The Islamic State’s West Africa Province

Abstract

Based in northeastern Nigeria, the Islamic State's most powerful province would emerge in March 2015, when the group formerly colloquially known as “Boko Haram” would pledge allegiance to the Islamic State, thus becoming the Islamic State’s West Africa Province (ISWAP). While Boko Haram had had, prior to its pledge to the Islamic State, interactions with Al-Qaeda’s affiliate in western Africa, Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), it never became a formal Al-Qaeda branch: thus, while IS’s global emergence did not extract Boko Haram away from Al-Qaeda, the newly "democratized" global jihadist landscape did give Boko Haram’s leader, Abubakar Shekau, another preferable option for affiliation. Given the mutual affinity between IS Central and Boko Haram, the former accepted the latter's pledge of bayah in March 2015: the process of “affiliate utility validation” was swift. Once becoming a wilaya, ISWAP dominated as the Islamic State’s largest and most deadly African province, undertaking wide-ranging violence and media productions, even as the group’s internal politics remained riven. Given its size and strength, ISWAP seemingly received more direction, assistance, and communication with IS Central than other African provinces, but fundamentally, remained a locally-driven--if globally-inspired--group, at its core, a “sovereign subordinate” until al-Baghdadi’s death.