The United States has withdrawn most of the troops it deployed to Nigeria for a May operation that killed Abu-Bilal al-Minuki, ISIS’s second-in-command, in the Lake Chad Basin. The announcement was made by AFRICOM Commander General Dagvin Anderson at a press briefing in Luanda, Angola, following the 2026 African Chiefs of Defence conference.
Anderson said Washington will continue its intelligence-sharing partnership with Nigeria, even as most of the forces deployed for that specific mission have been pulled back. He described the operation as a model of counterterrorism cooperation without external interference, crediting Nigeria’s capable military and the two countries’ joint intelligence work for enabling the strike on al-Minuki, who, he said, was responsible for much of ISIS’s global media operations and recruitment.
The AFRICOM chief added that the operation significantly weakened ISIS’s leadership both in Nigeria and globally, and noted that Nigerian forces have remained active since May in efforts to dismantle the terror network’s self-sufficiency.
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