Few jihadi fronts have had a more global moment of horrific glory than the jihadi insurgency in the northeast of Nigeria generally designated as Boko Haram. The kidnapping of more than 200 schoolgirls in Chibok, in 2014, created a truly global emotion, as #BringBackOurGirls reverberated through the social networks. The Sambisa forest, the haunt of Boko Haram's leader Abubakar Shekau, came to be the theatre of the opening scene of the 2018 blockbuster Black Panther, with the heroes of Wakanda overpowering jihadi fighters to release a group of kidnapped girls. In real life however, despite this global emotion, international intervention in the Boko Haram conflict has been more contained and indirect. Certainly, with ebbs and flows, there has been international interest in, and support to, the states involved, Nigeria and its three less intensely affected Lake Chad neighbours, Chad, Niger and Cameroon. But international But international intervention against Boko Haram has been nothing like the global fight against the jihadi in nearby Mali, where French and United Nations troops have been present for years, along with a large military training mission from the European Union and troops of the G5 Sahel, a coalition of African countries.The reasons behind it are a complex mix, having to do with the conflict and with Nigeria itself, with its regional and international partners and with how and when the conflict entered the global “market” of conflict situations. This complexity has fed a lot of suspicions on all parts, suspicions that have occasionally grown into full-fledged conspiracy theories, thus complicating international cooperation further. As Denis Tull has argued in a ground-breaking study of the international engagement in Mali, it is important to maintain a degree of symmetry, to examine mutual perceptions, rather than focus only on one side’s reading of the situation. But I also want to argue that, for all those (mis)perceptions between the Lake Chad states and their international partners, cooperation has indeed taken place. Perhaps its most significant legacy has been facilitating cooperation between the Lake Chad states themselves, which had long been difficult, and remains a complex matter.< Leer menos