Drew Hinshaw:

Thanks for having me. ISWAP is a faction of Boko Haram or was faction of Boko haram that split. For a bunch of reasons, one of which is they felt that Boko Haram was far too brutal on the civilian population, torching villages, all the kind of things you read about a few years ago, sending young children as suicide bombers. They had tactical advice from ISIS. Even ISIS thought that Boko Haram was too brutal, too uncivilian friendly and that's coming from ISIS. And so ISIS basically sent a series of letters to the Nigerian group that wanted to break away from Boko Haram and kind of laid out a theology that would be much more civilian friendly, the kind of things that guerrilla groups all around the world have tried to do.

Befriend the local population, mesh yourself in the village, make it safe for people to come back to their farms and trade. I don't want to paint a totally, you know picture of this ISIS group as if they're civilian friendly as they have also you know, committed their own massacres. But compared to Boko Haram they are just much more better at the game of winning civilians and creating a local population that doesn't mind them.