Two weeks after a failed reconciliation move between Jama’tu Ahlis Sunna Lidda’awati wal-Jihad (JAS), popularly known as Boko Haram, and its breakaway faction, Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), both groups have resumed fighting in Abadam Local Government Area of Borno State.
This is not the first time the Bakura Doro-led faction of Boko Haram and ISWAP engaged in such violent fighting on the islands of Lake Chad Basin.
The recent clash, according to Zagazola Makama, a counterinsurgency expert in the North-east, occurred on 14 February around ISWAP camps in Toumbun Gini and Toumbun Ali.
Mr Makama, in an X post, said ISWAP suffered heavy casualties in the battle that was fought on water. He said the fighting may continue and spread to Kukawa LGA, where Boko Haram fighters continue their campaign against ISWAP.
Both groups have been fighting each other since ISWAP split from Boko Haram in 2016 and pledged allegiance to the Islamic State.
Abubakar Shekau, a former idiosyncratic leader of JAS, had, in 2015, pledged allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), making him the leader of ISWAP.
However, ideological differences forced some top members of the group, including Habib Yusuf, the son of Boko Haram founder Mohammed Yusuf, to fall out with Mr Shekau.
The breakaway faction led by Mr Yusuf, otherwise known as Abu Musab al-Barnawi, went ahead to bear the name ISWAP with its operational bases in the islands and shores of the Lake Chad basin, restricting their brothers-in-arms to places like Sambisa and Mandara Mountain in Gwoza.
When the groups first split in 2016, the Islamic State tried all it could to reconcile them, but the negotiation failed majorly as a result of Mr Shekau’s ideological stance, especially on who should be regarded as a kufar [apostate] and why they must be executed.
That same year of the schism, the Islamic State officially recognised Mr Yusuf as the leader of ISWAP. This situation forced Mr Shekau and some of his loyalists to revert to his JAS designation.
Subsequently, a clash between ISWAP and Boko Haram led to the death of Mr Shekau, who experts believe killed himself to escape ridicule after his Sambisa hideout was raided on 19 May 2021. This ended Mr Shekau’s 11 years of terror campaign.
As the shadowy Bakura Doro succeeded Mr Shekau, supremacy fights between both groups continued, diminishing their strengths. This is besides strategic military offensives against the groups, although it is believed that these rivalry fights have killed more insurgents than military offensives.
