Author: Brian Beyer

Boko Haram, the Nigerian Islamist group opposed to what they see as the westernization of Nigeria, is making headlines yet again. Staying true to its name –Boko Haram means “Western education is a sin”– the “Nigerian Taliban” has said that it will bomb 18 Nigerian universities between September 12th and 17th. Most ominously, the group said that the attacks are “not a threat, but a notification which must be strictly adhered to.”

While attacks by Boko Haram are nothing new in Nigeria, the latest “notification” specifically targets the University of Ibadan and University of Benin. If Boko Haram successfully carries out either of these attacks, it will be significant for three reasons: both of these universities are among the most prominent in the country and would deal a devastating blow to the psyche of higher education in Nigeria; both of these universities are located in the Christian south and could enflame religious tensions; and the University of Benin is located in the oil rich Niger Delta.

Boko Haram has evolved rather spectacularly from an organization that shunned modern technology and relied on bow and arrow to attack,  to an internationally recognized terrorist group in the wake of the Abuja bombing. The evolution and internationalization of Boko Haram is not necessarily a sign of contact with al-Qaeda as Nigerian expert Jean Herskovits notes.

There has also been media speculation, fueled by government suggestions, that at various times members of Boko Haram have received training in Somalia, Sudan, Algeria, Mali, Yemen and even Afghanistan. But Boko Haram has at most only a few hundred hard-core members (though sympathizers, brought along by the brutality of the security forces, may add a few thousand), and they are known by those who live among them to be largely unemployed and impoverished. Few seem to be equipped for such traveling abroad.

Nor do sophisticated, powerful, improvised explosive devices (IEDs) have to come through an al Qaeda connection. Nigeria’s first major explosion on such a scale came in July 2009, when the militant Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), blew up the Atlas Cove jetty, an oil-storage and loading facility in Lagos, the commercial capital.

Herskovits rightly questions just how extensive, if at all, links are between al-Qaeda and Boko Haram. She does make clear, however, that misguided counterterrorism strategy in the region, as this writer suggested could happen, has the potential to do much more damage than Boko Haram could ever dream of.

Should Africom initiatives – especially in counterterrorism training – identify the United States more closely with Nigeria’s current government and its security agencies, there could be a consequence that neither Americans nor most Nigerians would welcome: America would be seen as an enemy, opening the way to exactly the Al Qaeda presence they least want.

As has been stressed before, the situation in Nigeria ought to be watched very closely. It could soon enough mutate into a hotbed for terrorism or American counterterrorism operations. 

There is a highly valuable lesson that can be learned, and should be learned, by Americans of political persuasions who still believe the idea that al-Qaeda attacked the United States because of its values, not its policies. Al-Qaeda did not wage a brutal campaign against drinking establishments, pot dispensaries, lingerie stores, churches, ball parks and Walmarts. Instead, they struck the Pentagon, the epitome of American militarism run amok, and the World Trade Centers, the symbol of America’s economic superpower status. When considering their goals, the targets could not have been more appropriate: al Qaeda has succeeded remarkably in bleeding America dry through endless wars.

Boko Haram, on the other hand, has attacked schools, beer gardens, and other “Western” institutions precisely because it detests Nigeria for westernizing. However, even Nigeria has experienced blowback, as the US did on 9/11, in response to its ruthless oppression of Boko Haram.

If the motivation of terrorists is to be understood, there could be no better place to start than in Nigeria with Boko Haram.

 

The discovery of old intelligence files in Tripoli is yet another example of hypocrisy and America’s extremely shortsighted foreign policy. While Libyan and American intelligence sharing and cooperation was not a secret, the cache of files reveals how deeply connected the CIA and the Libyan Intelligence Agency were. Colonel Gaddafi, a self proclaimed fighter of imperialism, took part in the extradordinary rendition programs that were harshly criticized by human rights organizations [.pdf]:

[H]undreds of other people are still deprived of their liberty, under American authority but outside the national territory, within an unclear normative framework. Their detention is, in any event, altogether contrary to the principles enshrined in all the international legal instruments dealing with respect for fundamental rights, including the domestic law of the United States (which explains the existence of such detention centres outside the country). The following headline appears to be an accurate summary of the current administration’s approach: prefers to interrogate bigger fish in terrorism cases rather than charge them.

The report made no mention of Libya, suggesting that rendition in Libya was very much a well kept secret. The documents also suggest that Gaddafi began the renditon program in 2004 after he came clean about “unconventional weapons” and spoke about the dangers of them. It appears that many of those who were renditioned were memebers of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG). The LIFG was loathed by the Gaddafi regime, especially after an assassination attempt in 1996. Fearful of their links with al-Qaeda and cals for an Islamic state, Gaddafi ruthlessly cracked down on the group. It does not appear, therefore, that Gaddafi was an unwilling participant in the rendition program.

What is really interesting, however, is just how shortsighted American foreign policy has been. Gaddafi, who was relentlessly villified until he changed his bad habits, was pragmatically used as an ally in the neverending War on Terror. The tit for tat games played with Moammar abruptly came to an end during the Arab Spring when the United States and NATO seized the opportunity to oust the not so reliable dictator. Just like the Taliban were American allies during the Red Scare and are now mortal enemies in the midst of a decade long war, former enemies that endured the American-Libyan rendition program are now allies. Particularly alarming are the seedy “allies” that the United States now has:

A much underreported story in the press recently was the UN bombing in Abuja, Nigeria by the Nigerian terrorist group Boko Haram. Also known as the Nigerian Taliban, the Muslim group was founded in response to what its founders saw as the westernization of Nigeria, Islam and, specifically, education.

The event was significant in many aspects, but like so many other important global affairs, goes underreported or completely ignored.

Preliminary investigations so far have concluded the following: according to UN security chief, a bomb, probably around 100 pounds, was detonated by a suicide bomber under the reception area of the UN building, only after speeding down the “long driveway,” gathering enough speed to crash through two barriers. An unarmed guard was run over and killed after trying to flag down and stop the speeding suicide bomber. Twenty-three people were killed and seventy-three more were injured in this barbaric attack.

Alleged members of Boko Haram almost immediately claimed responsibility:

“Through the wisdom of Allah, we have launched the attack with absolute precision,” a man who identified himself as Abu Darda told a reporter in Kano on Friday. “We have said it several times that the U.N. is one of our prime targets.” Another man claiming to be a spokesman for Boko Haram, Mallam Abu Kaka, in a telephone conference call on Saturday with reporters in Maiduguri, blamed the United States. “The U.S. government has been collaborating with the Nigerian government to clamp down on our members nationwide,” he said. Both men warned that more attacks were imminent.

While it still has not been verified that those two men were Boko Haram members, Nigeria’s Department of State Services hasapparently already found the culprit:

“Investigation has revealed that one Mamman Nur, a notorious Boko Haram element with al Qaeda links who returned recently from Somalia, working in concert with the two suspects, masterminded the attack on the United Nations building in Abuja,” the Department of State Services said in a statement on Wednesday.

It did not give details of how it came to this conclusion, beyond mentioning that the two suspects in detention before the bombing, which killed 23 people, had given “valuable statements.”

“We implore … the general public to cooperate with security agencies by providing useful information that could lead to the arrest of Mamman Nur, who is hereby declared wanted,” it said.

This attack marks the first by Boko Haram against a non-Nigerian target. Typically, the group attacks police and government officials. This time, however, the group began to diversify and has gone international, in a sense. Not only has Boko Haram gone international, but they’ve struck at the core of the status quo, world order: the UN.

The international flavor that Boko Haram has all of the sudden developed a taste for, as well as their increasingly sophisticated attacks, have led some to believe that the group is in contact with or actively working with al-Qaeda. General Carter Ham, the commander of operations in Africa and, consequently, the director of the Libyan war effort, has said that he has several sources that tell him that Boko Haram has made contacts with al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and al-Shabaab, the Somali Islamist group. A Nigerian diplomat in Kenya said that 19 members of Boko Haram had stayed with an al-Shabaab commander in Mogadishu in late 2010. Neither of these statements, nor the Department of State Service’s, have been corroborated or independently verified, so their veracity is in question. General Ham said of the possibility of those three groups working with one another, “I think it would be the most dangerous thing to happen not only to the Africans, but to us as well.”

Such language from high level military brass, as well as Boko Haram’s supposed affiliation with arguably the two most important terrorist groups at the moment–AQIM because of Libya and al-Shabaab because of the drought and the recent American offensive against them–are ominous signs for Nigeria. The US has shown itself to be willing to go literally anywhere if a threat against the US, real or otherwise, emerges. This is especially the case if that country happens to have valuable resources, particularly oil. Lest it’s forgotten, Nigeria is the fifth biggest exporter of oil to the United States. Boko Haram has not, however, shown a willingness to strike in the oil rich, Christian south.

The story continues to get even more interesting and is where the media has dropped the ball yet again. Tucked away in a Washington Post article is a mention of FBI agents on the ground to “assist” the investigation. Deb Maclean, the spokeswoman who came forward with this information, decided to not elaborate any further. What Maclean and the FBI call assisting has many heads in Nigeria spinning.

The Punch, “Nigeria’s most widely read newspaper,” ran a bombshell story that will undoubtedly make President Goodluck Jonathan blush:

OPERATIVES of the United States’ domestic intelligence agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, have taken over the investigations of Friday’s bombing of the UN building in Abuja.

Sources told THE PUNCH that the FBI agents probing the bombing had sidelined investigators from the Nigeria Police and the State Security Service.

A source in one of the security agencies, who requested anonymity, said the takeover had the support of the Federal Government. The source added that the government might have lost confidence in the Police, SSS and other security agencies for their alleged failure to halt the bombings in the country.

It’s not clear whether the Nigerian government sought the help of the United States, but complaints about the competency of the State Security Service by government officials give a lot of credence to accusations by PUNCH.

Later in the article, PUNCH notes that the FBI has been involved in Nigerian investigations before, specifically from the October 1, 2010 bombings onward. A cable released by Wikileaks back in December exposed that the US had actionable intelligence concerning Boko Haram. If the US has done this before, what’s all the fuss about?

First, it appears that the US has genuinely hijacked the Nigerian led investigation of this bombing. Second, the rapid and overblown response by the US comes a mere two weeks after General Ham made apocalyptic statements about Boko Haram. And finally, the rapid conclusion reached by the Department of State Services is worthy of several questions: was this reached independent of the FBI? If not, what was the extent of American involvement? If the damning evidence was really gathered from two detainees before the attack, why was the attack not prevented? Incompetence or willful ignorance? Was it gathered through unsavory means, such as torture, or did the detainees come clean?

Many unanswered questions remain, but such heavy handed involvement by the US is a very unsettling development. Could the US be on its way to significant anti-terrorism “operations” in Nigeria, or is this just a one time thing? Only time will tell, but Nigeria and Boko Haram are certainly worth watching.

Moammar Gaddafi, the Libyan leader desperate to maintain the little power he has left, was said to have arrived in Algeria in a convoy of Mercedes. He must have done so after finding the personal jet of Robert Mugabe and Zimbabwe to not be luxurious enough for his flamboyant self. Or he’s in the Sahara desert with his adopted daughter who arose from the dead 25 years after her death. Or he’s floating around in space.

All of this confusion, chaos, and senseless chatter about Gaddafi’s whereabouts mimics much of Libya’s Big Picture: the future is constantly changing, subject to the ever blowing Saharan winds, and will most likely be far from a democratic dreamland.

Fareed Zakaria, a member of the foreign policy elite, has heralded the Libyan intervention (not a war, of course) as “a new era in U.S. foreign policy.” Most of his praise was directed at the multilateral effort of the UN and the legitimacy that nearby Arab countries provided. He ended his propaganda piece with a self addressed question and answer:

The question before Libya was: Could such interventions be successful while keeping costs under control – both human and financial. Today’s answer is: Yes.

This same short sighted nonsense was said about Iraq as well. Seared into every American’s head was President George W. Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” speech that declared the end of major combat operations. Years later, Iraq experienced civil war, and religious and sectarian strife. Money and blood flowed quicker than Kuwaiti crude. And as I write, the US is developing plans for keeping troops in Iraq well past the 2011 year end deadline.

The problem with  Zakaria and other like minded thinkers is that they’re caught up in the moment. They tend to think that just because Gaddafi is in his last days as the “Brotherly Leader,” the work is done. But that’s not how the US and their fellow supreme rulers in the UN and NATO operate. They’ve got motives other than protecting the Libyan people, and it reeks of oil. After all, what’s so different about Bahrainis and Yemenites?

Besides dithering over who gets what oil field and protecting them from sabotage, the US risks getting sucked into yet another Iraq like quagmire. Analyst Scott Stewart from world renowned Stratfor is dead on when he writes:

As the experiences of recent years in Iraq and Afghanistan have vividly illustrated, it is far easier to depose a regime than it is to govern a country. It has also proved to be very difficult to build a stable government from the remnants of a long-established dictatorial regime. History is replete with examples of coalition fronts that united to overthrow an oppressive regime but then splintered and fell into internal fighting once the regime they fought against was toppled. In some cases, the power struggle resulted in a civil war more brutal than the one that brought down the regime. In other cases, this factional strife resulted in anarchy that lasted for years as the iron fist that kept ethnic and sectarian tensions in check was suddenly removed, allowing those issues to re-emerge.

As Libya enters this critical juncture and the National Transitional Council (NTC) transitions from breaking things to building things and running a country, there will be important fault lines to watch in order to envision what Libya will become.

One has to wonder if Zakaria and others took such realities into account while proclaiming “Mission Accomplished.” As divisions continue to deepen and fault lines begin to show, the prospect of an embattled Libya is almost a near certainty. Couple the grim prospect of civil war with America’s eagerness to fight the War on Terror –Islamic extremists, al-Qaeda, and other Islamic fundamentalists are said to make up the ranks of Libya’s ragtag rebels– and a protracted American involvement does not at all seem out of the picture.

While the media and Establishment would have you believe that the Libyan Transnational Council represents the interest of the Libyan people, this could not be farther from the truth. Besides not even being democratically elected and full of former Gaddafi supporters, the council will have tremendous difficulty in putting forth a coherent agenda, let alone making it a reality. Will Libya, in the spirit of the Arab Spring, move towards democracy and a freer society? Or will Islamists get their dream and turn Libya into the seedlings of the Caliphate? Or, like in Egypt, could only symbolic changes take place to appease the people? Other than ideological divisions, Libya will still have to cope with ethnic and tribal divisions. Stewart explains:

These [divisions] include ethnic differences in the form of Berbers in the Nafusa Mountains, Tuaregs in the southwestern desert region of Fezzan and Toubou in the Cyrenaican portion of the Sahara Desert. Among the Arabs who form the bulk of the Libyan population, there are also hundreds of different tribes and multiple dialects of spoken Arabic.

It must also be remembered that Libya is awash with weapons of all sorts: chemical weapons, small arms, military grade explosives, artillery, and worst of all man-portable air defense systems, or MANPADS. Many small arms are already in circulation and being used in battle, looted from Gaddafi’s arm depots. But more worrisome are the bigger weapons. These weapons run a high risk of getting on the black market or in terrorists’ hands, which could then be used as they were in Iraq to fight the Western powers and the puppet government. Many Islamists who had their throats stepped on by Gaddafi are now free to breathe, plan, attack, and seek revenge in the new, Gaddafi almost-free Libya. The CIA is most likely on alert and, if not already, is eager to dive into Libya to keep waging the hopeless War on Terror.

Contrary to claims by the government and its Presstitutes who consistently lie, exaggerate, or are just plain wrong, the Libyan mission is far from over. The ever elusive Gaddafi is still on the run. The governing Transnational Council must develop a working plan for a functioning government. Civil divisions must be dealt with, as will the likelihood of civil war even if Gaddafi is once and for all ousted. An upshot of terrorism is also likely and would be devastating to any hopes of establishing a free and peaceful society.

A turbulent future remains for Libya.

Julian Assange and Team Wikileaks are at it again. Using Twitter and their own website, the organization released some 35,000 cables after months of only a handful being released each day.

Perhaps one of the most amusing and telling cables comes from way back in 1987. It begins:

AFGHANS SELL US STINGERS TO KHOMEINI

THE UNITED STATES HAS CUT OFF SUPPLIES OF STINGER
ANTI-AIRCRAFT MISSILES TO AN AFGHAN GUERRILLA GROUP
AFTER DISCOVERING THAT AT LEAST 16 OF THE WEAPONS WERE
SOLD BY THE RESISTANCE TO IRAN.

A mere 24 years later, the tables have turned as the US is accusing Iran of supplying arms to the Taliban. While these accusations have faltered tremendously under intense scrutiny, the back and forth movements of American supplied weapons, from ally to enemy and back again, highlight how reactionary and near sighted American foreign policy is.

As Onion-esque as all of this may sound, the cable gets even better:

UNCOMFIRMED REPORTS EARLIER THIS YEAR MAINTAINED THAT
THE IRANIANS HAD USED STINGERS TO SHOOT DOWN IRAQI
AIRCRAFT IN THE GULF WAR.

The United States denied these reports, and while their veracity may be debated, that misses the point.

The point is that the United States has become so nosy and imperialist that weapons provided to the Taliban in Afghanistan, now our enemies, were used to fight the Soviets, now our allies (unless we invade Georgia to establish a beacon of democracy, or something like that), which were sold to the Iranians, still our enemies, to fight against an American backed Saddam, who ultimately fell out of grace with the US in 2003 that resulted in a war in which the US is still involved in today.

Providing arms to proxy groups in hope of defeating an enemy is never a safe bet and liable to many, many changes. This is especially the case when American foreign policy seems to bipolar (condemning human rights abuses in Iran while turning a blind eye to the slaughter in Bahrain, etc. ad nauseam) and subject to constant change.

As dizzying as this maze of deceit and backstabbing may be, there is just one more spectacle of irony:

THE US… IS CONCERNED THAT THE WEAPONS WILL FALL INTO
TERRORIST HANDS, OR WILL BE COPIED AND SUPPLIED IN
LARGE NUMBERS TO OTHER HOSTILE STATES SUCH AS LIBYA.

That should speak volumes by itself.

Last Friday, the ratings agency Standard and Poors (S&P), in an odd episode of semi-sanity, decided to stand firm against the United States government and downgrade American debt from the golden AAA to AA+. The empire, being caught naked yet again, went into a fit of fury. President Obama dismissed the downgrade, not considering it an indictment of America’s economic condition. Rather, he said the downgrade occurred “because after witnessing a month of wrangling over raising the debt ceiling, they [S&P] doubted our political system’s ability to act.” Tax cheat Tim Geithner blasted S&P’s “really horrible judgment” and “lack of knowledge.” And former economic adviser to Obama, Christina Romer, spoke the truth saying that the US is “pretty darn fucked.”

While the state of America’s finances is certainly not worthy of even a AA+ credit rating, all of America was woken up. There is something terribly, terribly wrong with the USS America and if reforms are not instituted quickly, the ship will quickly sink to banana republic status. But despite the downgrade which could have been much, much worse, America’s politburo had a conniption. Why?

S&P dared to go where no credit rating agency has gone before. It defied the US government. Because of this audacity, the cozy relationship between S&P and D.C. all but vanished.  Besides the toothless Levin and Coburn Senate report that effectively resulted in a matriarchal chastising of Goldman Sachs and the ratings agencies, and was published before the downgrade, not much was said:

It was not in the short term economic interest of either Moody’s or S&P, however, to provide accurate credit ratings for high risk RMBS and CDO securities, because doing so would have hurt their own revenues. Instead, the credit rating agencies’ profits became increasingly reliant on the fees generated by issuing a large volume of structured finance ratings.

Of course the SEC and other comical regulatory bodies “missed” these rampant abuses and frauds in the lead up to the housing bubble; it allowed for the show to go on. The gravy train was going to keep on chugging until it ran out of fuel. The American economy was fine and dandy, until the day of reckoning came. However, even in the immediate aftermath of the collapse of the American economy, the relationship of convenience was maintained. The quid pro quo lived on: rating agencies were free to keep the American people and investors under the illusion that everything was AAA-OK as long as that meant the people stayed off the streets. The Oracle of Omaha and Whore of Wallshington St., Warren Buffett, absolved the rating agencies:

 I am much more inclined to come down hard on the CEOs of institutions that caused the United States Government to come in and necessarily bolster them than I am on somebody that made a mistake that 300 million other Americans made.

The ancient Oracle truly outdid himself this time. Holding people accountable for failing to do their job or doing it poorly? Forget about it!

Such sleazy alliances of convenience permeate American foreign policy. Libya is perhaps the most glaring example of the new Millenium. The Gulf of Sidra incident and the Lockerbie bombing ended all hopes of normalized relations between America and Libya. Then, in December of 2003, Libya, in hopes of not being the next Iraq, announced that it would cease and destroy all weapons programs that the international community deemed unacceptable. The Great Resistor of Imperialism in the Maghreb folded without much of a fight. By May of 2006, an American embassy in Libya was opened and Libya lost its designation of state sponsor of terrorism. Moammar Gaddafi even went to far as to helping the United States fight the “War on Terror.”

But then the Arab spring came. Libyans from all walks of life rose up against dictator Moammar Gaddafi. Just like Syria’s Assad, Egypt’s Mubarak, and Bahrain’s King Khalifa, this thug acted brutally, repressing the people’s peaceful calls for social, political, and economic reform. America, desperate to actually look like they stood for human rights, decided to act. Little did Washington know, much of the world watched as America turned a blind eye to brutal repression in Egypt, Bahrain, and Yemen, all allies of the United States. NATO and the US, however, had to do something about pesky Moammar Gaddafi. They finally got their chance with Operation Odyssey Dawn.

Civilians, Gaddafi loyalists, and rebels alike were bombed to bits by NATO and US planes in hopes of regime change. The Libyan Transnational Council was quickly recognized as the rightful representatives of the Libyan people. The mission was pretty much complete, although Gaddafi still remains at large.

While S&P remains in business, their offices are being raided in Italy. Perhaps the same fate awaits S&P’s Washington bureau. Only time will tell. One thing is for certain, however. Moody’s will continue to be Washington’s right hand man until they, too, bite the hand that feeds.