This is not good. Not good at all:
Nigerian soldiers had left the town earlier that month under a new strategy of withdrawing to “super camps” that can be more easily defended against insurgents the army has been struggling to contain for a decade.
That withdrawal into large bases is by definition going to leave areas outside the big bases open to enemy operations:
The army’s withdrawal into large bases has coincided with a string of insurgent raids on newly unprotected towns and has left the militants free to set up checkpoints on roads as they roam more freely across the countryside, according to three briefing notes from an international aid and development organization, two security officials and residents.
And this is just wishful thinking:
The new military strategy announced by President Muhammadu Buhari in July to concentrate soldiers in big bases is designed to give troops a secure platform from which they can respond quickly to threats in the region and raid militant camps.
Without the hope of friendly eyes and ears outside the bases--because the government has abandoned those people to the tender mercies of the jihadis--forays into the countryside or urban areas will just be blind lunges that wreck things as the jihadis harass and avoid decisive contact.
In theory, having secure bases is a good first step to spreading out from those bases in order to control more people. You either protect your civilian allies from the enemy or you prevent your civilian foes from helping your enemy.
Pulling back to bases as described is just abandoning the people in the countryside and urban areas away from bases. This is a way to lose the war, as I warned against doing in Afghanistan:
If--and it is a big if--Afghan forces truly are contracting their area of control in order to move on the offensive, this is good.
Otherwise, the Afghan security forces are simply abandoning the countryside and allowing the Taliban to eventually put the urban areas under siege, perhaps reliant on aerial resupply or heavily guarded ground convoys to sustain their resistance. If that happens and Afghan security forces collapse even for a moment under constant Taliban attacks as the security forces hunker down and just take attack after attack with no end in sight, there will be no place to withdraw to and we will have a massacre of Afghan security forces and a Taliban victory that might shake the foundation of the Afghan security forces in general.
Nigeria's strategy will end the ability to atomize the jihadis and allow the jihadis to step up the insurgency ladder to build larger forces--which makes it even harder to control territory and people because the Nigerian military will be less able to spread troops out in smaller units to do that. Because those small units will be wiped out.
This has happened before.
This is bad. And Boko Haram will gain strength until the Nigerians change their strategy.
