Boko Haram’s resurgence: Why Nigeria’s military is struggling to hold the line

Boko Haram’s resurgence: Why Nigeria’s military is struggling to hold the line
Nigerian security forces are seen on the site of a sabotage attack allegedly perpetrated by Boko Haram against electical infrastructures on the outskirts of Maiduguri on February 12, 2021. (AFP/File)
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Updated 27 May 2025
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Boko Haram’s resurgence: Why Nigeria’s military is struggling to hold the line

Boko Haram’s resurgence: Why Nigeria’s military is struggling to hold the line

ABUJA, Nigeria: A resurgence of Boko Haram attacks is shaking Nigeria’s northeast, as Islamic extremists have repeatedly overrun military outposts, mined roads with bombs and raided civilian communities since the start of the year, raising fears of a possible return to peak Boko Haram-era insecurity despite the military’s claims of successes.
Boko Haram, Nigeria’s homegrown jihadis, took up arms in 2009 to fight Western education and impose their radical version of Islamic law. The conflict has spilled into Nigeria’s northern neighbors and resulted in the death of around 35,000 civilians and the displacement of more than 2 million others, according to the United Nations.
In the latest attack last week in the village of Gajibo in Borno state, the epicenter of the crisis, extremists killed nine members of a local militia that supports the Nigerian military, after soldiers deserted the base when becoming aware of the insurgents’ advance, according to the group’s claim and local aid workers. That is in addition to roadside bombs and deadly attacks on villages in recent months.
Nyelni Kwari’s area of Borno, Hawul, includes some of the affected villages, and returning home has become unsafe. “Unfortunately, the situation hasn’t improved for me to feel secure,” said Kwari, a graduate student in Borno’s capital, Maiduguri.

Two factions

Boko Haram has split into two factions over the years.
One is backed by the Daesh group and is known as the Islamic State West Africa Province, or ISWAP. It has become notorious for targeting military positions and has overrun the military on at least 15 occasions this year, killing soldiers and stealing weapons, according to an Associated Press count, experts and security reports.
In May, ISWAP struck outposts in Gajibo, Buni Gari, Marte, Izge and Rann and launched an assault on the Nigeria-Cameroon joint base in Wulgo and Soueram in Cameroon. Other attacks this year have hit Malam Fatori, Goniri, Sabon Gari, Wajiroko and Monguno, among others. The group often attacks at night.
The other faction, Jama’atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda’awati wal-Jihad, or JAS, has increasingly resorted to attacking civilians and perceived collaborators, and thrives on robberies and abductions for ransom.

Expansion and decentralization

Malik Samuel, senior researcher at nonprofit Good Governance Africa, said ISWAP’s success is a result of its territorial expansion following gains against rival JAS as well as a decentralized structure that has enhanced its ability to conduct “coordinated, near-simultaneous attacks across different regions.”
“The unpredictability of attacks under this framework illustrates ISWAP’s growing strategic sophistication,” Samuel said.
External support from IS in Iraq and Syria is also a critical resource, said Samuel, who has interviewed ex-fighters. Such support is evident in ISWAP’s evolving tactics, including nighttime raids, rapid assaults with light but effective weaponry and the use of modified commercial drones to drop explosives, Samuel said.

Outgunned and outnumbered military

Ali Abani, a local nonprofit worker familiar with military operations in Borno’s strategic town of Dikwa, said army bases are understaffed and located in remote areas, making them vulnerable to attacks.
“When these gunmen come, they just overpower the soldiers,” Abani said.
Reinforcements, in the form of air support or nearby ground troops, are often too slow to arrive, allowing militants time to strip the outposts of weapons needed to bolster their arsenal, he added, recalling a May 12 attack during which soldiers fled as they were outnumbered, leaving the extremists to cart away weaponry.
There also have been reports of former militants who continued to work as informants and logistics handlers after claiming to have repented.

Nigeria losing ground ‘almost on a daily basis’

At its peak in 2013 and 2014, Boko Haram gained global notoriety after kidnapping 276 Chibok schoolgirls and controlling an area the size of Belgium.
While it has lost much of that territory because of military campaigns, the new surge in Boko Haram attacks has raised fears about a possible return to the gloomy past.
Borno Gov. Babagana Zulum warned recently of lost gains after raising concerns that military formations in the state are being dislodged “almost on a daily basis without confrontation.”
Federal lawmakers highlight the extremists’ growing sophistication and advanced weaponry, calling on the government to bolster military capabilities.
The Nigerian military didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Last Friday, senior commanders visited one troubled area, Gamboru on the border with Cameroon, promising the deployment of more troops to combat Boko Haram.


Sweden faces call to halt international adoptions after inquiry finds abuses and fraud

Updated 9 sec ago
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Sweden faces call to halt international adoptions after inquiry finds abuses and fraud

Sweden faces call to halt international adoptions after inquiry finds abuses and fraud
STOCKHOLM: A Swedish commission recommended Monday that international adoptions be stopped after an investigation found a series of abuses and fraud dating back decades.
Sweden is the latest country to examine its international adoption policies after allegations of unethical practices, particularly in South Korea,
The commission was formed in 2021 following a report by Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter detailing the Scandinavian country’s problematic international adoption system. Monday’s recommendations were sent to Minister of Social Services Camilla Waltersson Grönvall.
“The assignment was to investigate whether there had been irregularities that the Swedish actors knew about, could have done and actually did,” Anna Singer, a legal expert and the head of the commission, told a press conference. “And actors include everyone who has had anything to do with international adoption activities.
“It includes the government, the supervisory authority, organization, municipalities and courts. The conclusion is that there have been irregularities in the international adoptions to Sweden.”
The commission called on the government to formally apologize to adoptees and their families. Investigators found confirmed cases of child trafficking in every decade from the 1970s to the 2000s, including from Sri Lanka, Colombia, Poland and China.
Singer said a public apology, besides being important for those who are personally affected, can help raise awareness about the violations because there is a tendency to download the existence and significance of the abuses.
An Associated Press investigation, also documented by Frontline (PBS), last year reported dubious child-gathering practices and fraudulent paperwork involving South Korea’s foreign adoption program, which peaked in the 1970s and `80s amid huge Western demands for babies.
The AP and Frontline spoke with more than 80 adoptees in the US, Australia and Europe and examined thousands of pages of documents to reveal evidence of kidnapped or missing children ending up abroad, fabricated child origins, babies switched with one another and parents told their newborns were gravely sick or dead, only to discover decades later they’d been sent to new parents overseas.
The findings are challenging the international adoption industry, which was built on the model created in South Korea.
The Netherlands last year announced it would no longer allow its citizens to adopt from abroad. Denmark’s only international adoption agency said it was shutting down and Switzerland apologized for failing to prevent illegal adoptions. France released a scathing assessment of its own culpability.
South Korea sent around 200,000 children to the West for adoptions in the past six decades, with more than half of them placed in the US Along with France and Denmark, Sweden was a major European destination of South Korean children, adopting nearly 10,000 of them since the 1960s.

Tunisian national shot dead by neighbor in the south of France

Tunisian national shot dead by neighbor in the south of France
Updated 19 min 19 sec ago
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Tunisian national shot dead by neighbor in the south of France

Tunisian national shot dead by neighbor in the south of France
PARIS: A Tunisian national was shot dead by his neighbor in the south of France, the Draguignan prosecutor said in a statement, adding that the incident was being investigated as a racially-motivated crime.
The victim, who was said to be “possibly 35,” but has not been officially identified, was killed late on Saturday night in the town of Puget-sur-Argens. A 25-year-old Turkish national was also shot in the hand by the man and taken to hospital.
The incident comes one month after the fatal stabbing of Aboubakar Cisse, a 22-year-old man from Mali, in a mosque in the southern town of La Grand-Combe, amid rising racism in France.
Last year French police recorded an 11 percent rise in racist, xenophobic or anti-religious crimes, according to official data published in March.
In a statement released late on Sunday, the prosecutor said the suspect in the weekend shooting was a 53-year-old who practices sports shooting. He had published hateful and racist content on his social media account before and after killing his neighbor, the prosecutor added.
France has the largest Muslim population in Europe, numbering more than 6 million and making up about 10 percent of the country’s population.
Politicians across the political spectrum, including President Emmanuel Macron, have attacked what they describe as Islamist separatism in a way that rights groups have said stigmatizes Muslims and amounts to discrimination.

UK PM Starmer says situation in Gaza ‘getting worse by the day’

UK PM Starmer says situation in Gaza ‘getting worse by the day’
Updated 55 min 4 sec ago
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UK PM Starmer says situation in Gaza ‘getting worse by the day’

UK PM Starmer says situation in Gaza ‘getting worse by the day’
  • “The situation is intolerable in Gaza, and getting worse by the day,” Starmer told reporters in Scotland, when asked whether the UK would take any action over the issue

LONDON: British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said on Monday that the situation in Gaza was getting “worse by the day” and that it was important to ensure the Palestinian enclave receives more humanitarian aid urgently.
“The situation is intolerable in Gaza, and getting worse by the day,” Starmer told reporters in Scotland, when asked whether the UK would take any action over the issue.
“Which is why we are working with allies ... to be absolutely clear that humanitarian aid needs to get in at speed and at volumes that it is not getting in at the moment, causing absolute devastation,” he added.


Pakistan’s anti-polio drive suffers a blow after a northern enclave reports first case in 7 years

Pakistan’s anti-polio drive suffers a blow after a northern enclave reports first case in 7 years
Updated 02 June 2025
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Pakistan’s anti-polio drive suffers a blow after a northern enclave reports first case in 7 years

Pakistan’s anti-polio drive suffers a blow after a northern enclave reports first case in 7 years

PESHAWAR: Pakistan efforts to eliminate polio suffered another blow on Monday after a northern enclave reported its first case in seven years. Overall, it was the country’s 11th case since January, despite the launch of several immunization drives.
The virus was detected in a child from the district of Diamer in the Gilgit-Baltistan region, according to the country’s polio eradication program.
Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan remain the only two countries where the spread of the wild polio virus has not been stopped, according to the World Health Organization. There are ongoing outbreaks of polio linked to the oral vaccine in 10 other countries, mostly in Africa.
The new case was reported after Pakistan on Sunday wrapped up its third nationwide polio vaccination drive of the year, aiming to immunize 45 million children.
Mohammad Iqbal, a director at the polio program in the northwest, said local health officials were still trying to determine how the poliovirus that was found in the southern port city of Karachi had infected the child in Diamer.
During the summer season, thousands of tourists from Karachi and elsewhere visit tourist resorts in Gilgit-Baltistan.
Pakistan’s polio eradication program has been running anti-polio campaigns for years, though health workers and the police assigned to protect them are often targeted by militants who falsely claim the vaccination campaigns are a Western conspiracy to sterilize children.
Since the 1990s, attacks on polio vaccination teams have killed more than 200 workers and security personnel.


Zelensky arrives in Vilnius for Nato eastern flank summit

Zelensky arrives in Vilnius for Nato eastern flank summit
Updated 02 June 2025
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Zelensky arrives in Vilnius for Nato eastern flank summit

Zelensky arrives in Vilnius for Nato eastern flank summit
  • The summit brings together the Bucharest Nine, the alliance’s members across eastern and central Europe — with its Nordic members, Zelensky and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte

VILNIUS: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky arrived Monday in Vilnius for a summit with the leaders of NATO’s eastern and Nordic members, who are some of Kyiv’s staunchest backers amid the Russian invasion.
The military alliance has bolstered its eastern defenses since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, with Finland and Sweden also overhauling decades of security policy to join the alliance.
The summit brings together the Bucharest Nine — the alliance’s members across eastern and central Europe — with its Nordic members, Zelensky and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte.
Zelensky’s spokesman said he would hold “bilateral meetings” on the sidelines of the summit in the Lithuanian capital.
It comes ahead of a full NATO summit later in June in The Hague to which Zelensky has demanded he be invited to.
“If Ukraine is not present at the NATO summit, it will be a victory for Putin, but not over Ukraine, but over NATO,” he said last week.
Zelensky wants NATO to offer security guarantees to Ukraine in the event of a ceasefire or peace deal with Russia — something Moscow has called “unacceptable.”
NATO’s eastern members have been some of the strongest backers of Ukraine since Russia invaded and have repeatedly warned about the prospect of Moscow stepping up its aggression.
Baltic states Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia are former Soviet republics, now EU members, that fear they are in Moscow’s crosshairs.
US President Donald Trump has heaped pressure on NATO’s European members to increase their defense spending, sparking fears about the US commitment to protect the continent.