The United States earlier this month withdrew most of its troops deployed for a joint counterterrorism operation in northeastern Nigeria.
The area has long been a hotbed for the Boko Haram Islamist militant group and its splinter factions — particularly the Islamic State West African Province (ISWAP), one of “Islamic State”‘s most active affiliates globally.
US Africa Command’s General Dagvin Anderson described the joint operation as a model for future security cooperation on the continent.
“We have withdrawn much of our forces that were just there for that operation,” Anderson told reporters at a conference of African defense chiefs in Luanda, Angola.
“But [we] are continuing the partnership that Nigeria has asked for to help continue with the intelligence sharing and the understanding that’s necessary to be able to prosecute these difficult tasks,” he said.
In February, the United States sent a small contingent to support local forces with intelligence, logistics, and training. The deployment followed tensions between Washington and Abuja after US President Donald Trump accused Nigeria of failing to stop killings against Christians and threatened military intervention.
However, the partnership soon evolved beyond advisory roles.
The joint operation, which led to the killing of Abu Bilal al-Minuki, a senior “Islamic State” (IS) leader, also eliminated 175 fighters while destroying checkpoints, weapon caches, logistics hubs, military equipment, and financing networks used by the group.
A new model or a one-off operation?
Now, the drawdown comes amid significant changes in the US security posture and Washington’s broader push for burden sharing among its partners and allies.
In Africa, the security landscape is changing more rapidly than its armed forces are resourced to handle as jihadist armed groups spread across the Sahel, Somalia, and northeastern Nigeria.
With the joint mission in Nigeria, the United States appears, according to analysts, to be putting its strategy into practice by providing specialized training, surveillance capabilities, and support for African-led operations rather than maintaining large troop deployments — even as Western forces are being pruned back amid increasing Russian and Chinese influence on the continent.
James Barnett, a research fellow with the Hudson Institute who specializes in conflict and militancy in Nigeria and Africa, said the overall US approach to counterterrorism in Africa is not changing much.
“The US military always talks about assisting capable African partners who lead, which is the general philosophy, but the Trump administration has shown it is willing if not often eager to flex US military muscle with airstrikes or raids, particularly against the Islamic State’s networks,” he said.
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On the other side of the continent, in Somalia, where local forces are much weaker, the US military remains quite active with about 600 military personnel and a sustained air campaign against “Islamic State” fighters and al-Shabaab militants in the region.
“What’s more telling is that Washington is calling it a model for future cooperation across Africa, which means this fits a broader US foreign policy interest in dismantling Islamic State’s global network wherever it operates, and in re-establishing American relevance in African security after a period of reduced engagement,” said Taiwo Adebayo, a researcher at the Institute for Security Studies (ISS Africa).
“So, it’s less a retreat and more like America choosing a mode of involvement it can sustain and repeat, using Nigeria as the proof of concept,” Adebayo told DW.
Can this strengthen Africa-led operations?
The continent has seen a surge in terrorism-related activity in recent years. According to the 2026 Global Terrorism Index, more than half of the world’s terrorism-related deaths occurred in West Africa’s Sahel, making the vast territory the global epicenter of terrorism.
“The US has sought to intervene or support where it can demonstrate symbolic or quick wins, even if the insurgencies in those areas remain entrenched and unresolved,” Beverly Ochieng, senior analyst with Control Risks, told DW.
She noted that the US airstrikes “in Nigeria and Somalia since Trump’s re-entry in office have not necessarily dislodged insurgent groups or discouraged their activities, and will not resolve the wider devastating impacts of insecurity in these countries.”
Many experts agree that partnership with the US is necessary for early warning capabilities and enhancing ongoing ground operations.
Adebayo remarked that international cooperation is vital to dismantling insurgent networks, while Ochieng added that “an all-out military approach is unlikely to be sufficient as the underpinning issues that enable militant and armed groups to remain active … still need to be addressed by [African] governments themselves.”
They must also “limit dependence on increasingly unreliable international geopolitical partners,” Ochieng concluded.
