History of Boko Haram by Garba Sani

Chatham House hosted a discussion in January, Nigeria in 2012: Crises and Reforms. In it Garba Sani gave a brief history of Boko Harum that is one of the best I have seen.

View of Zuma rock from Madalla market, taken October 2008, photo from Christian Blanchard on Flickr. Madalla was a site of the 2011 Christmas day bombings by Boko Haram.

Garba Sani:

Garba took a narrower and more focussed perspective analysing the issues facing Northern Nigeria and the role of Boko Haram. From the perspective of Northern Nigerians, ever since the days of colonialism Western style education and Christianity have been imposed upon them as a package from the south. The response to this has been a resistance to Western education and the Western way of life. However, this is not simply a cultural sentiment. The civil servants and politicians produced by this system are seen conspicuously wasting money. Poor Nigerians see their politicians flying abroad, shopping in Dubai, and sending their children to expensive Western schools. Consequently people feel that the leadership is devoid of justice, and when they call for the establishment of Sharia law it is not about religious piety but reflects a desire for a more just system.

The resentment fostered among the youth of Northern Nigeria is where Boko Haram has its beginnings. Whilst Boko Haram started as a non-violent breakaway group, persecution and aggressive crack-downs from the security services brought a violent response. Boko Haram was at first a small and controllable problem, but the issue escalated in 2009 after heavy crackdowns were ordered by President Yar’Adua. The crackdown was brutal and disproportionate; around 700 innocent people were killed, some of them publicly executed on suspicions that they were member of Boko Haram.

Following the killing of their leader the movement went underground but emerged a year later with renewed attacks. Even at this point the situation was controllable, yet the government response was again heavy-handed. Local people felt more intimidated by the soldiers deployed to fight Boko Haram than they did by Boko Haram itself. This sentiment was compounded by the violent and indiscriminate responses of the security forces, which frequently caused the destruction of property and the loss of innocent lives. It is quite possible that the Boko Haram situation may have been encouraged by the Federal Government to undermine the North. The fact that the government refuses to negotiate with the group fuels these suspicions.

With regard to international actors and what helpful role they may play, the main problem is that internationally the current situation in Nigeria is seen very simplistically. It would be helpful for international actors to instead look at the problem from a local perspective. For example, calls for Sharia law and Jihad are exaggerated in the Western discourse. There is also no affiliation between Boko Haram and Al Qaeda. Rather, the statements made by Boko Haram’s leaders reflect local grievances and in this sense there is some sympathy for the group in the North. That said, Boko Haram is not representative of Islam and has been condemned by Muslims in northern Nigeria. Both the international community and the federal government should
proceed with caution – they need to understand the local nature of the problem. A good start would be to consult diasporas from the northern communities.

Following a policy of wherever there is oil we must engage terrorists, the US Dept. of Homeland Security has just issued a report that examines the threat of Boko Haram predictably simplistically.
Boko Haram: Emerging Threat to the US Homeland PDF.

The shorter version of this report is: We don’t know anything about Boko Haram but even without any evidence we think they are collaborating with al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), and al Shabaab in Somalia. This creates a huge threat to the United States. Therefore we need to crank up a massive military and diplomatic response.

Keep in mind that the US is constantly looking for terrorists to feed the anti-terrorism industry. US corporations need terrorists to justify selling their anti-terrorist products. More terrorists equals more sales. And the US Africa Command needs terrorists to justify its ongoing security activities all around the continent.

The US report does recommend consulting with the Nigerian diaspora. However judging by experience to date with expat Muslim communities in the US, and particularly the Somali community in Minnesota, consulting with the diaspora consists of spying and intimidation rather than actually listening to what the diaspora has to say.

The African Partnership station is mentioned in the report, and right on cue, the African Partnership station is back visiting Nigeria. You can view pictures of APS activities at AFRICOM Along the Coasts and In the Creeks.

The suspect in the Madalla bombing was captured by the Nigerian authorities, and then “mysteriously” escaped. As Teju Cole put it in one of his eloquently understated tweets:

@tejucole
The Madalla bombing mastermind, arrested in a state governor’s lodge, coincidentally, has escaped from jail, quite by chance.
19 Jan (2012)

This escape proved such an embarrassment that Nigeria has recaptured the suspect Kabiru Abubakar Umar Dikko, who is also known as Kabiru Sokoto. Getting caught came as a shock to Kabiru Sokoto who is quoted:

The source quoted Sokoto saying in an emotional tone: “For instance, I never for once believed I could be arrested.

“I thought I was invincible. But now I’ve realised that if I could be arrested; if Abdullahi Damasak, the spiritual adviser, could disappear (arrested), then it’s a matter of time before everyone is caught.”

Sokoto is now said to be cooperating and providing a great deal of information which is being compared to the information provided by Abdul Qaqa, captured separately, who is being interrogated about the money trail:

It would be recalled that Monday, one other chieftains of the sect, Abdul Qaqa said the group engaged in criminal activities, breaking banks and seeking for money from every available illicit sources.
…
He spoke on the exploits of the dreaded body and stated that though they agreed to split such monies into five, “nobody dared ask how the money was spent and nobody dared ask questions for fear of death”.

Sokoto said the members feared the leadership of the group more than the security agencies.

Sokoto is said to have provided details of the sponsors of the sect who comprise mainly politicians, traditional rulers and some influential business men.

“The man is co-operating well with us. He has said a lot, though some of the revelations he made are chilling and nerve racking. He has named some top personalities in the society as their sponsors.

“He has also named some of the bank managers who have been facilitating them to make some transactions and how they bring in their deadly weapons, including the explosives they use in their bombings.

“We have put some construction companies on surveillance and we shall screen the permits they obtained for dynamites and explosives and we shall cross-match these with the activities they had to carry out for which they applied for such explosives,”

At the moment Nigeria appears on the right track regarding Boko Haram. It is important for genuine security that Nigeria handle this internally. The more the CIA and US military Special Operations go beetling around playing at counterinsurgency, the more damage they will do to Nigeria and Nigerians.

Nigeria needs to find some way of addressing corruption, and needs to avoid heavy crackdowns on the innocent. The Occupy Nigeria protests in response to the sudden removal of the fuel subsidy may have given Nigeria a nudge in the direction of trying to do something about corruption. The Nigerian police have been trying to upgrade their image. So far that does not seem to include modifying police behavior. I haven’t read anything that indicates people believe they can trust the police more than before. Teju Cole addresses this with another relevant tweet.

@tejucole
To ensure that Nigerians see the police force in a new way, Inspector General Abubakar announced a redesign in police uniforms.
15 Feb (2012)

Kano from Dala Hill, November 2005. Recently Kano has suffered several bomb attacks by Boko Haram

 

Blood of Nigeria

RT is featuring a documentary about oil in Nigeria called Blood of Nigeria, directed by Philippe Lespinasse. It is well done and worth a look. RT is showing it in two parts. They will be consecutive on the schedule, but there may be other programs in between, and the RT schedule does not indicate which is part 1 and which is part 2. You can see the scheduled times here: Blood of Nigeria, and you can check the program schedule in Moscow time. If you don’t get RT, you can watch it in their streaming video feed at the scheduled broadcast times.

The Niger Delta, one of the 10 most important wetland and coastal marine ecosystems in the world, has experienced an average of one oil spill per day, collectively the equivalent of one Exxon Valdez spill per year, for five decades, 50 years.

Blood of Nigeria film crew travelling on the oil covered water in the Niger Delta. The oil covers the water and nothing lives beneath it.

You can watch the film online narrated in French at Le sang de Nigéria. The full film is about 53 minutes long. You will find more information and another link to the film here.

Dead mangrove in the Niger Delta, suffocated by oil. These wetlands are part of the lungs of our planet.

The approach to an informal oil refinery in the Niger Delta

An FPSO, Floating Production Storage and Offloading, an offshore oil & gas industry vessel, glittering in the sea off the coast of the Niger Delta

After 50 years of massive oil spills the Niger Delta is a Laboratory For Oil Spills In Coastal Wetlands. Even so, no one is studying it, and attempts to study it are prevented.

For a quick and clear explanation of why Nigeria erupted in protests when the fuel subsidy was removed, see Naijablog.
Here is a brief excerpt:

“… the lived reality of citizens of the Nigerian state is that it provides little or no security, no infrastructure, no education and no employment opportunities (apart from mostly McJobs in the civil service). Everywhere in Nigeria, the basic elements of civilised existence have to be taken care of house-by-house, compound-by-compound. You must sink your own borehole for water, buy, install and fuel a generator for power, hire security guards to keep the wolves from the door, pay school fees to ensure your kids get a half-decent education because the public school system is in perpetual meltdown. And to earn enough money to get through the day, you must hustle.
…
For the past few decades, cheap fuel has therefore been the only form of social contract between ordinary Nigerians and the state and the principle lever to control inflation during times of rising oil prices. With most Nigerians subsisting on US$2 or less, subsidised fuel has also been a survival mechanism, making life only just bearable.
…
As it is, most Nigerians are poor, and will simply not be able to survive with any comfort on US$2 a day and a doubling of living costs.”

 

US Militarizing Around the World

I noted these selected paragraphs from articles I read today. The topics are most certainly related.

From an article in Nigeria’s Daily Independent:

On Sudan, my country Nigeria was made to ratify the break-up of that country into North and South so that the powerful nations can have access to the oil fields in the South which they currently cannot control under the incumbent regime. Will Nigeria allow UN to split it into North and South? Never! …

Gradually, White House is bringing Al Qaeda to Nigeria even when Nigeria has no issue with Al Qaeda. The US attempt to force its Africa Command (AFRICOM) base on Nigeria is responsible for the current bombings being tagged ‘Al Qaeda bombs’, so that Nigeria can accept the inevitability of US forces in Nigeria. What’s more, with CIA agents now prowling Nigeria, more bombings should be expected, as the US is determined to pursue its 2015 prediction that Nigeria will break-up. (Cornelius Segun Ojo)

——–

Which country has the biggest military budget per year?

——–

The US military budget in context

From the Narco News Bulletin:

State Department cables recently made public by WikiLeaks do seem to confirm that the U.S. government is very aware that much of the heavy firepower now in the hands of Mexican criminal organizations isn’t linked to mom-and-pop gun stores, but rather the result of blowback from U.S. arms-trading policies (both current and dating back to the Iran/Contra era) that put billions of dollars of deadly munitions into global trade stream annually.

As the death toll mounts in the drug war now raging in Mexico, it pays to remember that weapons trafficking, both government-sponsored and illegal, is a big business that feeds and profits off that carnage. Bellicose government policies, such as the U.S.-sponsored Merida Initiative, that are premised on further militarizing the effort to impose prohibition on civil society only serve to expand the profit margin on the bloodshed. (Pentagon Fingered as a Source of Narco-Firepower in Mexico)

There is an election this week in Uganda. Ugandan journalist Rosebell Kagumire records some of her observations:

We have also seen Museveni try to tell the youth in the last few days, through the New Vision newspaper, which largely leads with his stories that they shouldn’t vote the opposition for it will sabotage a government plan to give them jobs. I don’t think Ugandan youth are fools to think that what a man has not done in 25 years can achieve in 5 years. Uganda produces about 400,000 graduates from higher institutions of learning every year but less than 50,000 jobs are created annually. President Museveni and his brother Salim Saleh have even gone into security business sending hundreds of Ugandan youth to Iraq and Afghanistan to reduce the numbers of idle youth. The truth is there’s no real plan for the youth and many will not be voting for the ruling party.

… But because many have for long trusted Museveni on security, few Ugandans bother to know or even ask why their sons are fighting in Somalia.

For a regime that has enjoyed such trust on security matters, there shouldn’t be thousands of police officers at every corner in Kampala right now. … no wonder people are now anxious …
…
We wait for the next three days and see if every home will have a policeman attached to it in the name of security.

Museveni is one of the US’s prized client dictators, sending proxy armies to Somalia and around the world, and also, a favorite of the US Africa Command.

Meanwhile, back at home in the US, the US government fails its own people and fails to do the job of governing:

Dear Poor People, Thank You for Going Without Heat So We Can Buy Another Week of War

As a result of your going without heat next winter, we will be able to afford almost one whole week of fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which cost about $468 million a day. Although when you add in the many hidden costs like increased long-term veteran’s health care due to the conflicts, your sacrifice is probably only really going to cover maybe half a week.

I hope you understand that when we had to choose between providing basic necessities to our citizens or fighting about five more days in Iraq and Afghanistan because of [insert newest justification here], we clearly just had to choose the wars over you.

These few bits of news are worth considering in relation to each other. Our choices have consequences.

 

Laboratory For Oil Spills In Coastal Wetlands

We have a laboratory that shows us what happens to a vital and sensitive coastal wetland subjected to massive and repeated oil spills. So far very little has been done to study it. The Niger Delta, one of the 10 most important wetland and coastal marine ecosystems in the world, has experienced an average of one oil spill per day, collectively the equivalent of one Exxon Valdez spill per year, for five decades, 50 years. Half the life created in a warm coastal wetland is created in the top two millimeters of slime on the surface of the marsh mud, the food base of the entire coastal wetland, as illustrated below. If this layer is covered by oil and dies, all the animals up the food chain risk starvation. In the 8 minute video Curse of the Black Gold. you can hear a man telling us that in his Niger Delta fishing community where they have fished for generations, there is now no one who can make a living as a fisherman.

Half of the all the life created in the nature-rich Louisiana coast, one of the world's most productive estuaries, or in any warm coastal wetland, takes place in the thin layer of slime on top of the marshes. Microscopic creatures are a key part of the Gulf marsh ecosystem. (nola.com, click to enlarge enough to read)

Right now BP’s Deep Horizon well is spilling what may be the equivalent of one or more Exxon Valdez spills per week. The well may be compromised downhole (from dougr at the Oil Drum) and leaking in multiple locations. How, and even if it can be stopped are open questions to which no one appears to know the answer. In the Niger Delta we have the laboratory for how this massive a spill might effect people, plants, animals, land, and water. But it has been very little studied. The effects of this oil spilling on people has been almost completely ignored.

Meredeth Turshen wrote of the Niger Delta in 2004:

Specific effects of oil development on women’s health seem not to have been investigated. Although I found an article on the effects of exposure of crocodiles to sub-lethal concentrations of petroleum waste drilling fluid in the Niger Delta basin, I could find nothing on the health of women who live near oil wells and oil production stations, and nothing on reproductive outcomes in areas adjacent to petrochemical plants. Yet it is known that cadmium, chromium, mercury, and lead are contained in the refinery effluents that are constantly discharged into nearby bodies of water. At high concentrations these metals cause metabolic malfunctions in human beings. They enter the food chain through the drinking water and the local fish that people consume.

Right now we are just beginning to see similar exposure to US citizens.

Oil spills have destroyed lives and livelihoods throughout the Niger Delta. You can see and hear what has happened to people:
Click here to view the 8 minute video Curse of the Black Gold.
It is based on Ed Kashi’s book of the same name, Curse of the Black Gold.

Neither the oil companies nor the Nigerian government want anyone to know what is going on. Investigation and research is actively discouraged. Those engaged in research or reporting may find themselves threatened and at risk of arrest, beatings, injury and death. And now The Mercenaries Take Over, mostly hired by the oil companies to protect their interests and prevent interference and investigation.

The same thing is happening in the Gulf of Mexico. BP has hired mercenaries to keep the news media and the public away from the places the oil has come ashore and prevent investigation.
Louisiana response to Gulf of Mexico oil spill obstructed by BP and federal agencies, state officials say
or
Barriers to news coverage of Gulf of Mexico oil spill remain despite promises

Journalists covering the Gulf of Mexico oil spill have been yelled at, kicked off public beaches and islands and threatened with arrest in the nearly three weeks since the government promised improved media access.

The threats and dangers are not now as pervasive and severe as in the Niger Delta. But they are there, and this is just the beginning. You can see in the following picture the vast extent of the oil spill, covering 18, 473 square miles on June 19, and growing. Much of that oil will be coming ashore in the wetlands. Storms are likely to drive it to land and inland. Much oil remains suspended in the water along with a great deal of methane that has been escaping with the oil. The oil and methane will kill marine life and make their habitat uninhabitable.

Strong thunderstorms form large, dense masses of bright white cloud in this MODIS/Aqua satellite image of the northeast Gulf of Mexico taken the afternoon of June 19, 2010. But it's clearer than the MODIS/Terra image taken the day before, and reveals fresh oil upwelling around the location of the leaking Macondo well, source of the ongoing BP / Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Slicks and sheen span 18,473 square miles (47,847 km2) on this image. Thin patches of slick and sheen appear to be making landfall from Gulf Shores, Alabama to Perdido Key in Florida, and from Grayton Beach State Park to the Seacrest / Rosemary Beach area along the Florida coast. (from SkyTruth on Flickr: flickr.com/photos/skytruth/4722626008/ , click to enlarge)

In Nigeria Claytus Kanyie says:

The aquatic life of our people is dying off. There used be shrimp. There are no longer any shrimp.

And another Nigerian fisherman speaks:

If you want to go fishing, you have to paddle for about four hours through several rivers before you can get to where you can catch fish and the spill is lesser … some of the fishes we catch, when you open the stomach, it smells of crude oil.

Soon this will be true in the Gulf of Mexico, as will all the health effects and economic impact of wetlands saturated with oil, and of a sea depleted of oxygen and filled with oil and toxic chemicals.

 

Whose Oil? Whose Country? Whose Benefit?

… no country has been developed by outsiders. International relationships are simply not defined by sentimentalities but by cold, calculated self-interest. This is a lesson that African leaders refuse to learn. Outsiders might help, but it is the citizens of a country led by an intelligent leader with vision that develop nations.
Femi Akomolafe

Map of Ghana's Jubilee Field

Back in December the Vanguard published an editorial recording a conversation between Professor Dora Akunyili, Minister of Information for Nigeria, and Venezuela’s Ambassador to Nigeria, Enerique Fernando Arrundell. There is much in Mr. Arrundell’s words that Ghanaians should take to heart.

Lessons from Venezuela
Dec. 4, 2009

VENEZUELAN Ambassador to Nigeria, Enerique Fernando Arrundell, could not have offered his advice on Nigeria’s management of its petroleum resources at a better time. The anchor of government’s argument is that higher prices would draw foreign investors to the down stream sector of the industry.

Professor Dora Akunyili, Minister of Information had solicited Venezuelan investments for our refineries.
Mr. Arrundell’s response was without diplomatese. He launched a profound lecture on Nigeria’s oil and gas.

“In Venezuela, since 1999, we’ve never had a raise in fuel price. We only pay $1.02 to fill the tank. What I pay for with N12, 000 here (Nigeria), in Venezuela I’ll pay N400. What is happening is simple. Our President (Hugo Chavez) decided one day to control the industry, because it belongs to Venezuelans. If you don’t control the industry, your development will be in the hands of foreigners.

“You have to have your own country. The oil is your country’s. Sorry I am telling you this. I am giving you the experience of Venezuela. We have 12 refineries in the United States, 18,000 gas stations in the West Coast. All we are doing is in the hands of Venezuelans.

“Before 1999, we had three or four foreign companies working with us. That time they were taking 80 per cent, and giving us 20. Now, we have 90 per cent, and giving them 10. But now, we have 22 countries working with us in that condition.

It is the Venezuelan condition. You know why? It is because 60 per cent of the income goes to social programmes. That’s why we have 22,000 medical doctors assisting the people in the community. The people don’t go to the hospital; doctors go to their houses. This is because the money is handled by Venezuelans. How come

Nigeria that has more technical manpower than Venezuela, with 150 million people, and very intellectual people all around, not been able to get it right? The question is: If you are not handling your resources, how are you going to handle the country?

“So, it is important that Nigeria takes control of her resources. We have no illiterate people. We have over 17 new universities totally free. I graduated from the university without paying one cent, and take three meals every day, because we have the resources. We want the resources of the Nigerian people for the
Nigerians. It is enough! It is enough, Minister!

Femi Akomolafe (his blog) adds some words of advice:

There are, however, some fundamental truths that we must begin to tell ourselves. First and foremost is the belief that we can continue to depend on other people’s (especially Western) charities for our development. I have said several times that no country has been developed by outsiders. International relationships are simply not defined by sentimentalities but by cold, calculated self-interest. This is a lesson that African leaders refuse to learn. Outsiders might help, but it is the citizens of a country led by an intelligent leader with vision that develop nations.

And as I have recounted several times in this very column, our five hundred or so years of “relationship” with the West has been to our utter detriment. We have nothing but slavery, colonialism, and the more pernicious neo-colonialism (aka imperialism) to show for it. We can also throw in the disease of rabid racism that still pervades the Western world.

And yet African leaders continue to parrot the same inanities about partnering with “developmental partners!”

In Ghana:

In the name of “investment,” the Western multinationals will bring in ancient equipment (tax free) to come and set up shop to extract our resources. To attract their “investments,” they are given tax breaks and other packages that made them pay their expatriate staff out-of-this-world salaries and emoluments. They will employ the brute force of our compatriots whilst their planes and helicopters are waiting to ship out our gold and diamonds in their raw state. For this they pay us a pittance in royalty and employ the best PR outfits who will dazzle us with enough razzmatazz to make us dizzy. A few years down the road, the mines are depleted, our land and environment polluted, and our people’s lives wretched. The wily Westerner is already outta the country.

This is the very sad story that keeps repeating itself year in year out and like mindless children, we seem not to learn any lesson. Since the overthrow of President Kwame Nkrumah’s government in 1966, no government in Ghana has deemed it fit and proper to build a gold or diamond factory in order to add some value to them.
…
This has been our sad story and yet our leaders have stubbornly refused to learn a thing.

There is a law in this country against causing financial loss to the state and it is high time we start to use it seriously and effectively. How on earth can officials of our country, paid from the treasury of mother Ghana, and in this age and time, sign agreements with foreigners to cart away our crude oil unrefined for twenty years! What on earth informed that reckless decision? Who said that slavery is over? And please, what crime is that if not the criminal cause of financial loss to the state of Ghana?

There is a state-owned oil refinery at Tema that is in perennial struggle to get crude oil from Nigeria, and yet some unconscionable Ghanaians appended their signature to ship our oil to foreign refineries unrefined!

 

US Military Edging Out Diplomacy In Africa

Africom’s budget of $763 million in the coming fiscal year, compared to the Africa Bureau’s allocation of $226 million, is enabling the US military to take on roles previously played by American diplomats and civilian development experts. (from the East African)

KARAMBO, Rwanda - Members of the Rwandan Defence Force (RDF) show Lieutenant Darren Denyer, from Combined Joint Task Force - Horn of Africa, a water distribution point built by the RDF during ’Army Week’ — the RDF’s civil-military operations campaign conducted throughout Rwanda. CJTF-HOA sent Maritime Civil Affairs Team (MCAT) 104 to Rwanda, August 1-8, 2009, to strengthen the partnership between the Rwanda and U.S. militaries and to observe civil-military operations throughout the country. (U.S. Navy photo by Senior Chief Petty Officer Jon E. McMillan)

“The US military is stepping into void created by a lack of resources for traditional development and public diplomacy,” the inspector general warns.

That finding appears to confirm charges by some independent analysts that American policy toward Africa has grown increasingly militarised in the years since the 2001 terror attacks on New York and Washington.

… the Obama administration is continuing to move in that direction, despite Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s emphasis on development issues during her recent seven-nation Africa tour.
…
The inspector general’s report contrasts the work of Africom’s “military information support teams” (Mist) with what it describes as the “failure” of the State Department’s 10-year-old effort to integrate public diplomacy into its operations. “Mist teams have exponentially more money to spend in a country than do embassy public affairs offices,” the report says

For more on the spending inequities the August OIG report, PDF reports:

In Somalia, for example, the Embassy had $30,000 to spend on public diplomacy while the MIST team had $600,000. Given the urgency of combating terrorism in Somalia, money was needed and the reported successes of MIST programs elsewhere served as a recommendation. Under MIST, AFRICOM inherited an established military practice of working closely with embassy public affairs officers to develop and fund effective programs.

In Somalia so far there is no evidence of any success resulting from MIST, or any other US spending. Although if one assumes the purpose of US spending and intervention is to weaken and destabilize Somalia, then the policy has been a success. Spending this money would have been the responsibility of US Ambassador to Kenya Ranneberger, who is tasked with managing Somalia relations, and who has engineered a consistently disastrous policy for Somalia, as well as damaging Kenyan democracy.

Daniel Volman writes that:

In May 2008, the United States Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, hosted “Unified Quest 2008,” … it was the first time the war games included African scenarios as part of the Pentagon’s plan to create a new military command for the continent: the Africa Command or Africom.

There were 4 scenarios gamed, including one in Somalia and one in Nigeria, about which we have some information:

… set in 2013 — which was a test of how Africom could respond to a crisis in Nigeria in which the Nigerian government is near collapse, and rival factions and rebels are fighting for control of the oil fields of the Niger Delta and vying for power in the country which is the sixth largest supplier of America’s oil imports.
…
As the game progressed, according to former U.S. ambassador David Lyon, it became clear that the government of Nigeria was a large part of the problem. As he put it, “we have a circle of elites [the government of Nigeria] who have seized resources and are trying to perpetuate themselves. Their interests are not exactly those of the people.”

Furthermore, according to U.S. Army Major Robert Thornton, an officer with the Joint Center for International Security Force Assistance at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, “it became apparent that it was actually green (the host nation government) which had the initiative, and that any blue [the U.S. government and its allies] actions within the frame were contingent upon what green was willing to tolerate and accommodate.”

This information should not have been a surprise to anyone with even a moderate knowledge of Nigeria. I’m sure most Nigerians could have told the wargamers this same information. I think one thing it makes clear is that diplomacy, NOT military force is what is needed now, and what will be most useful going forward. So far, despite examples such as this, or the ongoing disaster in Somalia, continually made worse by US interference, the Obama administration seems committed to the military path. And despite all the talk of cooperation and development from those promoting Africom:

… neither the commander of Africom, General William Ward, nor his deputy, Vice Admiral Robert Moeller, are under any illusions about the purpose of the new command.

Thus, when General Ward appeared before the House Armed Services Committee on March 13, 2008, he cited America’s growing dependence on African oil as a priority issue for Africom and went on to proclaim that combating terrorism would be “Africom’s number one theater-wide goal.” He barely mentioned development, humanitarian aid, peacekeeping or conflict resolution.

And in a presentation by Vice Admiral Moeller at an Africom conference held at Fort McNair on February 18, 2008 and subsequently posted on the web by the Pentagon, he declared that protecting “the free flow of natural resources from Africa to the global market” was one of Africom’s “guiding principles” and specifically cited “oil disruption,” “terrorism,” and the “growing influence” of China as major “challenges” to U.S. interests in Africa.

So far President Obama, rather than seeking the civil and diplomatic route, has decided:

… to expand the operations of Africom throughout the continent. He has proposed a budget for financial year 2010 that will provide increased security assistance to repressive and undemocratic governments in resource-rich countries like Nigeria, Niger, Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and to countries that are key military allies of the United States like Ethiopia, Kenya, Djibouti, Rwanda and Uganda.

And he has actually chosen to escalate U.S. military intervention in Africa, most conspicuously by providing arms and training to the beleaguered Transitional Federal Government of Somalia, as part of his effort to make Africa a central battlefield in the “global war on terrorism.” So it is clearly wishful thinking to believe that his exposure to the real risks of such a strategy revealed by these hypothetical scenarios gave him a better appreciation of the risks that the strategy entails.

________
h/t b real of africa comments for source material

 

Nigeria: Petroleum, Pollution and Poverty Violating Human Rights In the Niger Delta

Up to 13 million barrels of oil have spilled in the Niger Delta ecosystem over the past 50 years, representing about 50 times the estimated volume spilled in the Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska in 1989. Niger Delta Natural Resource Damage Assessment and Restoration Project, PDF.

Oil spill in the village of Ikarama, Bayelsa State, Nigeria, 7 February 2008 © Kadir van Lohuizen/NOOR

These spills equal the amount of 1 Exxon Valdez sized oil spill per year. And this is taking place in one of the most sensitive wetlands of our planet, part of the lungs of the planet. The spills pollute the land, pollute the water, clog the creeks, and gas flaring pollutes the air and the rainwater, bringing down toxic acid rain on land and water and all that live there.

As one Niger Delta fisherman stated:

If you want to go fishing, you have to paddle for about four hours through several rivers before you can get to where you can catch fish and the spill is lesser … some of the fishes we catch, when you open the stomach, it smells of crude oil.

…

The Niger Delta is one of the 10 most important wetland and coastal marine ecosystems in the world and is home to some 31 million people. The Niger Delta is also the location of massive oil deposits.
…
Under Nigerian law, local communities have no legal rights to oil and gas reserves in their territory.
…
This report focuses on one dimension of the crisis: the impact of pollution and environmental damage caused by the oil industry on the human rights of the people living in the oil producing areas of Niger Delta.

This report is a report from Amnesty International Nigeria: Petroleum, Pollution and Poverty in the Niger Delta – Report PDF. The report was released June 30, 2009.

The main human rights issues raised in this report are:

• Violations of the right to an adequate standard of living, including the right to food – as a consequence of the impact of oil-related pollution and environmental damage on agriculture and fisheries, which are the main sources of food for many people in the Niger Delta.

• Violations of the right to gain a living through work – also as a consequence of widespread damage to agriculture and fisheries, because these are also the main sources of livelihood for many people in the Niger Delta.

• Violations of the right to water – which occur when oil spills and waste materials pollute water used for drinking and other domestic purposes.

• Violations of the right to health – which arise from failure to secure the underlying determinants of health, including a healthy environment, and failure to enforce laws to protect the environment and prevent pollution.

• The absence of any adequate monitoring of the human impacts of oil-related pollution – despite the fact that the oil industry in the Niger Delta is operating in a relatively densely populated area characterized by high levels of poverty and vulnerability.

• Failure to provide affected communities with adequate information or ensure consultation on the impacts of oil operations on their human rights.

• Failure to ensure access to effective remedy for people whose human rights have been violated.

The report also examines who is responsible for this situation in a context where multinational oil companies have been operating for decades. It highlights how companies can take advantage of the weak regulatory systems that characterize many poor countries, which frequently results in the poorest people being the most vulnerable to exploitation by corporate actors. The people of the Niger Delta have seen their human rights undermined by oil companies that their government cannot or will not hold to account. They have been systematically denied access to information about how oil exploration and production will affect them, and are repeatedly denied access to justice. The Niger Delta provides a stark case study of the lack of accountability of a government to its people, and of multinational companies’ almost total lack of accountability when it comes to the impact of their operations on human rights.

More oil is being prospected and discovered throughout Africa. Rather than an outdated holdover from an ugly past, Shell’s pollution of the Niger Delta is probably the model for oil exploitation across the African continent. Only if African countries stand up for themselves and their people, can the devastating effects be mitigated. Far too many governments in Africa are not accountable, or only barely accountable to their people. And even where there is a will, the outside powers and donor countries will not make it easy. Look at what is happening in Somalia, another potential source of oil. The international donor countries are keeping it destabilized in the name of fighting “terrorism”. When Somalia did develop its own government in 2006, it was rapidly crushed by the US using Ethiopia as a proxy. This is what is known as stability operations.

In response to a question, I was talking to someone in the neighborhood where I work about pollution and oil exploitation in the Niger Delta. He was not really interested and brushed it off, saying, “we have to get our oil from somewhere.” This is someone with whom I’ve had a number of friendly conversations, and generally think of as a nice guy. I think his response typifies the attitude of people in the US, and in the developed and rapidly developing world.

Just as the European colonial powers spoke of bringing Africa the 3 Cs, Christianity, Civilization and Commerce, the US, and the US Africa Command speak with straight faces of bringing Africa the 3 Ds, Defense, Diplomacy, and Development. It was a mirage the first time, and this is pretty much the same thing, minus Christianity. It is not done to benefit the people of Africa but to fool them. It is like the distraction of a magician, so you don’t see how he does the trick.

As Dr. Wafula Okumu testified:

To paraphrase Kenyatta’s allegory, “when the Whiteman came to Africa, he was holding a Bible in one hand and asked us to close our eyes and pray. When we opened our eyes after the prayer, his other hand was holding a gun and all our land was gone!” Africa’s colonial history was characterised by military occupations, exploitation of its natural resources and suppression of its people. After testing decades of independence, these countries are now jealously guarding their sovereignty and are highly suspicious of foreigners, even those with good intentions.

There are many professed good intentions, and very few genuine good intentions among the powers gathering around for this latest scramble for Africa, particularly in the search for oil. It behooves Africans to be very wary indeed.

 

Accounts And Analysis Of The War In The Creeks

Burnt palace of the monarch of Gbaramatu kingdom in Oporoza near the volatile oil rich Niger Delta. Photo: GEORGE ESIRI from 234next.com.

Here is a rundown of a variety of news reports and commentaries on the JTF attacks in Nigeria’s Delta State.

Sokari writes of the initial attack, and includes moving testimonies of what happened from the surviviors:

On May 14, 2009 at about noon, Gbaramatu Kingdom,Delta State, was in a festive mood. There had been an influx of guests into the community from far and near. They all came to witness the presentation of the Staff of Office to the Pere of Gbaramatu Kingdom, His Royal Majesty Ogie the third. The palace located in Oporoza was filled with well- wishers as the day also marked the King’s one year anniversary. Suddenly, three low flying helicopters were seen approaching the Kindgom. The community people initially thought they were flying dignitaries to the ceremony or that they were part of the glamour for the ceremony. They were wrong. Dead wrong!

The three choppers were actually gunships of the Joint Military Task Force, on a mission to mow down the Gbaramatu Kingdom. Suddenly the gunships started bombing everywhere, the King’s palace inclusive.

Next reports that the JTF assault on the Gbaramatu communities is of questionable legality:

The legality of the current onslaught against militants in Delta State by the Joint Military Task Force is stoking controversy among lawyers, lawmakers and military officials spoken to by NEXT on Sunday

Although the Nigerian defence headquarters claimed it sought and got the nod of the Nigerian president, Umaru Yar’Adua to embark on the campaign, critics of the action said the president erred in not seeking the support of the National Assembly for the exercise. The Assembly, last Wednesday however, voted to support the campaign.

Neither the Vice President, Goodluck Jonathan nor the Delta State governor, Emmanuel Uduaghan received any prior notice of the action, as NEXT reported last Sunday.

The lack of debate in the House is also said to be responsible for the rather lax operating rules under which the military is conducting the war.

A Lagos lawyer, Jiti Ogunye said: “The commander of JTF sometime last week said that they were looking for a monarch and that they found some incriminating documents after ransacking his palace. I shuddered with amazement. The question is who made soldiers to be investigating crime? Where did they get that kind of right? They sacked the man’s house in the first instance, which is not right, or shall we now say that we are now subjected to a martial law? I mean all these are very important.”

Paul Adah, the deputy chairman of the House of Representatives Defence Committee said there was no act of parliament that establishes or recognizes the Joint Task Force. He, however, said the Nigerian President, as the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces, has the powers to set up such task forces

Samuel Okikiola writes an account of a visit to Camp Five before the attacks, and has this to say about TomPolo:

TomPollo has an effective communication network with which he communicates with other fighters and inhabitants of smaller martial camps. His deputy did the talking most of the time. He said Tompollo was the head of the Ijaw struggle for emancipation. His other assistant has a Masters Degree from the University of Nigeria , Nsukka. His real name is Government Ekpomupolo. He will be 40 this year.

TomPollo has a vast business empire. He has a house in South Africa, where many of the current Niger-Delta governors passed the night whenever they visited. He was a consultant to Chevron, which sustained the relationship with him, owing to his integrity, honesty and charm. He was also a consultant to Shell Petroleum.
…

Top government officials have been visiting Tom Pollo in the past two years. The government was said to have made several overtures to him, including the post of a minister of state, which he rejected. His deputy commandant said the vice-president, Goodluck Jonathan had visited Camp 5 on two occasions; while a woman, said to be President Umaru Yar Adu’a sister, paid TomPollo a visit in 2008,appealing to him to “give her brother a chance to rule Nigeria peacefully.”

The account also describes Camp Five as clean and disciplined.

Ibiba Don-Pedro writes an analysis of the JTF attacks and the war in the creeks:

Two weeks after it began, on May 13, ongoing military attacks on Ijaw communities are taking a high toll on ordinary citizens in the area. The Joint Military Task Force has insisted that its mission was pegged on a search and rescue operation to locate 18 of its officers and men, missing in action since an encounter with fighters from the camp of Ijaw militant, Government Tompolo. The missing soldiers have not yet been found and each day brings fresh reports of attack on another Ijaw community and fresh civilian casualties along the Escravos River.

On Wednesday, May 27, Kokodiagbene, an Ijaw community of mostly fisher folk was invaded. Before this, communities including Oporoza, Okerenkoko, Azama, Kurutie, Kunukunama and Abiteye, among others, were destroyed within the first few days of the military offensive. In the following days, installations of Chevron were attacked by men of MEND, in a show of nerve, leaving unknown casualties.

Although not much has been heard in terms of actual casualty figures, the ongoing military blockade of the Escravos and surrounding creeks has raised fears over the fate of perhaps thousands of women, children, men and the aged who are forced out of their communities into the forests and swamps.

A rescue mission by the National Emergency Management Agency has assumed tragi-comedy proportions, as relief efforts and personnel are being ferried from Ogbe-Ijoh laboriously, through the meandering creeks by hand-pulled canoes. Yet, to reach the closest of the communities to Warri ordinarily takes two hours by a speedboat.

Condemnation of the military action has poured in, even as the military, through the Joint Media Campaign Centre, struggles to shift attention away from the reality of huge human casualties and continued suffering.
…
This latest bloody battle, coming barely a week after the expiration of a three month notice by the Ijaw Youth Council, given February 5, 2009 to all militants to disarm and demobilize their camps, is being seen as the Federal Government’s version of the final solution to the Niger Delta conundrum.

It is a solution many groups had warned the administration not to explore. “State sponsors of terrorism cannot sustain oil exploration and production.

Next also has accounts of survivors of the attack on the Gbaramatu communities:

They all fled from Okerenkoko and Oporoza communities. Depending on who was telling the story: the people were either fleeing from soldiers or members of the Movement for the Emancipation of Niger Delta.

There has been continious bombardmenent of the area since May 13. A common trend, however, in the narrative of all actors in the saga is that residents of these communities in Gbaramatu kingdom of Ijaw nation, the fourth largest nationality in Nigeria, have become homeless. Many have been killed and many more rendered homeless. Families have been separated with some mothers not knowing the whereabouts of their children.

There are almost no men among the visible refugees. Those who are alive are still hiding in the bush. Any male is likely to be killed or arrested as a militant. The stories of families separated and missing family members are heartbreaking. One woman had to leave her mother because her mother could not walk. Many don’t know where their children are. Another young woman described how:

Together with her three sisters and her mother, she swam for nearly an entire day just to get away from the cascading bullets from helicopters. The whereabouts of their father and brothers remain unknown. She said they were in the bush for three days where they were kept company by the regular sounds of gunshots.

New reports say the JTF Didn’t Raze Ijaw Communities, Say NEMA, Red Cross

Officials of National Emergency Manage-ment Agency (NEMA) and international voluntary relief organisation, the Nigerian Red Cross Society, have said they did not find evidence of communities that were totally razed by Joint Military Task Force (JTF), in the Niger-Delta.

The officials said after visits to at least seven Ijaw communities in Warri South-West Local Government Area, Delta State, where the security task force had extended their two-week military campaign against the militants, they could say without fear of contradiction, that certain accounts they had read in the newspapers were a far cry from the reality on ground.
…
Although a number of houses had been torched in the communities visited, there was no evidence of large-scale destruction of residential buildings as reported in some newspapers, they said. “What we found remarkable was that only women and children came out to receive the relief materials we took along with us during the visit,” the Red Cross official said, noting that they had decided to take the relief materials provided by NEMA, despite reports that “no lives remained in the affected communities.”

As reported above, and in other places, NEMA and the Red Cross were only allowed to visit the communities in wooden boats with paddles, even though “to reach the closest of the communities to Warri ordinarily takes two hours by a speedboat“. Regardless of the scale of the destruction, it is clear the military assault has created a huge internally displaced refugee population.

Sokari writes:

The back story to the present military operation in Warri South West is beginning to unfold in some quite sinister ways.
…
… if one takes the view that the military option is a part of a well planned offensive against the Niger Delta resistance by the Northern mafia that runs the country AND the latest report from chidi opara reports then something might be brewing.
…
Another piece in this unfolding tragedy is the British and more lately French governments offer to send arms to be used against militants and their support of Nigeria having a seat on the Security Council.

Two issues are at stake here for both Nigeria and these two European governments – the free flowing of cheap oil and preventing the break up of Nigeria in which all three of them will loose big time.

The US is not mentioned here, but it has been increasing its arms transfers to Nigeria for several years. The Niger Delta has been a focus of AFRICOM, and of the mercenaries, the private military and security corporations who thrive on armed conflict.

chidi opara reports says the JTF assault is the result of advice from a secret group of security advisors to Yar’Adua:

Information available to chidi opara reports indicate that the mandate of the Joint Taskforce On Security(JTF), currently engaged in fiece gun battle with the Movement For The Emmancipation Of Niger Delta(MEND) in the creeks of Delta State, may be expanded, if the advice of a group of shadow security advisers to the President is accepted. The JTF currently have a mandate that is limited to the Niger Delta region.

This group, according to a senior Presidency contact, “met recently and forwarded a memo to Mr. President to expand the JTF mandate to include the South-eastern and the South-western regions of the country“. This group we learnt comprises retired senior security and military personnels from Northern Nigeria. It has a retired Colonel who served in the military intelligence corps during the regime of Ibrahim Babangida as leader.
…
Meanwhile, chidi opara reports can now reveal that there is increased security survillance on some vocal elements in the country. We can now confirm that security survillance on Professor Pat Utomi, Mr. Yinka Odumakin, Professor Tam David-west and others have increased in the last few days.

chidi opara reports also reports they are ceasing operations for the time being. Due to surveillance they feel there is too much danger to their contacts and volunteers to continue publishing for now.

“it has become necessary to scale down our operations because of the need to protect our network members and contacts, most of whom the security agencies I learnt, have started closing in on”.

This Day is reporting today that the militants may be interested in amnesty.

Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) said at the weekend it would consider the federal government’s offer of amnesty only if the movement’s leader, Mr. Henry Okah, was released from detention.

However, THISDAY checks, reveal that many of the militant leaders have been making overtures to government that they were ready to lay down their arms but that they do not trust political leaders from the area.

One of MEND’s commanders, Farah Dagogo, told Dow Jones the movement could also hold off further attacks on the oil industry if the companies can embark on mass employment of capable people from their host communities.

According to Dagogo, “President Umaru Yar’Adua says ‘we want to give amnesty. They should start with (Henry Okah). At least we will know they are sincere.”

I remember hearing someone say there is more to a left hook than meets the eye. That is most certainly metaphorically true in the Niger Delta.

 

Niger Delta War Crimes Trials In The Future?

Sixteen foreign-based civil society organisations have called for the prosecution of the Joint Task Force Commander, Gen. Sarkin Yarkin-Bello, over the killing of civilians in Gbaramatu, Delta State.

Chanomi creeks Gbaramatu area

Sola Adebayo and Ibanga Isine continue in the Punch:

The groups, in a joint petition to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, The Netherlands also requested a probe into the role played by President Umaru Yar’Adua in the incident.
…

The civil society organisations include Trans Africa Forum, Centre for Civil Society, Environmental Justice Project of the University of KwaZulu-Natal, the Sweet Crude, Communities for a Better Environment, the Borneo Project, the Justice in Nigeria Now and the Center for Third World Organising.

Others are Global Exchange, Rainforest Action Network, Asian Pacific Environmental Network, Crude Accountability, Oil Change International, Counter Corp, Foreign Policy In Focus and Sustainable Energy and Economy Network.

The groups claimed that the military carried out land, water and aerial bombardments of Oporoza, Kurutie, Kunukunuma, Kokodiagbene, Okerenkoko, Azama, Benikurukuru and Ubefan communities in Gbaramatu Local Government Area, “under the guise of attacking militants.”

The petition reads in part, “Residents of the villages and those visiting for a festival on the day the bombing began were forced to flee their homes and villages. They are hiding in the bush and do not have adequate food or medical supplies.

“The JTF has not allowed humanitarian aid groups or journalists into the area. As of today, the coordinated aerial and ground attacks by the JTF and mass starvation continue.

“Reports suggest that thousands of innocent civilians are dead already. Reports also suggest that this was a well planned attack with the possible collusion of state government officials.

“We urge the ICC’s Office of the Prosecutor to use its power to investigate and prosecute those responsible for these crimes against humanity, including Brigadier General Yarkin-Bello, who is reportedly in command of the JTF’s operations. Questions regarding President Yar’Adua’s involvement must also be investigated.”

The destruction of the Gbaramatu communities in Delta State continues. Sola Adebayo writes in the Punch:

Peace remained elusive in the Niger Delta on Saturday as troops of the Joint Task Force in Delta State razed Benikrukru community in the Gbaramatu clan of Warri South-West Local Government Area of the state.

Report also indicated that the soldiers advanced toward another community identified as Kokodiagbene after the Benikrukru operation. Kokodiagbene community, SUNDAY PUNCH learnt is adjacent to Benikrukru.

Many persons, including an octogenarian, identified as Kuku Olobio, were reported dead during the Saturday raid.
…
Bello said the raids would continue until the wanted militant leader, Chief Government Ekpomukpolo, popularly known Tompolo was found dead or alive.

He also tied the withdrawal of the troops to the discovery of the 12 military personnel declared missing in a clash with the militants in Gbaramatu.

It was gathered that the latest raid at Benikrukru, followed the earlier pattern with the JTF using jet bombers, gunboats and warships on the community.

A source from Benikrukru said, ”The community was burnt down this morning. Many people were killed in the air and land raids on the hapless community. The JTF was about to cross over to nearby Kokodiagbene when I escaped from the area.”

Also, some ethnic and political as well as youth leaders in the region have gone underground as the detectives embarked on manhunt for them as a result of their alleged relationship with the militants.

Sunday Punch gathered that wanted leaders, who had a prior knowledge of the planned action, had since fled their homes.

”We (JTF) are after some political and ethnic leaders who have been fingered as sponsors of militant operations and some of them who have benefited from the unwholesome activities of the militants. Some youth leaders are also under surveillance.

We are aware that some of them have taken cover but they can only run but cannot hide. It is a total onslaught this mess they call militancy once and for all,” our source who craved anonymity added.

Meanwhile, President Umaru Yar‘Adua has directed the Chief of Defence Staff, Air Marshal Paul Dike, to establish military bases at the two militants‘ camps seized by the JTF in Delta State.

The hideouts identified as Camp 5 and Iroko Camp were seized by the federal troops on Saturday and Monday, respectively.

A source in JTF told our correspondent that the President gave the directive to facilitate the monitoring of the activities along the waterways in the area.

The centrality of Camp 5 in particular, the source added, would ensure easy monitoring of the creeks in Bayelsa, Delta, Edo and Ondo states and keep the trouble makers under constant check.
…
Meanwhile, the President of the Ijaw Youth Council, Dr. Chris Ekiyor, on Saturday raised the alarm that the JTF troops had invaded Warri on the manhunt for innocent Ijaw persons.

Ekiyor in a text message to our correspondent said, “Killings continue as soldiers now invade Warri in search of successful Ijaw business for extinction.

Also, the Delta Waterways Security Committee on Saturday said the peace process in the state was on course. The committee in a statement by its Secretary, Mr. Patrick Origho, said, “Everything was being done to ensure that normalcy returns to the creeks of the state, which was the scene of conflict in the past one week between a group of armed youths and JTF.

However, the JTF has approved the request of a committee set up by the state government to distribute relief materials to displaced persons to carry out its assignment.

The JTF, however, said only wooden boats would be allowed to convey the items to the communities.

This Day reports this statement. This is the deliberate language of discrimination. Paraphrased in shorter version it reads: it was “unfortunate” we had to kill so many, but it was “necessary”, they brought the problem on themselves. It is genuinely unfortunate that this seems to be a common reaction to the slaughter and displacement of the Ijaw communities.  The military action is called Operation Restore Hope. The JTF attacks are successfully characterized as a fight against the militants. It is not clear how badly the militants may have been harmed. But the communities have been destroyed. In the long run these actions just create more militants, and more incentives to crime as communities are destroyed, while the inhibitions against crime are destroyed with the communities.

Chief Sunny Okogwu, business mogul, has said resolution of militancy in the Niger Delta region lies with traditional rulers in the area.

Okogwu said given the level of influence the royal fathers wield among their subjects, all they needed to do was to direct cessation of such activities.
Speaking with newsmen in Kaduna, weekend, Okogwu said, “the traditional fathers know who these boys are and they always obey them. All they need do is tell the boys, ‘enough of these’ and the boys will obey them.”Commenting on the current military operations in the area, Okogwu blamed the militants for incurring the anger of the military by first killing some military personnel on a rescue mission, noting that the action of the militants was tantamount to a declaration of war of some sort.

While decrying the killing of innocent persons during the military operations, Okogwu said, “military tactics they call it. If you declare war on a nation and one man is the cause of the war, destroy him. There is no war without the innocent dying. If you analyse what causes a war and breakdown of civil disorder, it is unbelievable who causes that war. It is the innocent.”

 

Scorching Earth & People In The Niger Delta

… the re-branding Nigeria project has succeeded in rebranding everyone in the Niger Delta militants, including women, children, governors, aged, kings, chiefs, physically challenged et al. – Niger Delta Women

Arms and ammunition recovered from militant camps in Delta State... on Thursday May 21. Sola Adebayo

The destruction of the Ijaw communities in the Niger Delta is terrorizing people into fleeing their homes and creating thousands of internally displaced persons. The JTF and the House of Representatives have threatened to attack “militants” in Ondo, Bayelsa, and Rivers states. People in the communities in those states are fleeing, as they are terrified by what happened to the communities of Delta State.

ABUJA, 22 May 2009 (IRIN) – Thousands of civilians have fled their villages in Nigeria’s Delta state after government troops launched an offensive against militant groups in the state on 13 May.

Villagers in Delta state’s Gbramatu kingdom reported Oporoza and Okerenkoko villages being attacked with heavy machine-gun fire from low-flying helicopters on 15 May. Eyewitness accounts reported at least 100 bodies, according to Amnesty International’s Nigeria campaigner Lucy Freeman.

The Nigerian Red Cross estimates that 1,000 displaced people have fled to Ogbe Ijoh – capital of Warri south government area – where they are sheltering in a primary school and hospital.

Witnesses report that about 3,000 people have fled and Amnesty International estimates that as many as 10,000 could be on the move.

Patricia Okolo from Okerenkoko told IRIN from Ogbe Ijoh: “I had to run from my home. I did not take a single item with me. I have 10 children but I don’t know where any of them are. I could not count the number of people who were killed or injured but there were many. I could not even count.”

“I don’t know where my husband is. I am the only one who got here.”

Most of the displaced are women and children as most men are too frightened of being attacked or killed, said Nigerian Red Cross officer Egbero Ococity from Ogbe Ijoh. Many men are hiding in the forest with no access to clean water, food or shelter, he said.
…
“They [the displaced] need food, water, shelter and blankets to relieve their suffering,” the Red Cross’s Ococity told IRIN. “They are sleeping on the bare floor. They are traumatised as a result of the attacks and what they went through in the mangroves while escaping.

“You can see the frustration in their faces. Hunger is taking its toll because most of them did not have anything to eat for four days.”
…
The offensive suggests a “worrying change in direction” in the government’s approach, Freeman told IRIN. In recent months a government committee recommended amnesty for some politically-motivated militants.

In February 2009 the government of President Umaru Yar’Adua assured the UN Human Rights Council it would refrain from military offensives in the Delta region because of the risk of loss of innocent lives.

In my previous post I quoted from the statement of the Ijaw elders and leaders: The Systematic Destruction of the Ijaw. The women of the Niger Delta have issued the statement: Niger Delta Women call for an end to genicide, excerpted below:

… the Yar’adua administration has manufactured its own excuse for a greater massacre of Niger Delta women and children under the guise of fishing out militants. Beginning Wednesday, May 13, 2009 the Joint Task Force has been bombing Kurutie, Kokodiagbene, Kunukunuma, Oporoaza and Okerenkoko communities in Gbaramatu kingdom of Delta State, killing innocent persons, majority of them, women and children. Many more persons are rendered homeless; the Punch of Monday, May 18, 2009 reported that about 20,000 people are trapped in these riverine communities because the waterways are blocked by the JTF.

The displaced persons who took refuge in the Ogbe-Ijoh General Hospital were further made to flee the camp due to the invasion by soldiers from the Joint Task Force. As at Tuesday, May 19, 2009, the soldiers proceeded to carry out a house to house gruesome burning of persons and properties Okerenkoko community. The implication is that the re-branding Nigeria project has succeeded in rebranding everyone in the Niger Delta militants, including women, children, governors, aged, kings, chiefs, physically challenged et al.

Thousands of harmless women and children have been killed while some are displaced. Schooling has been disrupted for a great majority of children in the Gbaramatu kingdom of Niger Delta; having access to food and shelter has suddenly become a luxury; safety & security is far from the people; development has become a mockery; access to sanitary facilities for the women is out of the question. Many are scrambling to safety but no thoroughfare. The cries of the Niger Delta women have re-echoed. The Federal government is the killer of women and children. Instead of giving them food, education, health and security; the women and children of the Niger Delta are given bullets, blood, grief and poverty. WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?
…
WE SAY NO TO THE JOINT TASK FORCE!
WE SAY NO TO THE GRUESOME MURDER OF WOMEN AND CHILDREN IN THE NIGER DELTA!!
WE SAY NO TO MILITARY INVASION OF THE NIGER DELTA!!!

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie writes in an essay in Curse of the Black Gold:

I have heard from many well-to-do Nigerians who, in the midst of talking about the unrest, the corruption, the underdevelopment in the Niger Delta, equate everything to these words: “the problem of the Niger Delta is that the Ijaw are too lazy.”

This is the language of discrimination. When we discriminate against a group of people, we call them lazy, stupid, ignorant, greedy, promiscuous, unhygienic. These words, individually or in combination, should serve as an immediate warning that discrimination is taking place. This language allows the majority, or minorities that hold power, to oppress and even slaughter an inconvenient group of people. They can feel comfortable with themselves by using these words. Whatever actions they take against the group may then be called “unfortunate”, but “necessary”, or even “for the best”.

Nigeria’s House of Representatives has endorsed the JTF’s violence in the Delta:

N’Delta Crisis: House Backs Military Action
From Onwuka Nzeshi in Abuja and Segun James in Warri, 05.22.2009

Amidst protests and rowdiness, the House of Representatives yesterday threw its weight behind the ongoing military operation in parts of Delta State.
They also demanded that the onslaught against militant groups in the area be extended to Bayelsa and Rivers States to forestall the relocation of the militants to other parts of the Niger Delta.
The lawmakers said given the large scale criminality associated with the militant groups, it would be an aberration for the Federal Government to continue to tolerate their excesses or halt the military from crushing their apparent insurrection against the Nigerian state.
…
Although Hon. Daniel Metu and Hon. Tam Brisibe backed Agoda on the call for restraint, their resistance soon crumbled as the Chairman, House Committee on Judiciary, Hon. Mohammed Ibn N’Allah (PDP, Kebbi), took the floor by storm and unleashed a tirade of verbal attacks on the militants. …
We can do away with 20 million militants for the rest 120 million Nigerians to live,” N’Allah said.

This comment was also quoted in Punch as: “for the survival of 100 million Nigerians, we can do away with 20 million.”

[from N’Delta Crisis…]The comment sparked off widespread protests amongst lawmakers from the Niger Delta region who demanded a withdrawal of the statement and apologies.
There was tension and proceedings of the House were stalled for at least five minutes before N’Allah in a veiled retraction said it was a “parliamentary joke”.

Although communities have been terrified and destroyed, it is unclear if the actual militants have been hurt much at all. Tompolo is still alive and free. From the gun battle in Warri, the JTF alleged they captured 9 militants, assuming they are militants, and not just men who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Sola Adebayo’s picture of the weapons seized is reproduced above. After bragging about all the heavy and high tech weaponry they seized from the militants, this was all the JTF had to display.

Abubakar disclosed that the suspected militants are now in JTF’s custody.
The JTF, however, failed to parade the suspects before newsmen when the Commander, Maj. Gen. Sakin Yakin Bello, addressed the world press on the activities of his command in the last one week.

Abubakar said the arrested men are “to assist the force in carrying out investigations to determine the level of their involvement in the militancy in the Niger Delta”.

In a twist, Bello declared High Chief Government Ekpemupolo (alias Tompolo) wanted dead or alive – a week after the reports claimed the militant leader had been killed.
…
Journalists were surprised that no arrests were made during the JTF operation, a situation which gives the suspicion that every moving object in the area was killed by the invading soldiers.

The military paraded what they claimed were the weapons of the militants.
Journalists were shown rusted dane guns, normally used for hunting, unserviceable collection of old guns and dirty old machetes.

It would appear that the militants’ armoury was not as sophisticated as been claimed by the JTF.

No AK47 weapon, said to be the weapon of choice of the militants, was captured by the JTF, even though several militants have been said to have died in gun battle with the soldiers.

Bello refused to name the number of persons killed so far by his man, but declared that they were prepared to kill more, while also pursuing the militants to wherever they were known to hide.

Bello’s declaration followed persistent questions from journalists over the handling of the operation by the JTF whose soldiers invaded the Ogbe-Ijoh General Hospital to harass and arrest doctors who were treating victims of the military attack on communities in Gbaramatu kingdom area of Warri.
The action of the soldiers forced the management of the hospital to close down and discharge all the patients.

The commander denied knowledge of the hospital invasion, but promised that such would not repeat itself.
Bello admitted that a scanty number of weapons, including a pistol, a submachine gun, an Uzzi, a rifle, and a Mark IV, among others were captured from Tompolo’s personal house at Oporoza.

He denied that innocent persons were killed in the operation even when he was confronted with the fact that the attack took place on the day of a traditional festival for which a lot of people from far and near had come to Oporoza.

This Day reports that in the United States Congress Senator Feingold asked President Obama to become involved:

Chairman of Foreign Relations Committee of the United States Senate, Senator Russ Feingold, has asked President Barak Obama to intervene in the ongoing military action in the Niger Delta.

Feingold in a statement, issued in Washington yesterday said “I urge the Obama administration to think creatively about how we can work multilaterally to help end this long standing crisis in the Niger Delta.

“Some military actions may be justified to stop the criminality, kidnappings and killings by militants in the Niger Delta, but such measures should be accompanied by a larger political strategy.”

“Genuine peacemaking will require not only legitimate political negotiations but a convincing case for transforming the illicit war economy into one of peace,” he stated.

Feingold lamented the killings of thousands of civilians since the Joint Military Task Force (JTF) began its operation in Gbaramatu Kingdom in Warri, Delta State, about a week ago, to fish out militants taking refuge in parts of the Kingdom. He said in order to achieve a lasting peace in the region, federal government “needs to undertake a serious and sustained initiative to address the underdevelopment of the region.”
…
Meanwhile, US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, Mr. Johnnie Carson, has described Nigeria as the US’ most important strategic partner in the African continent. He disclosed this at the meeting with members of the Nigerian Governors’ Forum led by the chairman, Dr. Bukola Saraki, in Washington, last Wednesday. The Governors are in the US on a working visit. The team include Alhaji Isa Yuguda of Bauchi State, Godswill Akpabio of Akwa Ibom and Comrade Adams Oshiomhole of Edo State.

Carson expressed the need to strengthen the relationship between Nigeria and the US, while promising to push the process that will further deepen the US-Nigeria relationship. He commended the Governors for their patriotic initiative and assured them of his commitment to their cause. He said his doors were open to the Governors Forum at all times.
Carson also described the Governors’ visit as a new dawn in US-Nigeria relationship, “This is a new dawn in the relationship between our two countries. We have never had it so good,” he said. He noted that the Governors were the first foreign visitors he was receiving since he resumed office on Monday, last week.
…
The Governors also visited the Capitol Hill, America’s legislative power house where they had a meeting with Black America’s most powerful congresswoman, Mrs. Sheila Jackson-Lee.
Welcoming the Governors to her office, Jackson-Lee observed that the visit was the first by any delegation of Governors from Africa to any congress person on the Capitol Hill. She said she would be leading a delegation of the congress to “West African sub-region very soon”.
She commended Nigeria for her efforts in global peace-keeping, especially in Dafur, Liberia and Sierra-Leone.

The displacement continues in N’Delta communities. People are fleeing their homes in terror seeing what the JTF has done in Delta State, and hearing the threats that more is coming. We could call this state sponsored terrorism, and not be wrong. From the Punch:

Following the ongoing military onslaught against militants in the Niger Delta region, some Ijaw living in coastal areas of Ondo State have begun fleeing their communities for fear of being attacked by the men of the Joint Task Force.
…

Eleitu-Uguoji who is the National Coordinator of the Ijaw Consultative Forum blamed the indiscriminate attack of civilian settlements in Delta State for the apprehension among Ijaw people all over the country.

He added that the people were afraid because they believed that the men of the JTF were looking for Ijaw people since it was difficult to distinguish a militant from innocent civilians.

He explained that although community leaders were appealing to people in their areas not to panic, he stated that it was not possible to prevent them from fleeing due to the news of killing and maiming of innocent civilians in Ijaw communities in Delta State.

He said, “Although we have not seen either military presence nor militants‘ presence in our communities the people are afraid and they are leaving, especially the women and the children.

“They are afraid because militancy is not written on anybody‘s face and it will be almost impossible to know who is a militant among the crowd.
…

“With this development, even if the soldiers wipe out all the militants today more militants will still rise up if our areas are not developed.”

The Special Adviser to the Ondo State Governor on Niger Delta Affairs, Mr. Bekekimi Idiarhi, told our correspondent on the telephone that he was not aware of movement of Ijaw in Ondo State to safer places. But he said that there was palpable fear among the Ijaw people living along the coast from Ondo State to Akwa Ibom State .

 

War On The Ijaw In N’Delta

In Warri, Delta State, the raging battle between the men of the Joint Task Force (JTF) and militants operating in the creeks shifted to the metropolis yesterday as men of the Nigerian Navy invaded the predominately Ijaw enclave, the “Warri Corner” and Miller waterside near the Naval Base and the Warri Port, a move that resulted in a shoot-out that lasted several hours. – This Day Online

The Niger river at Warri photo by davethompsonministries on Flickr

… the resultant gun battle triggered a stampede as workers from the nearby NNPC Zonal office which also houses the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR), the Warri South Local Government secretariat and the Warri ports took to their heels. Some journalists who were in the vicinity at the time of the invasion took shelter at the nearby Police Area Command office as the bullets continued to fly for over two hours.

The fighting in the Delta is costing the Nigerian government over 1 million bpd, barrels per day, of oil revenue. The JTF shows no concern for civilian casualties. Starting a gunbattle in a city such as Warri, is certain to kill far more civilians than fighters, it is a much more visible show of the JTF’s contempt for human life. There is far greater destruction for now in the villages. The civilians in the village communities themselves are most certainly part of the intended military target, they are not accidental collateral damage

The makers of the film Sweet Crude write:

On Wednesday, May 13, the Joint Task Force (JTF) began aerial and ground attacks on militant camps in the Niger Delta. On Friday, these attacks widened to include at least nine Gbaramatu Kingdom Ijaw communities, including Oporoza, the village where much of Sweet Crude was filmed. Based on our most recent information, these attacks on civilians continue.

According to first-hand accounts by village residents, the JTF used gunboats and helicopters to fire on villages, with women and children among the estimated 500 casualties. Some were killed while fishing in canoes. Residents fled in terror into the bush. The villages are now deserted and as many as 30,000 civilians are displaced without adequate food or water supply.

There is no way to accurately report on the number of casualties, as aid agencies have not been able to get into the region. This leaves the injured without medical attention, as there are no hospitals in the area. It is reported that the JTF has closed the waterways, barring outside access and preventing villagers from traveling and fishing.

There is a tragic history of Niger Delta civilian communities being targeted by the Nigerian military. In 1999, Odi, a community of 5,000 was wiped out completely � all residents were killed and the village was razed. In 2005, Odioma suffered a similar fate, as did the village of Agge in 2008.

And in an email yesterday the filmmakers wrote:

It was reported today that the village of Oporoza, where much of Sweet Crude was filmed and where we have many friends, was burned to the ground by the Nigerian military Joint Task Force. Other villages too. The destruction continues and the region is still blocked off to aid agencies.

Ijaw elders and leaders issued a statement: The Systematic Destruction of the Ijaw. It says the violence and destruction is on a scale greater even than in the Nigerian civil war, and includes these statements:

b) The burning, destruction, complete razing of Okerenkoko, Oporoza, Kunukunuma, Peretorukorigbene, Kurutie and many other communities and the killing and maiming of innocent people including women and children amount to systemic annihilation of an ethnic race and this is simply genocide. It therefore deserves international condemnation.
…
d) The Ijaw ethnic nation contributes more than 70% of Nigeria’s wealth. We appear to be a people who have become victims of our own wealth by the use of sophisticated military hardware bought with our own petro-naira to kill our people.
…
e) It is indeed criminal, unjustified, inconsiderate and callous to declare full military operations on communities in the guise of undertaking a search and rescue mission for hostages and missing personnel whereas it is common knowledge that hostages and hijacked vessels are secured within the precinct of militant camps and not villages inhabited by innocent people. This is nothing but a deeply contemplated systemic killing of the Ijaw people in furtherance of the age-long crave by sections of this country to either forcefully relocate us or make the Ijaw identity extinct in the Nigerian map with a view to taking over full possession of our natural resources.

f) The Ijaw ethnic nation appeals to the United Nations Organisation to set up a Commission of Inquiry to investigate the circumstances surrounding this latest assault and killing of hapless and innocent people since we do not foresee the possibility of justice from a Nigerian government commissioned inquiry.

The violence is losing the country a lot of money, also from This Day Online:

At the present price of $60 per barrel, and at the current exchange rate of N145 against the dollar, Nigeria is losing about N8.7 billion daily …

There are comments on many Nigerian websites to the effect of kill them all, or sometimes just kill all the militants. He may not like the loss of money, but Speaker Bankole appears quite comfortable with the violence:

Bankole: Military Action Part of Peacekeeping
Speaker Bankole yesterday said that the military operation in Niger Delta is part of the effort to achieve peace in the violence ridden region.
Bankole, who spoke with journalists at the Presidential /VIP terminal of Murtala Muhammed Airport, Lagos, described the military option recently being employed by the federal government to counter and suppress the insurgence of the militants in the Niger Delta, who have almost held the nation’s social and economic activities to a stand still in the area for some years now, as a necessary option to achieve peace in that part of the country.
“As far I am concerned, it is a peacekeeping option that is going on in the Niger Delta,” he said.
On the innocent citizens who are being killed on daily basis in the crossfire, the Speaker said casualties of that status were inevitable in the cause of attempting to resolve any conflict.
“When two people are fighting and you try to separate them, you might get punched as well,” Bankole added.
He also expressed his sympathy for the families of the victims.

Quite touching that last bit, you can tell just how sincerely he cares.

And it is true the militants are a mixture of actions and motives. In many quarters they get little or no sympathy, from Punch:

While one may count millions of reasons why the military should never engage in its present activities in the Niger Delta, the fact that the militants are causing the nation great pains is incontrovertible.

In the beginning, the militants were protesting the rape of their land by oil explorers and many people regarded it as part of the struggles to get those who are reaping the resources of the area to pay attention to the sufferings of the people. Then they were kidnapping foreign oil workers and setting them free after the payment of ransom. Today, the militants have taken the business of kidnapping to a blood chilling level. Now they kidnap everybody including Nigerian men, women and innocent children many of who neither have business with oil in the Niger Delta nor the oil companies. The kidnapping of a three year old girl is a case in point. Recently, the nation was awe struck with the news that a kidnapped young lady was killed after a N10m ransom was paid.

There are and have been strong links between the militants, elected officials, and even the oil companies.

Punch also reports:

Indications have emerged that the Federal Government’s rebuff of pleas to stop further military onslaught against militants in the Niger Delta communities may have been caused by negative intelligence reports on some leaders of the region.

A security source said that some prominent leaders in the region, including state governors, had been found to be fraternising with militant groups before the ongoing operation.
…
He said, “How can you listen to people you know have openly identified with known militants in the Niger Delta region? Today, they have lost control of the boys and there is nothing they can do about it.

For more information on how this works, Human Rights Watch released an extensive report on the political situation in Nigeria in 2007, called Criminal Politics: Violence, “Godfathers” and Corruption in Nigeria, click here for the Pdf version.

With their village homes destroyed, and their families fleeing, in hiding, or slaughtered, the militants are threatening a nasty escalation, from Punch:

The JRC [Joint Revolutionary Council] is made up of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, the Martyrs Brigade and the Reformed Niger Delta People’s Volunteer Force

The spokesperson for the JRC, Ms. Cynthia Whyte, who accused the Joint Task Force of attacking civilian settlements, including the palace of the Agadagba of Gbaramatu, schools and other public places, vowed that the soldiers would be made to pay for the “desecration of Ijawland.”

Whyte said, “Let us also warn that any bandit soldier of the Nigerian state who breaches the rules of engagement in this campaign will be summarily executed.

“Any attack on unarmed and innocent village-folk will be revenged. Any attack on community people will result in an equal attack on families of soldiers in any barracks we choose to attack. It will be an eye for an eye henceforth.”

The militants debunked the claim by the JTF that Camp 5 of the militants had been taken over by the soldiers.

According to the statement, militants had long vacated the camp, adding that it had already become a tourist centre before it was taken over by the JTF.

The statement reads in part, “Let it be known that Camp 5 had long become a tourist centre and a haven of sorts for various Ijaw organisations who seek to keep the peace.

“Let us remind all men of goodwill that the attacks on Gbaramatu Kingdom represent the height of an attempt by a northern cabal to fully sink their teeth in oil production operations in the Niger Delta.”

And this last is one of the huge problems facing Nigeria. The illegal bunkering in the Delta is big time and sophisticated. The criminals and syndicates involved make $60 million a day, by one insider estimate.

From the BBC in an article that also talks about the UK offering Nigeria military assistance for dealing with the militants:

But a source close to the former government of President Olusegun Obasanjo says the problem is not about quashing militants in boats.

Some of the people who run the cartels are among Nigeria’s top political “godfathers”, who wield massive political influence.

“If the president goes after them, they could destabilise the country, cause a coup, a civil war. They are that powerful, they could bring the state down,” said the source, who did not want to be identified.

He says that attempts in the past to bring the trade under control were stopped for that reason.

“This is an industry that makes £30m ($60m) a day, they’d kill you, me, anyone, in order to protect it,” he said.
…
In order to get away with the theft, the bunkering syndicates operate under the cloak of the conflict between militants and oil companies in the Niger Delta.

They need “security” – gangs of armed heavies to protect their cargos – and threaten anyone who tries to interfere.

They don’t have to look far to find large groups of unemployed youths willing to do what they are told for a little money.
…
These youths protect bunkering ships, force local community leaders to let bunkerers pass and bribe the Nigerian military.

The thieves may also need “the boys” to blow up pipelines, forcing the oil company to shut down the flow, allowing them to install a tap in the pipe.

“Hot-tapping”, as it is known, requires considerable expertise, usually supplied by a former oil company employee.

The US and the UK have offered Nigeria military assistance of one sort or another. It is quite clear that there is no possible military solution in the Delta. There are criminals on all sides. There are many many more people who are just trying to live their lives. Lawful regulation and transparency in the oil industry and the related banking would make a big difference, along with lawful and reliable policing. And by reliable I mean citizens would not need to fear the police. The problem that needs to be solved is that the people of the Delta have no clean water, no schools, no clinics, no jobs, and a heavily polluted environment that makes traditional farming and fishing impossible. Nobody seems too uncomfortable with the thought of killing all of “them” to “solve” the problem, the current JTF approach. Any military assistance will certainly assist this “solution”.

Kayode Komolafe writes some wise words in an article printed in This Day:

Not surprisingly the information about the latest bloodbath has been murky as everything about the handling of the Niger Delta crisis over the years. There are no means of getting the records of casualties, if any is being taken at all. Deaths are simply counted in dozens and displaced persons in thousands. Newspapers are awash with photographs of hapless children and old men and women who have been displaced. These defenceless folks are fleeing the spots where soldiers are battling it out with militants. Viewers have been treated to footages on television of people streaming out of the creeks to avoid getting caught in the crossfire. Even the military task force that is “flushing out” the militants has only invited the media to visit the areas of operations “when the dust settles”. Meanwhile, one does not need to be a security expert to know that helpless people will bear the brunt of the crisis.

It is, therefore, not enough to have official declarations that Camp Five and the Iroko Camp of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) have been destroyed. It is even more urgent to stop the suffering of the defenceless persons. While the debate may continue about who is to blame primarily for the Niger Delta debacle, the government and people of Nigeria should be interested about the humanitarian dimension of the fighting now.
…
It is unfortunate that the nation has ignored the lessons in the tragedies of Odi, Zaki Biam, Umuechem and other places where the military response to attacks on soldiers recorded indefensible collateral damage. The extent of this damage should be made clear as we draw on lessons from the past operations. These are steps that should not be delayed.
…
For clarity, the government has the responsibility for security in all parts of the republic. And no sane person can justify the activities of criminals who kidnap persons, vandalise pipelines, steal oil or even chase a way construction workers from sites. These criminals operating in the region have distorted the legitimate struggle of the people for justice and equity in the administration of the revenues from oil. The activities of the criminals should be separated from the justifiable protest against the neglect, poverty and underdevelopment of the region. Security and law enforcement forces should be able to deal with criminals without wreaking havoc on whole communities. It is a professional challenge. For instance, kidnappers have operated in other parts of Nigeria outside the Niger Delta such as south- eastern states, Lagos, Abuja and Kaduna. The crime could be fought without unleashing onslaught on the communities.
…
… Yar’Adua should not stop at flushing out militants out of Camp Five and Iroko Camp, he should move swiftly to implement policies that would flush out inequity, poverty, and underdevelopment in the region.

 

Niger Delta Communities Under Assault by Nigerian JTF

Nigeria from the Escravos oil installation area on the left to Warri on the right. This is the area of the Gbaramatu communities.

There are no roads in the Creeks area of the Niger Delta; village residents must paddle everywhere. Gas flare and oil installation in background. Oporoza, Niger Delta, August 2006. photo: Kendra E. Thornbury

Oporoza Library, which was attacked, at its dedication in 2005, see the library link below for more information, and links to more pictures.

Reports of severe violence are coming in from the vicinity of Escravos near Warri in the Niger Delta. The JTF, Joint Task Force of the Nigerian Federal Government, the FG, attacked several villages and Camp 5, the headquarters of the MEND chief, Tompolo. They brought 7000 troups, 2 warships, and 14 gunboats. Four Ijaw communities have been attacked, and may be destroyed: Oporoza, Kunukunuma, Okerenkoko and Kurutie. The JTF has a history of making reprisals on innocent civilian communities, and destroying them, for the actions of militants and criminals, Odioma and Aker Base are two examples.

From the Vanguard:

Some community leaders from Gbaramatu who managed to escape alive from Friday’s bombardment of some Ijaw communities by the JTF said the number of casualties were high as they were many people who came from far and near to Oporoza for the Amaseikumor festival.

From Punch, by Sola Adebayo in Warri, May 16:

Twenty-four hours to the end of the ultimatum issued by the Movement of the Emancipation of the Niger Delta to oil companies operating in the region to evacuate their employees and shut down, the Federal Government on Friday, launched a major operation to dislodge the militants.

MEND had on Wednesday engaged troops of the Joint Task Force in a fierce battle in which several soldiers were feared dead and their weapons seized. The militants also took 15 foreigners hostage.

Saturday Punch learnt that President Umaru Yar‘Adua was angry about the number of casualties on the part of the JTF and consequently ordered that camps of the militants must be invaded and their leaders captured dead or alive.

As a result, two warships and 14 gunboats were in the early hours of Friday deployed in the coastal Ijaw communities in Delta State. Four helicopter gunboats were also deployed to attack the identified militants‘ hideouts and camps.

Sources said that some Ijaw communities like Oporoza, Kunukunuma, Okerenkoko and Kurutie where leaders of the militant groups are believed to be hiding also came under heavy bombardment by the JTF troops. Unconfirmed reports said the communities had been razed as at 3pm on Friday.

The popular Camp 5 operated by a well known militant, Chief Government Ekpomukpolo, alias Tompolo, in Delta State, was also reportedly razed. The fate of the warlord and his lieutenants could not be ascertained as at 4 pm on Friday.

No fewer than 3,000 troops were involved in the operation in the riverside Gbaramatu Kingdom in Warri South West Local Government Area of Delta State. The Ijaw enclave housed the popular militant Camp 5 and Iroko Camp, which the JTF had been itching to invade and take over in the last 10 years.

It was gathered that the troops were mandated to dislodge the militants from the two camps and regain control of the area.

No fewer than 12 soldiers, including a lieutenant were feared killed in Wednesday‘s battle. It was learnt that 13 others sustained serious injuries before the embattled soldiers were forced to retreat following the superior firepower of the warlords.

Saturday Punch investigation further showed that about 20 military weapons were seized by the militants. The militants hijacked two ships.

Already, one soldier whose body has been recovered, has been declared dead while 11 others have been declared missing by authorities of the JTF.

…

Indications that the JTF was prepared to avenge the killings emerged on Thursday night when movement of soldiers and military equipment into Warri Port for onward journey to Gbaramatu communities and the two militants‘ camps was noticed.

Efforts by the Delta State government and notable Ijaw leaders to stave off the operation were rebuffed by authorities of the JTF, who politely told them that it had been ordered “from above”. It was gathered that Dike, an indigene of the state, who was also contacted to shelve the exercise said it was beyond him.

Consequently, by 5am on Friday, two naval warships identified as NNS Obula and NNS Nwanba as well as 14 gunboats had settled down for business in Camp 5 and at Gbaramatu, Okerenkoko, Oporoza, Kunukunuma and Kurutie.

Saturday Punch also gathered that four helicopter gunboats on the fleet of the Nigerian Air Force embarked on air surveillance and rendered air support.

An Ijaw youth, who managed to escape from the scene, told Saturday Punch on the telephone that, ”Oporoza, Kunukunuma, Okerenkoko and Kurutie towns and Camp 5 in Gbaramatu kingdom in Delta State had been invaded from the air and the river.”

However, Saturday Punch learnt that heavy shooting between the militants and the soldiers still persisted as at 2:30pm on Friday as the warlords mounted stiff resistance at Camp 5.

”What is going on in Gbaramatu Kingdom as I am talking to you now (2:30 pm) is a total war between the militants and the Federal Government. You can call it a show of strength because both sides are well equipped and appeared ready for the battle. The picture is not very clear yet but the troops have burnt some Ijaw communities and the notorious Camp 5 have been razed,” a source said.

The spokesman of JTF, Col. Rabe Abubakar, confirmed the operation but hastily added that it was premature to comment on its details. Abubakar said the federal troops were merely on a rescue operation in the area.

Abubakar said the troops were deployed to rescue the hostages, free hijacked ships and fish out the hoodlums who attacked military personnel on legitimate duties on Wednesday.

He said, ”We (JTF) deliberately went on search and rescue operation in some coastal communities in Delta State. The idea was to apprehend and fish out criminals who are involved in abduction of crew members of two ships and those behind the hijack of the ships. We are also after the criminals who attacked our personnel on legitimate duties.

”But in the process, the so-called militants mounted resistance and this expectedly led to a serious gun duel and they retreated to their camps and hideouts. Our men also pursued them to the camps and hideouts. There is no further detail for now, but heavy shooting is persisting as you are talking to me now.”

The Ijaw National Leader, in his reaction said the Federal Government had declared total war on the Ijaw nation.

Clark said, ”The military (JTF) has declared total war on our people in Escravos in Delta State. They are bombing from the air and water, killing innocent children and women in Okerenkoko, Oporoza, Kurutie and Kunukunuma. They (Ijaw people) are seeking for safety in the bush. “Please intervene immediately by telling Mr. President not to declare total war on fellow Nigerians particularly when the Vice President, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan [from the Delta], is away in Europe on official mission.

One of the villages under attack, Oporoza, was host to the people who made the movie Sweet Crude. They send out an email which contained the following information:

There are conflicting reports, but we do know from a friend who called from the bush, where village residents have fled, that the military has opened fire and there are casualties.

We received this text message from one of the film’s main characters:

“The situation is getting worse every minute. Their plan is to wipe Oporoza out of the surface of Earth tomorrow morning.

The leader of the JTF force has claimed the hostages have been rescued, although one hostage was killed, quite possibly by the JTF. However other reports say that MEND still has the hostages. Reports coming in today, Monday, say 9 hostages have been recovered by the JTF. By the time you read this those numbers may have changed. The militants have blown up two major pipelines, one of which was just repaired at great expense. The Vanguard reports:

MEND said it had sabotaged two oil and gas pipelines near to Escravos which supply the 110,000 barrels per day (bpd) Kaduna refinery in northern Nigeria, shut down for maintenance in November.
…
The pipeline transports crude produced by Chevron-Texaco to the Warri Refinery and Petrchemical Company (WRPC). It is also used to channel imported heavy crude to the Kaduna Refinery. It was damaged by militants some years ago and its repairs gulped a huge sum of money.
…
Tompolo not dead: A top aide of the leader of Camp Five, popularly known as Tompolo, who was reported to have been killed, however, told Sunday Vanguard, “Nothing happened to him, he is alive”. He also said all the 15 hostages were Filipinos, but the JTF said it rescued six Filipinos and four Nigerians. His words, “All the 15 hostages were Filipinos. Two died and three were seriously injured during yesterday’s (Friday) aerial attack on camp 5.

The city of Warri was being considered as one of the hosts of the Under 17 World Cup. FIFA officials were due to visit this week, but that visit has been called off. Officials in Warri said there was no danger and no worry. But they may find themselves out of the running to participate in the cup.

The JTF is said to be in persuit of Gbaramatu leaders, and may be pursuing them into Warri:

We hear that Okerenkoko is next in their plan to attack and that they are even planning to trail Gbaramatu leaders staying in Warri and arrest them, this will be a dangerous development …

And from Business Day:

Reacting to comments by some groups whom he called “MEND supporters” who allegedly raised alarm that the JTF used aircraft to bomb communities, Abubakar said such comments were wrong as JTF was adopting normal convention of Cordon and Search as no responsible military would carry out actions that would be detrimental to the existence of innocent citizens.

Given the history of JTF thuggery and its targeting of civilian communities, I don’t give this denial much credit for truthfulness. The Punch reports the crisis is escalating:

Also killed in the fighting, in which about 20,000 people are said to be trapped, was another Filipino hostage and a nine-year-old child.

Three more Filippino were, however, freed from the militants and one helicopter recovered by the JTF operatives during the attacks in Kurutie, Kokodiagbene, Kunulunuma, Oporoza and Okerenkoko in Gbaramatu clan, all in Warri South- West Local Government Area of Delta State.

… an official of the Delta State Government, who craved anonymity, put the figure at 20,000. “It is true that about 5,000 people have been displaced, but the people trapped are just about 20,000,” he said.

The official craved anonymity because the state government was yet to comment officially.

When one of our correspondents visited the Ogbe-Ijoh General Hospital in Warri South- West LGA, about 5,000 displaced persons were seen weeping as efforts were being made by the council officials to rehabilitate them.

Some of the displaced persons, including seven youth corps members, gave horrifying accounts of their escape from the scenes of the fighting.

The spokesman of the corps members, Mr. Lanre Abayomi, said they were in a library in Oporoza when the JTF operatives invaded the community in jet fighters and gunboats.

Abayomi, who attributed their escape into Warri to divine intervention, claimed that many buildings were attacked from the air by the troops.
…
[JTF’s] Abubakar said, “The continuous search and rescue operations being carried out were aimed at criminals who made those areas their abode and made it impossible to rescue the remaining expatriates on board MT Spirit earlier hijacked by them.

There have been many claims and counter claims by the JTF and by MEND. The JTF says the militants are lifeless and homeless. MEND says Camp 5 will be the graveyard of the JTF. Reports vary on how much the oil companies are curtailing their activities, or evacuating their personnel. What is clear is that the local communities near the Escravos terminal are under attack, and that the civilians are the ones bearing the casualties and the suffering.

On April 3oth the International Crisis Group issued a briefing:

Since the Yar’Adua administration assumed office in May 2007, its initiatives for ending Delta violence have been ambiguous and at times incoherent. An early attempt to convene a Delta summit was aborted due to local opposition. A May 2008 proposal that militants incorporate as security companies so they could be hired to guard pipelines and other oil installations met with public scepticism and militants’ rejection and never got off the ground. Creation of the Ministry of Niger Delta Affairs in September 2008 initially drew mixed reactions, but low funding in the 2009 budget, an uncertain division of responsibilities with the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) and unclear guiding principles have cost it credibility.

…
On 7 January 2009, a number of the country’s leading civil society groups charged that Yar’Adua’s silence on the report showed he was only playing to the gallery on the Delta issue, and subsequent developments have done nothing to dispel those misgivings. The disclosure by a special adviser to the vice president two months after the report was submitted that yet another committee had been established to study the recommendations, coupled with the lack of any further response since then, are deepening doubts over the government’s sincerity. The longer these doubts grow, the more difficult it will become to engage all stakeholders in an effective peace process.The Technical Committee has been the government’s most promising effort to develop a coherent, long-term strategy in the Delta. Launched on 8 September 2008 with broad and credible membership, the committee was mandated to collate, review and distil all previous reports, memorandums and submissions and “make suggestions for Government’s necessary and urgent action”. Vice President Goodluck Jonathan pledged that its recommendations “will not be treated with levity”. It was widely believed that the government would adopt those recommendations as its definitive roadmap for resolving the region’s crisis.

Right now it does not look like there is much interest in resolving the crisis. It would be interesting to know if the US Africa Command was acting in any advisory capacity in this exercise. I have no particular reason to suppose it is. However the US has been pouring arms into Nigeria for years, and the numbers soared during the Bush administration. The Africa Command was initially set up largely to safeguard Nigerian oil for the US market. This exercise in violence by the Nigerian government does not seem to be safeguarding anything. The US has demonstrated no serious interest to date in peaceful solutions to the crisis in the Delta. The Africa Command, and the mercenary contractors who are their camp followers, are studying to carry out counter insurgency operations in the Niger Delta. Counterinsurgency operations include attacks like these on Delta communities. The mercenary contractors already have a heavy presence in the Delta, in violation of Nigerian law.

As of today, Monday:

A source told Daily Independent at the weekend that production loss to the on-going violence was over 250, 000 barrels per day as foreign firms remove all but essential staff from the areas.

Chevron, the source added, could soon declare a force majeure on oil from the Escravos operation, while the Shell Petro-leum and Development Company (SPDC) has commenced the evacuation of its staff from the swamp and offshore locations in response to threat by the militants to attack oil workers.

Fears that the violent clash in the region of Nigeria could cause price surge also gripped traders at the global market as transaction resumes Monday. … traders believed that the renewed violence in Nigeria could single-handedly skyrocket the price.

And this is what most of the world cares about. We are largely indifferent to the fate of the local people whose land contains the oil, but who receive no benefit from it. The local people receive instead severe pollution and violent assault. I would like to think this current assault is an aberration, but I suspect it is a big step towards an escalation.

 

The Mercenaries Take Over In The Niger Delta

Oil spill fouls the water supply

defenders of human rights

Violence has been an instrument of governance in the Niger Delta as a constant companion to the oil business. Sokari Ekine has written a moving and well documented account of “how women have spearheaded the defence of local livelihoods through organised protests which cut across regional ethnic divisions” in Women’s responses to state violence in the Niger Delta, Violence as an instrument of governance.

The Niger Delta is a region of Nigeria that has been subjected to excessive militarisation for the past 13 years, where violence is used as an instrument of governance to force the people into total submission (Okonta and Douglas, 2001; Na’Allah, 1998). It is where, by far, the majority of the people live in abject poverty and where women are the poorest of the poor (Human Rights Watch, 2002; 2004; 2007). This region has little or no development, no electricity, no water, no communications, no health facilities, little and poor education. In contrast, the region generated an estimated over US$30 billion in oil revenues over a 38-year period in the form of rents for the government and profit for the multinational oil companies

Now, in order to keep this population poor, without water, without communications, or health facilities, or education, or jobs, in order to keep oil and money coming out of the Delta, going to the politicians and the oil companies, according to Nigeria’s Next, The Mercenaries Take Over.
(h/t Foreign Policy Exchange)

The Niger Delta is crawling with British and American private paramilitary companies providing security services for clients in the oil and gas industry, in clear violation of Nigerian law

There are at least 10 mercenary companies operating in the Delta, including Triple Canopy, Control Risk, Erinys International, ArmorGroup, Aegis Defence System, and Northbridge Service Group, the successor company to the now defunct Executive Outcomes … “the notorious South African paramilitary force known for its role in helping the Angolan government during the war with the rebel UNITA forces of Jonas Savimbi,and for fighting directly in the Sierra Leonean civil war.

Our laws forbid foreigners from operating armed security companies or paramilitary organisations of any kind and, strictly speaking, these hired guns are forbidden from freelancing here. But almost all of them have sought to get around the law by forming vague partnerships with local companies and by claiming to provide mainly advisory services, which contradict their stated objectives and services on their parent websites and their known activities in other countries.

Government denial

Astonishingly, our military and security services also claim to know nothing of their presence.

“I am not aware,” said the spokesman for Defence Headquarters in Abuja, Col. Christopher Jemitola. “If there is any evidence, including photographs, bring them up and we will address the issue.”

Some of the security companies also claim not to bear any arms in the Delta, a chaotic frontier where foreigners are routinely kidnaped and gunfights are a fact of daily life in cities such as Port Harcourt and in the creeks of the mangrove swamp.

This denial beggars belief, said Ishola Williams, a former commandant of the Nigerian Army Training and Doctrine Command.“They must be magicians,” said the retired general. “Are they going to fight the militants with karate or judo? We have to be very realistic, because if someone gives you a contract to provide protection for oil workers in the Niger Delta, what would you do– you would go there with your bare arms?”

Apart from the Biafran war of 1967-70, paramilitary groups are relatively new to Nigeria. But the protracted and deteriorating insurgency in the Niger Delta has made them increasingly sought after. One of the security companies that claims local partnership in Nigeria is Erinys International, a British company with experience of guarding oil installations in Iraq.

…

In the wild frontier of the internet, private military companies are rife and active, peddling their services to prospective patrons. Many of them have announced that they are now operationally domiciled in Nigeria’s Niger Delta, and some claim they work in partnership with the military Joint Task Force, the Nigeria defence forces known by its acronym JTF and which has primary responsibility for security in the area.

A JTF spokesman, Musa Sagir, denied knowledge of the existence of the foreigners nor any collaboration with them. We don’t have any connection with any foreign military contractor,” Col. Sagir said, adding that “With my inside knowledge and experience in the Niger Delta, in particular River State, I don’t have formal or informal knowledge of the existence of foreign military contractors.”

What was more, he added, somewhat indignantly, “we are trained for the job and we know what to do at the right time.”

Willaims, the retired general and now head of the local Transparency International office in Nigeria, was buying none of that. “Remember that these are government officials. If they say they know them, you as the press will go and blow it up that foreign military companies have taken over the job of security in this country and what are they doing? The House of Representatives will take it up and want to investigate, and it shows the weaknesses of all the armed forces and all the security agencies in Nigeria.”

Official denials and a seeming lack of awareness of the activities of these companies also demonstrate the enfeebled state of the Nigerian state, said Kayode Soremekun, a professor of international relations at the University of Lagos.

My own problem here is that the ministry of internal affairs and ministry of defence are not aware of their existence,” Soremekun said. “It is either one or two things: the ministry of defence is genuinely ignorant of this particular development, or it is pretending. Either way it does not bode well for the Nigerian state. And it simply shows what a lot of people had thought all along, that those who really control the Nigerian state, those who really determine what happens in the Nigerian state, cannot even be located in this country. You can locate them offshore.”

…

Since our laws do not allow for foreign owned security company to operate locally, most of these private security contractors have resorted to calling themselves “risk management consultants” rather than hired guns.

This way, they are able to provide a cocktail of services and products that are not different from what regular private military companies provide– or what the same companies do elsewhere in countries like Sierra Leone

Most of the companies are not forthcoming about their activities, for example:

At Control Risk, yet another of these security companies active in the Niger Delta, company spokesman, Edward Murray, told Next on Sunday to “go to hell” when asked to help define the scope of their Nigerian operations.

The company states that it is in Nigeria to protect British oil workers and names “a large oil producer” as a client. However, its mission includes, according to its official web site, “the provision of technical security services (onshore and offshore) and sophisticated management of security strategy in places where security is linked to broader issues of social performance.” In plain English, the company guards oil company interests against restive locals.

The mercenary companies are there to protect the “rights” of the oil companies to kill and oppress the people of the Niger Delta, pollute their land and water, and steal the resources from under their feet.

The people who are suffering most are the women. They are also organizing and fighting back. So women and children will remain major targets of violent military governance.

Meredeth Turshen wrote in 2004:

Specific effects of oil development on women’s health seem not to have been investigated. Although I found an article on the effects of exposure of crocodiles to sub-lethal concentrations of petroleum waste drilling fluid in the Niger Delta basin, I could find nothing on the health of women who live near oil wells and oil production stations, and nothing on reproductive outcomes in areas adjacent to petrochemical plants. Yet it is known that cadmium, chromium, mercury, and lead are contained in the refinery effluents that are constantly discharged into nearby bodies of water. At high concentrations these metals cause metabolic malfunctions in human beings. They enter the food chain through the drinking water and the local fish that people consume. Fish store mercury without metabolizing it, and people who eat mercury-contaminated fish can contract Minamata disease.

The health of the people and of future generations is not even important enough to study. The people polluting the environment don’t want the effects known. Until there is a serious effort to create a political solution to the problems of the Niger Delta, the people will continue to suffer, and the health and lives of the entire population are in danger. The proliferation of armed mercenaries will only escalate and prolong the problem.

(h/t sdnnigeria’s photostream)

 

HTS, KBR, XE, & CRS Africom

Just a few noteworthy odds and ends today that have some relevance to Africa and the US Africa Command, the first is distinctly odd:

US Government Takeover of Human Terrain System,
HTS Program Managers Spared, Laugh On Way to Bank

On February 9, 2009, Human Terrain System (HTS) program manager Steve Fondacaro informed HTS employees that they were being converted to Term Government Employees. The catalyst for the drastic change was, according to Fondacaro, the new Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) with the Iraqi Government. Yet, sources believe there is something fishy about the SOFA cover, particularly since their treatment by HTS program management (Steve Fondacaro, Steve Rotkoff-Deputy Program Manager, and Montgomery McFate-Sapone-Senior Social Scientist) over the past year has been anything but stellar. Further, BAE SYSTEMS was not notified by HTS program management but, according to sources, by HTS employees who had gotten word of the changes afoot through the HTS grapevine.
…
BAE SYSTEMS and the primes are scrambling right now to get to the bottom of what this is about since they were clueless until employees starting burning up the phone lines and email. Most of the employees are worried because if they are forced to covert (alternative is to quit) so really no choice, that they are not tied to their contractor but at the mercy of the TRADOC and they essentially become non-permanent government army employees.

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KBR has been convicted of bribing officials in Nigeria:

Kellogg Brown & Root LLC Pleads Guilty to Foreign Bribery Charges and Agrees to Pay $402 Million Criminal Fine Enforcement Actions by DOJ and SEC Result in Penalties of $579 Million for KBR’s Participation in a Scheme to Bribe Nigerian Government Officials to Obtain Contracts

WASHINGTON – Kellogg Brown & Root LLC (KBR), a global engineering, construction and services company based in Houston, pleaded guilty today to charges related to the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) for its participation in a decade-long scheme to bribe Nigerian government officials to obtain engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contracts, Acting Assistant Attorney General Rita M. Glavin of the Criminal Division announced. The EPC contracts to build liquefied natural gas (LNG) facilities on Bonny Island, Nigeria, were valued at more than $6 billion.

KBR entered guilty pleas to a five-count criminal information in federal court in Houston before U.S. District Judge Keith P. Ellison. As part of the plea agreement, KBR agreed to pay a $402 million criminal fine.

According to court documents, KBR was part of a four-company joint venture that was awarded four EPC contracts by Nigeria LNG Ltd. (NLNG) between 1995 and 2004 to build LNG facilities on Bonny Island. The government-owned Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) was the largest shareholder of NLNG, owning 49 percent of the company.

KBR pleaded guilty to conspiring with its joint-venture partners and others to violate the FCPA by authorizing, promising and paying bribes to a range of Nigerian government officials, including officials of the executive branch of the Nigerian government, NNPC officials, and NLNG officials, to obtain the EPC contracts. KBR also pleaded guilty to four counts of violating the FCPA related to the joint venture’s payment of tens of millions of dollars in “consulting fees” to two agents for use in bribing Nigerian government officials.

KBR admitted that, at crucial junctures before the award of the EPC contracts, KBR’s former CEO, Albert “Jack” Stanley, and others met with three successive former holders of a top-level office in the executive branch of the Nigerian government to ask the office holder to designate a representative with whom the joint venture should negotiate bribes to Nigerian government officials. Stanley and others negotiated bribe amounts with the office holders’ representatives and agreed to hire the two agents to pay the bribes. According to court documents, the joint venture paid approximately $132 million to the first agent, a consulting company incorporated in Gibraltar, and more than $50 million to the second agent, a global trading company headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, during the course of the bribery scheme. KBR admitted that it had intended for these agents’ fees to be used, in part, for bribes to Nigerian government officials.

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Possibly following advice from Wired’s Danger Room, Blackwater is rebranding, now calling itself Xe, pronounced zee.

They never picked up on our Hello Kitty-style logos. But finally, after a godawful year and a half, the private security firm Blackwater Worldwide is taking Danger Room’s advice, and changing its name to something opaque and hard-to-pronounce.

So, goodbye Blackwater. Hello, Xe. No, seriously. Xe — “pronounced like the letter ‘z,'” the Associated Press reports. …

For the last year or so, lackwater Xe has been moving away from its core business of diplomat protection, and into — well, just about everything else, it seems. Firm CEO Erik Prince has put together teams of spies-for-hire. The company is pushing ahead with plans to protect commercial ships, traveling through pirate-packed seas. And in case that doesn’t work out, the company is making custom rifles, marketing spy blimps, assembling a fleet of light attack aicraft, and billing itself as experts in everything from cargo handling to dog training to construction management. It’s even training pro athletes.

Firm president Gary Jackson says in a memo to employees that the new name (and the renaming of its firing range as “U.S. Training Center Inc.”) are just reflections of that diversification. (graphic h/t Danger Room)

________

And especially noteworthy, WikiLeaks has published an archive of CRS, Congressional Research Service documents (h/t Koranteng) including the January 2009 report:

PDF: Africa Command: U.S. Strategic Interests and the Role of the U.S. Military in Africa

Most of the issues covered in the report have been discussed in this blog. It is interesting to see a number of my assumptions confirmed in this way. I’ll copy just a couple of quotes.

… five factors that have shaped increased U.S. interest in Africa in the past decade: oil, global trade [China], armed conflicts, terror, and HIV/AIDS. …

A senior DOD official reportedly commented in 2003 that “a key mission for U.S. forces (in Africa) would be to ensure that Nigeria’s oil fields… are secure.” In spite of conflict in the Niger Delta and other oil producing areas, the potential for deep water drilling in the Gulf of Guinea is high, and analysts estimate that Africa may supply as much as 25% of all U.S. oil imports by 2015.

 

HTS – Weaponizing culture

1999 demonstration in Port Harcourt welcoming home Owens Wiwa, the brother of Ken Saro-Wiwa (faces intentionally blurred by the photographer)

The people of the Niger Delta are a principal target of AFRICOM and the Human Terrain System, HTS. The people in the picture above are targets. We know this because in the same month AFRICOM was announced, contractors for the US Marines were looking for academics to “study” ethnic groups in the Niger Delta. The Delta is considered a prime candidate for “stability operations” because of the social unrest generated by 50 years of ruthless exploitation by oil companies complicit with successive Nigerian governments. People in the Delta want a share of their own wealth. It is not just Nigeria that is a target. Most of the countries in Africa are targets for “stability operations”, “nation building”, and “humanitarian” assistance because of their enormous natural resources, especially oil. Somalia is a case in point. This week I read:

in ecoterra int’l’s jan 25th update : Major oil companies who declared force majeure on their Somali assets in the 1990s are reviving their claims to blocks in the unrecognized but relatively peaceful Republic of Somaliland.

Roberto González wrote the book American Counterinsurgency: Human Science and the Human Terrain, and was interviewed by David Price for CounterPunch.

González is a founding member of the Network of Concerned Anthropologists and has been at the forefront of debates on Human Terrain within the American Anthropological Association (AAA).
…

González: … For more than two years, a group of military planners has been involved in a scheme to whitewash counterinsurgency-to clean up the image of anti-revolutionary warfare, which is always a dirty business. Even though the US military has more than a century of experience in counterinsurgency warfare (going back to the “Indian Wars” of the 1800s and the cruel campaign against Filipino revolutionaries in the early 1900s), General David Petraeus and other battlefield technicians have portrayed the method as a “gentler” means of fighting, while recruiting political scientists, anthropologists, and other social scientists to create the tools to do this. The Human Terrain System, which embeds social scientists in combat brigades in Iraq and Afghanistan, is among the most visible new counterinsurgency programs, and this became the focus of my work.
…

HTS personnel tend to use outdated anthropological concepts, theories, and methods, mostly from the 1930s and 1940s. For example, Montgomery McFate (the Pentagon’s senior social science advisor for HTS) has recently published articles and given presentations in which she relies heavily upon the concept of “tribalism,” functionalist theory, and data collection methods developed for the Human Relations Area Files. Others have sought to incorporate social network analysis as a research method. Each of these elements was either created or elaborated at a time when many anthropologists were employed by colonial governments to more effectively control indigenous populations. It’s no accident that these are precisely the tools advocated by HTS’s architects.

In the past, when military planners and colonial administrators sought the counsel of anthropologists, they looked for a social science stripped of ambiguity, meaning, and context. They wanted simple analytical tools that might help them accomplish short-term objectives: to put down an uprising, to manufacture propaganda, to conduct psychological warfare, to divide one ethnic group or religious sect against another. Today, anthropologists commissioned by the Pentagon as counterinsurgency consultants use the same tools as instruments for manipulation and social control-not as a means of humanizing other people. Some of this work is published in army journals with titles like, “The Military Utility of Understanding Adversary Culture” and “Operational Culture for the Warfighter.” These kinds of articles tell us a great deal about a principal aim of militarized social science: transforming culture into a weapon.
…

Recently, a military contract firm called Archimedes Global posted a recruitment ad for “socio-cultural cell” members within the newly-established AFRICOM (US African Command). The ad calls for specialists with “human terrain” expertise, among others. It’s a clear example of how human terrain has become a much broader phenomenon, now embraced by the military, industries, and research universities. Beyond the army’s HTS program, human terrain has become a growth industry.

After Robert Gates replaced Donald Rumsfeld as Defense Secretary, there was a boom in funding for projects focused on human terrain research and “culture-centric” warfare, and this attracted dozens of companies from the military-industrial complex-BAE Systems, Aptima Corporation, MITRE, the RAND Corporation, Wexford Group, MTC Technologies, NEK Advanced Securities Group, and Alpha Ten to name a few. Unfortunately, President Obama has asked Gates-a staunch supporter of HTS-to continue serving as Defense Secretary
…

Despite this overwhelming evidence pointing to a program run amok, the US Congress has not shown much interest in investigating HTS. … It will be left to citizens of conscience to demand the abolition of human terrain teams-and the imperial wars that employ them.