The National: Arab Spring uprisings embolden Africa’s militants

John Thorne

TUNIS // Across North Africa, the Arab Spring uprisings have empowered millions: activists, politicians, voters - and, it turns out, the region’s militants.

Revolts that brought down dictators also threw security services off balance, while weapons poured out of Libya in the chaos that followed Muammar Qaddafi’s downfall, analysts said.

“We’re very concerned,” said William Lawrence, head of the North Africa Project for the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based NGO. “As many as 12 countries could be significantly affected by the flow of arms and fighters.”

Al Qaeda’s North African franchise and Nigeria’s Boko Haram group have increased attacks over the past year, while Tuareg insurgents in Mali launched new offensives last month.

The expanding violence highlights the difficulty of controlling the Sahara desert and adjacent Sahel region, more than 9 million arid square kilometres where national borders often fade into irrelevance.

FULL ARTICLE: The National

Photo: Afolabi Sotunde/Reuters

CrisisWatch N°102 - February 2012

In Syria prospects of ending the crisis look bleak, with the UN Security Council struggling to agree on an appropriate response. The Assad regime’s brutal crackdown, including shelling of central city Homs, shows no sign of abating. Increased bloodshed led the Arab League to withdraw its observers at the end of January, its proposal for President Bahsar al-Assad to relinquish power flatly rejected by Damascus. With significant divergences between the West’s and Russian approaches thus far stymieing consensus on a new Security Council resolution, Crisis Group identifies a grave risk of further conflict.

Relations between Sudan and South Sudan deteriorated further this month as Khartoum seized South Sudanese oil and Juba, in response, shut down production. Direct talks on the sidelines of the AU summit, and IGAD attempts to mediate, failed to settle the increasingly bitter, and ominous, dispute. In the South, escalating violence between Lou Nuer and Murle killed scores, displaced thousands, and contributed to continued internal instability.

Nigeria, Boko Haram carried out its most deadly series of bomb attacks yet, killing more than 200 people in the northern city of Kano. Further attacks across the far north left dozens more dead, and show increasing signs of sophistication. President Goodluck Jonathan’s claim early in the month that the militants enjoy support in the civil service and security forces was further indication of the gravity of the threat they pose the state. The government’s withdrawal of fuel subsidies, meanwhile, sparked crippling country-wide strikes, forcing Jonathan to partially restore them.

In Mali, regional spillover from the Libyan conflict aggravated fears of a new Tuareg rebellion. National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) rebels, reportedly backed by al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and former Libyan army fighters, launched a series of attacks across the north, leaving dozens dead and forcing more than two thousand to flee into neighbouring Mauritania. In Senegal the Constitutional Court’s ruling that President Abdoulaye Wade can seek a controversial third term in next month’s elections dealt another blow to the country’s democratic health. Clashes between protesters and police during the ensuing demonstrations left four dead and scores injured. Military operations against Casamance separatists continued in the south.

January saw tensions between Pakistan’s civilian and military leaders ratcheted up further. The military top brass warned of “potentially grievous consequences” in response to Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani’s public criticism of the army. Gilani also dismissed defence secretary and retired general Naeem Khalid Lodhi, replacing him with a civilian, deepening military ire. Friction with the U.S. and Afghanistan continues, as an internal NATO assessment, leaked at the end of the month, noted decisive Pakistani support for the Taliban insurgency.

A Guatemalan court ruling that former military president General Efraín Ríos Montt must stand trial on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity marked a decisive step towards ending decades of impunity. Prosecutors argue that Montt had full knowledge and command of army operations resulting in the killing of over 1,700 Mayan villagers at the height of Guatemala’s civil war in the early 1980s.

In Myanmar, the government and the main Karen rebel group signed a ceasefire agreement on 12 January, raising hopes that it would end decisively one of the world’s longest running insurgencies. The release of another 651 prisoners, including prominent dissidents, prompted the U.S. to announce it would restore full diplomatic ties with Myanmar. EU foreign ministers suspended visa bans on leading Myanmar politicians on the basis of the country’s “remarkable” reforms.

FULL REPORT (International Crisis Group)

Global Observatory: Boko Haram: Interview with Dr. Comfort Ero, International Crisis Group

ANN WRIGHT

In this interview,  Dr. Comfort Ero, an Africa expert from the International Crisis Group, discusses Boko Haram, the radical Islamist group responsible for violent acts intended to destabilize Nigeria and ultimately create an Islamist state governed by Sharia law. Their recent attack on January 20th killed 178 people.

Dr. Ero said Boko Haram’s violent campaign threatens the stability of Nigeria, and that she sees clear signs “the group has become ever more dangerous,” though she believes that the evidence remains sketchy about the extent of Boko Haram’s networks with other terror groups.

FULL ARTICLE (Global Observatory) 

Bloomberg: Nigerian Security Forces Arrest Islamist Fighters’ Spokesman

Gbenga Akingbule

Nigeria’s security police said they captured the alleged spokesman of the Islamist group that has claimed responsibility for a series of bombings and attacks that have killed hundreds of people in Africa’s top oil producer.

“We’ve arrested Abu Qaqa, the so-called spokesman of the Boko Haram sect and one of its leaders,” Ahmed Abdullahi, director of the State Security Service, or SSS, in the northeastern city of Maiduguri, said today by phone.

Agents from the SSS, a plain clothes unit charged with state security, had tracked Qaqa for some time before apprehending him today in the northern city of Kaduna, said Abdullahi.

Boko Haram, whose name means “Western education is a sin,” claimed responsibility for blasts that struck eight government buildings on Jan. 20 in Kano, the biggest city in northern Nigeria, killing at least 250 people, according to rights group Civil Rights Congress. A spokesman for the group, who gave his name as Abu Qaqa, told reporters by phone on Jan. 21 it carried out the attack to avenge the persecution of its members in the city.

Nigeria is roughly split between a mainly Muslim north and a predominantly Christian south. More than 14,000 people died in ethnic and religious clashes in the West African nation between 1999 and 2009, according to the Brussels-based International Crisis Group. Boko Haram wants to impose sharia rule in Nigeria’s north.

FULL ARTICLE (BLOOMBERG)

AFP: German kidnapped as fresh blast strikes Nigeria’s Kano

By M.J. Smith

Gunmen abducted a German engineer on Thursday in the Nigerian city of Kano, where yet another explosion struck fear among residents plagued by unprecedented violence blamed on an Islamist sect.

The kidnap victim was Edgar Raupach, working with a construction company on the outskirts of the northern city, said Kano police spokesman Magaji Majia.

The spokesman also reported the blast at a bus terminal, saying it caused no casualties.

“They came and handcuffed him and put him in the boot and zoomed away,” Majia said, adding that the German engineer was attached to Dantata and Sawoe, a Nigerian construction company.

“All the major highways were blocked and even the neighbouring states were equally alerted,” he said.

The kidnapping of foreigners is rare in northern Nigeria.

A senior Kano police official said earlier that some 200 people had been arrested, most of the them Chadian “mercenaries,” following coordinated gun and bomb attacks that killed at least 185 people in the city last week.

Boko Haram, a shadowy Islamist group, claimed that assault, its deadliest yet in a series over recent months.

A Briton and an Italian engineer with an Italian construction company based in Nigeria were seized from their apartment last May by gunmen in the northwest on the border with Niger.

Video footage sent to Mauritania’s Agence Nouakchott Informations, claimed that the captors belong to a Nigerian group inspired by Al-Qaeda.

On Thursday morning, tension had eased in Kano, a Muslim majority city, with a bustling main market and banks reopening for the first time since the deadly attacks last Friday, an AFP correspondent said.

But the calm was disrupted by a fresh explosion that targeted a bus terminal where members of the mainly Christian Igbo tribe board coaches headed to their home area in southeastern Nigeria.

Majia said the area was evacuated shortly after the blast, whose cause was not yet clear.

Nigeria’s security services have faced intense criticism amid escalating Islamist violence in recent weeks, and on Thursday a police official said a huge sweep of arrests had already been carried out.

“We have arrested around 200 attackers and 80 percent of them are Chadians. They came in as mercenaries,” the official said on condition of anonymity.

There were indications the Chadians had been paid to participate in the recent attacks attributed to Boko Haram, the source added.

Boko Haram has been blamed for scores of other attacks in Nigeria, mainly in the north, and security forces have long suspected it of smuggling arms into the country through the porous northeastern borders with Chad and Niger.

A UN report on regional security released on Wednesday said there was evidence suggesting the Nigerian group had Chadian members who had received training from Al-Qaeda’s north Africa affiliate.

But a Nigeria specialist with the International Crisis Group (ICG) said it was unlikely the sect had such a high number of foreigners in its ranks.

“I was shocked to hear that myself. Personally, I don’t believe it,” said Kunle Amuwo of the ICG.

“We know some foreigners have been implicated and continue to be implicated, but that number is huge,” he said, adding that, based on his research in the region, he believes most Boko Haram members are dejected Nigerian youths.

FULL ARTICLE (AFP)

LA Times: Nigeria president’s bungled fuel policy hurts his reputation

Robyn Dixo

The nation incurred almost $1.3 billion in economic losses during a nationwide strike that followed Jonathan’s announcement Jan. 1 that the government was ending a fuel subsidy that kept gasoline prices low, the National Bureau of Statistics said Wednesday.

In addition, his deployment of troops in response to a protest movement dubbed Occupy Nigeria was widely condemned as residents and prominent people such as Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka and Lagos Gov. Babatunde Fashola, a leading opposition figure, objected to such government action.

“Nigerians are saying enough is enough,” said Kunle Amuwo, Nigeria analyst for the International Crisis Group. “Nigeria is a very rich country, but people are very poor. Nigerians don’t trust their government because there has been a cycle of broken promises by the government for decades.”

FULL ARTICLE: (Los Angeles Times)

Photo: Sunday Alamba/AP