ICC Note: The regional armies of Chad, Nigeria, Niger, and Cameroon are engaged in a final push to defeat Boko Haram, the Islamist terrorist group that has plagued northeast Nigeria for the past seven years with violence and brutal persecution of the Christian Church. They need to band together in order to be strong enough to defeat Boko Haram, but they reportedly lack a unified strategy, resulting in various difficulties. Boko Haram has succeeded in forcing the armies to retreat eight times before. With international support focused on defeating the Islamic State (ISIS), those fighting Boko Haram have relied predominantly on their own regional forces.

07/27/16, Nigeria (Reuters) – “You’ll all be able to go home soon. Boko Haram is nearly finished,” Niger’s Interior Minister Mohamed Bazoum told a crowd of refugees seated quietly on dusty, sun-baked flats.

His words of optimism were belied by the dozens-strong security detail required to protect him as he toured his country’s southern border.

Seven years into an insurgency that spread from Nigeria into Chad, Niger and Cameroon, regional armies are now in a final push to defeat Boko Haram, a once obscure Islamist sect turned deadly militant group.

But lingering divisions in the countries’ multi-national joint task force (MNJTF) are complicating that mission.

“If there’s no strategy to attack Boko Haram together, we won’t ever finish with them,” Mahamadou Liman Ali, an opposition lawmaker from southern Niger, told Reuters in Niamey.

At a time when the world’s wealthy nations are focused on the fight against Islamic State and al Qaeda, financial support for the MNJTF’s efforts against Boko Haram, which has pledged its allegiance to IS, have fallen short of targets.

That has left the task force’s members – including Chad, the region’s capable but increasingly reluctant military powerhouse – to shoulder the bulk of the costs of fighting the group.

Boko Haram’s victims, which include 2.4 million displaced, live in hope that this month-old offensive – dubbed Operation Gama Aiki, or “finish the job” in the local Hausa language – might succeed where others have failed.

Some have doubts. From where he stays in southern Niger, refugee Usman Kanimbu sees smoke rising from the coalition’s air strikes on insurgent positions in Nigeria, the home he fled.

“We’ve fled eight times. Each time we arrive somewhere Boko Haram attacks again. We would keep running, but we can’t afford to anymore,” he said. “I’m not sure this will ever end.”

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