Old Islamists re-emerge as new 'Taliban'
Thursday, 12 July 2007
Dino Mahtani
WHEN a small group of attackers emerged from their hideout in Nigeria's main northern city of Kano, they descended on a local police station wearing black bandanas, shooting nine policemen dead and setting fire to vehicles.
As the mayhem unfolded, the military sealed off the neighbourhood of Panshekara, where a heavy gun battle ensued for hours with the Muslim radicals known locally as the "Taliban".
There were, at most, 500 fighters in total, and most probably fled to a nearby forest, according to a military report leaked to the Financial Times after the incident in mid-April. It criticised the police and intelligence services for being "lackadaisical". Twenty-five fighters were killed and Islamic literature was seized by authorities, the report said.
In Panshekara, witnesses heard assailants, who included women carrying grenades in cloth bags, speaking in either the local Hausa dialect or in the Arabic and French, languages -spoken in neighbouring Saharan countries.
The fighters, suspected by some officials to have come from Nigeria's north-east and from Chad on Nigeria's north-east frontier, told local people they meant no harm to civilians but were interested in destroying the Nigerian state because it was un-Islamic.
They also allegedly said they wanted to avenge the murder of a local radical preacher, known to have links with Islamistclerics from Saudi Arabia.
The attack in Kano bolstered a growing perception in official circles that Africa's biggest oil producer, where half the 140m population is estimated to be Muslim, is turning into a terrorist incubator.
In 2003 Osama bin Laden listed Nigeria as among the "most qualified" countries for "liberation" along with Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Morocco and Yemen.
Nigeria is currently trying its first al-Qaeda suspect, Mohammed Damagun, a director of a prominent northern newspaper who is accused of using $300,000 (euro220,000, £149,000) in -al-Qaeda funds to ferry 17 "Taliban" fighters for training in the Saharan state of Mauritania.
But there are no proven cases of al-Qaeda terrorist attacks in Nigeria. Hardline Islamist groups from the remote north-east of Nigeria have attacked several times in the past decades only to be put down in heavy security crackdowns.
"There has always been a strand of militant Islam in Nigeria which has waxed and waned over the years. But the tendency of these latest groups to self-style themselves 'Taliban' is a bit of a publicity stunt," says Nowa Omoigui, a lecturer at Nigeria's war college.
He says the Islamist threat in Nigeria is "low grade and chronic recurrent". Whether it gets more serious is a function of the legitimacy of the government, the perception of Nigeria as an arm of a western conspiracy against Islam, the capability of the security agencies and the relationship between Nigerian Islamists and those in the Sahara.
The US government, which is spending $100m a year on a counter-terrorism initiative involving governments in the Sahara and Nigeria, believes a number of Nigerians are receiving training in Saharan camps.
They say Nigerians and nationals from other west and north African countries are training alongside the Algerian group now calling itself al-Qaeda of the Islamic Maghreb.
An official from EUCOM, the US military command that oversees Europe and Africa, told the FT he suspected the numbers of Nigerians joining the camps in the last few years to be "small but significant".
The US government did not have evidence of specific Nigerian operatives involved in international terrorist plots but was more concerned that "the influence of Wahabi Islam [the austere version of Islam practised in Saudi Arabia] which is alien to Nigeria is starting to take hold". Wahabi indoctrination, combined with worsening poverty and state failure in Nigeria, could provide more recruits in the future.
Decades of corrupt military rule and eight years of civilian government that both failed to alleviate the crushing problems of poverty in Nigeria's Muslim-dominated north, has pushed many northern Nigerians closer to Islam.
Under military rule hundreds of Islamic activists were jailed and abused by security forces. But in 2000, a year after military rule ended, 12 northern Nigerian state governments declared Islamic shariah law, capitalising on the mood of people hungry for social justice.
Since then finance from Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Libya and other places has sustained the building of madrassa schools and mosques. International counter-terror regulations after 2001 seem to have stifled much Saudi charity activity. But Saudi analysts say -charitable donations to Nigeria and visits to Riyadh by Nigerian clerics have been stepped up over the past year.
Under syndication arrangement with FE
WHEN a small group of attackers emerged from their hideout in Nigeria's main northern city of Kano, they descended on a local police station wearing black bandanas, shooting nine policemen dead and setting fire to vehicles.
As the mayhem unfolded, the military sealed off the neighbourhood of Panshekara, where a heavy gun battle ensued for hours with the Muslim radicals known locally as the "Taliban".
There were, at most, 500 fighters in total, and most probably fled to a nearby forest, according to a military report leaked to the Financial Times after the incident in mid-April. It criticised the police and intelligence services for being "lackadaisical". Twenty-five fighters were killed and Islamic literature was seized by authorities, the report said.
In Panshekara, witnesses heard assailants, who included women carrying grenades in cloth bags, speaking in either the local Hausa dialect or in the Arabic and French, languages -spoken in neighbouring Saharan countries.
The fighters, suspected by some officials to have come from Nigeria's north-east and from Chad on Nigeria's north-east frontier, told local people they meant no harm to civilians but were interested in destroying the Nigerian state because it was un-Islamic.
They also allegedly said they wanted to avenge the murder of a local radical preacher, known to have links with Islamistclerics from Saudi Arabia.
The attack in Kano bolstered a growing perception in official circles that Africa's biggest oil producer, where half the 140m population is estimated to be Muslim, is turning into a terrorist incubator.
In 2003 Osama bin Laden listed Nigeria as among the "most qualified" countries for "liberation" along with Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Morocco and Yemen.
Nigeria is currently trying its first al-Qaeda suspect, Mohammed Damagun, a director of a prominent northern newspaper who is accused of using $300,000 (euro220,000, £149,000) in -al-Qaeda funds to ferry 17 "Taliban" fighters for training in the Saharan state of Mauritania.
But there are no proven cases of al-Qaeda terrorist attacks in Nigeria. Hardline Islamist groups from the remote north-east of Nigeria have attacked several times in the past decades only to be put down in heavy security crackdowns.
"There has always been a strand of militant Islam in Nigeria which has waxed and waned over the years. But the tendency of these latest groups to self-style themselves 'Taliban' is a bit of a publicity stunt," says Nowa Omoigui, a lecturer at Nigeria's war college.
He says the Islamist threat in Nigeria is "low grade and chronic recurrent". Whether it gets more serious is a function of the legitimacy of the government, the perception of Nigeria as an arm of a western conspiracy against Islam, the capability of the security agencies and the relationship between Nigerian Islamists and those in the Sahara.
The US government, which is spending $100m a year on a counter-terrorism initiative involving governments in the Sahara and Nigeria, believes a number of Nigerians are receiving training in Saharan camps.
They say Nigerians and nationals from other west and north African countries are training alongside the Algerian group now calling itself al-Qaeda of the Islamic Maghreb.
An official from EUCOM, the US military command that oversees Europe and Africa, told the FT he suspected the numbers of Nigerians joining the camps in the last few years to be "small but significant".
The US government did not have evidence of specific Nigerian operatives involved in international terrorist plots but was more concerned that "the influence of Wahabi Islam [the austere version of Islam practised in Saudi Arabia] which is alien to Nigeria is starting to take hold". Wahabi indoctrination, combined with worsening poverty and state failure in Nigeria, could provide more recruits in the future.
Decades of corrupt military rule and eight years of civilian government that both failed to alleviate the crushing problems of poverty in Nigeria's Muslim-dominated north, has pushed many northern Nigerians closer to Islam.
Under military rule hundreds of Islamic activists were jailed and abused by security forces. But in 2000, a year after military rule ended, 12 northern Nigerian state governments declared Islamic shariah law, capitalising on the mood of people hungry for social justice.
Since then finance from Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Libya and other places has sustained the building of madrassa schools and mosques. International counter-terror regulations after 2001 seem to have stifled much Saudi charity activity. But Saudi analysts say -charitable donations to Nigeria and visits to Riyadh by Nigerian clerics have been stepped up over the past year.
Under syndication arrangement with FE