Global Terrorism: Masking Hidden Environmental Problems?

The article started like so many, of recent times.  It was yet another sad, sordid and grisly tale of domestic terrorism.  It was Christmas day 2011.  It happened in Nigeria.  Furthermore, because it took place in Africa—committed by Africans against other Africans—it likely would not get much mention in the western mainstream media.  That doesn’t mean that there weren’t international dimensions, with potentially global implications, however.  Americans should take heed.  Sometimes we can learn important and relevant lessons from far and distant places. 

Nigeria is a very big and extremely diverse country, situated on the coast of West Africa.  With a population of roughly 160 million people, it is the 10^th largest country in the world.  Much like the US, it is also a democracy, consisting of many different ethnic groups and languages (many more than the US, in fact!).  It has a federal government consisting of 36 states.  The coordinated Christmas day attacks—perpetrated by a group called “Boko Haram”—took place spread over many hundreds of kilometers, in three different locations in the country:  Madalla, in Niger State; Jos, in Plateau State; and Damaturu, in Yobe State.  

Nigeria in Context of Africa and the World

Figure: Nigeria in global geographic context. 

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Location_Nigeria_AU_Africa.svg

The article went on to describe the deep hurt, the pain, and the outrage caused by this terrible incident.  It provided a very short list of those prominent persons who went on record to publicly condemn it.  The excerpt here, culled from a larger article, from the Associated Press, starts with a quote from the African Union director, Jean Ping.  I will make use of an extended section of this AP article, in order to highlight a certain point about how people think about things like terrorism.  Please note the framing of the article (look for any recurring themes), and how they are presented here.  Please consider how certain issues may be brought to light, even as others may be masked.

The African Union also condemned the attacks and pledged to support Nigeria in its fight against terrorism.

"Boko Haram's continued acts of terror and cruelty and absolute disregard for human life cannot be justified by any religion or faith," said a statement attributed to AU commission chairman Jean Ping.

On Sunday, a bomb also exploded amid gunfire in the central Nigeria city of Jos and a suicide car bomber attacked the military in the nation's northeast. Three people died in those assaults.

After the bombings, a Boko Haram spokesman using the nom de guerre Abul-Qaqa claimed responsibility for the attacks in an interview with The Daily Trust, the newspaper of record across Nigeria's Muslim north. The sect has used the newspaper in the past to communicate with public.

"There will never be peace until our demands are met," the newspaper quoted the spokesman as saying. "We want all our brothers who have been incarcerated to be released; we want full implementation of the Sharia system and we want democracy and the constitution to be suspended."

Boko Haram has carried out increasingly sophisticated and bloody attacks in its campaign to implement strict Shariah law across Nigeria. The group, whose name means "Western education is sacrilege" in the local Hausa language, is responsible for at least 504 killings this year alone, according to an Associated Press count.

Last year, a series of Christmas Eve bombings in Jos claimed by the militants left at least 32 dead and 74 wounded. The group also claimed responsibility for the Aug. 26 bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Nigeria's capital Abuja that killed 24 people and wounded 116 others.

While initially targeting enemies via hit-and-run assassinations from the back of motorbikes after the 2009 riot, violence by Boko Haram now has a new sophistication and apparent planning that includes high-profile attacks with greater casualties.

That has fueled speculation about the group's ties as it has splintered into at least three different factions, diplomats and security sources say. They say the more extreme wing of the sect maintains contact with terror groups in North Africa and Somalia.

Targeting Boko Haram has remained difficult, as sect members are scattered throughout northern Nigeria and the nearby countries of Cameroon, Chad and Niger.

Source: (AP) http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/A/AF_NIGERIA_VIOLENCE?SITE=CAANG&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

The last paragraph from this excerpt, shown immediately above, is crucial to what I will discuss next.  It states that Boko Haram “sect members” are scattered throughout northern Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad, and Niger. 

Those four countries converge at a place commonly referred to as the “Lake Chad Basin.”  A quick search on the Internet, via Wikipedia displayed the following map. 

 Four Countries at the Confluence of Lake Chad

 

 Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Lakechad_map.png

Lake Chad comes with a long and interesting (and more recently “tragic”) history.  Like most of Africa, the vast majority of people who live and work in this region have traditionally worked in agriculture—farming and fishing, in this case.  Furthermore, over many, many centuries they had come to rely on the hydrological features of Lake Chad for their routine agricultural practices.  An important—and I would argue “missing”—piece of the social history of the Lake Chad Basin is worth noting here.  You see, the “farmers” and “fishermen” of Lake Chad can no longer conduct farming in quantities sufficient to sustain the local population. 

This begs an important question, with potentially disturbing implications:  What happens to otherwise strong and healthy young men in a given place, when they can no longer work to support themselves, their families, and their way of life?  What can history teach us about such things?      

For many decades now, the human population in this region has been steadily increasing, while the water supply from the Lake Chad has been steadily decreasing.  What follows, below, is a simple time-series graphic, from the United Nations, that will demonstrate some of the current crisis in the Basin. 

Lake Chad is drying up.

The size of Lake Chad has increased and shrunk at regular intervals. Increasing aridity in the Sahel area and more demand for freshwater for irrigation may however entail that Lake Chad will continue shrinking. Lake Chad varies in extent between the rainy and dry seasons, from 50,000 to 20,000 km². Precise boundaries have been established between Chad, Nigeria, Cameroon, and Niger. Sectors of the boundaries that are located in the rivers that drain into Lake Chad have never been determined, and several complications are caused by flooding and the appearance or submergence of islands. A similar process on the Kovango River between Botswana and Namibia led to a military confrontation between the two states.

Climate change exacerbates the drying up of already arid zones in Africa. Vorosmarty and Moore (1991) have documented the potential impacts of impoundment, land-use change, and climatic change on the Zambezi and found that they can be substantial. Cambula (1999) has shown a decrease in surface and subsurface runoff of five streams in Mozambique, including the Zambezi, under various climate change scenarios. For the Zambezi basin, simulated runoff under climate change is projected to decrease by about 40% or more. Growing water scarcity, increasing population, degradation of shared freshwater ecosystems, and competing demands for shrinking natural resources distributed over such a huge area involving so many countries have the potential for creating bilateral and multilateral conflicts (Gleick, 1992).

Source: http://www.grida.no/publications/vg/africa/page/3115.aspx

The above quote is from the United Nations Environment Programme, which has been tracking the creeping environmental crisis in the Lake Chad Basin for many years now.  Again, the last sentence in the excerpt above is key: “. . . shrinking natural resources distributed over such a huge area involving so many countries have the potential for creating bilateral and multilateral conflicts.” 

What the last sentence didn’t mention, above, is the capacity to create “unilateral” or “internal” or “fratricidal” conflict.  Sadly, it is not uncommon for human beings to turn on each other, in order to seek a solution for their declining resource predicaments, irrespective of national boundaries.  Sometimes the boundaries are not national at all.  Sometimes they are ethnic. Sometimes they are religious.   Rwanda in the early 1990s was an example of a deep ethnic cleavage.  Nigeria today is an example of an emergent, and potentially deep, religious cleavage.  There is another factor to consider, however.  Each country—Rwanda for the 1990s and Nigeria now in the second decade of 2000s—has suffered from a creeping ecological and demographic crisis.  That crisis, in the minds of far too many political and social leaders, has often gone misdiagnosed and misunderstood for far too long.   

This is not to say, of course, that human beings are not capable of causing problems for other human beings—far from it.  There’s an old Nigerian saying: “To ask people to live together is to ask them to quarrel.”  Instead, what I am saying here is that not all human problems can be strictly isolated to the world of human social relations.  Instead of constantly looking toward “other people” as the immediate locus of one’s own problem, in many instances it is better to cast ones’ gaze toward the rivers, the skies, the mountains, and the forests.  I believe that my own African ancestors once knew a little something about all of this.  It is often in these natural places (often referred to by the ancient ones as “sacred places”) where the root of many social conflicts can be found.  However, it seems modern humans have been socialized to “ignore” or “discount” Nature, in her powerful capacity to drive human social events.  Alas, we modern humans engage in such ignorance now only at our peril. 

I personally witnessed a small piece of the Rwandan Holocaust, in northern Rwanda, back in 1994. I saw what can happen when Nature’s liberal-but-but-ultimately-unforgiving laws are finally transgressed too often.  Nature will work to reduce the human population so that the supply of Her bounty is once again brought into balance with human demand.   How that process gets played out among human beings can vary, according to local culture and history; but, the end result is nearly always the same.  In the final analysis, Nature’s laws will be enforced—by any means necessary.  Human beings, as a matter of self-interest, should work hard to see that Nature does not have to intervene directly too often, in order to enforce her laws.  This is the current challenge before us.  It would be better if humans could be a bit more attenuated to more of Nature’s simple laws, I think.

While the locus of the most recent round of international terror may have been in Nigeria, this week, the lesson is a global in scope.  There is a “timeless” lesson to be learned here—for all of humanity to consider.  Sometimes, at a deep and sublime level, what appears to be the issue starring in the face of human beings is not really the issue—not really.   Sometimes it is a mask.  Behind that mask lies a deeper issue, the real driver of current events.  And sometimes, like the many layers of an onion, there are even many masks covering it.   

There was terrible tragedy that took place in Nigeria on Christmas day in 2011.  And my heart goes out to all those who were affected, in one way or another, by this tragic set of events.  As people mourn and bury their dead, as politicians posture and make political statements, as onlookers gawk with shock and amazement, and as perpetrators congratulate themselves and prepare for the next round, it is my sincere hope that people—all people regardless of their station in life—would consider the various masks being worn today.  Sometimes the masks hide situations.  Sometimes the masks hide people.  The process of masking still remains the same, however. 

We should think long and hard on these things.  It won’t be easy for many, I realize.  There has been so much pain of late.  But, ponder this.  Underneath that hard, cruel mask of terror in northern Nigeria may well be the crying face of a fisherman—the face of one who is hurting because he can no longer feed his wife and children. Underneath the biggest mask of all may well be the face of humanity’s increasing suffering, crying out under a yoke of ever-tightening global resource constraints.  Might now be the time to consider looking past some of the masks?         

Blaine D. Pope