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Abu-Bilal al-Minuki, ISIS’s shadow commander in West Africa, was killed May 16 using what an extremism analyst describes as one of the hardest forms of intelligence to detect, after decades being shielded by “deep local networks” across the region.
While the killing dealt one of the biggest blows to ISIS’s global network in years, disrupting operations in northeastern Nigeria, the terror group’s top leader, Abu Hafs al-Hashimi al-Qurashi, remains at large as Africa becomes the movement’s global epicenter.
“There is no single ISIS ‘headquarters’ in Nigeria; ISWAP (Islamic State West Africa Province) operates dozens of small, shifting camps scattered across the Lake Chad islands and the Borno bush,” Dr. Omar Mohammed, Senior Research Fellow at the GW Program on Extremism, told Digital.
“Al-Minuki would have had no smartphones, relying instead on courier-based communications and constant movement between these small camps,” he said.
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Abu-Bilal al-Minuki, ISIS’s shadow commander in West Africa, was killed May 16. (Pictures from History/Universal Images Group)
President Donald Trump’s explicit reference to “sources who kept us informed” points directly to human intelligence, or HUMINT — the hardest form of intelligence for a target to detect or counter, Mohammed explained.
The precision strike successfully penetrated defenses that had been held for years.
“He would have utilized deep local networks the Nigerian military has struggled to penetrate for over a decade,” Mohammed added.
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“His operational security would have been severe,” Mohammed said. “But two things eventually undo even careful targets: time generates patterns, and human sources are extremely difficult to defeat.”
“Despite severe operational security, al-Minuki was ultimately compromised through persistent human intelligence,” he noted. “Al-Minuki knew he was marked.”
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ISIS caliph Abu Hafs al-Hashimi al-Qurashi is believed to have fled to Somalia’s semi-autonomous Puntland region. (Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post)
The Nigerian army described the strike as “a meticulously planned and highly complex precision air-land operation” carried out Saturday between midnight and 4 a.m. in Metele, located in Borno State in northeast Nigeria.
U.S. Africa Command, or AFRICOM, placed the strike in northeastern Nigeria, with Nigerian army communications pointing specifically to the Metele region.
Despite the tactical success, the current ISIS “caliph,” or overall leader, remains on the run, according to reports.
Al-Qurashi was “named following his predecessor’s death in Syria,” Mohammed claimed.
“He is deliberately faceless, with analysts describing this line of leaders as the ‘caliphs of the shadows,’” Mohammed said, noting al-Qurashi assumed leadership after Turkish authorities killed his predecessor in 2023.
While al-Qurashi’s exact location is unknown, reports indicate he traveled from Syria or Iraq through Yemen to Somalia’s semi-autonomous Puntland region.
“This is where the financial hub also sits, meaning the entire center of gravity of the organization — leadership, finance, operational direction — has been quietly relocating to Africa for years,” Mohammed said.
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“Africa has transitioned from a peripheral theater to the operational and financial center of global ISIS activity,” Dr. Omar Mohammed, Senior Research Fellow at the GW Program on Extremism, explained to Digital. (Jaron Willis/AFRICOM)
Data from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project confirms this regional shift, showing more than two-thirds of all Islamic State global activity now takes place in Africa.
“Africa has transitioned from a peripheral theater to the operational and financial center of global ISIS activity,” Mohammed explained. “Africa is no longer a peripheral theater. It is the main one. Funding is overwhelmingly local and extractive — taxation, ransom, smuggling — which is precisely why these networks are so resilient.”
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“Al-Minuki, for example, rose through ISWAP and operated across the Lake Chad Basin and into the wider Sahel,” he noted.
“Still, staking out al-Minuki is the most significant blow to ISIS’ global leadership architecture since the al-Baghdadi raid in 2019, executed in the theater that has quietly become the group’s beating heart,” Mohammed said before adding the strike was “not a one-off kinetic moment.”
