1. Terrorists attacks on Auno & Chibok has made many people question the COAS statement about ending insurgency but having to deal with terrorism. Today I will talk a bit on conventional war, conflating insurgency & terrorism. My tweets are not in defense of the government

2. or its agencies but a medium where ideas can be shared & a few things learned. You are still free to act the fool though. War is described as an organized, armed, & often prolonged conflict using conventional battlefield tactics that is carried on between nations. The US DOD

3. defines insurgency as an organized resistance movement that uses subversion, sabotage, & armed conflict to achieve its aims. Insurgencies normally seek to overthrow the existing social order & reallocate power within the country. There is currently no international legal or

4. academic agreement on what constitutes terrorism but same DOD defines it as violence perpetrated by non-state actors against civilians to coerce or to intimidate governments or societies in the pursuit of goals that are
generally; political, religious, or ideological. There

5. is a thin line between terrorism & insurgency, the reason why many went up in arms when the COAS Gen. Buratai said last week that we had defeated insurgency but still dealing with terrorism. Terrorism is attacks carried out sporadically or randomly. If terrorist attacks become

6. really sustained & extensive such that terrorists can overrun locations & control areas—if attacks are no longer sporadic—then it is said to have moved from terrorism to an insurgency. A while back, Bokoharam held huge territories, hoisted flags of their caliphate, installed

7. leaders on captured lands, even went as far as collecting taxes & imposing laws on inhabitants of captured lands. Now they no longer control territory, but does it make them less deadly? No! Recent attacks like the one in Auno has shown they have morphed from

8. attacking/capturing/controlling (insurgency) territory to guerilla tactics where they raid, ambush, hit & run (terrorism). In conventional war, armed forces of warring countries confront each other with weapons, military technology, military tactics, operational art, military

9. logistics etc. In conventional war, soldiers have uniforms, military bases are known etc. When two countries go after each other, they would most likely target military formations to degrade the opponent’s capability. In unconventional warfare/terrorism/asymmetric warfare,

10. terrorists employ any and every tactics including suicide bombings, assassinations, ambushes, raids, hit & runs, area attacks/standoffs etc. A conventional army would use ordnance, mortars etc. while a terrorists group will use same but also resort to improvised explosive

11. devices (IED) or vehicle-Borne Improvised Explosive Devices (VBIED). When people claim that the military is
reactionary in their dealings with Bokoharam, I actually do not blame them as many do not know the extent of what the military is dealing with out there. Imagine

12. fighting a group that has no known base, a group that is split into cells/units that they can be in multiple places at the same time, a group that recruits over 5,000 fighters yearly. Imagine their fighters split into units of 50-100 men & spread all over the place. Sambisa

13. forest alone is about 686 square kilometers, in October of 2015; troops rescued over 300 people in Sambisa alone. Imagine carrying out a major offensive in a location as vast as that, there is a high possibility of collateral damage reaching thousands. While we are all

14. fixated on Sambisa, there are other pockets of forests, stretches of plain land, hills like Mafa, Ngaranam, Bellam,
Iwuramdi, Mogonori, Babari etc. In between Yobe & Bornu are major locations like Potiskum, Ngelzarma, Damaturu, Ngamdu, Benisheik etc. Before moving from one

15. of these major locations to another you will see vast lands; plain scorched lands, some hilly difficult terrain or lands covered with canopies of trees. All these are locations big & vast enough to accommodate hundreds of fighters for a few days (locations that have all been

16. used by these terrorists). I have not yet mentioned locations that drift off Bornu & head towards Adamawa even across our borders like between Makari-Blangoua (lakechad axis) or Gwoza-warabe areas. They are every where, they move among the people as a fish swims in the sea.

17. As I said at the beginning, my tweets are simply to let a few people who have asked to know a few difficulties in dealing with a conflict of this nature.