November 12, 2007

Nigeria Busts An Al-Qaeda Ring

The war on terror shifts to Nigeria today, as the African nation announced it has captured a ring of al-Qaeda terrorists red-handed with explosives. Investigators cast a wide net and captured alleged terrorists in three different states. The men have suspected links to the Nigerian Taliban, unaffiliated with the Afghanistan/Pakistan version that got chased out of power following the 9/11 attacks:

A group of militants with suspected links to al-Qaeda in northern Nigeria has been arrested according to Nigeria's internal security service.

A State Security Service spokesman said men in three states were detained and explosive-making devices were found.

Nigeria has not suffered a terrorist attack and despite occasional arrests of suspected Islamic militants there is no evidence of al-Qaeda in Nigeria.

In September, the US embassy warned Nigeria is at risk of a terror attack.

A group of Islamic militants were found with fertiliser and explosive-making devices, following investigations in three states in northern Nigeria: Kano, Kaduna and Yobe.

Nigeria has not suffered a terrorist attack over the last several years, but seems rather vulnerable to extremism. They have only had moderately stable civilian rule, and even that for less than a decade. The country is evenly split between Muslims and others, primarily Christians. It has some significant oil revenues which have mostly disappeared through corruption and inefficiency.

Nigeria shares a short border in the northeast with Chad, which has its own active rebellion destabilizing the area. That region has Islamist tribes that control territory in a similar fashion as Waziristan in Pakistan. AQ could certainly recruit from these areas, and may already have done so, if this report is on the level; the arrests took place in that general area. The BBC notes that Nigeria has made such claims in the past but has not built cases afterwards, although the capture of explosive components seems to signal that they have more substance in these arrests.

If AQ has decided to extend its operations to Nigeria, that will show some resiliency on the part of AQ in Pakistan. Their reach could still be potent, and the capture of its operatives in Nigeria would demonstrate that, even if they proved unsuccessful in their mission. It shows how vulnerable a poverty-stricken and corrupt African continent can be to the terrorist impulse, and how easily AQ could inflame tribal tensions into an Islamist grassfire.

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