Wednesday, March 31, 2010
What Makes Chechen Women So Dangerous?
By ROBERT A. PAPE, LINDSEY O'ROURKE and JENNA McDERMIT
Published: March 30, 2010
Chicago
ALMOST every month for the past two years, Chechen suicide bombers have struck. Their targets can be anything from Russian soldiers to Chechen police officers to the innocent civilians who were killed on the subway in Moscow this week. We all know the horror that people willing to kill themselves can inflict. But do we really understand what drives young women and men to strap explosives on their bodies and deliberately kill themselves in order to murder dozens of people going about their daily lives?
Chechen suicide attackers do not fit popular stereotypes, contrary to the Russian government’s efforts to pigeonhole them. For years, Moscow has routinely portrayed Chechen bombers as Islamic extremists, many of them foreign, who want to make Islam the world’s dominant religion. Yet however much Russia may want to convince the West that this battle is part of a global war on terrorism, the facts about who becomes a Chechen suicide attacker — male or female — reveal otherwise.
The three of us, in our work for the Chicago Project on Security and Terrorism, have analyzed every Chechen suicide attack since they began in 2000, 42 separate incidents involving 63 people who killed themselves. Many Chechen separatists are Muslim, but few of the suicide bombers profess religious motives. The majority are male, but a huge fraction — over 40 percent — are women. Although foreign suicide attackers are not unheard of in Chechnya, of the 42 for whom we can determine place of birth, 38 were from the Caucasus. Something is driving Chechen suicide bombers, but it is hardly global jihad.
As we have discovered in our research on Lebanon, the West Bank, Iraq, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and elsewhere, suicide terrorist campaigns are almost always a last resort against foreign military occupation. Chechnya is a powerful demonstration of this phenomenon at work.
In the 1990s, the rebels kicked out tens of thousands of Russian troops who had been sent to the region to prevent Chechnya, a republic within the Russian Federation, from declaring independence. In 1999, the Russians came back — this time with more than 90,000 troops — and waged a well-documented scorched-earth campaign, killing an estimated 30,000 to 40,000 civilians out of a population of about 1 million. Ordinary guerrilla tactics and hostage-taking — the keys to ousting the Russians the first time — now got the rebels nowhere. New tactics were employed and women were central from the start.
On June 7, 2000, two Chechen women, Khava Barayeva and Luiza Magomadova, drove a truck laden with explosives into a Russian special forces building in Alkhan-Yurt, Chechnya; while the Russians insist only two soldiers were killed, the Chechen rebel claim of more than two dozen fatalities seems more likely.
This was the first Chechen suicide attack and showed the many advantages of female suicide bombers. They were deadly, as Chechen female attackers generally are, killing an average of 21 people per attack compared to 13 for males. Perhaps far more important, they could inspire others to follow in their footsteps, women and men alike.
Ms. Barayeva made a martyr video, as many suicide bombers do before their attacks. While warning Russia that she was attacking for Chechen independence, she also directed a powerful message clearly meant to provoke men to make similar sacrifices out of a sense of honor. She pleaded for Chechen men to “not take the woman’s role by staying at home”; so far, 32 men have answered her call.
Just as important, Ms. Barayeva is considered responsible for inspiring a movement of “black widows” — women who have lost a husband, child or close relative to the “occupation” and killed themselves on missions to even the score. In total, 24 Chechen females ranging in age from 15 to 37 have carried out suicide attacks, including the most deadly — the coordinated bombings of two passenger flights in August 2004 that caused 90 deaths and (according to Russian authorities) the subway blasts on Monday that killed nearly 40.
The bombers’ motives spring directly from their experiences with Russian troops, according to Abu al-Walid, a rebel leader who was killed in 2004. “These women, particularly the wives of the mujahedeen who were martyred, are being threatened in their homes, their honor [is] being threatened,” he explained in a video that appeared on Al Jazeera. “They do not accept being humiliated and living under occupation.”
And female suicide attackers have one more advantage: They can often travel inconspicuously to their targets. A July 2003 investigative report by the Russian news magazine Kommersant-Vlast found that a potential female suicide bomber could easily avoid public suspicion. Just days after a Chechen suicide bomber, Zarema Muzhakhoyeva, tried but failed to blow up a Moscow cafe in 2003, one of the magazine’s journalists — wearing a niqab, tightly clutching a black satchel to her chest, and behaving in a nervous manner — was able to get a table at the same cafe without ever being questioned. Perhaps not surprisingly, Chechen women have carried out 8 of the 10 suicide attacks in Moscow.
Although we are still learning the details of Monday’s bombings, there were warnings that a major attack in Russia was coming. Twice this year one of Chechnya’s leading rebel commanders, Doku Umarov, issued video statements warning of attacks in Russia proper. “The Russians think the war is distant,” he said. “Blood will not only spill in our towns and villages but also it will spill in their towns ... our military operations will encompass the entirety of Russia.” He also made clear that his campaign was not about restoring any Islamic caliphate, but about Chechen independence: “This is the land of our brothers and it is our sacred duty to liberate these lands.”
With so many Chechen suicide attacks, one could easily be forgiven for being skeptical about the prospects for a lasting peace. Yet, a closer examination of the conflict’s history suggests solutions that both sides may be able to accept.
The trajectory of Chechnya’s suicide campaign reveals a stark pattern: 27 attacks from June 2000 to November 2004, no attacks until October 2007, and 18 since. What explains the three-year pause?
The answer is loss of public support in Chechnya for the rebellion, for two reasons. The first was revulsion against the 2004 Beslan school massacre in which Chechen rebels murdered hundreds of Russian children. “A bigger blow could not have been dealt on us,” one of the separatists’ spokesmen said at the time. “People around the world will think that Chechens are beasts and monsters if they could attack children.” Second, the Russians pursued a robust hearts-and-minds program to win over the war-torn population. Military operations killed significantly fewer civilians. Amnesty was granted to rebel fighters and nearly 600 Chechen separatists surrendered in 2006 alone.
Unfortunately, the Russians then over-reached. Starting in late 2007, Moscow pressured the pro-Russian Chechen government of Ramzan Kadyrov to stamp out the remaining militants. It complied, pursuing an ambitious counterterrorism offensive with notably harsh measures of its own.
Suspected rebels were abducted and imprisoned, their families’ houses were burned, and there were widespread accusations of forced confessions and coerced testimony in trials. An investigation by The Times in February 2009 reported claims of extensive torture and executions under the Kadyrov administration, and detailed “efforts by Chechnya’s government to suppress knowledge of its policies through official lies, obstruction and witness intimidation.” There is one more riddle to explain: Why did the current wave of Chechen suicide attacks gain force in the spring of 2009 after Russia announced an end of all its military operations in Chechnya? Because the Kadyrov government’s counterterrorism measures had grown so harsh that some had actually begun to view Moscow as a moderating force in the region.
Still, the picture is clear: Chechen suicide terrorism is strongly motivated by both direct military occupation by Russia and by indirect military occupation by pro-Russia Chechen security forces. Building on the more moderate policies of 2005 to 2007 might not end every attack, but it could well reduce violence to a level both sides can live with.
Because the new wave of Chechen separatists see President Kadyrov as a puppet of the Kremlin, any realistic solution must improve the legitimacy of Chechnya’s core social institutions. An initial step would be holding free and fair elections. Others would include adopting internationally accepted standards of humane conduct among the security forces and equally distributing the region’s oil revenues so that Chechnya’s Muslims benefit from their own resources.
No political solution would resolve every issue. But the subway attacks should make clear to Russia that quelling the rebellion with diplomacy is in its security interests. As long as Chechens feel themselves under occupation — either directly by Russian troops or by their proxies — the cycle of violence will continue wreaking havoc across Russia.
Robert A. Pape is a professor of political science at the University of Chicago. Lindsey O’Rourke is a doctoral student there, and Jenna McDermit is an undergraduate majoring in anthropology.
Published: March 30, 2010
Chicago
ALMOST every month for the past two years, Chechen suicide bombers have struck. Their targets can be anything from Russian soldiers to Chechen police officers to the innocent civilians who were killed on the subway in Moscow this week. We all know the horror that people willing to kill themselves can inflict. But do we really understand what drives young women and men to strap explosives on their bodies and deliberately kill themselves in order to murder dozens of people going about their daily lives?
Chechen suicide attackers do not fit popular stereotypes, contrary to the Russian government’s efforts to pigeonhole them. For years, Moscow has routinely portrayed Chechen bombers as Islamic extremists, many of them foreign, who want to make Islam the world’s dominant religion. Yet however much Russia may want to convince the West that this battle is part of a global war on terrorism, the facts about who becomes a Chechen suicide attacker — male or female — reveal otherwise.
The three of us, in our work for the Chicago Project on Security and Terrorism, have analyzed every Chechen suicide attack since they began in 2000, 42 separate incidents involving 63 people who killed themselves. Many Chechen separatists are Muslim, but few of the suicide bombers profess religious motives. The majority are male, but a huge fraction — over 40 percent — are women. Although foreign suicide attackers are not unheard of in Chechnya, of the 42 for whom we can determine place of birth, 38 were from the Caucasus. Something is driving Chechen suicide bombers, but it is hardly global jihad.
As we have discovered in our research on Lebanon, the West Bank, Iraq, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and elsewhere, suicide terrorist campaigns are almost always a last resort against foreign military occupation. Chechnya is a powerful demonstration of this phenomenon at work.
In the 1990s, the rebels kicked out tens of thousands of Russian troops who had been sent to the region to prevent Chechnya, a republic within the Russian Federation, from declaring independence. In 1999, the Russians came back — this time with more than 90,000 troops — and waged a well-documented scorched-earth campaign, killing an estimated 30,000 to 40,000 civilians out of a population of about 1 million. Ordinary guerrilla tactics and hostage-taking — the keys to ousting the Russians the first time — now got the rebels nowhere. New tactics were employed and women were central from the start.
On June 7, 2000, two Chechen women, Khava Barayeva and Luiza Magomadova, drove a truck laden with explosives into a Russian special forces building in Alkhan-Yurt, Chechnya; while the Russians insist only two soldiers were killed, the Chechen rebel claim of more than two dozen fatalities seems more likely.
This was the first Chechen suicide attack and showed the many advantages of female suicide bombers. They were deadly, as Chechen female attackers generally are, killing an average of 21 people per attack compared to 13 for males. Perhaps far more important, they could inspire others to follow in their footsteps, women and men alike.
Ms. Barayeva made a martyr video, as many suicide bombers do before their attacks. While warning Russia that she was attacking for Chechen independence, she also directed a powerful message clearly meant to provoke men to make similar sacrifices out of a sense of honor. She pleaded for Chechen men to “not take the woman’s role by staying at home”; so far, 32 men have answered her call.
Just as important, Ms. Barayeva is considered responsible for inspiring a movement of “black widows” — women who have lost a husband, child or close relative to the “occupation” and killed themselves on missions to even the score. In total, 24 Chechen females ranging in age from 15 to 37 have carried out suicide attacks, including the most deadly — the coordinated bombings of two passenger flights in August 2004 that caused 90 deaths and (according to Russian authorities) the subway blasts on Monday that killed nearly 40.
The bombers’ motives spring directly from their experiences with Russian troops, according to Abu al-Walid, a rebel leader who was killed in 2004. “These women, particularly the wives of the mujahedeen who were martyred, are being threatened in their homes, their honor [is] being threatened,” he explained in a video that appeared on Al Jazeera. “They do not accept being humiliated and living under occupation.”
And female suicide attackers have one more advantage: They can often travel inconspicuously to their targets. A July 2003 investigative report by the Russian news magazine Kommersant-Vlast found that a potential female suicide bomber could easily avoid public suspicion. Just days after a Chechen suicide bomber, Zarema Muzhakhoyeva, tried but failed to blow up a Moscow cafe in 2003, one of the magazine’s journalists — wearing a niqab, tightly clutching a black satchel to her chest, and behaving in a nervous manner — was able to get a table at the same cafe without ever being questioned. Perhaps not surprisingly, Chechen women have carried out 8 of the 10 suicide attacks in Moscow.
Although we are still learning the details of Monday’s bombings, there were warnings that a major attack in Russia was coming. Twice this year one of Chechnya’s leading rebel commanders, Doku Umarov, issued video statements warning of attacks in Russia proper. “The Russians think the war is distant,” he said. “Blood will not only spill in our towns and villages but also it will spill in their towns ... our military operations will encompass the entirety of Russia.” He also made clear that his campaign was not about restoring any Islamic caliphate, but about Chechen independence: “This is the land of our brothers and it is our sacred duty to liberate these lands.”
With so many Chechen suicide attacks, one could easily be forgiven for being skeptical about the prospects for a lasting peace. Yet, a closer examination of the conflict’s history suggests solutions that both sides may be able to accept.
The trajectory of Chechnya’s suicide campaign reveals a stark pattern: 27 attacks from June 2000 to November 2004, no attacks until October 2007, and 18 since. What explains the three-year pause?
The answer is loss of public support in Chechnya for the rebellion, for two reasons. The first was revulsion against the 2004 Beslan school massacre in which Chechen rebels murdered hundreds of Russian children. “A bigger blow could not have been dealt on us,” one of the separatists’ spokesmen said at the time. “People around the world will think that Chechens are beasts and monsters if they could attack children.” Second, the Russians pursued a robust hearts-and-minds program to win over the war-torn population. Military operations killed significantly fewer civilians. Amnesty was granted to rebel fighters and nearly 600 Chechen separatists surrendered in 2006 alone.
Unfortunately, the Russians then over-reached. Starting in late 2007, Moscow pressured the pro-Russian Chechen government of Ramzan Kadyrov to stamp out the remaining militants. It complied, pursuing an ambitious counterterrorism offensive with notably harsh measures of its own.
Suspected rebels were abducted and imprisoned, their families’ houses were burned, and there were widespread accusations of forced confessions and coerced testimony in trials. An investigation by The Times in February 2009 reported claims of extensive torture and executions under the Kadyrov administration, and detailed “efforts by Chechnya’s government to suppress knowledge of its policies through official lies, obstruction and witness intimidation.” There is one more riddle to explain: Why did the current wave of Chechen suicide attacks gain force in the spring of 2009 after Russia announced an end of all its military operations in Chechnya? Because the Kadyrov government’s counterterrorism measures had grown so harsh that some had actually begun to view Moscow as a moderating force in the region.
Still, the picture is clear: Chechen suicide terrorism is strongly motivated by both direct military occupation by Russia and by indirect military occupation by pro-Russia Chechen security forces. Building on the more moderate policies of 2005 to 2007 might not end every attack, but it could well reduce violence to a level both sides can live with.
Because the new wave of Chechen separatists see President Kadyrov as a puppet of the Kremlin, any realistic solution must improve the legitimacy of Chechnya’s core social institutions. An initial step would be holding free and fair elections. Others would include adopting internationally accepted standards of humane conduct among the security forces and equally distributing the region’s oil revenues so that Chechnya’s Muslims benefit from their own resources.
No political solution would resolve every issue. But the subway attacks should make clear to Russia that quelling the rebellion with diplomacy is in its security interests. As long as Chechens feel themselves under occupation — either directly by Russian troops or by their proxies — the cycle of violence will continue wreaking havoc across Russia.
Robert A. Pape is a professor of political science at the University of Chicago. Lindsey O’Rourke is a doctoral student there, and Jenna McDermit is an undergraduate majoring in anthropology.
Friday, March 26, 2010
 |
 Dmitry Gets No RespectPresident Dmitry Medvedev plays an unconvincing tough guy. And the more he tries to act tough, the weaker he looks. |
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
The War on Drugs is Doomed
They say that the first step in dealing with a problem is acknowledging that you have one. It is therefore good news that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will lead a delegation to Mexico tomorrow to talk with officials there about efforts to fight the mob violence that is being generated in Mexico by the war on drugs. U.S. recognition of this shared problem is healthy.
But that's where the good news is likely to end.
Violence along the border has skyrocketed ever since Mexican President Felipe Calderón decided to confront the illegal drug cartels that operate there. Some 7,000 troops now patrol Juárez, a city of roughly one million. Yet even militarization has not delivered the peace. The reason is simple enough: The source of the problem is not Mexican supply. It is American demand coupled with prohibition.
It is doubtful that this will be acknowledged at tomorrow's meeting. The drug-warrior industry, which includes both the private-sector and a massive government bureaucracy devoted to "enforcement," has an enormous economic incentive to keep the war raging. In Washington politics both groups have substantial influence. So it is likely that we are going to get further plans to turn Juárez into a police state with the promise that more guns, tanks, helicopters and informants can stop Mexican gangsters from shoving drugs up American noses.
Last week's gangland-style slaying of an unborn baby and three adults who had ties to the U.S. Consulate in Juárez has drawn attention to Mrs. Clinton's trip. The incident stunned Americans. Yet tragic as they were, statistically those four deaths don't create even a blip on the body-count chart. The running tally of drug-trafficking linked deaths in Juárez since December 2006 is more than 5,350. There has also been a high cost to the city's economy as investors and tourists have turned away.
Even with low odds of a productive outcome, though, Mexico can't afford to write off tomorrow's meeting. It is an opportunity that, handled correctly, could provide for a teachable moment. I suggest that one or two of Mexico's very fine economists trained at the University of Chicago by Milton Friedman sit down with President Obama's team to explain a few things about how markets work. They could begin by outlining the path that a worthless weed travels to become the funding for the cartel's firepower. In this Econ 101 lesson, students will learn how the lion's share of the profit is in getting the stuff over the U.S. border to the American consumer. In football terms, Juárez is first and goal.
Mexico hasn't always been an important playing field for drug cartels. For many years cocaine traffickers used the Caribbean to get their product to their customers in the largest and richest market in the hemisphere. But when the U.S. redoubled its efforts to block shipments traveling by sea, the entrepreneurs shifted to land routes through Central America and Mexico.
Mexican traffickers now handle cocaine but traditional marijuana smuggling is their cash cow, despite competition from stateside growers. In a February 2009 interview, then-Mexican Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora told me that half of the cartel's annual income was derived from marijuana.
This is especially troubling for Mexican law enforcement because marijuana use, through medical marijuana outlets and general social acceptance, has become de facto legal in the U.S., and demand is robust. The upshot is that consumption is cool while production, trafficking and distribution are organized-crime activities. This is what I called in a previous column, "a stimulus plan for Mexican gangsters."
The Americas in the News
Get the latest information in Spanish from The Wall Street Journal's Americas page.
In much of the world, where institutions are weak and folks are poor, the high value that prohibition puts into drugs means that the thugs rule. Mr. Medina Mora told me in the same 2009 interview that Mexico estimated the annual cash flow from U.S. drug consumers to Mexico at around $10 billion, which of course explains why the cartels are so well armed and also able to grease the system. It also explains why Juárez is today a killing field.
Supply warriors might have a better argument if the billions of dollars spent defoliating the Colombian jungle, chasing fast boats and shooting down airplanes for the past four decades had reduced drug use. Yet despite passing victories like taking out 1980s kingpin Pablo Escobar and countless other drug lords since then, narcotics are still widely available in the U.S. and some segment of American society remains enthusiastic about using them. In some places terrorist organizations like Colombia's FARC rebels and al Qaeda have replaced traditional cartels.
There is one ray of hope for innocent victims of the war on drugs. Last week the Journal reported that Drug Enforcement Administration agents were questioning members of an El Paso gang about their possible involvement in the recent killings in Juárez. If the escalation is now spilling over into the U.S., Americans may finally have to face their role in the mess. Mrs. Clinton's mission will only add value if it reflects awareness of that reality.
Write to O'Grady@wsj.com
But that's where the good news is likely to end.
Violence along the border has skyrocketed ever since Mexican President Felipe Calderón decided to confront the illegal drug cartels that operate there. Some 7,000 troops now patrol Juárez, a city of roughly one million. Yet even militarization has not delivered the peace. The reason is simple enough: The source of the problem is not Mexican supply. It is American demand coupled with prohibition.
It is doubtful that this will be acknowledged at tomorrow's meeting. The drug-warrior industry, which includes both the private-sector and a massive government bureaucracy devoted to "enforcement," has an enormous economic incentive to keep the war raging. In Washington politics both groups have substantial influence. So it is likely that we are going to get further plans to turn Juárez into a police state with the promise that more guns, tanks, helicopters and informants can stop Mexican gangsters from shoving drugs up American noses.
Last week's gangland-style slaying of an unborn baby and three adults who had ties to the U.S. Consulate in Juárez has drawn attention to Mrs. Clinton's trip. The incident stunned Americans. Yet tragic as they were, statistically those four deaths don't create even a blip on the body-count chart. The running tally of drug-trafficking linked deaths in Juárez since December 2006 is more than 5,350. There has also been a high cost to the city's economy as investors and tourists have turned away.
Even with low odds of a productive outcome, though, Mexico can't afford to write off tomorrow's meeting. It is an opportunity that, handled correctly, could provide for a teachable moment. I suggest that one or two of Mexico's very fine economists trained at the University of Chicago by Milton Friedman sit down with President Obama's team to explain a few things about how markets work. They could begin by outlining the path that a worthless weed travels to become the funding for the cartel's firepower. In this Econ 101 lesson, students will learn how the lion's share of the profit is in getting the stuff over the U.S. border to the American consumer. In football terms, Juárez is first and goal.
Mexico hasn't always been an important playing field for drug cartels. For many years cocaine traffickers used the Caribbean to get their product to their customers in the largest and richest market in the hemisphere. But when the U.S. redoubled its efforts to block shipments traveling by sea, the entrepreneurs shifted to land routes through Central America and Mexico.
Mexican traffickers now handle cocaine but traditional marijuana smuggling is their cash cow, despite competition from stateside growers. In a February 2009 interview, then-Mexican Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora told me that half of the cartel's annual income was derived from marijuana.
This is especially troubling for Mexican law enforcement because marijuana use, through medical marijuana outlets and general social acceptance, has become de facto legal in the U.S., and demand is robust. The upshot is that consumption is cool while production, trafficking and distribution are organized-crime activities. This is what I called in a previous column, "a stimulus plan for Mexican gangsters."
The Americas in the News
Get the latest information in Spanish from The Wall Street Journal's Americas page.
In much of the world, where institutions are weak and folks are poor, the high value that prohibition puts into drugs means that the thugs rule. Mr. Medina Mora told me in the same 2009 interview that Mexico estimated the annual cash flow from U.S. drug consumers to Mexico at around $10 billion, which of course explains why the cartels are so well armed and also able to grease the system. It also explains why Juárez is today a killing field.
Supply warriors might have a better argument if the billions of dollars spent defoliating the Colombian jungle, chasing fast boats and shooting down airplanes for the past four decades had reduced drug use. Yet despite passing victories like taking out 1980s kingpin Pablo Escobar and countless other drug lords since then, narcotics are still widely available in the U.S. and some segment of American society remains enthusiastic about using them. In some places terrorist organizations like Colombia's FARC rebels and al Qaeda have replaced traditional cartels.
There is one ray of hope for innocent victims of the war on drugs. Last week the Journal reported that Drug Enforcement Administration agents were questioning members of an El Paso gang about their possible involvement in the recent killings in Juárez. If the escalation is now spilling over into the U.S., Americans may finally have to face their role in the mess. Mrs. Clinton's mission will only add value if it reflects awareness of that reality.
Write to O'Grady@wsj.com
Friday, March 19, 2010
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Will Nigeria Survive?
By Gwynne Dyer
There are notable differences between Woodrow Wilson, the 28th president of the United States, and Umaru Yar'Adua, the current president (more or less) of Nigeria.
For one thing, Yar'Adua did not found the League of Nations or win the Nobel Peace Prize, whereas Wilson did.
For another, Wilson was the president of Princeton University before he entered politics, whereas Umaru Yar'Adua's highest academic post was a lecturer in chemistry at the College of Arts, Science and Technology in Zaria, Kaduna State. But there is one striking similarity between the two men.
In 1919, about halfway through his second term as president, Wilson suffered a stroke that left him paralyzed on his left side and blind in his left eye. He never recovered sufficiently to resume carrying out the duties of the president ― but almost nobody knew it at the time.
Wilson's wife Edith safeguarded his position by allowing almost nobody else access to him for the last 17 months of his term. Even the vice-president and the cabinet almost never got in to see him. In effect, it was she who acted as the country's chief executive.
More recently, last November, President Yar'Adua unexpectedly left Nigeria for medical treatment in Saudi Arabia ― and didn't come back. He had made no arrangements for the vice-president to take over his duties while he was gone, but he remained abroad for three months, in a hospital bed and virtually incommunicado, while the business of government was paralyzed in Africa's most populous country.
Very little information was released about the precise nature of his illness, either. He already had serious kidney problems, but this time it was said that he had been struck down by acute pericarditis, an inflammation of the tissue surrounding the heart.
As the weeks passed and the unmade decisions piled up in Abuja, Nigeria's capital, suspicions grew that he was on life support and might never resume power again.
Finally, last month, the Nigerian Senate declared that Vice-President Goodluck Jonathan should become the acting president and carry out Yar'Adua's duties until such time as he might recover.
Soon afterwards Yar'Adua was flown back into Nigeria and driven to the presidential villa in the middle of the night.
Statements by his aides pointedly refer to ``Vice-President" Jonathan, implying that Yar'Adua is back in charge.
However, he spent his first week home in the back of an ambulance, while an intensive care facility was built inside the presidential villa.
His wife Turai has taken control of his agenda, and is allowing almost nobody in to see him. Even Goodluck Jonathan has been turned away repeatedly.
Yar'Adua's return, however incapacitated he may be, has severely undermined Jonathan's ability to take major decisions. He may be the acting president, but he cannot actually act. And so the paralysis in Nigeria deepens.
What is really going on here is the latest round in the perpetual power struggle among Nigeria's ultra-rich elites.
Political power matters greatly to them, since their wealth mainly derives from stealing the resources of the state, and in practice the competition is between the northern elite, who are Muslim, and the southern elite, who are Christian. Yar'Adua is a Muslim; Jonathan is a Christian.
It is a competition that has sometimes come close to tearing the country apart, and the animosities it generates play out at street level in the form of occasional massacres that seem to be religious in motivation.
Mass murders of Christian villagers in Plateau state early this month, for example, were probably retaliation for a similar mass killing of Muslims in January ― and the tit-for-tat massacres actually go back for many years.
But neither at the national nor at the village level is this struggle really about religious differences.
The desperate attempt to keep a (probably comatose) Umaru Yar'Adua in power is happening because replacing him in mid-term with Goodluck Jonathan violates a gentleman's agreement in the ruling party that Muslim and Christian leaders should alternate in power so that everybody who matters gets a fair turn at the trough.
Similarly, the massacres in Plateau state, which lies on the border between northern, Muslim Nigeria and the southern, Christian half of the country, are actually due to a conflict over land between the local farmers (whose Berom ethnic group happens to be Christian), and Fulani-speaking pastoralists who happen to be Muslim.
A struggle for power at the top, a struggle for land at the bottom, both defined as Muslims vs. Christians: It sounds like a formula for breaking Nigeria in two.
But it will probably never happen so long as Nigerian politics remains a conspiracy of the rich against the poor.
The northern elite plays the Muslim card repeatedly to preserve its monopoly of power in the northern states, but it will never stop collaborating with the southern elite to maintain the status quo, because all the oil is in the south.
The two groups compete fiercely over the division of the spoils, but if the north ever really seceded from Nigeria, the northern elite would lose its access to the oil revenues that keep it rich.
Gwynne Dyer is a London-based independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries.
There are notable differences between Woodrow Wilson, the 28th president of the United States, and Umaru Yar'Adua, the current president (more or less) of Nigeria.
For one thing, Yar'Adua did not found the League of Nations or win the Nobel Peace Prize, whereas Wilson did.
For another, Wilson was the president of Princeton University before he entered politics, whereas Umaru Yar'Adua's highest academic post was a lecturer in chemistry at the College of Arts, Science and Technology in Zaria, Kaduna State. But there is one striking similarity between the two men.
In 1919, about halfway through his second term as president, Wilson suffered a stroke that left him paralyzed on his left side and blind in his left eye. He never recovered sufficiently to resume carrying out the duties of the president ― but almost nobody knew it at the time.
Wilson's wife Edith safeguarded his position by allowing almost nobody else access to him for the last 17 months of his term. Even the vice-president and the cabinet almost never got in to see him. In effect, it was she who acted as the country's chief executive.
More recently, last November, President Yar'Adua unexpectedly left Nigeria for medical treatment in Saudi Arabia ― and didn't come back. He had made no arrangements for the vice-president to take over his duties while he was gone, but he remained abroad for three months, in a hospital bed and virtually incommunicado, while the business of government was paralyzed in Africa's most populous country.
Very little information was released about the precise nature of his illness, either. He already had serious kidney problems, but this time it was said that he had been struck down by acute pericarditis, an inflammation of the tissue surrounding the heart.
As the weeks passed and the unmade decisions piled up in Abuja, Nigeria's capital, suspicions grew that he was on life support and might never resume power again.
Finally, last month, the Nigerian Senate declared that Vice-President Goodluck Jonathan should become the acting president and carry out Yar'Adua's duties until such time as he might recover.
Soon afterwards Yar'Adua was flown back into Nigeria and driven to the presidential villa in the middle of the night.
Statements by his aides pointedly refer to ``Vice-President" Jonathan, implying that Yar'Adua is back in charge.
However, he spent his first week home in the back of an ambulance, while an intensive care facility was built inside the presidential villa.
His wife Turai has taken control of his agenda, and is allowing almost nobody in to see him. Even Goodluck Jonathan has been turned away repeatedly.
Yar'Adua's return, however incapacitated he may be, has severely undermined Jonathan's ability to take major decisions. He may be the acting president, but he cannot actually act. And so the paralysis in Nigeria deepens.
What is really going on here is the latest round in the perpetual power struggle among Nigeria's ultra-rich elites.
Political power matters greatly to them, since their wealth mainly derives from stealing the resources of the state, and in practice the competition is between the northern elite, who are Muslim, and the southern elite, who are Christian. Yar'Adua is a Muslim; Jonathan is a Christian.
It is a competition that has sometimes come close to tearing the country apart, and the animosities it generates play out at street level in the form of occasional massacres that seem to be religious in motivation.
Mass murders of Christian villagers in Plateau state early this month, for example, were probably retaliation for a similar mass killing of Muslims in January ― and the tit-for-tat massacres actually go back for many years.
But neither at the national nor at the village level is this struggle really about religious differences.
The desperate attempt to keep a (probably comatose) Umaru Yar'Adua in power is happening because replacing him in mid-term with Goodluck Jonathan violates a gentleman's agreement in the ruling party that Muslim and Christian leaders should alternate in power so that everybody who matters gets a fair turn at the trough.
Similarly, the massacres in Plateau state, which lies on the border between northern, Muslim Nigeria and the southern, Christian half of the country, are actually due to a conflict over land between the local farmers (whose Berom ethnic group happens to be Christian), and Fulani-speaking pastoralists who happen to be Muslim.
A struggle for power at the top, a struggle for land at the bottom, both defined as Muslims vs. Christians: It sounds like a formula for breaking Nigeria in two.
But it will probably never happen so long as Nigerian politics remains a conspiracy of the rich against the poor.
The northern elite plays the Muslim card repeatedly to preserve its monopoly of power in the northern states, but it will never stop collaborating with the southern elite to maintain the status quo, because all the oil is in the south.
The two groups compete fiercely over the division of the spoils, but if the north ever really seceded from Nigeria, the northern elite would lose its access to the oil revenues that keep it rich.
Gwynne Dyer is a London-based independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries.
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Monday, March 15, 2010
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Friday, March 5, 2010
Mexican drug gangs use U.S. national parks as pot fields
SEQUOIA NATIONAL FOREST, Calif. (AP) — Not far from the waterfalls of Yosemite and in the middle of California’s redwood forests, Mexican drug gangs are quietly commandeering U.S. public land to grow millions of marijuana plants and using smuggled immigrants to cultivate them.
Marijuana has been grown on public lands for decades, but Mexican traffickers have taken it to a whole new level: using armed guards and tripwires to safeguard sprawling plots that in some cases contain tens of thousands of plants offering a potential yield of more than 30 tons of pot a year.
“Just like the Mexicans took over the methamphetamine trade, they’ve gone to mega, monster gardens,” said Brent Wood, a supervisor in the California Department of Justice’s Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement. He said Mexican traffickers have “supersized” the marijuana trade.
Interviews conducted by the Associated Press with law enforcement officials across the country found that Mexican gangs are largely responsible for a spike in large-scale marijuana farms over the past several years.
Local, state and federal agents found about a million more pot plants each year between 2004 and 2008, and authorities estimated that 75 percent to 90 percent of the new marijuana farms can be linked to Mexican gangs.
In 2008 alone, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration, police across the country confiscated or destroyed 7.6 million plants from about 20,000 outdoor plots.
Growing marijuana in the United States saves traffickers the risk and expense of smuggling pot across the border and allows gangs to produce crops closer to local markets.
Distribution also becomes less risky. Once the marijuana is harvested and dried on the hidden farms, drug gangs can drive it to major cities, where it is distributed to street dealers and sold along with pot that was grown in Mexico.
About the only risk to the Mexican growers, experts say, is that a stray hiker or hunter could stumble onto a hidden field.
The remote plots are nestled under the cover of thick forest canopies in places such as Sequoia National Forest, or hidden high in the rugged-yet-fertile Sierra Nevadas. Others are secretly planted on remote stretches of Texas ranchland.
All of the sites are far from the eyes of law enforcement, where growers can take the time needed to grow far more potent marijuana. Farmers of these fields use illegal fertilizers to help the plants, and the use cloned female plants to reduce the amount of seed in the bud that is dried and eventually sold.
Mexican gang plots can often be distinguished from those of domestic-based growers, who usually cultivate much smaller fields with perhaps 100 plants and no security measures.
Some of the fields tied to the drug gangs have as many as 75,000 plants, each of which can yield at least a pound of pot annually, according to federal data reviewed by the AP.
Sequoia National Forest in central California is covered in a patchwork of pot fields, most of which are hidden along mountain creeks and streams, far from hiking trails. It’s the same in the nearby Yosemite, Sequoia and Redwood National Parks.
Even if they had the number of people necessary to police the vast wilderness, authorities say terrain and weather conditions often keep them from finding the farms, except accidentally.
Many of the plots are encircled with crude explosives. The plots are patrolled by guards brandishing machine guns who survey the perimeter from the ground and from perches high in the trees.
The farms are growing in sophistication and are increasingly cultivated by illegal immigrants, many of whom have been brought to the United States from Michoacán state.
Growers once slept among their plants, but many of them now have campsites up to a mile away equipped with separate living and cooking areas.
“It’s amazing how they have changed the way they do business,” Wood said. “It’s their domain.”
Drug gangs have also imported marijuana experts and unskilled labor to help find the best land or build irrigation systems, Wood said.
Moyses Mesa Barajas had just arrived in eastern Washington state from Michoacán when he was approached to work in a pot field. He was taken almost immediately to a massive crop hidden in the Wenatchee National Forest, where he managed the watering of the plants.
He was arrested in 2008 in a raid and sentenced to more than six years in federal prison. Several other men wearing camouflage fled before police could stop them.
“I thought it would be easy,” Barajas told the AP in a jailhouse interview. “I didn’t think it would be a big crime.”
Scott Stewart, vice president for tactical intelligence at Stratfor, a global intelligence company in Austin, Texas, said recruiters look for people who still have family in Mexico so they can use them as leverage to keep the farmers working — and to keep them quiet.
“If they send Jose from the hometown and Jose rips them off, they are going to go after Jose’s family,” Stewart said. “It’s big money.”
When the harvest is complete, investigators say, pot farm workers haul the product in garbage bags to drop-off points that are usually the same places where they get resupplied with food and fuel.
Agents routinely find the discarded remnants of camp life when they discover marijuana fields. It’s not uncommon to discover pots and pans, playing cards and books, half-eaten bags of food and empty beer cans.
But the growers leave more than litter to worry about. They often use animal poisons that can pollute mountain streams and groundwater meant for legitimate farmers and ranchers.
Because of the tree cover, armed pot farmers have a tactical advantage over law enforcement agents.
“They know the terrain better than we do,” said Lt. Rick Ko, a drug investigator with the Sheriff’s Office in Fresno, Calif. “Before we even see them, they can shoot us.”
“If we are getting 40 to 50 percent (of fields), I think we are doing well,” said Michigan State Police 1st Lt. Dave Peltomaa. “I really don’t think we are close to 50 percent. We don’t have the resources.”
Vast amounts of pot are still smuggled into the United States from Mexico. Federal officials report nearly daily hauls of several hundred to several thousand pounds seized along the border. But drug agents say the boom in domestic growing is a sign of diversification by traffickers.
Officials say arrests of farmers are rare, though the Sheriff’s Office in Fresno did nab more than 100 suspects during two weeks of raids last summer. But when field hands are arrested, most tell authorities only about their specific job.
When asked who hired him, Mesa repeatedly told an AP reporter, “I can’t tell you.”
Washington State Patrol Lt. Richard Wiley said hired hands either do not know who the boss is or are too frightened to give details.
“They are fearful of what may happen to them if they were to snitch on these coyote people,” Wiley said of the recruiters and smugglers who bring marijuana farmers into the country. “That’s organized crime of a different fashion. There’s nothing to gain from (talking), but there’s a lot to lose.”
Marijuana has been grown on public lands for decades, but Mexican traffickers have taken it to a whole new level: using armed guards and tripwires to safeguard sprawling plots that in some cases contain tens of thousands of plants offering a potential yield of more than 30 tons of pot a year.
“Just like the Mexicans took over the methamphetamine trade, they’ve gone to mega, monster gardens,” said Brent Wood, a supervisor in the California Department of Justice’s Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement. He said Mexican traffickers have “supersized” the marijuana trade.
Interviews conducted by the Associated Press with law enforcement officials across the country found that Mexican gangs are largely responsible for a spike in large-scale marijuana farms over the past several years.
Local, state and federal agents found about a million more pot plants each year between 2004 and 2008, and authorities estimated that 75 percent to 90 percent of the new marijuana farms can be linked to Mexican gangs.
In 2008 alone, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration, police across the country confiscated or destroyed 7.6 million plants from about 20,000 outdoor plots.
Growing marijuana in the United States saves traffickers the risk and expense of smuggling pot across the border and allows gangs to produce crops closer to local markets.
Distribution also becomes less risky. Once the marijuana is harvested and dried on the hidden farms, drug gangs can drive it to major cities, where it is distributed to street dealers and sold along with pot that was grown in Mexico.
About the only risk to the Mexican growers, experts say, is that a stray hiker or hunter could stumble onto a hidden field.
The remote plots are nestled under the cover of thick forest canopies in places such as Sequoia National Forest, or hidden high in the rugged-yet-fertile Sierra Nevadas. Others are secretly planted on remote stretches of Texas ranchland.
All of the sites are far from the eyes of law enforcement, where growers can take the time needed to grow far more potent marijuana. Farmers of these fields use illegal fertilizers to help the plants, and the use cloned female plants to reduce the amount of seed in the bud that is dried and eventually sold.
Mexican gang plots can often be distinguished from those of domestic-based growers, who usually cultivate much smaller fields with perhaps 100 plants and no security measures.
Some of the fields tied to the drug gangs have as many as 75,000 plants, each of which can yield at least a pound of pot annually, according to federal data reviewed by the AP.
Sequoia National Forest in central California is covered in a patchwork of pot fields, most of which are hidden along mountain creeks and streams, far from hiking trails. It’s the same in the nearby Yosemite, Sequoia and Redwood National Parks.
Even if they had the number of people necessary to police the vast wilderness, authorities say terrain and weather conditions often keep them from finding the farms, except accidentally.
Many of the plots are encircled with crude explosives. The plots are patrolled by guards brandishing machine guns who survey the perimeter from the ground and from perches high in the trees.
The farms are growing in sophistication and are increasingly cultivated by illegal immigrants, many of whom have been brought to the United States from Michoacán state.
Growers once slept among their plants, but many of them now have campsites up to a mile away equipped with separate living and cooking areas.
“It’s amazing how they have changed the way they do business,” Wood said. “It’s their domain.”
Drug gangs have also imported marijuana experts and unskilled labor to help find the best land or build irrigation systems, Wood said.
Moyses Mesa Barajas had just arrived in eastern Washington state from Michoacán when he was approached to work in a pot field. He was taken almost immediately to a massive crop hidden in the Wenatchee National Forest, where he managed the watering of the plants.
He was arrested in 2008 in a raid and sentenced to more than six years in federal prison. Several other men wearing camouflage fled before police could stop them.
“I thought it would be easy,” Barajas told the AP in a jailhouse interview. “I didn’t think it would be a big crime.”
Scott Stewart, vice president for tactical intelligence at Stratfor, a global intelligence company in Austin, Texas, said recruiters look for people who still have family in Mexico so they can use them as leverage to keep the farmers working — and to keep them quiet.
“If they send Jose from the hometown and Jose rips them off, they are going to go after Jose’s family,” Stewart said. “It’s big money.”
When the harvest is complete, investigators say, pot farm workers haul the product in garbage bags to drop-off points that are usually the same places where they get resupplied with food and fuel.
Agents routinely find the discarded remnants of camp life when they discover marijuana fields. It’s not uncommon to discover pots and pans, playing cards and books, half-eaten bags of food and empty beer cans.
But the growers leave more than litter to worry about. They often use animal poisons that can pollute mountain streams and groundwater meant for legitimate farmers and ranchers.
Because of the tree cover, armed pot farmers have a tactical advantage over law enforcement agents.
“They know the terrain better than we do,” said Lt. Rick Ko, a drug investigator with the Sheriff’s Office in Fresno, Calif. “Before we even see them, they can shoot us.”
“If we are getting 40 to 50 percent (of fields), I think we are doing well,” said Michigan State Police 1st Lt. Dave Peltomaa. “I really don’t think we are close to 50 percent. We don’t have the resources.”
Vast amounts of pot are still smuggled into the United States from Mexico. Federal officials report nearly daily hauls of several hundred to several thousand pounds seized along the border. But drug agents say the boom in domestic growing is a sign of diversification by traffickers.
Officials say arrests of farmers are rare, though the Sheriff’s Office in Fresno did nab more than 100 suspects during two weeks of raids last summer. But when field hands are arrested, most tell authorities only about their specific job.
When asked who hired him, Mesa repeatedly told an AP reporter, “I can’t tell you.”
Washington State Patrol Lt. Richard Wiley said hired hands either do not know who the boss is or are too frightened to give details.
“They are fearful of what may happen to them if they were to snitch on these coyote people,” Wiley said of the recruiters and smugglers who bring marijuana farmers into the country. “That’s organized crime of a different fashion. There’s nothing to gain from (talking), but there’s a lot to lose.”
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Legalization of Drugs
In the U.S. one of the most commonly talked about subjects in politics is the legalization of drugs. The illegal use of drugs in the U.S. has been outlawed since the 20th century. This ban on illegal substances has lead to many consequences for the country such as violence, crime, and the "War on Drugs." These consequences not only harm the economy, but they also harm the lives of citizens.
The most popularly used illegal substance is a plant called marijuana. It goes by many other names such as "weed" or "bud" or even "grass." Smoking of marijuana was popular during the 1970's when the Vietnam War was going on and it was being protested against. Other illegal substances include cocaine (popular during the 1980's,) heroin, methamphetamine, and prescription drugs. The abuse of these substances can cause major brain damage and other damage to the body. Many of these drugs are highly addictive and ruin the lives of the users once they are hooked.
The United States is at a "war on drugs" with drug dealers and suppliers because of the distribution of marijuana to the states from Mexico. Marijuana is illegally smuggled into the U.S. and sold amongst drug dealers.
If the government legalized any substance it should be marijuana. It is the least lethal of all the substances banned in the U.S. and they would be able to profit off of it. The government could allow companies to sell the drug to people at a controlled potency that would be safe for the consumer and they would be able to safely obtain it. This would help the government because then they could tax the sales and gain revenue. Also this would stop the need for it to be smuggled into the United States from Mexico. This then would lower the crime and violence rate.
Other substances I believe though should always be outlawed like heroin and methamphetamine because of the effects they have on the body and the people around the users of them. If any substances were to be legalized, it should be marijuana.
The government legalizing the sale of marijuana would cause less crime, violence, and smuggling in the U.S. They would not only lower those rates, but also make revenue off the taxes on the drug.
Herkenham, M. "InfoFacts: Marijuana". NIDA. 2-28-10 http://www.drugabuse.gov/Infofacts/marijuana.html.
The most popularly used illegal substance is a plant called marijuana. It goes by many other names such as "weed" or "bud" or even "grass." Smoking of marijuana was popular during the 1970's when the Vietnam War was going on and it was being protested against. Other illegal substances include cocaine (popular during the 1980's,) heroin, methamphetamine, and prescription drugs. The abuse of these substances can cause major brain damage and other damage to the body. Many of these drugs are highly addictive and ruin the lives of the users once they are hooked.
The United States is at a "war on drugs" with drug dealers and suppliers because of the distribution of marijuana to the states from Mexico. Marijuana is illegally smuggled into the U.S. and sold amongst drug dealers.
If the government legalized any substance it should be marijuana. It is the least lethal of all the substances banned in the U.S. and they would be able to profit off of it. The government could allow companies to sell the drug to people at a controlled potency that would be safe for the consumer and they would be able to safely obtain it. This would help the government because then they could tax the sales and gain revenue. Also this would stop the need for it to be smuggled into the United States from Mexico. This then would lower the crime and violence rate.
Other substances I believe though should always be outlawed like heroin and methamphetamine because of the effects they have on the body and the people around the users of them. If any substances were to be legalized, it should be marijuana.
The government legalizing the sale of marijuana would cause less crime, violence, and smuggling in the U.S. They would not only lower those rates, but also make revenue off the taxes on the drug.
Herkenham, M. "InfoFacts: Marijuana". NIDA. 2-28-10 http://www.drugabuse.gov/Infofacts/marijuana.html.
Pope, HG. "Marijuana". Drug Information Online. 2-28-10 http://www.drugs.com/search.php?searchterm=marijuana&is_main_search=1.
Melis, M. "Heroin". streetdrugs.org. 2-28-10
http://www.streetdrugs.org/eShop/10Expand.asp?ProductCode=1040
Melis, M. "Cocaine - Crack Cocaine". streetdrugs.org. 2-28-10
http://www.streetdrugs.org/eShop/10Expand.asp?ProductCode=1030
Melis, M. "Methamphetamine". streetdrugs.org. 2-28-10
http://www.streetdrugs.org/html%20files/Methamphetamine.html.
Monday, March 1, 2010
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