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Weekly UpdatesWhat worries both the political leadership in Abuja and speculators in oil futures is that Nigeria's troubles are not confined to the Niger Delta. Last week a Sunni/Neo-Salafi insurgency hit northern Nigeria which, if not brought to a decisive end, could eventually engulf the whole country and plunge it into a complex Christian-Muslim war.
The man behind this insurgency is Abu-Yehya al-Libi, a Libyan who is the third man in the trans-national network al-Qaeda next to Saudi-born Usama bin Laden and his Egyptian deputy Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri. Having emerged as a top ideologue in this network and a mufti for the Neo-Salafi movement, Libi has been focusing on the African continent in his planning for years. In late 2006 he managed to spread al-Qaeda's reach to North Africa - mainly in Algeria, Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia.
Now Libi's groups are active in sub-Saharan countries with emphasis on Niger, Mali, Togo, northern Nigeria and as far to the south-east of the continent as Somalia. It is said his plan is eventually to cover the whole of Africa, which is ultimately to become part of a global Neo-Salafi caliphate. The latter goal is, of course, a distant one; but Libi believes Africa should be a key part of the grand scheme, in view of its proximity to the Greater Middle East (GME) and Europe.
Libi is said to have been receiving aid from Iran, where al-Qaeda has a camp provided and controlled by the now ruling Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). The Iran-based Qaeda unit concentrates on IRGC-guided operations in the northern part of the Arab east (Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, the Gaza Strip and Egypt's Sinai). This co-ordinates with a Yemen-based Qaeda unit in charge of the Arabian Peninsula including the oil-rich GCC states and Yemen.
Both units are said to have been getting financial aid and explosives from the IRGC. But Iran now is in deep crisis and it is questionable whether the IRGC will keep funding Neo-Salafi operations which are quite expensive.
The Neo-Salafi insurgency in northern Nigeria was until July 31 led by Boko-Haram (Western education forbidden), a movement established in 2004 and led by Muhammad Yusuf. Yusuf, 35, was an unemployed figure with education limited to the Qur'an and the Neo-Salafi ideology which he adopted in 2001. His movement started up in a village near Niger's border he named Afghanistan. His fighters were called Nigerian Taliban. He exploited a widening gap between Nigeria's poor and rich/corrupt, with nearly 40m of Nigeria's 150m being unemployed, a gap causing serious trouble.
Advocating a Neo-Salafi regime for the whole of Nigeria, this group so far confined its operations to the north. It began a major battle after Friday prayers on July 24 as its forces attacked police and civilians. Battles spread to five states in the north and on July 28 President Yar'Adua, then visiting Brazil, ordered an all-out military offensive on the group. On July 31 government troops announced they had crushed the rebellion, forced Yusuf and hundreds of his fighters to flee and destroyed a bomb-making building they used. Yusuf was arrested and killed as he tried to escape. By then, Yusuf's group had attacked Christian churches, threatened to widen its insurgency further, and caused the death of over 400 people, mostly its fighters and Yusuf's deputy. Abuja said the rebellion ended. But on Aug. 1 observers were worried that, since many of Yusuf's followers had fled, they could revive their insurgency in future. The links between this group and Libi's African network were not clear. But experts said this group had no link to Afghanistan's insurgents.
The IRGC has a tactical alliance with each of al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Another Neo-Salafi network active in Afghanistan and Pakistan (AfPak), the Taliban rely on the IRGC mainly for the latter's supply of effective road-side bombs which are main killers on the AfPak front. But this alliance is only temporary, having been forced on al-Qaeda by the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001.
Many Qaeda fugitives had to take refuge in Iran and the IRGC seized on that opportunity to make the Neo-Salafi network conduct operations suiting the purpose of the Shi'ite conglomerate (see news5IRGC-Aug3-09 & fap2-IrqKrdUS-Aug3-09). In the process, the IRGC has widened its reach in the GME and Africa. Eventually, there will be a big war between the IRGC and the Neo-Salafi groups.
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