African jitters - CIR 30 September 2004

Last Sunday’s news that Nigerian rebels fighting in the eastern part of Nigeria’s oil-producing southern delta have said that they intend to expand operations to cover the whole of the Niger delta spooked oil markets early this week, but the development also needs to be seen in a wider context.

Raising fears of a repeat of last year’s uprising by members of the Ijaw tribe which closed down 40% of Nigeria’s 2.5m barrels per day oil output, rebel leader Mujahid Dokubo-Asari said: "We have decided to declare Operation Locust Feast which will cover the whole Niger delta. It is going to be an all-out war against the Nigerian state. Now the whole Ijaw nation will be fighting against the Nigerian state."

Asari has accused the government of breaking a ceasefire agreed on 3 September, and he has said that the Niger Delta People’s Volunteer Force (the NDPVF, thought to be about 168,000-strong) will fight until the government calls a conference at which the country’s ethnic groups can renegotiate Nigeria’s federal constitution. Asari said that the NDPVF has already taken the decision to target the Italian oil company Agip and that it will decide soon on whether to target Shell, Total, ChevronTexaco, and Exxon as well.

Securing energy supplies from West Africa is an American priority, and a US-led naval exercise this summer in the Gulf of Guinea (which currently provides the US with 15% of its oil supplies and might supply as much as 25% by 2015) led the Nigerian Society of International Affairs (NSIA) to worry publicly that this could be a prelude to an eventual military intervention. It recommended that Nigeria and its neighbours increase their military profile in the Gulf.

The spreading rebellion in Nigeria’s delta region is bound to feed both US concerns and corresponding Nigerian paranoia - not least because there is more than oil at stake. The US has wider concerns over instability in Africa and its impact on the war on terror. In March this year, General James Jones, the commander of Nato forces in Europe, warned that the "large ungoverned spaces" of Africa could provide havens for international terrorists.

And the bad news from Nigeria comes in the same week as the UN Security Council has expressed its concern over its near neighbour the Ivory Coast. The UNSC warned on Monday (27 September) that lack of progress in implementing political reforms "is not only holding back the peace process in Ivory Coast but is also detrimental to further progress in the sub-region as a whole".

Until civil war broke out in September 2002, the Ivory Coast was a model of stability - if not good governance - on the continent. Now it provides yet another example of endemic instability along Africa’s Muslim-Christian faultline, with the country divided between the government-controlled mainly Christian (and richer) south and the rebel-held mainly Muslim (and poorer) north.

President Laurent Gbagbo is dragging his feet on promised reforms and a revision of a constitutional clause that bars opposition leader Alassane Ouattara from running for president. On Tuesday, Ivory Coast’s parliament abandoned efforts to pass the agreed reforms by the 30 September deadline. The rebel New Forces group, due to begin disarming by 15 October under the July peace accord, have said they will only begin disarming once the reforms are implemented.

In the meantime, coup rumours have been sweeping Abidjan (it was reported locally on 22 September that the intelligence services had uncovered a plot to assassinate the president), and since last week roadblocks and other security checks have returned to the city. Tank patrols have been increased, and there have been flights of military helicopters over the city. The local media have also reported that up to 1,500 rebels have allegedly been infiltrated into the city "with livestock convoys entering by Noe", and this and other similar reports have been feeding the sense of crisis.

The UN Security Council’s warning that the lack of progress in the Ivory Coast is "detrimental to further progress in the sub-region as a whole" is no doubt true. But it could have gone further. There remains a fear that the north may make a bid for secession, that Guinea could side with the government in trying to reimpose control over the north, and that, in turn, Mali and Burkina Faso (which Ivory Coast blames for backing the September 2002 rebellion) could be drawn into the struggle. Liberia has also been deeply involved in developments in the west of the country.

On Tuesday (28 September), a government spokesman said that President Gbagbo had sent a delegation to tell heads of state in the region about an alleged plan by Burkina Faso to subvert Ivory Coast.

Separately, Mauritania is accusing Burkina Faso of harbouring and training dissident soldiers who are said to have been behind a failed coup attempt in June 2003 and another in August this year. Over the weekend Mauritania’s Communication Minister Hamoud Ould Abdi accused Burkina Faso of training soldiers at two camps. Adding to this combustible mix, Mauritania has also blamed Libya for backing dissident officers.

Meanwhile, on the other side of Africa, in Somalia, a rather different problem is developing for the US and the war on terror.

Somalia is a failed state with no central government, and during this long period of anarchy concerns that al-Qaida might be establishing a presence in the country have been dealt with by the expedient of employing local armed groups to do the dirty work. Sources in the region say that there have been some 15 raids on suspected al-Qaida cells in Somalia in the past 18 months undertaken by Somali proxies on the bidding of foreign powers.

Now Somalia is on the point of establishing a new government, with a president to be elected by members of an interim parliament meeting in Kenya on 10 October. Clearly the US and other Western powers have an interest in seeing legitimate government restored in Somalia, but the sort of raids that have gone on in the past (they have been roundly condemned by Muslim clerics) cannot continue without acutely embarrassing the new government. On the other hand, no one expects that the new government will have either the inclination or power to continue the policy itself. Being seen as a US puppet could be fatal to its existence.

So, while it is growing instability that is causing concern in Nigeria, Ivory Coast, and elsewhere in West Africa, ironically the latest concerns over Somalia relate to the long-awaited establishment of legitimate government - which just goes to show, there are never simple answers to complicated questions. Joe de Courcy, Editor.