Sokoto Christmas Fire and the Meaning of Counterterrorism
Editor’s note: In this piece, the Sokoto Christmas Day airstrike, carried out by the United States against ISIS-linked militants, becomes a lens for deeper questions about how counterterrorism is understood locally. Peace and conflict analyst Lekan Olayiwola explains why clarity, presence and trust are as crucial as military hits.
Commendably, an expanding framework of international counterterrorism cooperation has extended Nigeria’s technical reach. The Christmas Day strikes in Sokoto show that precision partnerships can disrupt camps and logistics. Yet the political labour of legitimacy needs to begin. In the absence of a clear state explanation and sustained local engagement, precision fire is already being reinterpreted by affected communities as a form of “protective alienation.”
Source: Getty Images
The arrival of international aerial strikes introduced a different variable into the local security equation. For the rural observer, the sudden intervention of advanced technology during a period of communal gathering represents more than a military event; it is a moment of profound psychological recalibration. It raises a strategic question about how the state appears locally after the smoke clears.
When force teaches the wrong lesson
Perception sustains insurgencies as much as arms. Where the state appears mainly by episodic force rather than daily governance, sudden and unexplained operations risk portraying authority as distant and impersonal. While tactical gains neutralising targets or disrupting logistics matter, their strategic value hinges on how civilians interpret them.
In Northwest Nigeria, counter-insurgency success increasingly depends on communities seeing the state as a protector rather than an intruder. History from Afghanistan to Mali shows that campaigns focused on attrition while neglecting civilian cognition achieve disruption, not stability. Every operation answers a silent question: who is this violence for?
Timing and the psychological terrain
In operational planning, timing follows intelligence windows, yet for civilians, it carries symbolic weight. Strikes on days of communal rest, like Christmas, market days, and religious observances, create cognitive shocks, collapsing the distinction between insurgent threat and state action. In Sokoto, communities burdened by years of displacement and insecurity experience such interventions not as isolated events but as woven into collective memory.
High-intensity operations during periods of social reprieves risk deepening communal fatalism. When people conclude that “no day is free from threat,” withdrawal and non-alignment often follow. Silence in these contexts is not benign neutrality; it functions as a survival shield. Civilians minimise visibility, avoid cooperation, and withhold intelligence.
While rational individually, this behaviour erodes the informational ecosystem critical to counter-insurgency. Effective strategy, therefore, requires recognising that the meaning of violence in local timeframes is as decisive as the strike itself. Tactical precision without attention to perception can inadvertently strengthen insurgent resilience.
The information vacuum and narrative sovereignty
A hallmark of effective counterterrorism is the preservation of surprise; consequently, operational details are rarely disclosed in advance. However, the period immediately following an operation is a critical narrative window. In the absence of a proactive, local communication strategy, a vacuum is created. Narrative sovereignty, the state’s ability to define the meaning of events that occur within its territory, is as vital as territorial control.
When the state fails to speak coherently, insurgent groups, local power brokers, religious figures, and rumour networks rapidly fill the gap, often framing events in ways that reinforce distrust or fear. In Sokoto’s villages, this vacuum is rarely left empty. It is filled with speculation and the competing interpretations of non-state actors. When the state remains silent following significant kinetic actions, it risks protective alienation.
Even when official explanations eventually emerge, their strategic effect is shaped by how much interpretive ground has already been lost. The civilian experience becomes one of being "acted upon" by distant powers rather than being "protected by" their own government. To maintain narrative sovereignty, the kinetic act must be paired with an immediate, visible presence that anchors the event in a framework of national protection.
Such a presence need not be militarised. It can take the form of local officials, traditional authorities, humanitarian coordination, or even symbolic acknowledgement. What matters is the restoration of relational contact. Without it, precision strikes risk being cognitively reclassified as foreign interventions conducted over local heads.
Source: Getty Images
Triangulating truth in contested spaces
In Nigeria’s current information environment, multiple actors, including political figures and influential religious leaders, serve as primary interpreters of events. Their public cautions regarding foreign-assisted strikes are indicators of the socio-political climate. In contested spaces, civilians rarely rely on a single source of truth. Instead, they triangulate, balancing official statements (or their absence) against moral authority, lived experience, and historical memory. Religious leaders in particular function as ethical translators, giving language to anxieties that may otherwise remain diffuse.
When clerical figures or political leaders express unease regarding an intervention, they provide a vocabulary for the community’s underlying anxiety. For a population triangulating between official silence and vocal moral authority, the perception of the state’s intent can become blurred. Without a counter-narrative of state ownership, the community may interpret even successful strikes as destabilising rather than liberating.
This is not a failure of faith leadership; it is a failure of state communication. Where legitimacy is thin, interpretive authority migrates. Counter-insurgency efforts that ignore this dynamic risk cede narrative control to actors whose primary obligation is moral reassurance rather than strategic coherence.
Legitimacy as a strategic asset
The strategic cost of an information gap is measurable in the erosion of cooperation. Compliance with state authority is not synonymous with allegiance. In counterinsurgency, neutrality is often the precursor to insurgent resilience. If civilians perceive they are merely "collateral" to the interests of foreign partners, they adopt a posture of silence as a survival mechanism.
Legitimacy is not an abstract virtue; it is a practical asset. It determines whether civilians warn soldiers of ambushes, report suspicious movement, or tolerate short-term disruption in the belief that long-term security will follow. Where legitimacy erodes, the state must rely increasingly on force, creating a feedback loop that further distances it from the population.
As demonstrated in historical contexts ranging from Colombia and Sri Lanka to Northern Ireland, the degradation of a militant group’s physical capability does not automatically translate to a victory for the state. Victory is secured when the civilian population views the state as the most legitimate provider of order. Recognising the psychological state of the affected community is an operational necessity.
The integrated approach
Counterterrorism in the modern era cannot be treated as a purely kinetic exercise. To be effective, precision in the air must be matched by presence on the ground. The strikes in Sokoto may have successfully degraded cells, but long-term stabilisation requires that the Nigerian state visibly own the aftermath.
An integrated approach recognises that force creates conditions, not solutions. Those conditions must be immediately occupied by governance, explanation, and reassurance. The absence of follow-through allows meaning to drift, and in contested environments, drift favours insurgent narratives.
The strategic choice is to move toward an integrated model where force is coupled with local engagement, and the logic of security is articulated clearly. When the state speaks through its actions but remains silent in its explanations, it leaves the door open for others to define the meaning of the conflict. To win, the state must ensure that every strike is seen not as a "fire from above," but as a deliberate step toward a shared and dignified peace.
Lekan Olayiwola is a public-facing peace & conflict researcher/policy analyst focused on leadership, ethics, governance, and political legitimacy in fragile states.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Legit.ng.
Proofreading by James Ojo, copy editor at Legit.ng.
Source: Legit.ng
