Graham Should Read More Nick Turse, TomDispatch, and Common Dreams.

What U.S. Senators Don’t Know (and Neither Do You) About What the Pentagon Is Doing in Africa

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), one of the Senate’s most outspoken military hawks and member of the powerful Arms Services Committee, confessed over the recent weekend he “didn’t know” the United States currently has nearly a thousand soldiers in Niger—something he only learned after the recent deaths of four U.S. soldiers in the African country broke into the national news cycle last week.

To the extent this admission is true, Sen. Graham would do himself a big favor if he put aside some time and started reading the body of work written by investigative journalist Nick Turse, an associate editor of the indispensable TomDispatch website and frequent contributor to The Intercept who has reported extensively on the expanding U.S. military footprint across Africa since 9/11.

In 2015, Turse wrote the book, Tomorrow’s Battlefield: U.S. Proxy Wars and Secret Ops in Africa, in which he details the Pentagon’s “shadow war in Africa,” mostly consisting of clandestine Special Forces operations, drone warfare, and the training of foreign troops that he argues is mainly “helping to destabilize whole countries” while setting the stage for future military escalation in any number of countries across the continent, with Niger just one among them.

And it is not as though Sen. Graham was alone in his stated surprise about the size and scope of the U.S. military presence in Africa. In addition to several other lawmakers who said so on the record, Democratic Minority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York also said he “did not [know]” about the troop levels in Niger or what the soldiers’ mission might have been. Schumer said he expected to receive a full briefing from the Pentagon this week.

In the meantime, however, Graham, Schumer—and anyone else for that matter—can start with these free and very accessible articles, all of which where first published by TomDispatch, edited by Tom Engelhardt, and subsequently re-posted here at Common Dreams over recent years.

Call it a primer for the U.S. “war on terror” in Africa. Or, to riff on one of Turse’s own headlines, What U.S. Senators Don’t Know (and Neither Do You) About What the Pentagon Is Doing in Africa:

July 12, 2012: America’s Shadow Wars in Africa

April 14, 2014: Our Big, Fat, Not-So-Secret War in Africa

September 08, 2014: How Not to Win Hearts and Minds in Africa

April 21, 2015: Sex, Drugs, and Dead Soldiers: What US Africa Command Doesn’t Want You to Know

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November 18, 2015: America’s Empire of African Bases

December 17, 2015: America’s Secret African Drone War Against the Islamic State

Thursday, June 23, 2016: Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics… and U.S. Africa Command

August 02, 2016: The U.S. Military Pivots to Africa and That Continent Goes Down the Drain

September 06, 2016: What the US Military Doesn’t Know (and Neither Do You) About Special Forces in Africa

December 19, 2016: Commandos Without Borders: America’s Elite Troops Partner with African Forces But Pursue US Aims

Thursday, April 27, 2017: The U.S. Military Moves Deeper into Africa

And it’s not just reporting past developments and events that might be needed at this point. As Turse himself pointed out to Sen. Graham in a tweet on Monday, there’s plenty in Africa’s future that U.S. military planners are considering as well.

Lindsey Graham fears next 9/11 will come from Africa. The Pentagon already war-gamed it. My latest @theintercept https://t.co/MreeEHQN1A

— Nick Turse (@nickturse) October 23, 2017

Perhaps it is best if members of Congress—as well as the U.S. public at large—started asking many more questions, and demanding much better answers, about what they do and do not know about America’s role on the continent.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License

Via Commondreams.org

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Related video added by Juan Cole:

Lindsey Graham Interview (Full): Americans In Niger Fighting Terrorists | Meet The Press | NBC News

LONDON (IPS) – A recent study supported by the government of Finland has found widespread misconceptions regarding what drives people to join Islamist militant groups like Boko Haram.

Boko Haram is Nigeria’s militant Islamist group, wreaking havoc across the nation through a series of abductions, bombings, and assassinations. The group opposes anything associated with Western society, including any social or political activity. Its military campaign’s sole focus is to wipe out any “non-believers” from the Nigerian state.

“There’s a widespread tendency to oversimplify what drives Nigerians to join a group that advocates such extreme violence like Boko Haram. It’s easy to place the blame on religion without delving any deeper into the subject.” — Anneli Botha

Boko Haram’s official name is Jama’atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda’awati wal-Jihad, which in Arabic means “People Committed to the Propagation of the Prophet’s Teachings and Jihad”.

The group’s unlawful actions became a topic of international concern in April 2014 when 276 schoolgirls were abducted by the extremists in Chibok, Nigeria. News of the girls’ abduction went viral and the “bring back our girls” social media campaign spread rapidly across the world. Today, 219 of the girls are still missing.

Whilst the majority of mainstream media outlets continue to associate the growth of radicalised groups like Boko Haram with the “perils” of Islam and religious extremism, the study set out to understand what drives people to extremism on a deeper level.

According to Mahdi Abdile, Director of Research at Finn Church Aid (FCA) and at the Network for Religious and Traditional Peacemakers, before the 9/11 terror attacks, religious motives could be drawn back to engagement in extremist practices, as widespread recruitment for militant groups like Boko Haram frequently took place in mosques and madrasas. Today, that has changed.

“There’s a widespread tendency to oversimplify what drives Nigerians to join a group that advocates such extreme violence like Boko Haram,” said Anneli Botha, an independent consultant on radicalisation, deradicalisation, reintegration and terrorism in Africa and co-author of the study.

“It’s easy to place the blame on religion without delving any deeper into the subject. Our empirical research has shown that there is, in fact, a web of complexities behind the recruitment process that we as a global community need to acknowledge and accept.”

For many, it may come as a shock that the primary factor for joining Boko Haram has little to do with following true “Islamic practices”. The study shows that 60 percent of Boko Haram fighters are recruited by their own family or friends.

In spite of 43 percent of former fighters indicating that religion had a strong influence on their decision to join Boko Haram, many stated that Boko Haram was not following the principles of Islam. Those who joined for religious reasons were described as “vulnerable” and “unfamiliar with the true teachings of the Qu’ran”.

The study also indicated that the most prominent pull factor in the Boko Haram recruitment process came out of deep fear and a thirst for revenge. “Fear of military action drives many people into the hands of Boko Haram,” Botha told IPS. Some interviewees explained that “a need for respect” influenced them to join Boko Haram.

In Northern Nigeria, citizens voiced a need for more rights and access to basic services. They also expressed feelings of frustration over what they considered to be persistent inequalities. They described those residing in Southern Nigeria as being far more “privileged.”

In many ways, questioning the media and public opinion’s tendency to place the blame on Islam for every act of extremism presents itself as one of the greatest challenges to be overcome in the study.

The research compiled also indicated a prominent female presence in the organisation. Most surprisingly, the study uncovered the increasingly active role women play in the operations of the militant group.

“The women interviewed made up of former Boko Haram fighters provided far more than basic services. They described being involved in collecting intelligence and the training process. Some women even considered themselves to be explosive experts,” Botha said. She considered the study to be an “amazing sample” of the significant role women play in what most consider to be a male-dominated militant organisation.

The women interviewed consisted of ex-Boko Haram fighters. The women described the hardship and difficulty the reintegration process had inflicted on them. Although many were kidnapped or forced into the group out of fear, now, they are seen as nothing more than “horrific reminders” of Boko Haram atrocities.

The women’s children, many born out of Boko Haram and now left fatherless, are also considered to be a “violent manifestation” of the extremist group. For the most part, the former Boko Haram women and children are neither accepted nor welcomed back into the community.

Oftentimes, for the women who escape, the gates to freedom remain tightly sealed and the struggle continues. Many former Boko Haram fighters experience Stockholm syndrome which is left untreated and worsened by the stigmatization they are subjected to by their community upon their return home.

Children born out of the Boko Haram process are equally victimized by the community. “There’s a widespread failure to recognize these women and children as victims, whether you’re a first or second-hand victim it has the same effect,” Botha said.

She said the next step must come from the implementation of an efficient reintegration process for both the former fighters and children born out of Boko Haram. The recognition of their strife and discouragement of the demonization of their past actions will help them feel welcomed and accepted in a strong community again.

Licensed from Inter Press Service

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Related video added by Juan Cole:

UN High Commission for Refugees: “Free from Boko Haram, Nigerians still need help”

Terrorists are in it as much for the loot as for the ideology.

. . . ISIS, could hardly exist, whatever its Islamist fervor, without hard cash from sales of pilfered petroleum, taxes on its subject population and kidnappings for ransom.

Likewise ISIS- and al-Qaida-linked groups in Africa prosper by trafficking drugs across the Sahara and by offering “protection” to smugglers who have long been trading illicit goods throughout the continent. Although Westerners tend to think of these groups as driven by ideology, new recruits may be more attracted by opportunities to make money.

Terror is big business, especially in the weak and fragile parts of the world.

A growing market

The market for narcotic substances is growing substantially within Africa itself.

Until recently, the majority of powerful drugs in Africa passed through only on their way to Europe and North America.

West Africa, for example, provides a convenient shortcut and stopover point for cocaine destined for markets in Europe. East Africa sends Asian heroin to both to Europe and North America. Hashish may be locally grown in Africa, but large quantities end up in Europe along with khat, a favorite of the Somali community.

Too few social scientists have studied narcotics trafficking, particularly how drug profiteering influences and fuels terror and radical insurgent movements. My work on failed states, governance and civil conflict leads naturally to a consideration of such associations and relationships.

In my view, understanding how plunder makes terror possible is fundamental to understanding how some nonstate actors are more mercenaries than servants of a cause.

Defeating ISIS, al-Qaida and their offshoots will, in other words, depend more on cutting off their riches than countering their appeal to wide-eyed would-be fundamentalists.

Drugs and militancy

Various big-power intelligence services are looking into how the drug trade works in Africa, and the interconnections of drug routes and militancy. The most comprehensive work is being done by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), which has agents in Africa and issues pointed reports about the trade.

Nevertheless, given the clandestine nature of narcotics and trafficking, conjecture and speculation abound. With big money at stake, operatives have every reason to cover their tracks.

Thanks to research done by the Strategic Studies Institute at the Army War College, we do know that cocaine arrives in Africa from South America on an almost daily basis.

Stemming from growers in Peru and Colombia, some cocaine leaves Venezuela and Brazil by private jet aircraft bound for secret airfields in Guinea-Bissau. This small West African nation is widely regarded as Africa’s primary narco-state. In recent years, military coups and other forced changes in Guinea-Bissau’s weak government have directly reflected competition for control of drug-fueled profits.

Other loads of cocaine from Colombia arrive at proper international airports in Nigeria, Benin and Ghana, hidden in shipments of plantains or coffee. Corrupt airport officials and customs and police officers make sure that the valuable shipments are soon on their way by air or road to Europe.

The fact is that today about 40 percent of the cocaine that reaches Europe annually comes via Africa.

That is where al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), or several of the Islamist groups that have been active in raiding and destabilizing Mali, Mauritania, Niger and Burkina Faso, muscle into the picture. They want their cut of the profits, either from being the major transporters of cocaine across the Sahara to Europe or from facilitating that traffic for a sizable slice of the returns.

The competing groups battle, as they have for the past two years in Mali, for primacy and control. That competition also leads to the macho assertion of prowess, as in the raids on Timbuktu and, in January, in Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkino Faso. Innocent bystanders lose their lives when the drug runners randomly invade hotels to boost their power and standing. Additionally, development suffers when drug traffickers threaten fragile governments.

Nigeria and its neighbors

Most analysts are unsure of the extent to which Boko Haram, the homegrown, now ISIS-tied, Islamist rebel movement in northeastern Nigeria and neighboring Cameroon, Chad and Niger, traffics in narcotics as well as uses them.

What is clear is that Boko Haram guards one of the traditional long-distance trading routes northward to the Mediterranean. It also requires cash to purchase what guns and ammunition it can’t obtained by overpowering the Nigerian military or raiding its barracks. The suspicion, therefore, is that Boko Haram, having killed thousands, kidnapped hundreds and destroyed 70 or so villages, fuels its growth and pays its new recruits from proceeds derived from the drug trade.

On the other side of the continent, Asian-refined heroin derived from Afghan or Burmese poppy seeds flows by dhow sailing vessel and by air into Ethiopia, Kenya and Tanzania. There it is redirected to Europe, and sometimes, via Nigeria, to Mexico and North America.

Al-Shabaab, the Islamist, al-Qaida-affiliated terror movement of Somalia, derives much of its predatory income from the movement of Asian heroin and locally produced qat.

Seleka, the Muslim insurgent group that captured and fractured the Central African Republic before being ousted by French and other militias, made money from transshipping drugs from south to north. Lebanon’s Hezbollah, which has always had side operations in West Africa among the Lebanese diaspora, also profits from narcotics dealings on the periphery of the Sahara.

Whether al-Shabaab, or any of the other al-Qaida- and ISIS-associated movements in Africa, would continue to constitute serious threats to local and world order absent abundant incomes derived from smuggling drugs and other goods like charcoal and hashish is not known with any certainty. But, certainly, drug profiteering is an opportunistic pursuit that drives terror activities.

Making trafficking more costly

Interventions by French and local forces, backed by the United States and Britain, have made drug trafficking more costly in Africa. They have also threatened the rent-seeking from which the various Islamist insurgent groups derive steady incomes by controlling drug movements through ports and cities such as Kismayu and Merca in Somalia and Timbuktu and Gao in Mali. The U.S. and its allies also provide security for local administrations in beleaguered places like Somalia, Mali and Niger, thus countering the insurgents.

But another, longer-term, way of depriving the terror groups of their cash and their influence is by legalizing the cocaine and heroin market in Europe.

Former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan’s Global Commission on Drug Policy is battling to have that obvious decriminalization proposal taken seriously, but so far with little result. His proposal, if adopted, would reduce consumer prices, make the product taxable and eliminate much of the incentive to ship narcotics clandestinely. In short, it would undercut terror movements. But, so far, there is no U.N. or national support for his sensible, albeit controversial, proposal.

Combating terror in Africa, at least, now depends as much on cutting off insurgents from their sources of income as it does on defeating them on the battlefield – a much longer, tougher and more costly pursuit.

Robert Rotberg, Founding Director of Program on Intrastate Conflict, Kennedy School , Harvard University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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Related video added by Juan Cole:

Journeyman Pictures from last fall: “The Drug Fueling Conflict In Syria”

So many people are scratching their heads as they search for an explanation for the extreme acts of violence meted out by such groups as the Nigerian jihadist organization, Boko Haram, and its now allied Middle Eastern Islamic State or ISIS.

Often in normal conversation, people will pull out an explanation, seemingly out of the air, that Islam as a religion lends itself to violence. The facile reasoning does not synch with historic fact certainly for Violent Extremist Organizations (VEOs) that I am familiar with in sub-Saharan Africa. My research on Boko Haram, for instance, shows that the driver of jihadist violence is a narrative of vengeance that was adopted in response to state violence. Historically, this may be true of several other VEOs in sub-Saharan Africa whose radicalization followed a massacre committed by government security forces against peaceful reform-oriented Islamist movements. Such has been the case in Somalia, Uganda and Tanzania.

Nigeria’s Boko Haram, which earned international notoriety with the 2014 abduction of more than 200 school girls, is a classic example of how state violence fosters a narrative of vengeance. Boko Haram’s founding leader, Mohamed Yusuf, had painted a utopian and fundamentalist vision for his followers, but it was peaceful vision. According to his prophetic vision, the adoption of Shari’a in the form of a strict fundamentalist Muslim law would ensure the achievement of a just society. This promise of a reprieve from the burdensome social and economic inequalities and lack of opportunities that characterize society in northeastern Nigeria earned him followers. Indeed, the moniker – Boko Haram (Western-style “Book” Education is forbidden) – that became applied to Yusuf’s movement reflects the deep-seated disillusionment with the educational status quo. According to reports, the Boko Haram label came from the fact that some of his original followers — high school graduates, so frustrated by the corrupt system of public education and the substandard instruction that they had received – reportedly burned their diplomas in protest.

Yusuf’s vision surely did not conform to the Western prescription of secular democracy and free market opportunities as a cure all for socio-economic malaise. Yet, it was neither an unreasonable response for downtrodden youth, especially disenfranchised and disillusioned young men in Borno, Yobe and Adamawa states. Yusuf’s message of hope struck a chord with them.

Yusuf actively eschewed violence as a tactic, however. He argued that a society based on pure Islam would come about by persuasion, not arms. Indeed, he was a preacher who openly engaged other Muslim religious leaders in Nigeria in an open debate about the value and benefits of Western education, and he held at bay others among his followers more prone to adopt violence as a means of imposing Shari’a. In photos and YouTube videos from 2009 and before, you can see Boko Haram’s current brutal leader, Abubakar Shekau standing to the side and slightly beside Yusuf.

The year 2009 is important. In that year, Nigerian security forces opened fire on unarmed Boko Haram followers traveling in a motorbike funeral procession in Maduguiri – the capital of Borno state. Maiduguri has since become a focus of Boko Haram violence including suicide and other types of bombings. Under the administration of former Nigerian president, Goodluck Jonathan, also became the scene of widespread human rights abuses by Nigerian military and security forces. Soon after the funeral procession massacre, the peaceful Yusuf was killed while in police custody.

With Yusuf literally and figuratively out of the leadership picture in Boko Haram, Shekau took center stage, promoting the quest for vengeance as a justification for violence against the state’s security apparatus and others perceived to be the enemy. Boko Haram leaders have used social media strategies to expose the heavy-handed tactics and extra-judicial killings by some Nigerian authorities in its recruiting efforts. In YouTube videos, Shekau has vowed to revenge the humiliation that the group has suffered at the hands of the Nigerian military and security forces, recalling the extrajudicial killing of the group’s founder and the arrest and continuing detention of its members. For Shekau and apparently for other Boko Haram leaders, theirs is a promise that moral injustice will be punished and righted through counter violence.

Drug-induced stupor seems to provide Shekau and his followers with a shield from the psychic pains of inflicting wanton violence on others, no matter how moral they espouse their cause to be. In some of his YouTube videos, Shekau’s crazed eyes and scratching of his skin suggest he uses opiates. And, the Nigerian military has reported finding syringes and narcotic drugs in abandoned Boko Haram camps, likely used by the Jihadis to get high before embarking on their deadly attacks.

Because Boko Haram’s grievances are based on a narrative of vengeance, it is challenging to unpack them to find a negotiated solution. The Jihadi killers justify their actions from a position of the moral superiority and the rectitude of those who have been victimized and humiliated. Any peaceful solution becomes even more complicated as the other party – often the state actors and authorities – too feel aggrieved, damaged and victimized, and the cycle goes on and on. Finding a common ground where each party recognizes the suffering of the other is no easy task, but it may be the only way forward to reclaim a collective sanity.

Certainly, zero tolerance for human rights violence by state actors would help dampen the lust for bloody vengeance. Imagine how Nigeria and the neighboring region would be different today if the killers of Mohamed Yusuf and his followers had been brought to justice.

Gregory Alonso Pirio, Ph.D. is the author of The African Jihad and The African Jihad: Bin Laden’s Quest for the Horn of Africa (Red Sea Press) and is president of EC Associates.

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Related video added by Juan Cole:

CCTV from last week: “Nigeria military on track to defeating Boko Haram”

NEW YORK (IPS) – Muhammadu Buhari, his hand on the Holy Book, was sworn in as Nigeria’s president at an open-air ceremony this past Friday in the capital city of Abuja. His speech acknowledged many of the challenges facing the largest democracy in Africa but offered hope that these challenges could be met.

Giving thanks to God “who has preserved us to witness this day and this occasion,” he recognised with appreciation the millions of supporters who waited long hours in the rain and hot sun to cast votes, who carried on the campaign on social media, and even to those who voted for his opponent, former president, Goodluck Jonathan.

“These countrymen and women contributed to make our democratic culture truly competitive, strong and definitive,” he said.

A Muslim by birth, Buhari addressed concerns of some the nation’s Christian community, saying: “I intend to keep my oath and serve as President to all Nigerians.”

After listing the nation’s most intractable problems – pervasive corruption, insecurity due to a terroristic insurgency, dire fuel and power shortages – he sounded a rallying cry. “We can fix our problems,” he said. One reporter called expectations of the population “catastrophic.”

Specifically, in the case of Boko Haram, the insurgent group, a new strategy was unveiled that would move the Army Command and Control Center from the capital Abuja to the insurgents’ home base in Maiduguri “until the group is completely subdued.”

“But we cannot claim to have defeated Boko Haram without rescuing the Chibok girls and all other innocent persons held hostage by insurgents.”

“We as Nigerians are heirs to great civilizations,” he said referencing history. “Shehu Othman Dan fodio’s caliphate, the Kanem Borno Empire, the Oyo Empire, the Benin Empire and King Jaja’s formidable domain. The blood of those great ancestors flow in our veins. What is now required is to build on these legacies, to modernize and uplift Nigeria.”

Working people – “labor unions, organized private sector, the press and civil society organizations” – must unite to raise productivity so that everybody will have the opportunity to share in increased prosperity, he said. He tipped his hat to the Nigerian press – “the most vibrant in Africa“ – but asked them to exercise their powers with responsibility and patriotism.

The speech closed with a quote from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar that speaks of “a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune,” and closes with “We must take the current when it serves, Or lose our ventures.”

“We have an opportunity,” the new president reiterated. “Let us take it.”

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Licensed from Inter Press Service

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Related video added by Juan Cole:

Euronews: “Nigeria: Suicide blast follows new President Buhari’s inauguration”

MAROUA, Far North Region, Jan 14 2015 (IPS) – “I’d quit my job before going to work in a place like that.” That is how a primary school teacher responded when IPS asked him why he had not accepted a job in Cameroon’s Far North region.

James Ngoran is not the only teacher who has refused to move to the embattled area bordering Nigeria where Boko Haram has been massing and launching lightning strike attacks on the isolated region.

“Many teachers posted or transferred to the Far North Region simply don’t take up their posts. They are all afraid for their lives,” Wilson Ngam, an official of the Far North Regional Delegation for Basic Education, tells IPS. He said over 200 trained teachers refused to take up their posts in the region in 2014.

Raids by the Boko Haram insurgents in the Far North Region have created a cycle of fear and uncertainty, making teachers posted here balk at their responsibility, and forcing those on the ground to bribe their way out of “the zone of death.”

Last week, Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau threatened Cameroon in a video message on YouTube, warning that the same fate would befall the country as neighbouring Nigeria. He addressed his message directly to Cameroonian President Paul Biya after repeated fighting between militants and troops in the Far North.

Shekau was reported killed in September by Cameroonian troops – a report that later turned out to be untrue.

As the Nigerian sect intensifies attacks on Cameroonian territory, government has been forced to close numerous schools. According to Mounouna Fotso, a senior official in the Cameroon Ministry of Secondary Education, over 130 schools have already been shut down.

Most of the schools are found in the Mayo-Tsanaga, Mayo-Sava and Logone and Chari Divisions-all areas which share a long border with Nigeria, and where the terrorists have continued to launch attacks.

“Government had to temporarily close the schools and relocate the students and teachers. The lives of thousands of students and pupils have been on the line as Boko Haram continues to attack. We can’t put the lives of children at risk,” Fotso said.

“We are losing students each time there is an attack on a village even if it is several kilometres from here,” Christophe Barbah, a schoolmaster in the Far North Region’s Kolofata area, said in a press interview.

The closure of schools and the psychological trauma experienced by teachers and students raises concerns that the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) on education will be missed in Cameroon’s Far North Region.

Although both government and civil society agree that universal primary education could attained by the end of this year in the country’s south, the 49 percent school enrolment rate in the Far North Region, compared to the national average of 83 percent, according to UNICEF, means a lot of work still needs to be done here.

Mahamat Abba, a resident of Fotocol whose four children used to attend one of the three government schools there, has fled with his entire family to Kouseri on the border with Chad.

“I looked at my kids and lovely wife and knew a bullet or bomb could get them at any time. We had to run away to safer environments. But starting life afresh here is a nightmare, having abandoned everything,” he told IPS.

Alhadji Abakoura, a resident of Amchidé, adds that the area has virtually become a ghost town. “The town had six primary schools and a nursery school. They have all been closed down.”

Overcrowded schools

As students, teachers and parents relocate to safer grounds, pressure is mounting on schools, which have to absorb the additional students with no additional funds.

According to UNICEF figures for Cameroon, school participation for boys topped 90 percent in 2013, while girls lagged behind at 85 percent or less. However, participation has been much lower in the extreme northern region.

According to the Institut National de la Statistique du Cameroon, literacy is below 40 percent in the Far North, 40 to 50 percent in the North, and 60-70 percent in the central north state of Adamawa. The Millennium Development Goal is full primary schooling for both sexes by 2015.

“Many of us are forced to follow lectures from classroom windows since there is practically very limited sitting space inside,” Ahmadou Saidou, a student of Government Secondary School Maroua, tells IPS. He had escaped from Amchidé where a September attack killed two students and a teacher.

Ahmadou said the benches on which three students once sat are now used by double that number.

“It’s an issue of great concern,” Mahamat Ahamat, the regional delegate for basic education, tells IPS.

“In normal circumstances, each classroom should contain a maximum of 60 students. But we are now in a situation where a single classroom hosts over one hundred and thirty students,” he said. “We are redeploying teachers who flee risk zones…we are getting them over to schools where students are fleeing to.

“These attacks are really slowing things down,’ Mahamat said.

Government response to the crisis

The Nigerian-based sect Boko Haram has intensified attacks on Cameroon in recent years, killing both civilians and military personnel and kidnapping nationals and expatriates in exchange for ransoms.

To respond to the crisis, Cameroon has come up with military and legal reforms. A new military region was set up in the country’s Far North Region. According to Defence Minister Edgar Alain Mebe Ngo’o, “The creation of the 4th Military Region is meant to bring the military closer to the theatre of threats, and to boost the operational means in both human and material resources.”

Military equipment has been supplied by the U.S., Germany and Israel, according to press reports.

Mebe Ngo’oo said Cameroon will recruit 20,000 soldiers over the next two years to step up the fight against the terrorists. Besides the military option, Cameroon has also come up with a legal framework to streamline the fight against terrorism. An anti-terrorism law was passed by Parliament in December, punishing all those guilty of terrorist acts by death.

But opposition political leaders, civil society activists and church leaders have criticised it as anti-democratic and fear it is actually intended to curtail civil liberties.

Edited by Lisa Vives

Licensed from Inter Press Service

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Related video:

KTN Kenya: “Over 100 Boko Haram militants killed by Cameroon army”

As many as 2,000 people are feared dead in Nigeria from what has been described as Boko Haram’s deadliest attack amid ongoing bloodshed a UN official says “should be searing the conscience of the world.”

The militant group reportedly carried out attacks starting January 3 on the northern town of Baga and neighboring villages, razing more than a dozen communities and forcing residents to flee for their lives.

Musa Bukar, head of the Kukawa local government area, stated that Boko Haram “burnt to the ground all the 16 towns and villages, including Baga, Doron-Baga, Mile 4, Mile 3, Kauyen Kuros and Bunduram.”

Observers have said that giving an exact death toll is near impossible, though an estimate of 2,000 was “credible.”

A week after the bloodshed, the scene is still grim. CNN reports Monday that “bodies still littered the bushes in the area.”

Borye Kime, a fisherman from Dubuwa village who had fled to Chad, told AFP Monday: “It is corpses everywhere. The whole town smells of decomposing bodies.” He added that Boko Haram had “set up barricades in strategic locations in the town.”

Some of those who attempted to flee eastward drowned in Lake Chad in their attempts to seek refuge; others remain stranded on an island facing lack of shelter, the threat of hippos and malaria. Over 7,000 others have fled to Chad since the beginning of the month, part of an exodus of tens of thousands as a result of the conflict, the UN refugee agency says.

Human rights organization Amnesty International has said that the Baga area attacks may be the deadliest Boko Haram has carried out.

“The attack on Baga and surrounding towns, looks as if it could be Boko Haram’s deadliest act in a catalogue of increasingly heinous attacks carried out by the group. If reports that the town was largely razed to the ground and that hundreds or even as many as two thousand civilians were killed are true, this marks a disturbing and bloody escalation of Boko Haram’s ongoing onslaught against the civilian population,” Daniel Eyre, Nigeria researcher for Amnesty International, said in a statement issued Friday.

Deadly attacks continued this weekend. Up to 20 people were killed when explosives strapped to a girl believed to be 10-years-old went off Saturday at a market in Maiduguri. A similar incident involving two young girls strapped with explosives took place Sunday in the town of Potiskum, killing three people. Boko Haram is suspected of being behind the attacks.

UNICEF Executive Director Anthony Lake said of the escalating violence: “These images from Northern Nigeria should be searing the conscience of the world.”

Though the number feared dead in this latest series of attacks, even the lower estimates, dwarfs the number killed in the recent terror attacks in Paris, the attacks in Nigeria have failed to garner the same kind of media attention, some have noted.

Archbishop Ignatius Kaigama of Jos in central Nigeria said that the kind of unity shown in the wake of the Paris attacks needs to be expressed for Boko Haram’s attacks as well. “We need that spirit to be spread around,” he said. “Not just when [an attack] happens in Europe, but when it happens in Nigeria, in Niger, in Cameroon.”

Via Commondreams.org

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Iraq, Syria, Nigeria, South Sudan, Ukraine, the East and South China Seas: wherever you look, the world is aflame with new or intensifying conflicts.  At first glance, these upheavals appear to be independent events, driven by their own unique and idiosyncratic circumstances.  But look more closely and they share several key characteristics — notably, a witch’s brew of ethnic, religious, and national antagonisms that have been stirred to the boiling point by a fixation on energy.

In each of these conflicts, the fighting is driven in large part by the eruption of long-standing historic antagonisms among neighboring (often intermingled) tribes, sects, and peoples.  In Iraq and Syria, it is a clash among Sunnis, Shiites, Kurds, Turkmen, and others; in Nigeria, among Muslims, Christians, and assorted tribal groupings; in South Sudan, between the Dinka and Nuer; in Ukraine, between Ukrainian loyalists and Russian-speakers aligned with Moscow; in the East and South China Sea, among the Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Filipinos, and others.  It would be easy to attribute all this to age-old hatreds, as suggested by many analysts; but while such hostilities do help drive these conflicts, they are fueled by a most modern impulse as well: the desire to control valuable oil and natural gas assets.  Make no mistake about it, these are twenty-first-century energy wars.

It should surprise no one that energy plays such a significant role in these conflicts.  Oil and gas are, after all, the world’s most important and valuable commodities and constitute a major source of income for the governments and corporations that control their production and distribution.  Indeed, the governments of Iraq, Nigeria, Russia, South Sudan, and Syria derive the great bulk of their revenues from oil sales, while the major energy firms (many state-owned) exercise immense power in these and the other countries involved.  Whoever controls these states, or the oil- and gas-producing areas within them, also controls the collection and allocation of crucial revenues.  Despite the patina of historical enmities, many of these conflicts, then, are really struggles for control over the principal source of national income.

Moreover, we live in an energy-centric world where control over oil and gas resources (and their means of delivery) translates into geopolitical clout for some and economic vulnerability for others.  Because so many countries are dependent on energy imports, nations with surpluses to export — including Iraq, Nigeria, Russia, and South Sudan — often exercise disproportionate influence on the world stage.  What happens in these countries sometimes matters as much to the rest of us as to the people living in them, and so the risk of external involvement in their conflicts — whether in the form of direct intervention, arms transfers, the sending in of military advisers, or economic assistance — is greater than almost anywhere else.

The struggle over energy resources has been a conspicuous factor in many recent conflicts, including the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-1988, the Gulf War of 1990-1991, and the Sudanese Civil War of 1983-2005.  On first glance, the fossil-fuel factor in the most recent outbreaks of tension and fighting may seem less evident.  But look more closely and you’ll see that each of these conflicts is, at heart, an energy war.

Iraq, Syria, and ISIS

The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the Sunni extremist group that controls large chunks of western Syria and northern Iraq, is a well-armed militia intent on creating an Islamic caliphate in the areas it controls.  In some respects, it is a fanatical, sectarian religious organization, seeking to reproduce the pure, uncorrupted piety of the early Islamic era.  At the same time, it is engaged in a conventional nation-building project, seeking to create a fully functioning state with all its attributes.

As the United States learned to its dismay in Iraq and Afghanistan, nation-building is expensive: institutions must be created and financed, armies recruited and paid, weapons and fuel procured, and infrastructure maintained.  Without oil (or some other lucrative source of income), ISIS could never hope to accomplish its ambitious goals.  However, as it now occupies key oil-producing areas of Syria and oil-refining facilities in Iraq, it is in a unique position to do so.  Oil, then, is absolutely essential to the organization’s grand strategy.

Syria was never a major oil producer, but its prewar production of some 400,000 barrels per day did provide the regime of Bashar al-Assad with a major source of income.  Now, most of the country’s oil fields are under the control of rebel groups, including ISIS, the al-Qaeda-linked Nusra Front, and local Kurdish militias.  Although production from the fields has dropped significantly, enough is being extracted and sold through various clandestine channels to provide the rebels with income and operating funds.  “Syria is an oil country and has resources, but in the past they were all stolen by the regime,” said Abu Nizar, an anti-government activist.  “Now they are being stolen by those who are profiting from the revolution.”

At first, many rebel groups were involved in these extractive activities, but since January, when it assumed control of Raqqa, the capital of the province of that name, ISIS has been the dominant player in the oil fields.  In addition, it has seized fields in neighboring Deir al-Zour Province along the Iraq border.  Indeed, many of the U.S.-supplied weapons it acquired from the fleeing Iraqi army after its recent drive into Mosul and other northern Iraqi cities have been moved into Deir al-Zour to help in the organization’s campaign to take full control of the region.  In Iraq, ISIS is fighting to gain control over Iraq’s largest refinery at Baiji in the central part of the country.

It appears that ISIS sells oil from the fields it controls to shadowy middlemen who in turn arrange for its transport — mostly by tanker trucks — to buyers in Iraq, Syria, and Turkey.  These sales are said to provide the organization with the funds needed to pay its troops and acquire its vast stockpiles of arms and ammunition.  Many observers also claim that ISIS is selling oil to the Assad regime in return for immunity from government air strikes of the sort being launched against other rebel groups.  “Many locals in Raqqa accuse ISIS of collaborating with the Syrian regime,” a Kurdish journalist, Sirwan Kajjo, reported in early June.  “Locals say that while other rebel groups in Raqqa have been under attack by regime air strikes on a regular basis, ISIS headquarters have not once been attacked.”

However the present fighting in northern Iraq plays out, it is obvious that there, too, oil is a central factor.  ISIS seeks both to deny petroleum supplies and oil revenue to the Baghdad government and to bolster its own coffers, enhancing its capacity for nation-building and further military advances.  At the same time, the Kurds and various Sunni tribes — some allied with ISIS — want control over oil fields located in the areas under their control and a greater share of the nation’s oil wealth.

Ukraine, the Crimea, and Russia

The present crisis in Ukraine began in November 2013 when President Viktor Yanukovych repudiated an agreement for closer economic and political ties with the European Union (EU), opting instead for closer ties with Russia.  That act touched off fierce anti-government protests in Kiev and eventually led to Yanukovych’s flight from the capital.  With Moscow’s principal ally pushed from the scene and pro-EU forces in control of the capital, Russian President Vladimir Putin moved to seize control of the Crimea and foment a separatist drive in eastern Ukraine.  For both sides, the resulting struggle has been about political legitimacy and national identity — but as in other recent conflicts, it has also been about energy.

Ukraine is not itself a significant energy producer.  It is, however, a major transit route for the delivery of Russian natural gas to Europe.  According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), Europe obtained 30% of its gas from Russia in 2013 — most of it from the state-controlled gas giant Gazprom — and approximately half of this was transported by pipelines crossing Ukraine.  As a result, that country plays a critical role in the complex energy relationship between Europe and Russia, one that has proved incredibly lucrative for the shadowy elites and oligarchs who control the flow of gas, whille at the same time provoking intense controversy. Disputes over the price Ukraine pays for its own imports of Russian gas twice provoked a cutoff in deliveries by Gazprom, leading to diminished supplies in Europe as well.

Given this background, it is not surprising that a key objective of the “association agreement” between the EU and Ukraine that was repudiated by Yanukovych (and has now been signed by the new Ukrainian government) calls for the extension of EU energy rules to Ukraine’s energy system — essentially eliminating the cozy deals between Ukrainian elites and Gazprom.  By entering into the agreement, EU officials claim, Ukraine will begin “a process of approximating its energy legislation to the EU norms and standards, thus facilitating internal market reforms.”

Russian leaders have many reasons to despise the association agreement.  For one thing, it will move Ukraine, a country on its border, into a closer political and economic embrace with the West.  Of special concern, however, are the provisions about energy, given Russia’s economic reliance on gas sales to Europe — not to mention the threat they pose to the personal fortunes of well-connected Russian elites.  In late 2013 Yanukovych came under immense pressure from Vladimir Putin to turn his back on the EU and agree instead to an economic union with Russia and Belarus, an arrangement that would have protected the privileged status of elites in both countries.  However, by moving in this direction, Yanukovych put a bright spotlight on the crony politics that had long plagued Ukraine’s energy system, thereby triggering protests in Kiev’s Independence Square (the Maidan) — that led to his downfall.

Once the protests began, a cascade of events led to the current standoff, with the Crimea in Russian hands, large parts of the east under the control of pro-Russian separatists, and the rump western areas moving ever closer to the EU.  In this ongoing struggle, identity politics has come to play a prominent role, with leaders on all sides appealing to national and ethnic loyalties.  Energy, nevertheless, remains a major factor in the equation.  Gazprom has repeatedly raised the price it charges Ukraine for its imports of natural gas, and on June 16th cut off its supply entirely, claiming non-payment for past deliveries.  A day later, an explosion damaged one of the main pipelines carrying Russian gas to Ukraine — an event still being investigated.  Negotiations over the gas price remain a major issue in the ongoing negotiations between Ukraine’s newly elected president, Petro Poroshenko, and Vladimir Putin.

Energy also played a key role in Russia’s determination to take the Crimea by military means.  By annexing that region, Russia virtually doubled the offshore territory it controls in the Black Sea, which is thought to house billions of barrels of oil and vast reserves of natural gas.  Prior to the crisis, several Western oil firms, including ExxonMobil, were negotiating with Ukraine for access to those reserves.  Now, they will be negotiating with Moscow.  “It’s a big deal,” said Carol Saivetz, a Eurasian expert at MIT.  “It deprives Ukraine of the possibility of developing these resources and gives them to Russia.”

Nigeria and South Sudan

The conflicts in South Sudan and Nigeria are distinctive in many respects, yet both share a key common factor: widespread anger and distrust towards government officials who have become wealthy, corrupt, and autocratic thanks to access to abundant oil revenues.

In Nigeria, the insurgent group Boko Haram is fighting to overthrow the existing political system and establish a puritanical, Muslim-ruled state.  Although most Nigerians decry the group’s violent methods (including the kidnapping of hundreds of teenage girls from a state-run school), it has drawn strength from disgust in the poverty-stricken northern part of the country with the corruption-riddled central government in distant Abuja, the capital.

Nigeria is the largest oil producer in Africa, pumping out some 2.5 million barrels per day.  With oil selling at around $100 per barrel, this represents a potentially staggering source of wealth for the nation, even after the private companies involved in the day-to-day extractive operations take their share.  Were these revenues — estimated in the tens of billions of dollars per year — used to spur development and improve the lot of the population, Nigeria could be a great beacon of hope for Africa.  Instead, much of the money disappears into the pockets (and foreign bank accounts) of Nigeria’s well-connected elites.

In February, the governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Lamido Sanusi, told a parliamentary investigating committee that the state-owned Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) had failed to transfer some $20 billion in proceeds from oil sales to the national treasury, as required by law.  It had all evidently been diverted to private accounts.  “A substantial amount of money has gone,” he told the New York Times.  “I wasn’t just talking about numbers.  I showed it was a scam.”

For many Nigerians — a majority of whom subsist on less than $2 per day — the corruption in Abuja, when combined with the wanton brutality of the government’s security forces, is a source of abiding anger and resentment, generating recruits for insurgent groups like Boko Haram and winning them begrudging admiration.  “They know well the frustration that would drive someone to take up arms against the state,” said National Geographic reporter James Verini of people he interviewed in battle-scarred areas of northern Nigeria.  At this stage, the government has displayed zero capacity to overcome the insurgency, while its ineptitude and heavy-handed military tactics have only further alienated ordinary Nigerians.

The conflict in South Sudan has different roots, but shares a common link to energy.  Indeed, the very formation of South Sudan is a product of oil politics.  A civil war in Sudan that lasted from 1955 to 1972 only ended when the Muslim-dominated government in the north agreed to grant more autonomy to the peoples of the southern part of the country, largely practitioners of traditional African religions or Christianity.  However, when oil was discovered in the south, the rulers of northern Sudan repudiated many of their earlier promises and sought to gain control over the oil fields, sparking a second civil war, which lasted from 1983 to 2005.  An estimated two million people lost their lives in this round of fighting.  In the end, the south was granted full autonomy and the right to vote on secession.  Following a January 2011 referendum in which 98.8% of southerners voted to secede, the country became independent on that July 9th.

The new state had barely been established, however, when conflict with the north over its oil resumed.  While South Sudan has a plethora of oil, the only pipeline allowing the country to export its energy stretches across North Sudan to the Red Sea.  This ensured that the south would be dependent on the north for the major source of government revenues.  Furious at the loss of the fields, the northerners charged excessively high rates for transporting the oil, precipitating a cutoff in oil deliveries by the south and sporadic violence along the two countries’ still-disputed border.  Finally, in August 2012, the two sides agreed to a formula for sharing the wealth and the flow of oil resumed. Fighting has, however, continued in certain border areas controlled by the north but populated by groups linked to the south.

With the flow of oil income assured, the leader of South Sudan, President Salva Kiir, sought to consolidate his control over the country and all those oil revenues.  Claiming an imminent coup attempt by his rivals, led by Vice President Riek Machar, he disbanded his multiethnic government on July 24, 2013, and began arresting allies of Machar.  The resulting power struggle quickly turned into an ethnic civil war, with the kin of President Kiir, a Dinka, battling members of the Nuer group, of which Machar is a member.  Despite several attempts to negotiate a cease-fire, fighting has been under way since December, with thousands of people killed and hundreds of thousands forced to flee their homes.

As in Syria and Iraq, much of the fighting in South Sudan has centered around the vital oil fields, with both sides determined to control them and collect the revenues they generate.  As of March, while still under government control, the Paloch field in Upper Nile State was producing some 150,000 barrels a day, worth about $15 million to the government and participating oil companies.  The rebel forces, led by former Vice President Machar, are trying to seize those fields to deny this revenue to the government.  “The presence of forces loyal to Salva Kiir in Paloch, to buy more arms to kill our people… is not acceptable to us,” Machar said in April.  “We want to take control of the oil field.  It’s our oil.”  As of now, the field remains in government hands, with rebel forces reportedly making gains in the vicinity.

The South China Sea

In both the East China and South China seas, China and its neighbors claim assorted atolls and islands that sit astride vast undersea oil and gas reserves.  The waters of both have been the site of recurring naval clashes over the past few years, with the South China Sea recently grabbing the spotlight. 

An energy-rich offshoot of the western Pacific, that sea, long a focus of contention, is rimmed by China, Vietnam, the island of Borneo, and the Philippine Islands.  Tensions peaked in May when the Chinese deployed their largest deepwater drilling rig, the HD-981, in waters claimed by Vietnam.  Once in the drilling area, about 120 nautical miles off the coast of Vietnam, the Chinese surrounded the HD-981 with a large flotilla of navy and coast guard ships.  When Vietnamese coast guard vessels attempted to penetrate this defensive ring in an effort to drive off the rig, they were rammed by Chinese ships and pummeled by water cannon.  No lives have yet been lost in these encounters, but anti-Chinese rioting in Vietnam in response to the sea-borne encroachment left several dead and the clashes at sea are expected to continue for several months until the Chinese move the rig to another (possibly equally contested) location.

The riots and clashes sparked by the deployment of HD-981 have been driven in large part by nationalism and resentment over past humiliations.  The Chinese, insisting that various tiny islands in the South China Sea were once ruled by their country, still seek to overcome the territorial losses and humiliations they suffered at the hands the Western powers and Imperial Japan.  The Vietnamese, long accustomed to Chinese invasions, seek to protect what they view as their sovereign territory.  For common citizens in both countries, demonstrating resolve in the dispute is a matter of national pride.

But to view the Chinese drive in the South China Sea as a simple matter of nationalistic impulses would be a mistake.  The owner of HD-981, the China National Offshore Oil Company (CNOOC), has conducted extensive seismic testing in the disputed area and evidently believes there is a large reservoir of energy there.  “The South China Sea is estimated to have 23 billion tons to 30 billion tons of oil and 16 trillion cubic meters of natural gas, accounting for one-third of China’s total oil and gas resources,” the Chinese news agency Xinhua noted.  Moreover, China announced in June that it was deploying a second drilling rig to the contested waters of the South China Sea, this time at the mouth of the Gulf of Tonkin. 

As the world’s biggest consumer of energy, China is desperate to acquire fresh fossil fuel supplies wherever it can.  Although its leaders are prepared to make increasingly large purchases of African, Russian, and Middle Eastern oil and gas to satisfy the nation’s growing energy requirements, they not surprisingly prefer to develop and exploit domestic supplies.  For them, the South China Sea is not a “foreign” source of energy but a Chinese one, and they appear determined to use whatever means necessary to secure it.  Because other countries, including Vietnam and the Philippines, also seek to exploit these oil and gas reserves, further clashes, at increasing levels of violence, seem almost inevitable.

No End to Fighting

As these conflicts and others like them suggest, fighting for control over key energy assets or the distribution of oil revenues is a critical factor in most contemporary warfare.  While ethnic and religious divisions may provide the political and ideological fuel for these battles, it is the potential for mammoth oil profits that keeps the struggles alive.  Without the promise of such resources, many of these conflicts would eventually die out for lack of funds to buy arms and pay troops.  So long as the oil keeps flowing, however, the belligerents have both the means and incentive to keep fighting.

In a fossil-fuel world, control over oil and gas reserves is an essential component of national power.  “Oil fuels more than automobiles and airplanes,” Robert Ebel of the Center for Strategic and International Studies told a State Department audience in 2002.  “Oil fuels military power, national treasuries, and international politics.”  Far more than an ordinary trade commodity, “it is a determinant of well being, of national security, and international power for those who possess this vital resource, and the converse for those who do not.”

If anything, that’s even truer today, and as energy wars expand, the truth of this will only become more evident.  Someday, perhaps, the development of renewable sources of energy may invalidate this dictum.  But in our present world, if you see a conflict developing, look for the energy.  It’ll be there somewhere on this fossil-fueled planet of ours.

Michael T. Klare, a TomDispatch regular, is a professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College and the author, most recently, of The Race for What’s Left.  A documentary movie version of his book Blood and Oil is available from the Media Education Foundation.

Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook and Tumblr. Check out the newest Dispatch Book, Rebecca Solnit’s Men Explain Things to Me.

Copyright 2014 Michael T. Klare

Mirrored from Tomdispatch.com

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Related video added by Juan Cole:

VOA Video: “Syrian Oil Finances ISIL Militants in Iraq”