From Security to Reconciliation: How Nigeria Can Win Its Bloody War With Boko Haram

Drivers of Instability - a crash course.
A lot of people focus on the "causes" that drive an insurgency. They will focus on their stated grievances or stated goals, as if they were legitimate. So allow me to peel the onion a bit.

In my view, the seeds that grew Boko Haram and ISIS-WA are actually very simple, and fairly ubiquitous throughout the African continent.
The vast majority of governments in Africa, whether democratically elected or formed via other means governs the same way. They do not have provisions for their entire population; only their power base. Government largesse and services are focused on populations and groups that support the leader or his (almost always his, not her) party. Often this divide is tribal in nature, and Nigeria is no exception. Security forces and military are not geared or equipped to defend borders or defeat enemies in nearly all cases, but rather arrayed and equipped to secure the capitol and the President himself. What that means for folks not in power is security forces and governance is either absent or formed locally. These groups often form the core of insurgencies all over the continent. The gap between securing their own region and taking from adjacent areas is a nebulous boundary that is often crossed. Central governments ignore these groups for the most part unless they feel threatened by their activities.

Now these groups will occasionally adopt an ideology for recruiting and legitimacy purposes. "True believers" are actually pretty rare, if not absent altogether. But an ideology of "us vs them" or Islam says this make for great recruiting posters and give a measure of control when times are lean or the heat comes on. You will note that leaders of these organizations seldom if ever take up arms themselves.
Insurgent activities may start with an event, but as time passes almost every last one of them devolves into a more or less heavily armed version of a conventional street gang, funding themselves through classic activities such as shaking down the locals for protection money and extorting "taxes" from the area they occupy. More sophisticated groups (usually with outside help) get into trafficking various commodities - weapons, narcotics, people, animals or animal parts, diamonds, or more rarely other material resources. These kinds of groups become regional security problems as they get tied into organized crime and with greater resources can begin to conduct more audacious operations.

Boko Haram is a classic tribal movement with an undercurrent of Islamicist ideology. It sits astride a nexus of arms and person trafficking, and Nigeria's robust oil resources provide a steady stream of income.
To defeat it, you need to get after the revenue streams BH and ISIS-WA use to fund their activities. Without that, they are just another regional group of bandits who can be defeated or marginalized without too much effort by conventional and unconventional forces.
As it stands, those revenue streams have allowed BH to become a regional player that draws recruits to the cause outside of Nigeria. This makes them stronger, but also vulnerable to IO and PO efforts to exploit schisms in the group and develop and exacerbate wedges in the ranks. At it's core, BH is still and will continue to be a movement contained within a single tribe with an axe to grind with the government of Nigeria. Nigeria's President may or may not choose to negotiate with their leaders and attempt to reconcile them and bring them into the King's Peace again, but I would bet they don't and leave them to rot in the hinterland to regenerate into something new in the next generation.
Follow and cut off the money, and BH and ISIS-WA whither and die as a regional security problem. Put just enough military pressure on them to have the ranks know that their cause cannot be a winning one. Exploit and advance fault lines among the group's leadership. That is a winning strategy.

Long term, the answer to these upstart militias, gangs, and insurgencies is to build up the capabilities of the host nation's security forces and to encourage and foster inclusive, comprehensive, and effective government.

What ever happened to Mercs?

Interesting article, thank you.