The strikes on Thursday on what the United States called Islamic State targets in northwestern Nigeria followed President Trump’s threat earlier this year to take military action if Nigeria’s government did not stop the killing of Christians by Islamist militants.
Mr. Trump has not specified which attacks he was referring to, nor has he cited evidence for the claim, made by several of his political allies, that Christians in Nigeria were facing a “genocide.”
Analysts say that the situation on the ground in Nigeria is far more complicated than Mr. Trump has suggested.
U.S. military officials have also expressed doubt that strikes would do much to quell violence in West Africa. Recent coups and the withdrawal of Western forces from the region have created a vacuum, allowing insurgent groups linked to the Islamic State and to Al Qaeda to expand attacks against military targets and civilians.
The strikes
More than a dozen Tomahawk cruise missiles were fired from a Navy ship in the Gulf of Guinea, striking two Islamic State camps in Nigeria’s Sokoto State, according to a U.S. military official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters.
The strike killed “multiple” terrorists belonging to the group, which is also known as ISIS, according to an initial assessment by U.S. Africa Command.
Announcing the strikes on social media, Mr. Trump said “the United States launched a powerful and deadly strike against ISIS Terrorist Scum in Northwest Nigeria,” accusing the group of “targeting and viciously killing, primarily, innocent Christians.”
The Defense Department said it worked with the Nigerian government to carry out the strikes, which the Nigerian Foreign Ministry confirmed in a statement.
Trump’s threat
On Nov. 1, Mr. Trump said that if Nigeria’s government continued to “allow the killing of Christians, the USA will immediately stop all aid and assistance to Nigeria, and may very well go into that disgraced country, ‘guns-a-blazing.’”
“I am hereby instructing our Department of War to prepare for possible action,” he wrote. “If we attack, it will be fast, vicious, and sweet.”
A day earlier, the Trump administration said it would reinstate Nigeria as a “country of particular concern,” a designation that the U.S. government applies to nations deemed to have “engaged in severe violations of religious freedom.” Mr. Trump took a similar step in 2020, near the end of his first term, but it was reversed during the Biden administration.
Nigeria’s response
Nigeria has denied the accusations that it was allowing the killing of Christians. In a statement on Friday, the Nigerian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said terrorist attacks against Christians, Muslims, or any community were “an affront to Nigeria’s values and to international peace and security.”
The characterization of Nigeria “as religiously intolerant does not reflect our national reality,” President Bola Ahmed Tinubu said in a statement in November, citing what he described as sustained efforts by the government to safeguard freedom of religion and belief for all Nigerians.
Still, Nigerian authorities have chosen to respond to his threats by cooperating with his administration and by taking the opportunity to use U.S. firepower against insurgents. Nigeria’s government said on Friday that it was on board with the airstrikes and that it had given the United States intelligence to carry them out.
Terrorism in Nigeria
Nigeria, home to around 220 million people, has large populations of Christians and Muslims. Boko Haram, an Islamist terror group based in northeastern Nigeria, has long carried out attacks on civilians, including Christians and Muslims.
Other terrorist groups operating in Nigeria include affiliates of the Islamic State, which once controlled a wide swath of Iraq and Syria but was largely defeated by local militias and American troops.
In 2016, a group known as the Islamic State West Africa Province, or ISWAP, splintered from Boko Haram and declared allegiance to the Islamic State. ISWAP operates primarily in northeastern Nigeria and has also carried out attacks in neighboring Niger, Chad and Cameroon.
A smaller affiliate, known as Islamic State — Sahel Province, has been most active west of Nigeria, in countries including Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger. Those countries lie in the Sahel region, which stretches across the south of the Sahara.
Recent coups in Burkina Faso, Chad and Niger have disrupted governance in West Africa, creating openings for terrorist groups to escalate their attacks in the region.
They note that the area is populated overwhelmingly by Muslims, who bear the brunt of terrorist attacks there, and that ISWAP — which has the best documented links to the Islamic State — operates mainly in northeastern Nigeria, on the other side of the country.
Experts are also divided over the existence of ties between insurgent groups in Sokoto and the Islamic State.
Vincent Foucher, a research fellow with the National Center for Scientific Research in France, said that the strikes would likely resonate with some American Christians and political allies of Mr. Trump who have amplified the narrative that Christians in Nigeria are being singled out for persecution.
“It’s a good way for the U.S., for Trump, to show to the American evangelical right that he’s doing something about Nigeria,” Mr. Foucher said. For the United States, he added, the strikes address both “Trump’s desire for publicity and the American security establishment’s concern about the Islamic State.”
Source: New York Times
