First, what Clinton did not see (or comment on) and what the Globe chose to ignore:
"Death toll in Nigeria now reported at 700" by Katharine Houreld, Associated Press | August 2, 2009
MAIDUGURI, Nigeria - A Nigerian military official said yesterday that about 700 people were killed in the northern city of Maiduguri during recent fighting between police and a radical Islamist sect. The toll was previously thought to be about 300.
Col. Ben Ahanotu said that mass burials had begun because bodies were decomposing in the heat. The Islamist compound destroyed last week by government troops is one of the burial sites, he said....
Related: The Boston Globe's African Insult: African Taliban
Maiduguri, the Borno state capital, was largely quiet yesterday. Its streets had been cleared of bodies and the blood spilled during five days of fierce fighting. Banks and markets reopened. But sporadic violence continued.
In the parking lot of the Umaru Shehu hospital, reporters saw the body of a young man with his hands tied behind his back, dead from a bullet through the back of his head. A hospital official, who asked not to be named because he feared more violence, said five other people were killed yesterday, their bodies left in the parking lot.
And THAT is where the web version of my local cut it.
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LOOK at what they LEFT OUT:
He said 172 bodies had been brought to the hospital since Tuesday.
He said people were coming to the hospital Saturday to remove sick relatives so they wouldn't get caught up in the violence.
Destruction was evident Saturday only in some areas of the city. The police building was in ruins and smoke rose from the destroyed compound of the sect's leader, where bodies are now buried. The compound was guarded by soldiers armed with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades.
A bloodied man, alleged to be a member of the sect, lay beneath a tree, his hands tied behind his back, guarded by soldiers. Borno Police Commissioner Christopher Dega said the members of the Boko Haram sect are likely in hiding and may be using the current calm to regroup....
Associated Press reporters saw two men heavily sweating as they were questioned by soldiers outside the compound. They were later released.
One of them, 35-year-old Ibrahim Mohammed, told the AP that he and his family cowered in their house for days, terrorized by knife and sword-wielding sect members -- then later by soldiers, who, he said, would shoot anything that moved.
"It was terrible," Mohammed said as he drew an imaginary knife across his throat. "At first if you run, (the sect) will knife you, and then after you run, (soldiers) will shoot you."
He said he hid 17 Christian neighbors, including a pregnant woman, in his house during the fighting.
In a wave of violence that began Sunday, July 26, in Bauchi and quickly spread to three other northern states, including Borno, the sect, Boko Harem -- the name means "Western education is sacrilege" -- attacked police stations, churches and government buildings. The group is seeking the imposition of strict Islamic Shariah law in Nigeria, a country of several religions.
This is STARTING to STINK of 'Al-CIA-Duh," folks.
On Wednesday, troops retaliated, killing about 100 people, half of them inside the sect's mosque. The bodies of barefoot young men littered the streets of Maiduguri on Thursday morning as security forces hunted militants.
Like a DEATH SQUAD would?
An Associated Press reporter saw dead bodies piled into at least six trucks in the hospital parking lot on Wednesday.
Mohammed Yusuf, head of the Boko Harem sect, was killed Thursday after he was found hiding in a goat pen at his in-laws' home. The details of his death remain murky.
Yeah, they already don't sound to good.
Nigeria's Civil Rights Congress, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International called for investigations into Yusuf's death, and other killings during the upheaval in predominately Muslim northern Nigeria.
That SURE IS an AWFUL LOT to OVERLOOK, huh?
Of course, the Globe gets its due, albeit for picking up a reworked and rewritten piece that leaves several key aspects out.
"At least 700 are reported dead in Nigeria violence; Military seeks members of Islamist sect" by Katharine Houreld, Associated Press | August 3, 2009
At least the Globe gave me a photograph.
Women pray at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Maiduguri yesterday, after violence in the city between government police and members of a radical Islamist group left several hundred people dead. (Sunday Alamba/Associated Press)
MAIDUGURI, Nigeria - Government forces hunted yesterday for surviving members of a radical Islamist sect after heavy fighting left at least 700 people dead and buildings and cars scorched.
No new fighting was reported, but a military commander told the Associated Press that many sect members were still at large. Armed with machine guns, government troops sweating in tropical heat guarded the rubble of the sect’s headquarters in this northern Nigerian city.
Moderate Muslim clerics and scholars said they had warned government officials about the sect’s violent tendencies - and that the alarms went unheeded before Boko Haram militants attacked a police station in Bauchi state on July 26. Violence quickly spread to three other states before Nigerian forces retaliated, storming the group’s Maiduguri compound.
Hmmmmmm!
Boko Haram is also known as the Nigerian Taliban. No direct link to Al Qaeda has emerged, but the bloodshed comes amid mounting concern about Al Qaeda affiliates’ ability to cross desert borders of North Africa. Many Boko Haram members were purportedly from neighboring Niger.
What about DEAD BODIES in the STREET!
Boko Haram - translated as “Western education is sacrilege’’ - seeks the imposition of strict Islamic Shariah law in Nigeria, a multireligious country that is a major oil producer and Africa’s most populous nation.
I'm not liking the smell, readers.
And about that 'Taliban' leader:
Sect leader Mohamed Yusuf was killed on Thursday. Suspicions that he had been executed after being captured grew deeper after a photo emerged yesterday on news websites showing him in custody of soldiers with only an arm wound.
Army Colonel Ben Ahanotu said he personally arrested Yusuf in a goat pen and handed him over alive to police, who later contended that he died in a shootout. Police officials did not return calls seeking comment. About 700 people were killed in Maiduguri alone, Ahanotu said. The death toll in other northern areas is unknown. Human rights groups say civilians were also slain during the hunt for sect members.
“Only Allah knows how many lives have been lost,’’ Ibrahim Ahmed Abdullahi, a local imam or cleric, said Saturday. Abdullahi said he had known the sect’s charismatic leader for 14 years. They had been friends but fell out when Yusuf began advocating violence.
More than 50 Muslim leaders repeatedly urged Nigeria’s police, local authorities, and state security to take action against the militants, but their pleas were ignored, Abdullahi said. Other scholars sitting with him on plastic mats in a Maiduguri slum nodded in agreement. “We used to call the government and security agents to say that these people must be stopped from what they are doing, because it must bring a lot of trouble,’’ Abdullahi said.
I'm sorry, I'm beginning to really smell an Al-CIA-Duh stink!
Christopher Dega, police chief in Borno state where the group had its compound, said authorities had been monitoring the sect and recognized it as a longstanding problem. It was not immediately clear if police received specific warnings about the July 26 attack.
Ahanotu said many sect members are still at large. “After I arrested Mohamed Yusuf, I monitored his phone. They were calling from all over the place,’’ he said. “There are lots of them still around . . . [but] only a few of them are still dangerous.’’
Ahanotu said he recommended several times that action be taken against the group but received no orders to do so. “I complained a lot of times,’’ he said. “I was told something would be done.’’
Burned-out cars lay upended yesterday in front of scorched police stations. The bodies were all gone - buried in mass graves.
Too many of those in this world.
Most sect members are young, unemployed, and angry that the introduction of moderate Shariah law in 12 impoverished northern states a decade ago has not halted the corruption that keeps most Nigerians in desperate poverty.
Oh, NOW I SEE! And WHO wants ISLAMISTS to FAIL?
Also see: African Safari: Clinton Supports Somali Islamists
Small green road signs in Maiduguri read “Fear Allah,’’ but they are dwarfed by the huge billboards that trumpet the achievements of politicians. Yesterday the opposition Action Congress party criticized the government for not tackling what it described as a key recruiting tool for groups like Boko Haram: the poverty of the north.
“When millions of our youths are unemployed and there is no hope of a better tomorrow, they become easy targets for apocalyptic preachers and mindless religious zealots,’’ it said. “That is why this federal government must shake off its lethargy and address the myriad problems facing this nation, so our youths can channel their energiesto productive ventures instead of becoming killing machines.’’--more--"
Nothing about bodies in the streets, huh?
And this next one. Talk about trying to shift attention.
"In economic tough times, cybercrime still paying; Americans falling prey more easily to promises of riches" by Karin Brulliard, Washington Post | August 9, 2009
LAGOS, Nigeria - Banjo, 24, speaking about Americans, whose trust he has won and whose money he has fleeced, via his Dell laptop....
What, he work for a bank?
Banjo is a polite young man in a button-down shirt, and he is the sort of guy on the other end of that block-lettered missive requesting your “URGENT ASSISTANCE’’ in transferring millions of dollars. He is the sort who made Nigeria infamous for cyberscams, which specialists say are increasing in these tough times.
US authorities say Americans - the easiest prey, according to Nigerian scammers - lose hundreds of millions of dollars a year to cybercrimes, including a scheme known as the Nigerian 419 fraud, named for a section of the Nigerian criminal code. Now financially squeezed, Americans succumb even more easily to offers of riches, experts say.
You REALLY ARE 'TOO-PID, ain't you, 'murka?
Though statistics are fuzzy, the FBI-backed Internet Crime Complaint Center says that scam reports by Americans grew 33 percent last year, and that after the United States and Britain, Nigeria housed the most perpetrators. Ultrascan, a Dutch research firm that investigates complaints of 419 fraud, says online scam offers from Nigerians in and outside their homeland have mushroomed this year.
Nigerian officials dispute their country’s prominence in online fraud, noting that scam networks rely on agents around the globe. But 419 is cemented in Nigerian popular culture. The scammers, known as “yahoo-yahoo boys,’’ are glorified in pop songs such as “Yahoozee,’’ which gained even more fame after former secretary of state Colin Powell danced to it at a London festival last year....
Wireless Internet has allowed scammers to move from cybercafes into private residences to churn out e-mails. Nigerian scammers are mostly young men who learn from one another, often as apprentices of cartel-like schemes....
Some e-mails promise wealth, perhaps in the form of jewels trapped in the bank box of a deceased dictator, but later require victims to wire “fees’’ for paperwork or insurance. Dating scams promise love, but eventually the sweetheart needs cash.
The most sophisticated lure investors to view venture opportunities in foreign lands - and persuade them, over fake business meetings, to sink millions.
Obviously not in the Muslim area, huh?
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Hey, have no fear. Clinton called of the dogs.
YENAGOA, Nigeria - The main rebel group said yesterday it would resume attacks against Africa’s biggest energy industry next month, overshadowing the surrender of hundreds of arms by rebels in a federal amnesty program.
Oh, I guess not; they are increasing operations.
The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), responsible for attacks that have wrought havoc on the OPEC member’s oil operations, said it would resume its campaign of violence on Sept. 15.
You know, it is QUITE POSSIBLE we have ANOTHER MISIDENTIFIED GROUP of NATIVES here.
But the AGENDA-PUSHING PAPER would NEVER DO THAT about "Taliban," right?
MEND, a loose coalition of militant groups, denounced the hundreds of rebels that have participated in President Umaru Yar’Adua’s 60-day amnesty program, which aims to stem unrest in the Niger Delta....
Hundreds of Nigerian militants earlier yesterday surrendered their weapons, mortar bombs and gunboats during a public ceremony in the Bayelsa state capital Yenagoa.
AFTER Clinton toured the region. Interesting.
The handover by dozens of militant groups was the largest collection of weapons and ammunition since Yar’Adua’s amnesty program began two weeks ago.
“We give up our weapons so that we give peace a chance and for all oil companies and other multinationals to come into our region to develop the place,’’ said Erepamutei Olotu, during a public handing-over ceremony.
No, that is ONLY for the CHINESE!
Attacks on pipelines and industry facilities along with the kidnapping of oil workers since early 2006 have cost the world’s eighth-biggest oil exporter billions of dollars a year in lost revenues and added to volatility in global energy prices....
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And I thought this was an interesting epilogue:
"Africa: U.S. Military Holds War Games on Nigeria, Somalia
President Obama has decided instead to expand the operations of Africom throughout the continent. He has proposed a budget for financial year 2010 that will provide increased security assistance to repressive and undemocratic governments in resource-rich countries like Nigeria, Niger, Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and to countries that are key military allies of the United States like Ethiopia, Kenya, Djibouti, Rwanda and Uganda.
