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Gaddafi tastes his own medicine
[Daily Nation (Kenya)] Part of fugitive former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's legacy maybe inadvertently arming like-minded "You-either-let-me-rule-you-or-perish" types.Leading candidates in Africa are the Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, Al Shabaab in Somalia, and Boko Haram in Nigeria. They are Islamists. Their agenda is establishing states governed under the Sharia, the Islamic law. Boko Haram is most potent. It has a pricy habitat, too, Africa's most populous nation and one of the continent's leading oil exporters. It's also home to a most cantankerous citizenry, a fertile recruitment ground. Libya's revolution is unique. It lacks a charismatic leader a la Cuba's Fidel Castro. Ideologies are as shifty as dunes in the Sahara Desert. Incredibly, an angry and disorganized mob is winning. Plausibly, had Gaddafi not vowed to flood Libya with the blood of the "rats," thereby alienating world opinion, the Nato bombing campaign wouldn't have taken place. His crucial forces neutralised, he ignominiously became his opponents' Quartermaster General. Rebels looted armouries, but hardly protected weapons they didn't need. Consequently, weapons, including shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles, are "travelling." Nigerian Tribune recently reported arms and ammunition from Libya are entering northern Nigeria's cities through Niger and Chad. So are Nigerians, some of whom served in Gaddafi's forces. Niger and Chad border southern Libya and share 4,500-kilometre borders with Nigeria. They are incapable of effectively monitoring their border with Libya or Nigeria. The latter isn't doing much better. It has 480 irregular and 12 regular border crossings with Chad and Niger. A CNN report says Niger and Chad have admitted the smuggled weapons include detonators, plastic explosives called Semtex, and Russian-made shoulder-fired missiles. Though antiquated, these missiles can shoot down aeroplanes flying at 11,000 feet. Libya reportedly had 20,000 of them. In the wrong hands, "They could turn all of North Africa into a no-fly zone," CNN quoted Peter Boukaert of the Human Rights Watch as saying. A few hundred in the hands of Boko Haram could do the same in Nigeria. And Boko Haram wouldn't love anything better. Established in 2001, Boko Haram has, as Nigeria writer Sola Odunfa noted in a BBC column recently, "graduated from carrying out homicidal attacks on unarmed people" to "carrying out suicide bombings this year on the headquarters of the police and the United Nations in the capital, Abuja." Government officials, Odunfa noted, "can only express horror at the bedside of survivors, vow on television to catch the perpetrator and then rush to fortify their motor convoys, offices, and residences." A report by a presidential committee on circumstances that bred Boko Haram concluded federal, state, and local governments are guilty of the injustices that partly gave birth to the menace. That's a gargantuan situation problem Nigeria's political elite need solve. The worst possible scenario is that Boko Haram acquires Gaddafi's "travelling" weapons. That should not only give Nigeria's political leadership nightmares but lead to serious soul searching and quick action. Posted by: Fred 2011-10-18 |
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