By Anugrah Kumar, Christian Post Contributor
The United States has withdrawn most of the troops it sent to Nigeria for a special operation against fighters of the Islamic State of West Africa Province, or ISWAP, while continuing to share intelligence with Nigerian forces, according to U.S. Africa Command.
Most of the force sent for the operation has pulled out, Gen. Dagvin Anderson of AFRICOM, the Pentagon’s command for Africa, said, according to reporting from Deutsche Welle and Agence France-Presse.
Speaking at a conference of African defense chiefs in Luanda, Angola, last week, Anderson said the partnership Nigeria requested continues, including intelligence sharing.
In May, U.S. and Nigerian forces killed nearly 200 Islamic State fighters in the Lake Chad region of northeastern Nigeria. Among those killed was Abu-Bilal al-Minuki, identified as the group’s global second-in-command.
Nigerian Defense Minister Christopher Musa told AFP that U.S. combat troops were deployed specifically for that operation. The troops came in, did the work and departed, he was quoted as saying.
Anderson said the Nigerian military has continued to be very active since the operation and continues to prosecute targets itself.
Roughly 200 non-combat U.S. troops also deployed earlier this year for training and technical assistance. It was not clear whether any of them were among those withdrawn.
Separately, AFRICOM, in coordination with the Federal Government of Somalia, conducted an airstrike targeting al-Shabaab, the al-Qaida-linked militant group, on Friday, according to a statement by the command. The strike occurred near Farsooley, about 55.9 miles west of Mogadishu. AFRICOM said it withheld specific details about units and assets for operational security.
The command said it continues to act with the Somali government and Somali Armed Forces to degrade al-Shabaab’s ability to threaten U.S. forces and citizens abroad.
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said on May 27 that U.S. forces had killed hundreds of Islamic State militants in Nigeria, crediting President Donald Trump’s directive to protect Christians in the country from Islamist violence. Hegseth said Trump charged the military with protecting Nigerian Christians roughly a year ago after learning of their targeting by the group.
Building the partnerships took time, Hegseth said, but the president remained persistent and the right assets were put in place.
On May 16, AFRICOM announced that U.S. forces had conducted an operation against Islamic State elements in northeastern Nigeria.
Anderson said at the time the operation was made possible through U.S.-Nigeria cooperation over previous months. He said the two nations would pursue and neutralize terrorist threats and are committed to protecting their people and interests.
According to a recent report by the Observatory of Religious Freedom in Africa (ORFA), at least 22,835 Christians and 10,519 Muslims were killed in Nigeria over the six years between October 2019 and September 2025. Islamic Fulani terror groups emerged as the dominant killers, responsible for 18,577 civilian deaths — four times the 4,941 attributed to Boko Haram and ISWAP combined.
The U.S. military buildup in Nigeria followed a public confrontation between Washington and Abuja. Trump accused the Nigerian government of allowing mass killings of Christians, called the situation genocide and warned that the United States could cut aid or increase military pressure if attacks continued.
Nigerian President Bola Ahmed Tinubu denied accusations of bias or negligence, arguing that both Christians and Muslims had been victims of the insurgency.
The ORFA data presented a ratio of 2.2 Christian deaths for every Muslim death. Adjusted for the relative size of Christian and Muslim populations in each affected state, that ratio rises to 4.4 to 1, the report said.
Nigeria has a population of roughly 237 million and is nearly evenly divided between Muslims concentrated in the north and Christians in the south. In the country’s Middle Belt, years of communal violence have killed thousands and displaced predominantly Christian farming communities.
Nigeria has fought an Islamist extremist insurgency in the northeast since 2009, waged first by Boko Haram and then by ISWAP, a Boko Haram offshoot and rival.