Nigeria on Friday signalled more strikes against jihadist groups were expected after a Christmas Day bombardment by US forces against militants in the north of the country, which it said was a joint operation with its military.
The West African country faces multiple interlinked security
crises in its north, where jihadists have been waging an insurgency in the
northeast since 2009, and armed “bandit” gangs raid villages and stage
kidnappings in the northwest.
The US strikes come after Abuja and Washington were locked
in a diplomatic dispute over what Trump characterised as the mass killing of
Christians amid Nigeria’s myriad armed conflicts.
Nigeria’s military said in a statement that its forces, in
conjunction with the United States, “conducted precision strike operations
against identified foreign ISIS-linked elements” in northwest Nigeria.
Washington’s framing of the violence as amounting to
Christian “persecution” is rejected by the Nigerian government and independent
analysts, but has nonetheless resulted in increased security coordination.
“It’s Nigeria that provided the intelligence,” the country’s
foreign minister, Yusuf Tuggar, told broadcaster Channels TV, saying he was on
the phone with US State Secretary Marco Rubio ahead of the bombardment.
Asked if there would be more strikes, Tuggar said: “It is an
ongoing thing, and we are working with the US. We are working with other
countries as well.”
– Targets unclear –
The Department of Defense’s US Africa Command, using an
acronym for the Islamic State group, said “multiple ISIS terrorists” were
killed in an attack in the northwestern state of Sokoto.
US defence officials later posted video of what appeared to
be the nighttime launch of a missile from the deck of a battleship flying the
US flag.
Residents in the far-flung villages of Sokoto state, which
borders junta-ruled Niger, said they were shocked by the blasts.
“We heard a loud explosion which shook the whole town, and
everyone was scared,” said Haruna Kallah, a Jabo resident, some 100 kilometres
from the state capital Sokoto in Tambuwal district.
“We initially thought it was an attack by Lakurawa (an armed
group linked to ISIS in the Sahel),” he said. “But later learnt that it was a
US drone attack which surprised us because this area has never been a Lakurawa
enclave and we have never had any attacks in the last two years.”
Which of Nigeria’s myriad armed groups were targeted remains
unclear.
Nigeria’s jihadist groups are mostly concentrated in the
northeast, but have made inroads into the northwest.
Researchers have recently linked some members from an armed
group known as Lakurawa — the main jihadist group located in Sokoto State — to
Islamic State Sahel Province (ISSP), which is mostly active in neighbouring
Niger and Mali.
Other analysts have disputed those links, though research on
Lakurawa is complicated as the term has been used to describe various armed
fighters in the northwest.
Those described as Lakurawa also reportedly have links to an
al-Qaeda-affiliated group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (JNIM), a rival
group to ISSP.
While Abuja has welcomed the strikes, “I think Trump would
not have accepted a ‘No’ from Nigeria,” said Malik Samuel, an Abuja-based
researcher for Good Governance Africa, an NGO.
Amid the diplomatic pressure, Nigerian authorities are keen
to be seen as cooperating with the US, Samuel told AFP, even though “both the
perpetrators and the victims in the northwest are overwhelmingly Muslim.
Tuggar said that Nigerian President Bola Tinubu “gave the
go-ahead” for the strikes.
The foreign minister added, “It must be made clear that it
is a joint operation, and it is not targeting any religion nor simply in the
name of one religion or the other.”
AFP
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