Nigerian Islamist attacks spread

[Heidi]

Source: BBC

Page last updated at 09:52 GMT, Monday, 27 July 2009 10:52 UK
Islamist militants have clashed with Nigerian police in two northern states leaving many dead, a day after at least 39 people were killed in other attacks.

Eyewitnesses told the BBC a gun battle had raged for hours in Potiskum, Yobe State and a police station set on fire.

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Nigeria's 140 million people are split almost equally between Muslims and Christians and the two groups generally live peacefully side by side, despite occasional outbreaks of communal violence.

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Militants chanting "God is great" attacked the Potiskum police station at about 0215 local time (0115 GMT) - the same time as the Taliban launched their raid in Maiduguri.

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The BBC's Bilkisu Babangida in Maiduguri says she has counted more than 30 dead bodies at one police building alone in Maiduguri


Read more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8169966.stm

[theHandpuppet]

1. Nigerian Islamist Attacks Spread

Source: BBC News

Islamist militants have staged three co-ordinated attacks in northern Nigeria leaving dozens dead, a day after a similar number was killed.

A BBC reporter has counted 50 bodies near the police headquarters in Maiduguri, Borno State, where hundreds are fleeing their homes.
Witnesses told the BBC a gun battle raged for hours in Potiskum, Yobe State and a police station was set on fire...

...There has also been an attack in Wudil, some 20km (12 miles) from Kano, the largest city in northern Nigeria.

A curfew is in force in Bauchi, the scene of Sunday's violence.

Read more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8169966.stm

[Javaman]

2. If you are wondering how this all started...

Here is the info on the M.E.N.D.

Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Movement_for_the_Emancipation_of_the_Niger_Delta

Over the last twenty years various political movements and activists have emerged in opposition to the perceived injustices perpetrated upon the people of the Niger Delta by the government and the oil companies. These were usually nonviolent; Ken Saro-Wiwa was the most famous activist. Saro-Wiwa was an Ogoni poet-turned-activist who was executed by the Nigerian government in 1995 on what many believe to be deliberately false charges with the aim of silencing his vocal opposition to the oil interests in Nigeria. In Saro-Wiwa's footsteps came others who, having seen the government's reaction to nonviolent activism, advocated violence as resistance to what they regarded as the enslavement of their people. Militants in the delta enjoy widespread support among the region's approximately 20 million people, most of whom live in poverty despite the enormous wealth generated in the oil-rich region.

>That's how this all began. Suppression by the Nigerian government and it's want of oil wealth<

[Igel]

3. But this is a bit different.

Nowhere near the delta, but violent. Hausa, not Efik or Ibibio. Semi-arid, not close to being jungle. Devoid of oil, not oil rich. Islamicized over the last couple of centuries, as Xianity crept northward. Now mostly Islamic in places, but in a country traditionally not ruled by Muslims, with the perception (sometimes accurate) that Muslims got the short end of the stick (even when compared to other ethnicities).

Giving more resources to the delta wouldn't have helped the Muslims in the north one bit--in fact, unless equal resources were spent up there, it would give rise to yet another (or an increased) grievance.

A lot of it is cultural, some is definitely religious, a lot is ethnic. The delta's involved only to the extent we want to read that into it; omitting it certainly doesn't render any potential analysis less accurate.

[ohio2007]

4. people like to play the convenient oil card

or just say
"Its a shame"

Over in east africa, the Chinese have no concern how the local authorities control their populations as long as the oil flow remains constant as promised under contracts ( in exchange for cheap weapons to control the population )

The Dutch Shell corp is the only evil operating in that western sector. They should be muscled out by the benevolent Chinese corporations....

jmo

;)

[ohio2007]

5. The Return of the "Nigerian Taliban" ( Feb 2007 article )

While the attention of most Africa security analysts and policymakers has been focused recently on the campaign to root out the militant Islamists of Somalia's Islamic Courts Union, evidence has emerged that another radical group – previously thought extinguished – was stirring again on the other end of the continent in Nigeria.


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According to prosecutor Abdullahi Mikailu, Mallam Damagun, whose business interests publish the Daily Trust, Weekly Trust, Sunday Trust, and Aminiya newspapers, received $300,000 from al-Qaeda accounts in Sudan which were transferred to his account (number 2106795, to be specific) at Habibsons Bank on St. James Street in London "with the intent that said money shall be used in the execution of acts of terrorism."

The cleric, who faces fifteen years' imprisonment if convicted, was also alleged to have sent three young men – Nura Umar, Abdul Aziz Hamza, and Mohammed Ibrahim – along with fourteen of their companions to receive terrorism and other combat terrorism at the Ummul Qurah camp in Mauretania, a West African country which has been battling the Salafist Group for Call and Combat, a violent Algerian insurgent group (better known by its French initials GSPC) whose leader, Abu Musab Abdul Wadud last year formally pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda



snip

Nigeria is in the midst of a very critical political transition: the state and national elections, scheduled for April 14 and 21 of this year, will either make or break the country. Unfortunately, as I reported in the online edition of the foreign policy journal The National Interest after returning from a visit to the country in December, as it is currently unfolding the electoral process is likely only to heighten tensions.

While all three major presidential contenders – the ruling People's Democratic Party's Governor Umar Musa Yar'Adua of Katsina state, the All Nigeria People's Party's former military ruler Muhammadu Buhari, and Vice President Atiku Abubakar, who is running on the Action Congress Party ticket – are Muslims from the north, as one Nigerian academic put it to me, "there are Muslims and there are Muslims."

Among other concerns, there is the matter of the links between Mallam Damagun and his newspapers, presidential contender Buhari, and radical elements like the "Taliban." The Media Trust publications have been rather critical of outgoing President Olusegun Obasanjo, an evangelical Christian from the south, and his party even as they have been supportive of Buhari and his party. The latter, of course, is not surprising: the company started out as a parastatal concern back in the days (1983-1985) when the General Buhari ran the country as a corporatist military regime which financed such businesses out of its oil wealth (Media Trust went private only in 1998, at which time, according to accounts published in the Nigerian press, Damagun bought in for the cut-rate price of just under $6,000).

However, the real question, as my Nigerian colleague reminded me, is not the Media Trust's affinity to Buhari as such, but the former's closeness to extremists and whether it might not say something about the latter's true ideological orientation and, if elected, his presidential agenda. (During a 2004 visit to Washington, for example, Buhari defended the imposition of Islamic law by twelve northern Nigerian states as "constitutional" and, in an interview with the allAfrica.com news agency, even blamed the victims of the ensuing communal tensions: "It was not a cause of social upheaval until it was given unfavorable publicity by communities who thought shari'a was a threat to them.

snip


http://worlddefensereview.com/pham020107.shtml