By Malik Samuel
A new infographic released by ISIS’s Amaq Agency over the weekend paints a revealing picture of the group’s global operations during the first half of the year. The data, drawn from across ISIS’s various wilayat (provinces), confirms a trend that has been developing over the past few years: the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) has become the most active and lethal of all ISIS affiliates. With 215 reported attacks and 734 casualties inflicted, ISWAP’s attacks in Nigeria alone accounted for nearly 35 percent of all ISIS operations globally, and approximately 23 percent of all deaths and injuries attributed to ISIS during this period.
West Africa the new battlefield
In Cameroon, ISWAP carried out 18 attacks that resulted in 135 casualties, while in Niger, ISWAP and the Islamic State Sahel Province (ISSP) were jointly responsible for 21 attacks that led to 233 casualties.
ISWAP’s emergence as the leading battlefield force within ISIS’s global network is not new or incidental. It reflects a calculated shift in ISIS’s operational geography and a strategic recalibration following the territorial collapse of the so-called caliphate in Iraq and Syria. While the central command in the Levant has weakened, West Africa’s Lake Chad region has become an epicenter of insurgent vitality. In ISWAP-controlled spaces, ISIS has found fertile ground not only to conduct military operations, but also to project relevance, assert ideological continuity, and re-establish itself as a transnational movement capable of adapting to local conditions while staying loyal to global jihadist ideals.
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The Amaq data shows that ISWAP not only conducted the highest number of attacks but also inflicted the most casualties by a single affiliate, outpacing affiliates in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. This sustained tempo of violence underscores ISWAP’s advanced operational capabilities, which include coordinated raids, ambushes, improvised explosive devices (IEDs), and strategic cross-border attacks into Cameroon and Niger. Since February 2025, ISWAP has been waging a coordinated campaign known as “The Camp Inferno”, aimed at targeting military bases across the Lake Chad Basin, particularly in Nigeria. Over the past five months, the group has successfully overrun 17 Nigerian military bases in Borno and Yobe states, inflicting significant casualties on government forces, destroying critical military infrastructure, and seizing a substantial cache of weapons and equipment.
Unlike ISIS remnants in the Middle East, ISWAP operates in an expansive theatre with access to cross-border sanctuaries, expansive local funding sources, and a large pool of foot soldiers drawn from diverse ethnic and national backgrounds across the Sahel.
A comparative review of the infographics from ISIS’s Amaq Agency for the first halves of 2024 and 2025 shows that while ISIS’s global operational output has declined, ISWAP has sustained a high tempo of attacks and lethality. ISIS recorded 788 attacks and 3,749 casualties globally in the first half of 2024, compared to 620 attacks and 3,193 casualties in the same period in 2025. Despite this drop, ISWAP carried out at least 246 attacks and inflicted 758 casualties in 2024, and at least 233 attacks with 869 casualties in 2025. These figures, drawn from Nigeria and Cameroon, where ISWAP is the sole ISIS affiliate, suggest the group’s performance has remained steady and even more lethal over time.
ISWAP’s share of global ISIS activity has continued to rise, accounting for 38% of all ISIS attacks and 27% of casualties in the first half of 2025. While attacks in Niger were also reported, ISIS did not distinguish between those carried out by ISWAP or the Islamic State Sahel Province (ISSP), making attribution difficult. This means ISWAP’s real numbers may be higher than reported. The group’s ability to retain its operational momentum amid pressure from national militaries underscores its entrenched capabilities, cross-border coordination, and access to local recruitment channels and funding streams. Its cross-border activity, especially in Nigeria, Niger and Cameroon, marks the Lake Chad Basin as a centre of gravity in ISIS’s current global structure.
ISWAP’s consistent performance makes it the most active and strategically significant ISIS affiliate globally. Its attacks are not only militarily disruptive but are also critical to ISIS’s propaganda apparatus, feeding the narrative of an enduring jihadist movement. The group’s success further reinforces its role as a model for other affiliates across the Sahel and highlights West Africa’s transformation into the epicentre of global jihadist activity. This shift has profound implications for regional stability and demands a sustained and coordinated international response.
ISWAP’s battlefield prominence enables ISIS to maintain the appearance of a global jihadist force, even as it suffers attrition elsewhere. Every ISWAP operation is amplified by ISIS media outlets to show that the caliphate’s military machine is still active and potent. These visuals and statistics are not merely retrospective records; they are propaganda assets, carefully curated to boost morale, attract foreign recruits, and secure the allegiance of splinter groups or dormant cells in other regions. Through ISWAP, ISIS manages to bridge its declining core in the Middle East with a dynamic periphery in Africa.
Regional insurgency, global implications
The implications of ISWAP’s leading role extend beyond ISIS’s internal balance of power. For Nigeria, Cameroon, Niger, Chad, and the wider Lake Chad Basin, the group’s operational dominance represents an ongoing threat to national and regional stability. ISWAP’s attacks are no longer confined to military outposts; they increasingly target civilian infrastructure, disrupt local economies, and assert political authority in rural zones through taxation and shadow governance that portray it as the best alternative government. This sustained insurgency not only weakens state control, but also entrenches ISWAP’s legitimacy among vulnerable populations who see the group as a more reliable source of order or livelihood.
In the broader Sahelian context, ISWAP’s strength reinforces jihadist momentum across West Africa. Its successes over the years have served as a model for other ISIS affiliates, particularly in Mali, Burkina Faso, and parts of Niger, where governance vacuums and security fragmentation provide fertile ground for expansion. Already, JNIM and the ISSP have entrenched themselves at the primary purveyors of insecurity in the Sahel. Furthermore, ISWAP’s role in projecting ISIS globally means that military victories against ISWAP are not only of local importance, but of global strategic significance.
As the Amaq infographics reveal, ISWAP is not just a regional actor. It has become the spearhead of ISIS’s global narrative, its operational vanguard, and the most important contributor to its survival as a transnational insurgency. This may help explain the influx of foreign fighters into the region, particularly into Nigeria, from a range of countries including Syria, Chechnya, Morocco, Algeria, and others. This reality demands a recalibrated international response, one that recognises West Africa and the Sahel not as a peripheral theatre, but as a central front in the fight against global jihadism. The response must go beyond military efforts to include disrupting ISWAP’s financial networks, blocking cross-border movements and the influx of foreign fighters, and preventing the recruitment of new combatants, particularly young boys, into the group’s ranks.
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Malik Samuel is a senior researcher at Good Governance Africa-Nigeria. Before joining GGA, he was a researcher with the Institute for Security Studies, specialising in the Boko Haram conflict in the Lake Chad Basin Region. Malik also worked as a conflict researcher with Amnesty International Nigeria. He was also a Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders field communications manager in Northeast Nigeria. Before that, he was an investigative journalist at the Abuja-based International Centre for Investigative Reporting. Malik holds a Master’s degree in Conflict, Peace, and Security from the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya and the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR).
