Preface Acknowledgements Introduction Part I: The Insurgent Chapter 1. Boko Haram’s Formative Years, Ideology and Transitioning to Violence Chapter 2. The 2009 Troubles in North-East Nigeria and Abu Shekau’s Emergence Chapter 3. 2016 – 2019: Boko Haram, Abu Mus’ab Al-Barnawi and Islamic State’s West Africa Province (ISWAP) Part II: The Environment Chapter 4. The Terrestrial Environment as a Force-Multiplier Chapter 5. The North-East Nigeria Border Environment: Cameroon, Chad and Niger Chapter 6. The Non-Physical Environment to Boko Haram’s Insurgency Part III: The Campaign Chapter 7. A Resilient Threat: Boko Haram’s Military and Organisational Sophistication Chapter 8. Suicide Bombing and Guerrilla Warfare: Boko Haram’s Covert Front Part IV: The Counter-Insurgency Challenge (Theory and Practice) Chapter 9. War and the COIN Challenge (Theory) Annexe to Chapter nine: 2019 Update Conclusion: So, Why Has the Nigerian Army Struggled Against Boko Haram? Notes Index
The first study of the military nature of Boko Haram, offering analysis of the organisation's insurgency tactics and the Nigerian army's efforts to counter their success in destabilizing the region.
Akali Omeni (PhD, Kings College London) is Lecturer at the Handa Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence, University of St Andrews, UK. He was previous a Lecturer in African Politics at the University of Leicester, UK. He has previously worked with the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) and was co-chair of the Africa Research Group at King's College London (affiliated to their world-leading War Studies department). In 2019, Omeni won the prestigious “Rising Star” excellence award at King’s College London. His other previously published books include Policing and Politics in Nigeria.
Omeni’s highly original study focuses ... on [explaining] the
group’s success over the last few decades as a fighting force.
...The book also includes a useful discussion of the group’s
relationship with the Islamic State.
*Foreign Affairs Magazine*
[The book is] without doubt essential reading, offering substantial
and empirically grounded insights on this feared group to scholars,
policy-makers, military planners and strategists, and
practitioners.
*International Affairs*
A well-informed, valuable analysis of Boko Haram’s military and
ideological evolution, the environment facilitating these
processes, and Nigerian security forces counterinsurgency
challenges … Akali Omeni has produced a wide-ranging and insightful
book that provides a detailed analysis of a resilient insurgent
threat and the efforts undertaken to counter it.
*Civil Wars*
Omeni combines emotional access, journalistic integrity and
intellectual rigour to produce an important and necessary book
about this under-rated, and little understood insurgency which
remains the biggest threat to the most powerful black nation in the
world. He has written it with great attention to little known
details, proving invaluable, often ignored insights into the
insurgency, the military and the region.
*Funmi Iyanda TV Host/Writer*
“This original and insightful book explains why the Nigerian
military has struggled to contain the rise of Boko Haram – a highly
resilient insurgency in West Africa, that has evolved from
terrorist roots to develop regular military forces, hold territory,
and ally with Islamic State. An important addition to the
comparative study of counterinsurgency failure.”
*Professor Theo Farrell Executive Dean, Faculty of Law, Humanities
and the Arts University of Wollongong, Australia*
“This is an extensive examination of the Boko Haram insurgency,
including the group’s military capabilities and strategies and the
nature of the Nigerian counterinsurgency response. The book charts
the evolution of a seemingly non-violent sect into a deadly jihadi
force that has sustained a decade-long conflict. It makes for
essential reading because of its unique insight into the
operational nature of the Boko Haram conflict.”
*Tomi Oladipo – Africa Security Correspondent, BBC News*
“This is a deep and well researched book highlighting the
challenges faced by the Nigerian military struggling to contain the
rampaging Boko Haram - A deadly and vicious terrorist organization
that has for a decade bedevilled Nigeria’s North East with its
affiliation to Al-Qaida and now Islamic State, and other terrorist
organizations in the Sahel. Boko Haram’s activities have
metamorphosed from terrorist acts to full blown insurgency
capturing and holding the ground. " This book will add to the
literature of understanding Counter Insurgency dimensions of both
its failure and success and will surely be a veritable reference
for both scholars and practitioners.”
*Major General Sarkin Yaki Bello Rtd Former Coordinator for
Counter-Terrorism Office of the National Security Adviser Abuja-
NIGERIA*
“A useful book to help understand the resilience of Boko Haram in
north-east Nigeria and why the Nigerian military has struggled to
contain it.”
*Dr Alex Vines OBE Head, Africa Programme Chatham House*
“This timely new book casts important new light on the development
and resilience of Boko Haram. In charting the group’s ongoing
evolution, it draws intriguing new lessons about the theory and
practice of counterinsurgency. A welcome and valuable addition to
the literature on contemporary African security.”
*Professor Jonathan Hill Director of the Institute of Middle
Eastern Studies King’s College London, UK*
In this carefully crafted book on counter-insurgency operations in
North East Nigeria and the Lake Chad Basin countries, Akali Omeni
provides an insightful study of the evolution and resilience of a
complex insurgent group, Boko Haram. The book provides a strong
empirical case for critiquing counter-insurgency theory by drawing
on an in-depth study of the everyday tactical and operational
strategies of Boko Haram, and explains why the Nigerian military is
still struggling to contain an evolving complex threat to national
and regional peace and security.
*Cyril Obi, Social Science Research Council, New York*
 |
Ask a Question About this Product More... |
|
