Maybe now is a good time to respond to @sahelblog's thoughtful review of my piece on the #ISIS/ #ISWAP relation... (Thanks, Alex). I don't think we disagree, really. https://twitter.com/sahelblog/status/1322150236928835584

I am glad Alex though it "pretty balanced". That was definitely my target. It is time to move beyond caricatural & ideologically-laden debates about the local & the global in jihad. The best way to do that is to start from evidence - talking to former jihadis, in this instance.

Indeed, "local" jihads are not pawns for a supposed ISIS HQ in Syria to play geopolitical chess with. That should not be a surprise. Imagine a development agency in a Western capital trying to operate with a NGO somewhere in Africa... a lot of the same problems, and more.

Alex is right: while there were always some contacts between Nigerian jihadi and global jihad, the rise of JAS in 2013-14 was a local affair (which is probably why Shekau is so territorial about it: he feels like he did this by himself). I agree & wish I had made that point.

And so both sides have had to bite it sometimes, to put up with things they were not keen about. And yes, there was parochialism & footdragging & resistance à la James Scott by Nigerian jihadi.

Perhaps we should note that ISIS ended up putting its weight behing those jihadi that seemed more in line... and that those dissenters, who started out as the JV team to Shekau, have since really come out on top.

In any case, one cannot argue ties between these jihadi groups did not occur or that they were superficial or only about comms. These ties have mattered. On some issues, they reinforced already present tendencies among dissenters. A meeting of minds.

On other issues, ISIS transfered new knowledge. There is no doubt that ISIS played a part in making ISWAP what it is now. Jihadi are good at transfering lessons learnt and best practices, it seems...

I am glad Alex picks up my mention of the group's lack of theological sophistication. Some defectors made it clear that the Nigerian jihad knew its weakness and really looked to the Caliph for knowledge.

This confirms the earnestness of the jihadi's engagement with religious matters. For many (though certainly not all), orthodoxy and orthopraxy do matter (though of course practical matters that turn up, making yearnings somewhat complicated to implement).

Finance-wise, indeed, I was struck by how low the amounts transfered were at a moment when ISIS was supposed to have hundreds of millions of USD... But you feed a man on a dollar a day in northern Nigeria...

At least now we accept those ties have existed. We can accept that they vary in intensity significantly from one period to the next. We can gather evidence and discuss about what those ties really mean, what ISIS has tried to do, and what local jihadi have been doing with that.

Interestingly, we just got from a UAE tribunal an additional clue... According to that court, sthg financial was indeed going on, until 2017 at least, between Nigerians in the UAE, an Arab visitor coming from (or through) Turkey and "Boko Haram". https://dailytrust.com/6-nigerians-convicted-in-uae-over-b-haram-funding

Plenty of questions however. Little is known about the evidence itself. How was it established the transfers were to Nigerian jihadi? Was it ISIS or other benefactors? Was it JAS or ISWAP on receiving side? Were the Nigerians condemned aware of who the sender and recipient were?

Was the one of them who settled in 2015 in Dubai sent by the Nigerian jihadi precisely with this assignment? Or was he just a regular hawala operator who made a poor choice of clients? Still, this does seem to fit nicely with what I heard from defectors.