Hundreds of Boko Haram fighters and their
families have surrendered in Chad in the past
month, security and U.N. sources said, Reuters
reported on Saturday.
The surrender is a sign the military campaign
against them is making headway.
“They surrendered to our troops on the front line
in Lake Chad,” said Colonel Mohammad Dole,
Chief Military Public Information Officer for the
Multinational Joint Task Force (MNJTF)
headquartered in Chad’s capital N’Djamena.
“The surrenders are taking place because of the
firepower of our operations.
The groups, many of them armed, have been arriving since September and their number keeps increasing,” he said.
Some 240 fighters, most off whom are Chadian,
are now being held in detention along with their
families, Dole said.
The MNJTF, with troops from Chad, Niger,
Nigeria, Cameroon and Benin and intelligence,
training and logistical support from the United
States, launched a regional operation in July
against the group, which has pledged allegiance to
Islamic State.
It has since continued patrols around the
waterways of Lake Chad – one of the world’s
poorest regions whose villages were last year
regularly struck by fighters, sometimes aboard
canoes.
Analyst and security sources think the fighters are
probably recent recruits that Boko Haram has
struggled to retain as it has ceded territory.
Defections of Boko Haram fighters have been
reported in Nigeria but are not known to have
previously occurred on such a large scale.
Around 2.6 million people have been displaced in
the Lake Chad Basin where Chad, Niger, Nigeria
and Cameroon meet.
Signs that regional armies are wresting back
control of the Chadian part of the lake is
significant since it had been a recruitment hub,
even if the group never sought to conquer
territory there, said Ryan Cummings, director of
consultancy Signal Risk.
“Their presence in Chad was more for
recruitment and for resources. Its strikes in the
country were punitive,” he said, referring to
revenge attacks on regional military heavyweight
Chad, which has supplied 3,000 troops for the
MNJTF.
Source - The Guardian
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