk of spillover into neighboring countries, the United Nations Development Programme warns.
