The United States says that the cache of security gadgets, arms and ammunition recovered from terrorists during its recent raid in Nigeria was the largest haul of such military equipment recovered since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
It also confirmed that about 199 terrorists were killed during the operation, making up the over 1000 terrorists killed by the Trump government.
The United States Deputy Assistant to President Trump and Senior Director for Counterterrorism at the National Security Council, Dr. Sebastian Gorka, disclosed this during an interview with Marissa Streit, the CEO of PragerU, a US conservative media organisation.
He described the Nigerian raid as a movie and blamed the flourishing of terrorism in Africa because Africa has a lot of ungoverned spaces which is what jihadist desire to perpetrate their crimes.
Gorka said the US government had to deploy an additional aircraft to evacuate electronic devices and other intelligence materials seized during the counter-terrorism operation, accentuating the large size of the seized materials which are currently being analysed by the US.
He said studying the materials will help the US understand the communications, networks and operational methods of the Islamic State (ISIS).
Gorka compared the Nigerian mission to scenes from a Hollywood action thriller, describing it as one of the most significant counter-terrorism successes recorded by the Trump administration.
“I can talk about this because it has been declassified. The President is not…going around the world like some lunatic neocon saying, ‘we will turn the world into America’.
“But if you’re threatening Americans, or if you’re targeting Christians, he has a very strong message to send to you, whether it was his Christmas Day strike, or three weeks ago, what we did in Nigeria.
“Three weeks ago in Nigeria, I watched it live from the Situation Room. It was like being in a Tom Clancy movie, but it’s better because it’s real. I watched our operatives kill 199 jihadists in one operation.
“Now, why is this important? That is the biggest neutralisation enemy killed in action since September the 11th. 199 jihadists who will not harm Americans again.
“Not only that, from that raid we brought home, we needed an extra plane to bring home all the electronic material that we captured in those camps. The haul was three times bigger than any enemy electronics haul since 9-11.
“That is priceless, because now our experts are taking apart all of that information, looking at how ISIS is communicating with each other. We are so back in the game of counterterrorism. It is just superlative to watch our professionals,” Gorka said.
Gorka said that the operation reflected a more aggressive counter-terrorism posture under President Trump, insisting that the administration had abandoned what he described as the policy of “watching and waiting.”
He said that in the administration’s first 15 months, American forces killed about 1,031 jihadists globally while also securing the freedom of 106 American hostages without paying ransom. “We are not watching and waiting. We are dealing death to bad people,” he said.
Gorka said the threat posed by extremist groups remained real and pointed to attacks carried out by ISIS and other jihadist organisations across the world, including against Christian communities in Nigeria.
“If you’re threatening Americans, or if you’re targeting Christians because they’re Christians, he has a very strong message to send to you,” Gorka said.
Gorka explained that Africa has increasingly become a target for ISIS because of the existence of vast ungoverned territories where extremist groups can regroup after suffering defeats elsewhere.
He stated that many ISIS fighters displaced from Iraq and Syria during Trump’s first administration relocated to Africa after the organisation’s so-called caliphate collapsed.
“Terrorists need ungoverned space. They need somewhere where they can hang out and rebuild. Africa has a lot of ungoverned space. That’s why I focus a lot of my attention on that region of the world where ISIS is trying to reconstitute a caliphate,” he said.
Gorka stated that Trump never wasted time before approving the exercise to attack terrorists in Nigeria immediately it was brought to his attention.
“We told the President, this man has killed Americans and is planning to kill Americans. And we’ve been watching him for a year and a half under the Biden administration.
“The President (Trump) looked up from the resident desk, he looked at us and said, “What do you mean we’re watching him? Kill him.
“And as a result, he took out his iconic sharpie pen. He ticked the ‘go box’ on the operational orders we had in front of him. Less than 30 hours later, I’m in the situation room under the West Wing with the National Security Advisor with my colleague from my counterterrorism team.
“And we watched like clockwork at exactly 8.45 in the morning on Saturday, this ISIS leader being permanently removed from the battlefield. The President then declassified the video of that strike. He posted it on Truth Social, it went 120 million likes in like eight hours,” he added.
