Boko Haram, ISWAP Resume Fighting After Failed Reconciliation Move

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 Friday 14 February, 2025 around ISWAP camps in Toumbun Gini and Toumbun Ali.

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.

A former idiosyncratic leader of JAS, Abubakar Shekau, had in 2015 pledged allegiance to the leader of Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, 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.