Nigeria election is historic - now the hard work begins

Gratifying to see pretty good coverage of Nigeria's recent election by news agencies. Because this election, conducted Saturday, March 29, resulted in the nation's first apparently successful and peaceful transition from one party to the opposition, a public exchange of respect and support by the incoming and outgoing president, a pledge to tackle corruption which has plagued this oil rich nation for decades, and finally a resolve by the new Muslim President to get serious about Boko Haram.


Nigeria - huge potential, still unrealized. Graphic from nigeriamasterweb.com

As a Voice of America report stated, "President-elect Muhammadu Buhari said his country has "embraced democracy" and put its one-party-state past behind it. “We have proven to the world that we are a people who have embraced democracy and a people who seek a government by, for and of the people," Buhari said. He spoke Wednesday in Abuja, just hours after the electoral commission declared him the official winner of Saturday's presidential election, defeating incumbent Goodluck Jonathan by more than 2 million votes.

Buhari says his government will "spare no effort" to defeat insurgent group Boko Haram. Buhari called Jonathan "a worthy opponent" and said he extends the "hand of fellowship" to the outgoing president. Jonathan, who conceded, called for peace, saying, “The unity, stability and progress of our dear country is more important than anything else.” ... There have been no reports of post-election violence in Nigeria - a major change from 2011, when news of Jonathan's victory over Buhari sparked violence in the north that killed about 800 people."


President elect Muhammedu Buhari (left) being publicly acknowledged by incumbent president Goodluck Jonathan. (Is that Kofi Annan, former UN Secretary in the background?) Photo from http://nationalmirroronline.net

Election factoids (from the Voice of America article)

*Jonathan's People's Democratic Party has ruled Nigeria since 1999.

*Buhari, 72, of the All Progressives Congress, is to be inaugurated May 29.

*Nigeria's Electoral Commission chairman Attahiru Jega announced earlier Wednesday that Buhari had officially won the election, getting 15.4 million votes to Jonathan's 12.9 million.

*President-elect Buhari was previously Nigeria's military ruler for 20 months after officers seized power in a December 1983 coup. He was toppled by another military coup, but has run for the presidency four times since democracy was restored in Nigeria in 1999.

Teatree musings

Mr. Buhari has declared two great directions for his incoming administration - 1) an end to endemic corruption that has stemmed to a great degree from revenues generated by the country's oil industry. 2) A serious fight to degrade if not destroy Boko Haram. These militants recently declared their allegiance to ISIS, the Islamic State jihadists ravaging Syria and Iraq and elsewhere.

His hands will be full. High oil prices that have long buoyed Nigeria have fallen in half in the past six months. Budgets that have been used to lavish funds on a variety of important and phantom needs alike are facing deep cuts. Now it gets serious - how to cut the fat and waste while leaving essential services functioning.


While Nigerian oil overwhelmingly flows via pipeline, apparently some fossil fuel is still delivered in barrels. In either case, the fortunes of Nigeria and revenues from its oil reserves go hand in hand. Photo from www.djazairess.com

Corruption

From an al-Jazeera article, "fundamentally, Buhari will need to oversee structural changes to the Nigerian state. Constitutional reform is needed to update or even replace the 1999 constitution with one that empowers citizens, decentralizes power and enables a more efficient governance framework. He will also need to revamp the oil sector. Jonathan’s administration was incapable of even enacting a new oil law, let alone tackling the massive corruption in the Nigerian National Petroleum Corp. There are perhaps 10 to 15 profitable years left before the world begins a concerted move away from hydrocarbons. Buhari’s administration can steer the Nigerian economy away from the curse of oil. A more efficient use of its diminished oil revenues could offer an opportunity for long-term infrastructural development and rapid turnaround in the power sector."

Military effectiveness and Boko Haram

Perhaps most intriguing is the emphasis that Mr Buhari has placed on defeating the Boko Haram insurgency. The nation, long split between a Christian south and Muslim north, has to some degree united behind the promises of Buhari to take the fight to Boko Haram. With his Muslim credentials, he has a high degree of support from many northern Nigerians, and thus may be able to push security initiatives against the jihadists in more certain terms. Certainly the very low bar of military effectiveness to this point gives him room to improve. As recently as January, the UK Guardian stated the prognosis succinctly, "Army corruption, troop mutinies, alienated citizens and a lack of political will are among reasons that militants continue to thrive." Items three and four may have changed dramatically with this election.


Nigerian soldiers training. To Teatree, the readiness and trustworthiness of Nigeria's military is a mystery. Certainly its performance in the past several years attempting to deal with the jihadists is dismal enough. Photo from africajournalismtheworld.com

As to turning around Nigeria's military effectiveness (items one and two above), that may be a much more difficult task. Time Magazine carried a recent piece (here) where it stated, "Nigeria’s military has been in decline for the past 16 years, says J. Peter Pham, director of the Africa Center at the Washington D.C.- based Atlantic Council, ever since the country moved from a military dictatorship to a democracy in 1999. The intervening years have seen the country’s armed forces hollowed out by a combination of poor leadership, graft, misdirected staff training and a succession of civilian governments so worried about another coup that they have starved the armed forces of key resources.

To a certain extent, part of the issue is size. The country may have a 90,000 strong standing army, says Pham, but not all of them are soldiers. Nurses, medics, administration personnel and military police don’t fight, “so the actual number of combat ready troops is much lower.” Add to the fact that some 3,000 troops are currently serving in United Nations peacekeeping missions around the world, and the number left is “inadequate for the task of defending a country the size of Nigeria,” with its population of 174 million and a history of local insurgencies."

Nigeria should be respected for its successful, clean election, while the leadership's unity during the changeover should not be minimized. And yet, now the hard work of good governance has just begun.

Much at stake in Nigeria's March election

Nigeria is Africa's most populous nation with over 173 million citizens. It is also the country where Boko Haram, the jihadist faction, has terrorized the northern half for the past several years, with little competent response from civil and military authorities.


Nigeria, in West Africa, and the jurisdictions where Boko Haram has been active in intimidation, kidnapping, general violence, and even massacres of villagers and university students. Graphic from The Economist.

So, there is some point to paying attention to its presidential and general assembly election scheduled for March 28, which is a six week postponement from the original plans. The current President, Goodluck Jonathan, has presided over nearly five years of apparent incompetence in attempts to contain and degrade the Boko Haram. Teatree is unsure whether this is due to distraction with other matters, or the exposure of a hollowed out military with a lack of discipline and focus when confronted with this internal force of marauders (ie. think of the meltdown of the Iraqi army when attacked by the Islamic State).


President Goodluck Jonathan, now facing an election where Boko Haram has become the main political issue, and one in which his track record is fairly dismal. Photo from festiveinspire.com

Officially, Nigerian leadership's reason to postpone the election was reported this way, "The security authorities claimed that a six-week military operation against the radical Islamist group Boko Haram, which is being conducted in the northeast of the country, was scheduled to begin on the same day as the election, leaving an inadequate security presence for voters in the rest of the country." President Jonathan's internal critics and political rivals for the presidency have called into question the postponement of the presidential elections, describing the extra weeks as a way for to him consolidate and build electoral support.

President Jonathan's main challenger is General Muhammadu Buhari, described in a Feb 20 Newsweek article as a "devout Muslim, ... a former military general [who] has failed on three occasions (2003, 2007 and 2011) in his bid to return as Nigerian president since the country moved from a series of military rulers to a democratic system in 1999. He survived a Boko Haram assassination attempt last July when a suicide bomber aligned to the radical Islamist group targeted his car in the northern city of Kaduna."

Nigerian opposition leader Buhari shown here speaking in London in early February. Photo by Afolabi Sotunde/Reuters

As many are aware, Nigeria is characterized as having a Christianized southern population and a Muslim northern population. The political and military leadership over the past decades of independence have generally taken into account the two mainstream perspectives with northern representation in roles of authority when a Southern individual was in power and vice versa.

With Boko Haram now savaging regions of the country, this election has bigger consequences at stake. Essentially, who can best tackle the jihadist scourge is the leading concern (while addressing corruption stemming from managing oil revenues being the perennial issue). One of Nigeria's best known voices, Wole Soyinka, was interviewed by the BBC recently. A website, Culture Custodian describes the interview this way, "Soyinka admits that President Goodluck failed in tackling Boko Haram but that the problem began with previous governments. Soyinka asserts that General Buhari represented one of the more brutal phases of military dictatorship but that he is willing to allow him take control of the country now. He also goes on to say that Nigeria must be prepared to deal with any betrayal from its leaders as we cannot continue with the cycle of evil and irresponsibility."


Wole Soyinka, Nigerian writer and world figure, might be characterized as thinking Nigeria is caught between a rock and a hard place when considering the two presidential contenders. Photo by Tomi Idowu February 16, 2015 in culturecustodian.com

In recent days, a suddenly motivated Nigerian military has claimed advances against the Boko Haram, but Teatree wonders how much of these gains might be better characterized as pronouncements that might influence the electoral outcome. Boko Haram, for its part, has attacked villages in Cameroon, Chad, and Niger over the past weeks, regionalizing its conflict into four countries rather than just Nigeria.


By now, most of us are at least aware of Boko Haram. In a BBC summary, we can read, "Founded in 2002; Official Arabic name, Jama'atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda'awati wal-Jihad, means "People Committed to the Propagation of the Prophet's Teachings and Jihad"; Initially focused on opposing Western education; Launched military operations in 2009 to create Islamic state; Designated a terrorist group by US in 2013; Declared a caliphate in areas it controls in 2014." A screen grab by the BBC from a video distributed from the group itself.

In any case, jihadists across northern Africa and in the Arab world have displayed their ability to bring down governments, or at the very least significantly destabilize them (Yemen, Libya are the two latest) so Nigeria's election is being watched with more than passing interest.

Violent jihad strikes hard in the new year

While the world was justifiably immersed in the violent and tragic events in France this past week, the Boko Haram jihadists in Africa have surpassed the France toll and even their own bloody history, with new large scale killings and mayhem in northern Nigeria. Some observers are starting to characterize Boko Haram as having established a defacto African Islamic caliphate - a mini-ISIS state if you will - across those arid lands.


This graphic was developed for a September 2014 story. In the last three months of 2014, and indeed this past week, Boko Haram has expanded its control of territory and its ability to raid in the face of the Nigerian military. Graphic from http://www.digitaljournal.com

Boko Haram is accused of returning and killing up to 2000 within the last few days, in the town of Baga on Nigeria's eastern border with Chad. A deed that follows their overrunning of a military base in the same town the week before.

Baga, the scene of a Boko Haram raid on a Nigerian military base in the first week of January 2015, has since borne the savagery of a massacre of its residents by the same jihadists the following week.

The list grows and grows

Boko Haram - up to 2000 civilians killed last week, military base overrun the previous week. The group has also abducted hundreds of schoolgirls in multiple events over the past year, with the apparent best response that the West can muster (not to mention Nigeria's authorities) is a #Bring Back our Girls media campaign.


While social media was stirred by the "bring back our girls" campaign, complete with Hollywood celebrities (to wit, Anne Hathaway and husband) and politicians holding posters, it is clear that more than posters is needed to change the trend in Nigeria ... Photo from www.usmagazine.com

While Boko Haram has killed up to 10,000 civilians in 2014, that is Syria's civilian death toll in just the past two months alone, according to a report in the New York Times.

Pakistan's Tehrik-e-Taliban which killed over 130 students in Peshawar as 2014 drew to a close, is now issuing new threats to kill more.

Al Shabab's attack in a Kenyan mall last year ended with 67 dead; a bus attack this past November ended with 28 non-Muslim passengers separated out and shot; and again in December, another 36 non-Muslim quarry workers were separated out and executed.

And now in the past few days, the radical Islamic violence has hit France, where a "mere" 20 deaths, including three jihadists and three police, have captured the world's attention.


French security forces storm Jewish grocery in the second and related attack in Paris. Here 4 hostages were killed by a jihadist, and one policewoman the previous day, before the French police moved in killing the attacker holding hostages inside. Previously, as well, well covered, two jihadists stormed a newspaper building, executing 9 citizens, mainly journalists, along with two policemen attempting to stop the attackers.

Time to sharpen our vocabulary, even as a backlash forms

This is quickly becoming the issue for 2015 - how do we talk more clearly about jihadists, terrorists, extremists, and probe more seriously as to why the majority of the brutal and unrelenting string of atrocities stem from individuals referring to the Koran as their guide. It is important because this stream of violence is beginning to fuel a backlash across the Western world that can easily spill over into a variety of xenophobic themes, and hostility to numerous minorities.

In Germany, for example, a movement called Pegida (Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West) is swelling - with immigrants or at least lenient immigration policies the target, and anti-Muslim immigration in particular. Far broader and less extreme than the vitriol of Nazi-skinheads, the Pegida movement nonetheless provides shelter for these Nazi remnants, as well as other far-right groups espousing various strains of ethnic purity and hostility towards minorities.

In France, the National Front Party headed by Jean-Marie Le Pen,long been considered extreme with its emphasis on tight immigration controls, is suddenly becoming more appealing. In a recent New Yorker article, Jean Marie states, “It was to be expected. This attack is probably the beginning of the beginning. It’s an episode in the war that is being waged against us by Islamism. The blindness and deafness of our leaders, for years, is in part responsible for these kinds of attacks.”


Jean-Marie Le Pen, head of France's National Front party. Photo from the New Yorker, in an article written by Philip Gourevitch, a journalist who wrote extensively about the Rwanda massacre in 1994.

All across Europe, parties promoting narrow brands of nationalism and ethnic boundaries are challenging the underlying sentiments that have guided the European Union's growth. The latest French attacks deal a double blow - against civil society directly, and against tolerance and solidarity across borders indirectly.


A German anti-Islam rally attended by 15,000 in Dresden in mid-December, though authorities and counter demonstrators all are challenging the group's premise. Photo by Jens Meyer/AP Photo in Bloomberg News article.

It is late, but there is still time

A little mentioned detail regarding the police officer, Ahmed Merabet, killed point-blank by one of the jihadists attacking the Charlie Hebdo news building was that he was a Muslim. The slain officer's brother Malek, lamented "He was killed by people who pretend to be Muslims. They are terrorists, that's it."

And another young Muslim from Mali distinguished himself during the second jihadist attack on a Jewish grocery.


Lassana Bathily, an employee at the Hyper Cacher kosher supermarket in Vincennes,and a "practicing Muslim," helped guide a group of hostages into a downstairs walk-in freezer while gunman Amedy Coulibaly was preparing to kill them. According to reports, he escaped the building via a freight elevator and ran outside, where he assisted police by describing the location of the freezer where hostages were hiding. Photo from www.telegraph.co.uk

Still, there seems to be a shrill and repeated insistence among some leaders after every jihadist attack that "Islam is a religion of peace." It is to the point when that statement is repeated, that one can assume there must have just been another attack in the name of defending the Prophet, even if the details have not yet emerged.

And while it is understandable to refer to individuals killing in the name of Allah as "lone wolfs" "deranged", etc, one can't ignore that after 9/11, hundreds of Muslims were dancing in the streets in East Jerusalem. As one Israeli opinion piece noted after this past week's events, that was not limited to a reaction against US foreign policy. "Not all Muslims are terrorists, but almost all terrorists are Muslims," wrote Abdulrahman al-Rashed, the former general manager of the Al-Arabiya television news channel in the important Arabic newspaper Asharq al-Awsat. This is, in brief, Europe's big dilemma. Millions of Muslims have nothing to do with terror but, according to surveys, hundreds of thousands support jihad, suicide bombings and even the Islamic State." (noted in Ynet News, Ben-Dror Yemini 1-8-15)


Mr Al-Rashed believes there is an opening in the Arab media to tell both sides (and an opening then that must surely be seized). Photo from the New York Times,

Even Egypt's new President, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi remarked, "I am referring here to the religious clerics. We have to think hard about what we are facing — and I have, in fact, addressed this topic a couple of times before. It's inconceivable that the thinking that we hold most sacred should cause the entire umma (Islamic world) to be a source of anxiety, danger, killing and destruction for the rest of the world. Impossible!

"That thinking — I am not saying 'religion' but 'thinking' — that corpus of texts and ideas that we have sacralized over the years, to the point that departing from them has become almost impossible, is antagonizing the entire world. It's antagonizing the entire world!

"Is it possible that 1.6 billion people (Muslims) should want to kill the rest of the world's inhabitants — that is 7 billion — so that they themselves may live? Impossible! ... I say and repeat again that we are in need of a religious revolution. You, imams, are responsible before Allah. The entire world, I say it again, the entire world is waiting for your next move … because this umma is being torn, it is being destroyed, it is being lost — and it is being lost by our own hands."


Egyptian President al-Sisi heads the largest Arab nation in terms of population. Egypt is also burdened with a history of hosting extremist groups as the Muslim Brotherhood, al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya, and al-Qaeda which at the moment is headed up by a former Egyptian doctor, Ayman Al-Zawahiri. Photo from www.ndtv.com

France's President Hollande has declared war on "radical Islam." Teatree isn't sure what that will look like - perhaps it will be a coordinated effort to marginalize or even arrest inflammatory Imams - the same situation in Pakistan that seems to be avoided. This seems a good place to start.

Transitioning from what we're against to include what we're for, France's Prime Minister Manuel Valls declared, “It is a war against terrorism, against jihadism, against radical Islam, against everything that is aimed at breaking fraternity, freedom, solidarity ...”

Similarly, UK's Prime Minister Cameron was quoted months ago in a Daily Mail article,"Muslim clerics in the UK who inflame terrorism by denouncing free speech, equality and democracy will be opposed in a ‘muscular’ new defence of ‘British values’, David Cameron has pledged.


The North London Central Mosque has gained a reputation in the U.K as a center of radical preaching. Photo from muslimweb.over-blog.com

In a powerful intervention clearly aimed mainly at ‘preachers of hate’, the Prime Minister says the failure to stand up to such firebrands has ‘allowed extremism – both the violent and non-violent kind – to flourish’. It is time to stop being ‘squeamish about Britishness’ and tell everyone who lives here that refusing to accept British laws and the British way of life is ‘not an option’, Mr Cameron argues."

There is another issue of concern - symbolism and dress. While this concern seems somewhat foreign in the US, Germany has long banned the use of any Nazi symbolism in its de-nazification efforts, and the burqa has already been banned in France.

Burqa and full body robes were banned in France in 2010, though Teatree is not sure of how it is enforced or current status. Photo by Alexandre Renahy / JerryCom / Pix Palace

To take the other side, many felt the lash of Charlie Hebdo's irreverent cartoons and consider them unnecessarily provocative. And freedom of speech and expression finds limits with the example of falsely shouting fire in a crowded theater.

Today's marches across France to stand up against extremism, but more importantly for tolerance and liberty was inspiring, and important as the crowds were said to have totaled more than 3.7 million. From today's events, Teatree believes citizens everywhere need to be more active in pushing for the values we hold dear, if for no other reason than a lack of forceful response will lead to more violence and an even more chaotic backlash.


Estimates of over 3.7 million people gathered across France in solidarity against violent jihadism, 1.6 million in Paris alone. Now the hard work begins. Photo from english.manoramaonline.com

For Teatree, "jihadism" will be his term for describing the nihilistic, violent mayhem wrought by extremists in the name of Islam. Teatree, will nonetheless, consider cynically any studied attempt to ignore inflammatory language and preaching (preachers of hate)of violence in mosques. Bland statements such as "Islam is a religion of peace" are already, to this blogger, considered mere bromides that at times seem deliberate in order to sidestep more serious consideration.

If world leaders do not step up with proactive, serious (yes, and hopefully thoughtful) efforts to degrade and reject this growing stream of deadly jihadist teaching, there will likely be much less constructive backlash in the years to come.

Nigeria to Brunei - Islamic extremism in the news

Teatree assumes that most reasonably informed folks have picked up on the [latest] debacle in Nigeria. Boko Haram in northern Nigeria raided another school, but this time, took over 200 young girls away, with the intent of providing their Islamic warriors with "wives."

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Picture purportedly taken at the scene of the school raid and kidnapping ... from http://www.bet.com/news/global/2014/04/16/200

Time Magazine ran this piece written by a Charlene Alter, and the first few paragraphs puts things into perspective rather well. "We were fascinated with the search for the Malaysian plane and the search for survivors on the South Korean ferry. Why wasn't the media also focused on searching for the missing girls?

There’s nothing the media loves more than a good hunt. So for the past few months, news coverage has been dominated by the hunt for the missing Flight #MH370, the hunt for survivors on the South Korean ferry accident, even the hunt for 2016 presidential candidates. But when Boko Haram terrorists kidnapped more than 230 Nigerian girls from their school on the night of April 14, Wolf Blitzer and his fancy graphics were nowhere to be found.

Eighteen days ago, the girls were just high schoolers trying to get an education. Now they’ve been kidnapped by terrorists and likely sold into “marriages” to men in Chad and Cameroon.

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The Boko Haram extremists seem to have the ability to attack at will, while the Nigerian government shows the inability to even get the kidnapping story straight, much less do anything about it. Photo from www.sundayworld.com

Sister Rosemary Nyirumbe, who runs a shelter for girls abducted by Joseph Kony’s LRA in Uganda, says that’s just a euphemism for systematic rape. “This is not marriage,” she says. “They are being given in sex slavery. This is human trafficking. We should call evil by its name.” Sub-Saharan Africa is home to over 16% of the 29.8 million enslaved people in the world, and now these girls have likely joined their ranks."

The piece goes on, leaving it for us to ponder, "It’s atrocious that the Nigerian government has made almost no publicized effort to find the girls. Mausi Segun, a researcher for Human Rights Watch in Nigeria, said that people who live near the group’s suspected camps haven’t seen any security forces searching for the students, nobody from the government has reached out to the families, and the government even lied and said that most of the girls had been returned.

But the media enabled the government to sweep the whole thing under the rug by ignoring the story for weeks. The kidnapping was mentioned for the first time on American nightly news on May 1st, more than two weeks after the girls were taken, according to Andrew Tyndall, who runs the Tyndall Report analyzing TV news. NBC Nightly News ran the first story Thursday night, CBS ran a piece Friday morning, and ABC has been mum. The story never made the front page of the National Edition of the New York Times."

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Nigerian women protesting in Nigeria's capital - photo from motherjones.com

Teatree can only add that, once again Islamic extremists - right? - have found a way to justify all they do. (A 2013 book written by a Canadian woman Amanda Lindhout, titled "A House in the Sky", describes in more detail her own treatment at the hand of Islamists in Somalia, including the religious thought and verses in the Koran that give the men free rein). The Nigerian government remains a mystery, if not a travesty, to the concept of honest and competent governance. And more often than not, western media picks through to choose, often insanely, what are the stories to receive obsessive coverage, while giving minimal and tardy coverage to others.

On to Brunei

So, the Taliban and Boko Haram are savage throwbacks to the 7th century but with modern weaponry. But how does one assess the latest example of choosing a retrograde judicial code, in this case, the strange little country of Brunei, which has just imposed Sharia law on its citizens.

Brunei, half the size of the US state of Connecticut, similar in size to Prince Edward Island in Canada, and 2/3s the size of Corsica in France. Population over 410 thousand, nearly 70% ethnic Malay, and 11% Chinese. Graphic from www.tefl-tips.com

As an article from The Diplomat puts it, "Brunei has ignored a chorus of international pleas and imposed Sharia law on the 416,000 people who live in the tiny, oil-rich country, which has been ruled by an absolute monarch, Hassanal Bolkiah, for almost half a century.

The Sultan of Brunei, Hassanal Bolkiah. Photo from viola.bz

Bolkiah had attempted to justify the introduction of the strict Islamic penal code, arguing it was a type of special assistance from God to protect his Sultanate from outside, decadent influences, commonly found on the Internet.

“It is because of our need that Allah the Almighty, in all his generosity, has created laws for us, so that we can utilise them to obtain justice,” he said. He also recalled the long gone days of the Divine Right of Kings, when he said that God himself “has said this law is indeed fair.”

Stiff penalties, normally associated with countries like Afghanistan or Pakistan, that include stoning to death, floggings and the amputation of limbs are to be introduced for theft, adultery and gay relationships. Sodomy, along with blasphemy, drinking alcohol and pregnancy outside of marriage are also illegal. Penalties can be imposed on people who were under the age of 18 when a Sharia crime was committed."

So, let's consider:

From Wikipedia, "Brunei regained its independence from the United Kingdom on 1 January 1984. Economic growth during the 1990s and 2000s, averaging 56% from 1999 to 2008, has transformed Brunei into a newly industrialised country. It has developed wealth from extensive petroleum and natural gas fields. Brunei has the second-highest Human Development Index among the South East Asia nations after Singapore, and is classified as a developed country.[13] According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Brunei is ranked fifth in the world by gross domestic product per capita at purchasing power parity. The IMF estimated in 2011 that Brunei was one of two countries (the other being Libya) with a public debt at 0% of the national GDP. Forbes also ranks Brunei as the fifth-richest nation out of 182, based on its petroleum and natural gas fields."

The country is rich, Muslim, good health coverage, etc. We will see how Sharia law plays out- the more draconian aspects - stoning, amputations, etc - are supposed to come in as part of phase two next year.

One thing we might note is that our Sultan has certainly appropriated the good life for himself.

He has a collection of 5,000 cars.

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As the song goes, "these are just a few of my favorite things ..." Photo from http://blog.dupontregistry.com

He lives in a palace, though lots of other getaways as well.

The Istana-Nurul-Iman palace has 1778 rooms, reportedly, and apparently a nice little boat in front.

And the official Rolls Royce car - purely for government functions ...

Photo from http://wheeltowheel.blogspot.com

What does the Sultan of Brunei (perhaps the world's richest man), and the Boko Haram have in common - a desire to impose Sharia law on citizens or those around them.

Islamic extremist attacks in Africa bookend the past week

First, there was the horrific attack in Kenya's capital city on Saturday, September 21. A shopping mall targeted by al-Shabaab extremists, the carnage ending four days later with nearly 70 dead and 200 wounded. The coverage was extensive in the world press highlighting Kenya's visibility as the economic hub of East Africa. What also stood out in the attack is that while al-Shabaab took credit for the bloodshed, they had recruited ideologues from many countries, including the West.

Eight days later, Sunday, September 29, another Islamic extremist group, the notorious Boko Haram (fluidly meaning "Western education forbidden") attacked a college in Nigeria's troubled northeast state of Yobe, killing at least 50 students, many in their sleep. In this instance, the coverage will likely be much briefer and certainly less intense.

At the risk of sounding like a drum once again, the common thread, in Teatree's opinion, is the vigorous, violent religious-directed action of Islamic fundamentalists. It seems like many years ago (in the 1990s) that the world heard a host of excuses for the first attacks on Western targets - "it is what happens when the West ignores the plight of the poor, it is because of the West's oppression of the rest of the world, it is the presence of Israel and its occupation of Palestine," etc. Over time, with fellow Muslims taking the brunt of the bloodshed, these rationales have fallen away. What remains is an extremist vision of utopia - Sharia law - and the use of force to achieve it, and an equally bewildering hesitance in so much of the world to focus on it clearly.

Westgate shopping mall, Nairobi, Kenya

The attack of the Westgate mall was horrific, though what stands out most in Teatree's mind is the incredible acts of bravery by outmatched police and volunteers to lead individuals out of harms way through the corridors of the mall itself. Muslim, Christian, Hindi, others all helping each other. There is something so powerful to witness bravery in action, then and there, when so much is on the line.

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Rescue efforts broke past racial space, and human bonds emphasized. Photo from tv.msnbc.com by Amanda Sakuma

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Photo from Yahoo news, by Jason Straziuso

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We've learned that this individual in the police force is a Muslim who is credited with many acts of bravery and compassion. Photo from nydaily news by Philip Caulfield

Photo from terrorfreesomalia.blogspot by rahm Warsame

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Likewise, outgunned plainsclothes police and detectives - all races - worked together in the fluid situation. www.dailymail.co.uk

Later, there always plenty of stories and analysis, much true, much simply repeating stereotypes. The New York Times captured one thought well - that while Kenya showcases much of what is modern, its depth of security is overstated. While the "wananchi" shown, there remains the spectacle of rivalry between police and security forces. And all that overshadowed by the spectacle of Kenya's President and Vice President both facing charges over their influence in violence during the 2007 elections when 1,200 people died and more than 500,000 were uprooted from their homes.

College of Agriculture, Yobe state, Nigeria.

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The northeast provinces of Nigeria have for more than a decade been battered by a series of Islamic extremist attacks, the local Boko Haram demanding a state of their own, framed in Sharia law. This latest incident was in the state of Yobe. Graphic from www.rte.ie

In the comparatively sparse reports on Sunday's attack, up to 50 mainly male students at a local college were killed in their sleep by West Africa's premiere jihadists. Very few if any pictures have turned up yet - a testimony to the difficulty of media to get to these sites, and perhaps not the urgency ... As we read in allAfrica.com, "Residents believe the attack has the imprimatur of the extremist Boko Haram sect which has in the past three years slaughtered thousands of innocent Nigerians in attacks on schools, places of worship, media establishments and security installations.

Academic activities only resumed last week in schools across Yobe state following 10 weeks of closure after the brazen attack by members of the violent sect on two secondary schools, which led to the death of 29 students and three teachers. The state government ordered the closure of all schools in the northeastern state after the attack by members of the sect on Government Secondary School, Mamudo. But Government Secondary School, Mamudo, remained closed for another two weeks for the conclusion of ongoing reconstruction work in the school, the state Commissioner of Education, Mohammed Lamin said.

The Boko Haram sect had on Wednesday and Thursday murdered at least 27 persons in two separate attacks in the border towns of Borno State, government officials and security sources said. ..."

July 6, 2013, 30 killed in a Boko Haram attack on Mamudo Secondary School

In the latest AP report, "The extremists rode into the college in two double-cabin pickup all-terrain vehicles and on motorcycles, some dressed in Nigerian military camouflage uniforms, a surviving student, Ibrahim Mohammed, told the AP. He said they appeared to know the layout of the college, attacking the four male hostels but avoiding the one hostel reserved for women. "We ran into the bush, nobody is left in the school now," Mohammed said. Almost all those killed were Muslims, as is the college's student body, Usman said.

Much was made over al-Shabaab gunmen in the Kenya attack asking people if they were Muslim or not, and if so, they could flee. Yet in this tragedy in Nigeria, with no westerners around, Muslims were given no pass, rather were focused targets to make the extremists point (men, not women - who will find their rightful place later). And in fact, while western victims provoke a large international outcry and coverage, it has been the Muslim populations around the trouble-spots of the world who have borne the brunt of Islamic extremists.

As with Kenya, secondary reports just now starting to filter in include some disturbing news of a system out of whack. The necessary investment and discipline in providing security is simply not reliable or sufficient. In this case, the Nigerian government had promised police protection for schools if they would reopen after the July attacks. While the schools did, apparently the police protection did not come through, at least at this school.

In any case, it seems to Teatree that a struggle for Islam itself is underway - it is the central question underlying both the visible attacks on westerners and on the more frequent and less covered attacks on fellow believers of Allah. From recurring unrest in Tunisia, Libya, Mali, Nigeria, and even Sudan itself, the internal struggle rages on this continent, and on into the Middle East.

The US posture on terror ...

This past week, US President Obama outlined his policies for the world's lone superpower approach to tackling "the war on terror." While this blog normally avoids coverage of US politics and events (enough obsessive coverage available everywhere), this issue has worldwide implications for many countries already struggling to deal with terrorism (and its rather common strain of extremist Islamic purity).

US President Obama speaking May 23 on his administration's policies towards terrorism and warfare balanced by American ideals.

The speech by the president (available here as "his remarks as prepared for delivery") covered the past 15-20 years - pre-9/11, the first decade since that event, and now his attempt to begin shifting the nation's posture. In Teatree's estimation, here are his main points regarding applying US force around the world in the fight against terror:

* "Americans are deeply ambivalent about war, but having fought for our independence, we know that a price must be paid for freedom. ... From the Civil War, to our struggle against fascism, and through the long, twilight struggle of the Cold War, battlefields have changed, and technology has evolved. ... on September 11th 2001, we were shaken out of complacency. Thousands were taken from us, as clouds of fire, metal and ash descended upon a sun-filled morning. This was a different kind of war. No armies came to our shores, and our military was not the principal target. Instead, a group of terrorists came to kill as many civilians as they could. And so our nation went to war. We have now been at war for well over a decade."

US troops in Afghanistan

* Today, Osama bin Laden is dead, and so are most of his top lieutenants. There have been no large-scale attacks on the United States, and our homeland is more secure. Fewer of our troops are in harm’s way, and over the next 19 months they will continue to come home. Our alliances are strong, and so is our standing in the world. In sum, we are safer because of our efforts. Now make no mistake: our nation is still threatened by terrorists. From Benghazi to Boston, we have been tragically reminded of that truth. We must recognize, however, that the threat has shifted and evolved from the one that came to our shores on 9/11.

* "... America is at a crossroads. We must define the nature and scope of this struggle, or else it will define us, mindful of James Madison’s warning that “No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.” Neither I, nor any President, can promise the total defeat of terror. We will never erase the evil that lies in the hearts of some human beings, nor stamp out every danger to our open society. What we can do – what we must do – is dismantle networks that pose a direct danger, and make it less likely for new groups to gain a foothold, all while maintaining the freedoms and ideals that we defend."

* "Today, the core of al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan is on a path to defeat. Their remaining operatives spend more time thinking about their own safety than plotting against us. They did not direct the attacks in Benghazi or Boston. They have not carried out a successful attack on our homeland since 9/11. Instead, what we’ve seen is the emergence of various al Qaeda affiliates."

al Qaeda in Yemen remains the most active cell of the terror group - the nation of the US fatal drone strike against an American citizen - self styled Sheikh Awlaki.

* "Unrest in the Arab World has also allowed extremists to gain a foothold in countries like Libya and Syria. Here, too, there are differences from 9/11. In some cases, we confront state-sponsored networks like Hizbollah that engage in acts of terror to achieve political goals. Others are simply collections of local militias or extremists interested in seizing territory. While we are vigilant for signs that these groups may pose a transnational threat, most are focused on operating in the countries and regions where they are based."

* "Finally, we face a real threat from radicalized individuals here in the United States. Whether it’s a shooter at a Sikh Temple in Wisconsin; a plane flying into a building in Texas; or the extremists who killed 168 people at the Federal Building in Oklahoma City. ... Deranged or alienated individuals – often U.S. citizens or legal residents – can do enormous damage, particularly when inspired by larger notions of violent jihad. That pull towards extremism appears to have led to the shooting at Fort Hood, and the bombing of the Boston Marathon."

The strange case of Major Nidal Hasan - this administration seems to go to some lengths to minimize his Islamic extremist views and allegiance. Even today, "the U.S. Defense Department confirms Maj. Nidal Hasan, the Fort Hood massacre suspect, is still drawing his pay while those injured have been denied combat pay. Hasan, a military psychiatrist suspected of going on a shooting rampage at the Texas base that left 13 dead and 32 injured in 2009, has been paid $278,000 since the shooting," KXAS-TV, Dallas/Fort Worth, reported Tuesday.

* "Lethal yet less capable al Qaeda affiliates. Threats to diplomatic facilities and businesses abroad. Homegrown extremists. This is the future of terrorism. We must take these threats seriously, and do all that we can to confront them. But as we shape our response, we have to recognize that the scale of this threat closely resembles the types of attacks we faced before 9/11."

* "First, we must finish the work of defeating al Qaeda and its associated forces. In Afghanistan, we will complete our transition to Afghan responsibility for security. Our troops will come home. Our combat mission will come to an end. And we will work with the Afghan government to train security forces, and sustain a counter-terrorism force which ensures that al Qaeda can never again establish a safe-haven to launch attacks against us or our allies. Beyond Afghanistan, we must define our effort not as a boundless ‘global war on terror’ – but rather as a series of persistent, targeted efforts to dismantle specific networks of violent extremists that threaten America."

* "It is ... not possible for America to simply deploy a team of Special Forces to capture every terrorist. And even when such an approach may be possible, there are places where it would pose profound risks to our troops and local civilians– where a terrorist compound cannot be breached without triggering a firefight with surrounding tribal communities that pose no threat to us, or when putting U.S. boots on the ground may trigger a major international crisis. To put it another way, our operation in Pakistan against Osama bin Laden cannot be the norm. ... It is in this context that the United States has taken lethal, targeted action against al Qaeda and its associated forces, including with remotely piloted aircraft commonly referred to as drones."

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Drone strikes by the numbers during the past two administrations

* "Under domestic law, and international law, the United States is at war with al Qaeda, the Taliban, and their associated forces. We are at war with an organization that right now would kill as many Americans as they could if we did not stop them first. So this is a just war – a war waged proportionally, in last resort, and in self-defense. ... by the end of 2014 (after the US reduces its forces in Afghanistan), we will no longer have the same need for force protection, and the progress we have made against core al Qaeda will reduce the need for unmanned strikes. Beyond the Afghan theater, we only target al Qaeda and its associated forces."

* "when a U.S. citizen goes abroad to wage war against America – and is actively plotting to kill U.S. citizens; and when neither the United States, nor our partners are in a position to capture him before he carries out a plot – his citizenship should no more serve as a shield than a sniper shooting down on an innocent crowd should be protected from a swat team ..."

Hmmm, a drone strike roughly equivalent to a police swat team - what's your thought?

The US President talked long on other issues of more domestic concern - surveillance laws and policies, legal framework of drone strikes, authority of Congress regarding war and oversight responsibilities, as well as one of his passionate stances that Guantanamo be closed and re-purposed from indefinitely holding enemy combatants.

Guantanamo prisoners - enemy combatants - continue to trouble the US President more it seems than his drone strikes which he has rationalized as the equivalent of domestic swat teams in action. At one time the numbers held peaked between 558 and 579, as of March 2013, 166 detainees remain - most are not wanted by their home government. Dozens of those earlier released turned up in further conflicts.

What President Obama has attempted to do was provide his narrative to issues of national security, personal liberties, the country's ideals, and the nature of war and our limits. Each president to some degree attempts to provide a cohesive narrative for his policies. Just from World War II on, we've seen narratives through the Korean war, the dismantling of many colonies into independent nations in the early 60s, and the machinations through the decades-long Cold War (with many failures of moral consistency from CIA manipulations of various regimes in Africa to the Vietnam War to influences in South and Central America). President Reagan's robust challenge to the Soviet Union and its ultimate collapse in 1989-1991 was consistent with his strongly-worded narrative. Turmoil in the Balkans and the rise of Islamic extremism culminated during the Clinton years was not matched by any particular narrative (can anyone remember a Clinton doctrine?), but with the attack of 9/11, George W Bush did in fact theme his response as a "war on terror."

US President Reagan with his conservative UK ally, Margaret Thatcher. Reagan unequivocally challenged the Soviet Union, calling it an evil empire, and when six months later, after an incident where the Soviet airforce shot down an unarmed Korean civilian passenger jet near Seoul, the narrative was more firmly set.

Now we have seen the last two narratives. President George W Bush pushed a positive component of his war on terror narrative (that the US was prepared to fight terror especially in the form of Islamic extremism wherever and however necessary) during the Iraq war. This positive message was that people around the world longed for freedom, that the march of humanity was always towards freedom, and in spite of not finding weapons of mass destruction, the Iraqi people were better off than before, as democracy would work anywhere it was legitimately tried.

President Obama's narrative overall seems to Teatree to be a plausible and sensible one.. At least when it comes to America's armed response, very few will argue against at some point it is time to "stand down." The president lays out the case that it is now - when the conventional military footprint is reduced in Afghanistan next year, drone strikes, intelligence gathering and covert operations will remain wherever threats emerge. The President's narrative says these threats are much more local and regional in scope than harboring international aspirations.

Four musings to the above.

#1 Even plausible sensible narratives will over time either reflect reality well or be exposed as wishful thinking.

#2 When President Obama describes random individual attacks as just that, is he diminishing the overarching presence of Islamic extremism? Certainly his insistence that we always consider the Oklahoma City bombing, or a Wisconsin shooting involving a Sikh temple seems disconnected to his only lightly noting, "Unrest in the Arab World has also allowed extremists to gain a foothold in countries ..." Again and again, as we've seen in four incidents in just the past few days (the UK cleaver attack on a British soldier, the suicide bomber in Dagestan, a broader attack in Niger, and the stabbing of a French soldier on home soil) there is this underlying narrative involving Islamic exrtremist motivation.

The latest display of deranged violence in the name of Islamic purity - two individuals running over a British soldier on leave, then hacking at him with knives and meat cleavers.

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Even the "lone wolf" or opportunistic view of the UK killing has been quickly challenged by the emergence that one of the suspects, Michael Adebolajo, had been detained in Kenya in 2010 for his connections to Islamic extremists in neighboring Somalia.

#3 When does the Iran-Syria-Hezbollah alliance tip from its current regional crisis to a full blown geopolitical confrontation? Or has it already? Russia on the one side with these three nations, and the western democracies on the other.

Hezbollah defiantly declaring support for Syria's Assad, death to Israel, and being armed by Iran with Russia's tacit approval. Just a regional issue?

#4 How tightly will he cling to his narrative. The Benghazi attack on the US ambassador there is still being debated whether it was an example of the administration attempting to shape the facts to fit the Obama narrative. One only has to ask whatever happened to that individual who was detained for making up the disrespectful Islamic video that was the initial posture of the administration...

Yes, the familiar Muslim rage, a discredited video story - both difficult to place in a coherent narrative.

And so on we go.

Uganda's role in regional peacekeeping forces to end

Friday, November 2, the Uganda government announced it was going to withdraw its military forces from various regional UN-authorized peacekeeping efforts across Africa. The announcement is not a good omen for the efforts involved, most noticeably the sizable force considered the backbone of UN efforts to establish a legitimate government in Somalia.

The reason

The BBC notes that the UN infuriated the government of Uganda when it published an experts' report last month accusing Uganda of arming Congolese rebels. The report said Rwanda and Uganda were both supplying weapons to the M23 rebels in the DR Congo. This long running conflict has forced some 500,000 from their homes since April, 2012.

This M23 group - led by Bosco "Terminator" Ntaganda - who is wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) on war crimes charges - is merely the latest ascendance of constantly shifting and coalescing rebel groups in Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. The region has never been brought under control of any government since the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.

Bosco Ntaganda, operations leader of the latest ascendant rebel group, the M23, in the eastern region of the Democratic Republic of Congo

Rwanda's current leader, Paul Kagame(a Tutu) and Uganda, under the leadership of Yoweri Museveni, opposed the Hutu-led government and militias that slaughtered nearly a million Tutsis and moderate Hutus during that three month period in 1994, and during the past two decades Rwanda has continued to back armed groups in the east of DR Congo as a way to fight Hutu rebels who fled there after the genocide.

The troubled eastern region of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), with Rwanda and Uganda neighboring.

M23 rebels moving to a position

The BBC article continues by quoting, Mr Mukasa, Uganda's Security Minister, told a news conference: "If our efforts are going to be misinterpreted and we are going to be maligned, we want to be in a good relationship with our neighbours. "Let's stop all these initiatives. We will concentrate on ourselves. Whoever wants to cause us trouble, they will find us at our home."

Uganda Security Minister, Wilson Mukasa

Places where Uganda troops are stationed.

The BBC notes that operations in Somalia, the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of Congo will be affected. Uganda provides the largest contingent to the UN-backed African Union mission in Somalia (Amisom) (7500 of the force's 16500 total). The Amisom force has helped the Somali government gain ground against Islamist militias. Analysts say a rapid withdrawal of Ugandan troops could threaten those gains.

Over 7500 Ugandan troops serving under the UN flag in Somalia

Ugandan troops are deployed in smaller numbers to an international mission to CAR and DR Congo to hunt down the remaining elements of the Lord's Resistance Army and its leader, Joseph Kony.

Ugandan troops deployed to search for the LRA leader, Joseph Kony, in both Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of Congo

African conflicts across the midsection of the continent

The Horn of Africa - Somalia is the center of this large region of conflict - Islamists (Al Shabaab) and famine, piracy - with Ethiopian, Kenyan, Burundian, and Ugandan soldiers comprising the UN peacekeeping force establishing security in what is known as the prime example of a failed state.

Sudan/South Sudan - the continuing battle of Islamist Sudan vs the black African South Sudan - the current point of conflict is over oil resources along the two country's border.

Mali/Nigeria - both battling Islamists with Al Qaeda sympathies, along with corruption in their own government.

Rwanda/Democratic Republic of Congo - the longest, deadliest, and most under-reported conflict on the continent.

Troubles, troubles, everywhere.