The Sudanese authorities have re-arrested the Salafist Jihadist preacher and supporter of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), Masa’ad al-Sidairah along with several of his disciples.

The National Intelligence and Security Services (NISS) arrested him and two others including the head of Jama’at al-I’tisam bil-Kitab wal-Sunnah (the group of adherents to the Quran and Sunnah), Omer abdel-Khalig and al-Shaikh Salah al-Din besides several of their followers.

Al-Sidairah is running a religious school in Shambat suburb in Khartoum North where he teaches Hadith (a collection of traditions containing sayings of the prophet Mohamed).

However the authorities see his institution as a recruiting centre for the youth who seek to join Jihadist movements including ISIS, the Somali militant group, al-Shabab and the Malian Ansar al-Din group.

Al-Sidairah had openly pledged allegiance to ISIS’ leader and the self-proclaimed Caliph, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, but he denies involvement in sending young people to Iraq and Syria to join the militant group.

ISIS presence in Sudan has made the headlines last March after British media outlets confirmed that nine medical students from Sudanese origins entered Syria via Turkey to work in hospitals under the control of ISIS. Also, last June, 12 other college students secretly left the country for Turkey to join ISIS.

The students are enrolled at the University of Medical Sciences and Technology (UMST) owned by the minister of health at the state of Khartoum Mamoon Humaida.

On 26 July 2014 Jama’at al-I’tisam bil-Quran wal-Sunna issued a statement signed by its former leader, Sulieman Abu Naro, pledging allegiance to al-Baghdadi and expressing support for the declaration of the Islamic Caliphate.

“We see in this event a great opportunity to unite Muslims and to strengthen their ranks in the battle against their enemies,” the statement read.

Also, the group, under its current leader, Abdel-Khalig, expressed its support to the terrorist attack against the offices of the French magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris, last January in which 12 people were killed and 11 others injured.

It also supported the killing of the Royal Jordanian Air Force pilot, Muaz Kassasbe, who was burned to death by ISIS last February after his plane crashed over Syria.

It is worth pointing that al-Sidairah was released last January after he spent three months in detention against the backdrop of the demonstrations which broke out in protest of a cartoon satirizing Islam’s prophet Mohamed. He had also been detained at Cairo airport in 2009.

On 30 June, NISS re-arrested the general coordinator of the far-right One Nation Movement group and the openly supporter of ISIS, Mohamed Ali al-Gizouli.

He was released a few days earlier after spending 8 months in detention against the backdrop of accusations pertaining to his support for ISIS.

In May, Sudan’s minister of Higher Education Sumaya Abu-Kushawa accused unnamed circles of actively recruiting students to join ISIS.

At the time, Sudanese second vice-president Hassabo Abdel-Rahman blamed internal and external parties as well as international intelligence agencies for the phenomenon of extremism in the Arab and African communities.

Also, last July sources told Sudan Tribune that an ISIS cell comprised of three Middle Eastern men and an Eritrean were arrested by the Sudanese authorities in the coastal city of Port Sudan on 10 June.

ISIS announced that one of its Sudanese fighters nicknamed Abu al-Fida al-Sudani was killed in their stronghold of al-Riqa.

Nigeria has nabbed a commander of extremist group Boko Haram in an operation by troops in the country’s northeastern state of Borno, an army statement said Monday.

The unnamed commander of Boko Haram was arrested in a military operation last weekend in Aulari, a hideout of the terrorists in Bama axis of Borno State, the statement signed by Col. Tukur Gusau, a spokesperson of the 7 Division of Nigerian army, said.

Several camps of the terror group were further cleared by troops in more than nine other villages in the same axis of the restive state, the statement said, adding the arrested Boko Haram commander is presently undergoing investigation.

Boko Haram has killed more than 13,000 people and injured more in attacks carried out in the last six years.

The group stepped up attacks in northeastern Nigeria since President Muhammadu Buhari took office in May, vowing to root out the group.

Nigerian troops have rescued 178 people from Boko Haram in attacks that destroyed several of the Islamic extremist group’s camps in the north east, according to the army.

Army spokesman Colonel Tukur Gusau said 101 of those freed were children, along with 67 women and 10 men.

The Nigerian Air Force reported killing “a large number” of militants in repelling an attack on Bitta village, 30 miles south west of the army operations that took place around Bama, 45 miles south east of Maiduguri city.

Maiduguri is the birthplace of Boko Haram and the capital of north-eastern Borno state.

Last week the army rescued 71 kidnapped people, some of whom said they had been held by Boko Haram for up to a year in villages just 25 miles from Maiduguri.

Hundreds have been freed from Boko Haram captivity this year but none of the 219 girls abducted in April 2014 from a school in Chibok was among the rescued.

Meanwhile the extremists distributed a new video on Twitter purporting to show attacks on Nigerian army barracks in the states of Borno and Yobe. The video also shows the beheading of a man in military fatigues said to be a Nigerian soldier.

According to a translation by the SITE Intelligence Group, an unidentified fighter, shown in the video with looted army weapons and ammunition, says the footage shows Nigeria’s military has not forced Boko Haram from its positions and got them hemmed into the Sambisa Forest, as the military has claimed.

Two Malian soldiers were killed and five were injured on Sunday when their convoy was ambushed in the centre of the country, a defence official said.

The attack occurred on the road between the central towns of Nampala and Diabaly, roughly 400 kilometres by road north of the capital, Bamako, said Lt. Col. Diarran Diakite, a defence ministry adviser.

“At this time we can’t say anything about the identity of those behind this ambush, but it’s clear that they are against the peace process,” Diakite said.

Mali’s northern half fell under the control of Islamic extremists following a military coup in 2012. A French-led military intervention in 2013 scattered the extremists from the north’s cities and towns, though the region remains insecure despite the presence of U.N. peacekeepers.

In recent months, violence has extended south. In March, a masked gunman opened fire at a restaurant popular with foreigners in Bamako, killing five people.

In late June, gunmen killed three soldiers in an attack on a village near the border with Mauritania, then followed that up the next day by briefly occupying a village near the border with Ivory Coast. The Ansar Dine extremist group later said it was behind those attacks.

Mali’s government signed a peace deal with Tuareg separatist rebels earlier this year.

The Nigerian Air Force, NAF, in a combined effort with the ground troops of the Nigerian Army, have successfully repelled an attack on Bita Village by Boko Haram insurgents.

The Nigerian Air Force, using its Alpha-Jet, provided combat air support to the ground force to attack the insurgents where they were observed to be mopping up to carry out a deadly attack on the village.

Director of Information, Nigerian Air Force, Air Commodore Dele Alonge, in a statement, said many Boko Haram fighters were killed and several others were injured.

Thereafter, the NAF A-Jet conducted an armed reconnaissance along Bita-Gwoza road and through Yamtege, Hamdaga, Dure and Pulka.

The statement assured that NAF will continue to give all necessary support to the ground force through its intensified and persistent efforts in the ongoing fight against Boko Haram terrorists in the North-East until all portions of Nigerian soil is safe and free from the insurgents.

Cameroon has deported more than 2 000 Nigerians who were living in the country illegally as part of new security measures intended to prevent suicide attacks by Boko Haram jihadists, sources said Friday.

Regional newspaper L’Oeil du Sahel reported that about 2,500 Nigerians had been “rounded up” in Kousseri, in the far north of Cameroon, and sent back to their country on Thursday.

The weekly posted a photo on its Facebook page showing several departing trucks crammed with hundreds of passengers.

A source close to regional authorities confirmed that “more than 2 000 ‘irregular’ Nigerians have been expelled from Kousseri”.

Mey Aly, an official from a local NGO, said that most of the Nigerians “had fled the atrocities of Boko Haram” to take refuge in Cameroon.

Thursday’s deportations came just a day after Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari visited Cameroon for talks on how to combat the escalating regional threat from Boko Haram.

Suicide bombers

Buhari and Cameroonian counterpart Paul Biya pledged to strengthen co-operation between their two countries in the fight against the insurgents.

Between July 12 and July 25, Cameroon’s far north, on the border with Boko Haram’s Nigerian strongholds, suffered three suicide attacks – two in the regional capital, Maroua – leaving at least 44 people dead.

The Cameroonian border post at Kousseri – which has been hit by two suicide attacks since June – occupies a strategic position, with just a bridge separating it from Chad’s capital N’Djamena.

Authorities in Cameroon’s far north have taken significant steps to boost security, including banning women from wearing the full face-veil amid fears that suicide bombers could use the garment to conceal explosives.

“With these attacks, the tone of the authorities has changed,” said a security source in Maroua. “They have asked that foreigners [notably Nigerians] and displaced people in the border areas go home.”

Some 300 Cameroonian children were removed from their Koranic schools in Maroua and taken back to their villages on Friday, according to a source close to local authorities, as the schools’ managers feared that insurgents could try to use them for suicide attacks.

Boko Haram’s bloody insurgency in Nigeria has left more than 15 000 people dead since 2009 and has increasingly spread across the country’s borders, with Chad and Cameroon suffering deadly suicide bombings in recent months.

Security co-operation is an area of high interest for the US in Africa. Obama has repeatedly expressed his administration’s keen interest in learning from Ethiopia’s counterterrorism (CT) efforts and its counterinsurgency (COIN) strategy, which I call the “Ethiopian Doctrine” on CT and COIN.

Attesting to this fact, Obama said: “Obviously [the US and Ethiopia] have been talking a lot about terrorism and the focus has been on ISIL [the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant], but in Somalia, we’ve seen al-Shabaab, an affiliate of al-Qaeda, wreak havoc throughout that country.”

He continued: “That’s an area where the co-operation and leadership on the part of Ethiopia is making a difference as we speak […] So, our counterterrorism co-operation and the partnerships that we have formed with countries like Ethiopia are going to be critical to our overall efforts to defeat terrorism.”

For many experts closely following events in the Horn of Africa and the fight against terrorism, Ethiopia stands out as having been exceptionally successful.

But what makes Ethiopia’s doctrine so successful?

Supremacy of politics

The Ethiopian Doctrine on CT and COIN differs from others in several highly related respects:

The first element refers to supremacy of politics over the military components of the CT and COIN strategies. Under the Ethiopian Doctrine, politics precedes and leads the military and criminal justice systems. Traditional military-led COIN and CT strategies (including peacekeeping missions) cripplingly depend on the expeditionary army, whereas the Ethiopian Doctrine focuses on liberating areas for local communities to organise, arm themselves, and fight back against terrorists.

It also focuses on traditional narratives of solidarity, thereby promoting credible voices and messages of hope against despair.

Additionally, the counterinsurgency soldiers must always follow and support the political and civilian officers. Thus, political work and community development advances before military operations.

Subsidiarity principle

The political work involves mainly consultation with local communities and helping them in organising and arming themselves in order to fight back against threats. A soldier has a place in CT and COIN, but only in a subsidiary role to the political officer.

The role of political and civilian officers cannot be replaced by a soldier or military representative.

It is not a quick-fix solution, but instead, seeks to gradually weaken violent extremism by engraining anti-insurgency into the very local cultural attributes and historical legacies of toleration of societies that comprise Ethiopia.

Trust-building, understanding fears, and sharing a common vision is at the centre of this approach, but more importantly, it embraces the principle of subsidiarity that requires that any and all external actors should be backup supporters of efforts by internal forces and local communities in the fight against terrorism.

This approach also helps to build close-knit neighbourhood associations that provide community-based peace and security with effective oversight by the state.

Such a commonality makes it very difficult for both foreign and domestic extremist groups to establish themselves and operate clandestinely within communities.

Pockets of stability and sustenance

Another element relates to seeking peace and national unity through the gradual expansion of pockets of stability, legitimacy, law, and order.

While traditional anti-insurgency strategies focus on controlling territories and populations, the Ethiopian Doctrine focuses on public deliberations, training, arming, and establishing administrative units in liberated areas to ensure their own peace and security.

It is a gradualist approach. For example, beginning with the liberation of Somalia’s capital Mogadishu, and then working outwards to liberate and secure more surrounding territory through community-based outreach.

Moreover, this strategy relates to the governance and delivery of basic services in order to build hope within communities and security to sustain their own livelihoods.

It aims at drying the swamps of poverty and unrest that breed violent extremism. Basically, this approach kills the problem at its source, before it spreads and expands beyond control.

Mobile military command posts

The last, and arguably the most profound aspect of Ethiopian Doctrine is that it recognises that there is no military solution to terrorism and insurgency.

That being said, it doesn’t eliminate it from the equation. It simply acknowledges that the military is not the most important factor.

It prioritises a greater use of mobile field headquarters and command centres meshed in the community – centres that are primarily designed to support the local communities in their efforts against terrorism and to provide extra muscle when their efforts are outgunned by the enemy.

In traditional anti-insurgency strategies, these mobile military operations would be pushing aggressive offensive measures and become static and easy targets for terrorist forces.

By adapting aspects of the Ethiopian Doctrine to local peculiarities, other regions facing chaotic security regimes could not only alienate the leadership of the terrorist organisations but could also offer opportunity and space for local community-based mobilisation of CT and COIN strategies.

Expansive and indiscriminate bombings without the active participation of local communities and regional actors would provide for more grievance-based terrorism and will fail to be effective and sustainable in the long term.

A high-level Partnership Forum on Somalia has stressed the need for additional resources for the war-ravaged country to enable it to effectively deal with Al-Shabaab threats.

The team says more resources will ensure delivery of a victory plan for Somalia’s federal government as it forges ahead with its stabilisation efforts.

Partners attending the High-Level Partnership Forum in Mogadishu, which ended Thursday, conceded that additional resources were needed in order to effectively equip and train Somalia’s security forces.

The African Union (AU) Special Representative to Somalia, Ambassador Maman Sidikou, says the funding will ensure delivery of a victory plan for the Federal Government as it forges ahead.

Ambassador Sidikou described the two-day meeting here as testimony to the progress made in securing the country.

The was co-hosted by the President of Federal Government of Somalia, Hassan Sheikh Mohamoud, and the Special representative of the United Nation Secretary-General to Somalia, Nicholas Kay.