'Nigeria: the context for violence' (2006-2013)
From ICG, 3 Aug 06: The Swamps of Insurgency: Nigeria's Delta Unrest
Quote:
A potent cocktail of poverty, crime and corruption is fuelling a militant threat to Nigeria’s reliability as a major oil producer. Since January 2006, fighters from a new group, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), have fought with government forces, sabotaged oil installations, taken foreign oil workers hostage and carried out two lethal car bombings. MEND demands the government withdraw troops, release imprisoned ethnic leaders and grant oil revenue concessions to Delta groups. The Nigerian government needs to forge far-reaching reforms to administration and its approach to revenue sharing, the oil companies to involve credible, community-based organisations in their development efforts and Western governments to pay immediate attention to improving their own development aid...
Vanity Fair article on Nigerian insurgency
In the latest Vanity Fair, Sebastian Junger wrote a very good article about Nigerian troubles in the Niger Delta with insurgent groups. It's worth reading.
Here's the link:
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/f...2/junger200702
The Swamps of Insurgency: Nigeria’s Delta Unrest. Crisis Group Africa Report N°115, 3
Quote:
A decade later, the potential consequences of this conflict have escalated in both human and economic terms across a swathe of territory 30 times the size of Ogoniland. Nigerian and international military experts have recognised that the crisis requires a negotiated political resolution. Any attempt at a military solution would be disastrous for residents and risky for the oil industry. Most facilities are in the maze of creeks and rivers that are particularly vulnerable to raids by well-armed militants with intimate knowledge of the terrain. But inaction risks escalating and entrenching the conflict at a time when tensions are already rising in advance of the 2007 national elections.
MEND increasingly serves as an umbrella organisation for a loose affiliation of rebel groups in the Delta. It has not revealed the identity of its leaders or the source of its funds but its actions demonstrate that it is better armed and organised than previous militant groups. Observers warn that a worst-case scenario could lead to a one to two-year shutdown of the oil industry in the Delta, where most of Nigeria’s 2.3 million daily barrels of crude oil originate.
Full Document
http://www.sweetcrudemovie.com/pdf/icgaugust2006.pdf
Where's China's Role In This Tragedy?
Tension has ebbed and flowed in the US security relationship with Nigeria, most notably portrayed in Dana Priest's excellent "The Mission", where the Nigerians were all about "give us the guns" while the US was intent on human rights training before anything else.
The Beijing Consensus certainly doesn't work like that. As the Chinese increasingly edge out the US in providing security training, weapons and cash to the Nigerian obligarchy (a process that could be sped up depending on who wins power in the upcoming Nigerian elections), the government's tactics against peaceful protests and violent rebellion alike will edge toward systematic scorched earth tactics which will only worsen the insurgency.
Given the propensity for ethnic cleansing and mass murder on behalf of the government in Nigeria's history, this will not end well and could be the big fissure that helps dismember Nigeria along religious, ethnic and even tribal lines. The chances of US intervention of some sort (whether US soldiers, special ops or private contractors like Blackwater) in Southern Nigeria (just like in Southern Sudan) will rise dramatically once it becomes a resource war shrouded in holy and ethnic terms.
President Inaugurated in Nigeria
31 May LA Times - President Inaugurated in Nigeria by Robyn Dixon.
Quote:
Umaru Yar'Adua was sworn in Tuesday as Nigeria's president, pledging to be a humble "servant-leader" and to push through political reform after his election last month was widely criticized by international and local observers.
In a muted style markedly different from that of his ebullient and flamboyant predecessor, Olusegun Obasanjo, Yar'Adua said he would fight poverty and corruption and reduce violent crime in the oil-rich Niger Delta. The kidnappings of foreign oil workers there have intensified in recent months, casting a shadow over the country's most important industry...
With Nigeria regularly ranked among the most corrupt countries by the independent group Transparency International, which analyzes corruption and accountability, Yar'Adua said all elected officials must change their "style and attitude."...