Title: Facing the Challenge of the Islamic State in West Africa Province | Crisis Group
Headings: Facing the Challenge of the Islamic State in West Africa Province
Facing the Challenge of the Islamic State in West Africa Province
Executive Summary
Dakar/Brussels, 16 May 2019
I. Introduction
II. Anatomy of a Break-up
III. A Struggle for the Mantle of Jihad
IV. ISWAP Asserts Itself: Tactics, Territory and the Regional Response
A. New Tactics Bring Success
B. A Two-Zone Territorial Presence
C. The Nigerian and Regional Military Response
V. Building a Jihadist Proto-State
VI. ISWAP After Nur
VII. Taking on ISWAP’s Challenge: Complementing the Military Approach
VIII. Conclusion
Dakar/Brussels, 16 May 2019
Appendix A: Map of Nigeria
Appendix B: Map of the Lake Chad Basin
Appendix C: JAS and ISWAP Zones of Influence
Appendix D: Monthly Fatalities Associated with Boko Haram Conflict, 2011-2019: Civilians vs. Soldiers

Content: The group clawed its way back from a failed uprising in July 2009 against the Nigerian government that left more than 1,000 dead, including the group’s founder, Mohammed Yusuf, to re-emerge as a full-fledged insurgency under the command of one of Yusuf’s lieutenants, Abubakar Shekau, a year later. [fn] For background, see Crisis Group Africa Reports N°213, Curbing Violence in Nigeria (II): The Boko Haram Insurgency, 3 April 2014; and N°168, Northern Nigeria: Background to Conflict, 20 December 2010. See also Alex Thurston, Boko Haram: The History of an African Jihadist Movement (Princeton, 2017). Hide Footnote
Over the next five years, and at a particularly rapid pace between 2013 and 2015, the group seized control of much of Nigeria’s Borno state, and began operating in border areas of neighbouring Niger, Chad and Cameroon. The organisation plundered villages and bombed markets and churches, as well as mosques it deemed “infidel”. In April 2014 it staged the kidnapping of 276 schoolgirls in Chibok, Borno state.