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Date: April 29, 2024 Mon
Time: 9:23 pm
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Results for violent conflict
4 results foundAuthor: Watts, Michael Title: Petro-Insurgency or Criminal Syndicate? Conflict, Violence and Political Disorder in the Niger Delta Summary: The Niger delta has become the home of an oil insurgency (see Obi 2004): remotely detonated car bombs and highly sophisticated arms and equipment are the tools of the trade; over 250 foreign hostages have been abducted in the last fifteen months and close to 1000 Nigerian workers detained or held hostage on facilities; major and often spectacular attacks on and on and off shore facilities are endemic and can be perpetrated at will. Unlike the 1980s or 1990s, militants are willing and able to directly confront federal and state security forces. The vast cache of sophisticated arms are skillfully deployed in an environment - the mangrove creeks running for hundreds of miles along the Bight of Benin - in which the Nigerian security forces to quote the new Vice-President Goodluck Jonathan “cannot cope with the situation” (Daily Trust, February 27th 2007). According to a World Bank report (Jua 2007), over 600 people have been killed in the course of these conflicts -often engagements between militias and the joint military task forces - since 2000. Pipeline breaks due to vandalization and sabotage have almost doubled between 1999 and 2004 (from 497 to 895); product loss (in metric tons) due to pipeline ruptures have grown steadily from 179,000 to 396,000 metric tons over the same period (a figure roughly equal to four supertankers) [see STATOIL 2006: 25]. The direct assaults on oil installations and infrastructure cost the Nigerian government $6.8 billion losses in revenue between 1999-2004 but in the last three years the figure has increased dramatically (currently the conflicts cost Nigeria $60 million per day, roughly $4.4 billion per annum in damages and lost revenue (www.strategypage.com/qnd/nigeria/20070630.aspx). In May 2007 Nigeria drew upon $2.7 billion from its ‘domestic excess crude’ (a windfall profits account) to plug revenues shortfalls from oil deferment. President Obasanjo ordered the military in mid-2006 to adopt a ‘force for force’ policy in the delta in a vain effort to gain control of the creeks; in early 2007 the Nigerian navy had embarked upon its biggest sea maneuver in two decades deploying 13 warships, four helicopters and four boats to the Bight of Bonny to test ‘operational capability’. Yet the month of May 2007, according to a Norwegian consulting company BergenRiskSolutions (BergenRiskSolutions2007), witnessed the largest monthly tally of attacks since the appearance of a shadowy but militarily wellarmed insurgent group called the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) eighteen months ago. Many of the oil-producing communities across the delta are torn apart by all manner of internal (for example Nembe or Finima) and inter-community (Ogoni-Andoni) conflicts or both (Soku-Kula-Oluasiri)3. There has certainly been no period since the first oil boom – palm oil in the nearly nineteenth century – in which the delta has been in such turmoil other than the civil war. The conflicts have an organic connection to oil but their genealogies are complex: in some cases communities fight over land and territorial disputes over oil bearing lands (Odiama); in some cases they are successional disputes, often of great historical depth, driven by the prospect of access to oil rents and company cash payments (Okrika) compounded by party politics; in other youth groups struggle among themselves or with elders over access to companies (Nembe); and in other cases they are sectional and communal, as ethnic communities in multi-ethnic settings, rural and urban, struggle over the establishment of electoral wards or local government councils to ensure they too can feed at the oil trough (Warri). The social forces are at once ethnic, generation, gender, class (chiefs, politicians), corporate and of course state (military and security). Conflicted communities across the oilfields entail complex configurations of such forces. They constitute a social field of violence in which the delta is now embroiled is a multi-headed hydra. Details: Berkeley, CA: Department of Geography, University of California, 2008. 36p. Source: Internet Resource: Working Paper No. 16: Accessed August 10, 2012 at: http://oldweb.geog.berkeley.edu/ProjectsResources/ND%20Website/NigerDelta/WP/16-Watts.pdf Year: 2008 Country: Nigeria URL: http://oldweb.geog.berkeley.edu/ProjectsResources/ND%20Website/NigerDelta/WP/16-Watts.pdf Shelf Number: 125958 Keywords: Natural Resources (Nigeria)OilViolenceViolent Conflict |
Author: Watts, Michael Title: Crude Politics: Life and Death on the Nigerian Oil Fields Summary: Nigeria is an oil-rich petro-state but its developmental record in one of catastrophic failure (Ahmad and Singh 2003). According to IMF, the $700 billion in oil revenues since 1960 have added almost nothing to the standard of living of the average Nigerian. Eighty-five per cent percent of oil revenues accrue to one percent of the population and a huge proportion of the country’s wealth – perhaps 40% or more, has been stolen. Over the last decade GDP per capita and life expectancy have, according to World Banks, both fallen. The United Nations Development Program (UNDP 2005), ranks Nigeria in terms of human development - a composite measure of life expectancy, income, and educational attainment – on par with Haiti and Congo. Why has such extraordinary oil wealth – and the developmental opportunities it affords - generated nothing more than violence, rage, disillusionment and catastrophically failed development? Why has the heart of the Nigerian petrostate degenerated into a zone of insurrection and how has the political nerve centre of the country, the Muslim north, come to be a breeding ground for radical Islamists? Both of these questions are related in complex ways to oil, to the fact that oil (and gas) saturates, provides the ether, the political, economic, cultural and ideological realities of contemporary Nigeria. Details: Berkeley, CA: Institute of International Studies, University of California, 2009. 27p. Source: Internet Resource: Working Paper No. 25: Accessed August 11, 2012 at: http://oldweb.geog.berkeley.edu/ProjectsResources/ND%20Website/NigerDelta/WP/Watts_25.pdf Year: 2009 Country: Nigeria URL: http://oldweb.geog.berkeley.edu/ProjectsResources/ND%20Website/NigerDelta/WP/Watts_25.pdf Shelf Number: 125989 Keywords: Natural Resources (Nigeria)OilViolenceViolent Conflict |
Author: The Sentry Title: Fear, Inc. War War Profiteering in the Central African Republic and the Bloody Rise of Abdoulaye Hissene Summary: Since 2013, the conflict in the Central African Republic (CAR) has repeatedly made international headlines, with alarms being raised over the escalating violence and even precursors to genocide in the country. Ethnic purges and other mass atrocities continue to take place on a near-daily basis against entire communities. A great, but unknown, number of civilians have died in the conflict and the instability has led to a major humanitarian crisis. In May 2018, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) announced that an unprecedented 1.27 million people have been internally displaced or forced to flee the country. Over the past 20 years, there have been a growing number of initiatives aimed at ending the CAR conflict, but these have had little impact. The country has seen a series of peace, disarmament and amnesty agreements; long-term UN peacekeeping missions and humanitarian assistance; foreign military operations; and elections. Billions of dollars have been spent in an attempt to restore stability and compensate for the lack of state control. Since 2014, the UN mission in CAR, also known as MINUSCA, has cost more than $3.2 billion. The European Union, a long-term and major development partner in CAR, has also disbursed nearly $200 million during the same period. Despite these efforts, the various mediation initiatives have failed to obtain a political compromise sufficient to manage the simple respect of a ceasefire. Today, there are multiple armed gangs, self-defense and politico military groups that control or exercise influence across the entire national territory. Worse yet, the perpetrators of atrocities are recognized by regional and international actors as legitimate political interlocutors with whom dialogue is necessary and peace must be negotiated. In August 2018 the African Union announced the end of a series of meetings with representatives of 14 armed groups to record their claims, even though some of the leaders have been placed under sanctions by the United Nations (UN) and the United-States (US). The African Union presented a list of more than 100 demands made by armed groups, including power sharing and amnesty. At the same time, a parallel dialogue was initiated by the Russian government, which invited to Khartoum the military leaders of the most violent armed groups active in the CAR conflict for almost a decade. Today, these so-called dialogues aimed at ending the deadly war have been captured by the agenda of perpetrators of mass atrocities who have shown no intention of making peace. Between 2016 and 2018, The Sentry investigated one such armed group representative, Abdoulaye Hissene, a notorious warlord involved in CAR's conflict for almost a decade. Formerly a diamond and gold trader, and since 2009 the leader of various politico-military groups, Hissene has been recognized as being responsible for an attempted coup in late 2015 and for targeted violence against UN and humanitarian staff. Since 2017, the United States, then followed by the full UN Security Council, have decided to impose sanctions through an asset freeze and travel ban. Chad announced it had implemented these sanctions, and the CAR government issued an international arrest warrant for him in 2016. Despite these measures and several attempts to arrest him, he remains a free man. The Sentry's investigation also reveals that Hissene has been successful building a profitable business and even since he has been under sanctions. He has amassed a fortune out of devastating sectarian violence. By inciting hatred and sowing divisions between ethnic and religious communities, he has gradually become a central player in the country's conflict. Hissene's rise has been possible thanks to strong ties he has developed over time with national and regional heads of state, their close allies, and with foreign business partners. In 2014, amid the ethnic cleansing of the Muslim population in CAR, Hissene enjoyed diplomatic status and traveled abroad, notably to Cameroon, the Republic of Congo, Chad, Kenya, United Arab Emirates, Switzerland, and France. During these travels, he expanded his list of partners and created lucrative business opportunities. At the end of 2014, after being fired from office and formally joining the armed opposition movement, he declared to the Chadian and Congolese heads of state that "what we want is to destroy everything to rebuild the country." He also convinced a Swiss oil company that he would be able to secure an oil contract with the Chadian national oil petroleum company. Acting as a "minister" and a leader of armed groups, and advertising his control of rich mining sites, Hissene has also developed an illicit trade in diamond and gold, particularly in Cameroon and in Kenya. Hissene's rise illustrates a violent system endemic in CAR, and similar to other countries in east and central Africa, that incentivizes conflict over peace. War profiteers and their allies hamper political and peace efforts, since conflict and state collapse are seen as lucrative business and smart politics. Sectarian violence is used as a political negotiation tool and actors who chose to pursue peace are largely kept out of negotiations. In this system, the greater the perpetrators of atrocities and their accomplices represent a threat to the central power, the more they will become essential political interlocutors and increase their financial gain. In 2015, the UN Security Council took a strong step when It decided to impose sanctions on a diamond company, Badica/Kardiam, accused of financing armed groups at the peak of the 2014 crisis. Despite this positive step, no other entities or businessmen faced any consequences for their role in the financing of the deadly conflict. By focusing on Hissene to illustrate war profiteering, this report calls for an in-depth reassessment of the strategy to support the emergence of CAR from its crisis. As long as violence is profitable for those behind the atrocities and their business networks both inside and outside the country, long-term peace in CAR and the rest of the Central African region will remain an illusion. It is time to send a strong signal to war profiteers so that their crimes will be less lucrative and bear increasingly costly consequences. Details: Washington, DC: The Sentry, 2018. 50p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed November 13, 2018 at: https://cdn.thesentry.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/FearInc_TheSentry_Nov2018-web.pdf Year: 2018 Country: Central African Republic URL: https://cdn.thesentry.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/FearInc_TheSentry_Nov2018-web.pdf Shelf Number: 153409 Keywords: GangsGenocideIllicit TradeProfiteeringViolenceViolent ConflictWarlords |
Author: Adeba, Brian Title: A Hijacked State: Violent Kleptocracy in South Sudan Summary: On September 12, 2018, the South Sudanese government and the armed opposition signed a peace deal that could potentially end the 5-year-old conflict, if elites exercise the political will required to implement the agreement. The South Sudanese conflict is rooted in the violent kleptocratic system of governance that the ruling Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) began building in 2005, after the end of the Second Sudanese Civil War (1983-2005). When President Salva Kiir became the chair of the SPLM and the leader of the autonomous Government of Southern Sudan from 2005 to 2011, a network of allies formed and positioned itself to make decisions about the distribution of influence and oil wealth. In 2011, Kiir became president of newly independent South Sudan, and these key allies drafted the Transitional Constitution, which vested immense powers in Kiir's hands that allowed him, for instance, to prorogue (discontinue without dissolving) the national legislature, fire elected governors, and dissolve legislative assemblies in the country's states. The destructive competition over power and access to opportunities for corruption resulted in a slow expulsion of some elites from the center of power and a consequential rise in power of others, dividing the ruling party into two factions, for and against Kiir. Those opposed to President Kiir largely coalesced behind Vice President Riek Machar. South Sudan's oil production was at its height in 2011 when the global prices of crude oil averaged over 100 U.S. dollars per barrel, which allowed the country to pocket a monthly average of 500 million U.S. dollars from its share. When South Sudanese authorities shut down oil production because of conflict with Sudan that had turned violent along the border, production remained suspended for 15 months-between January 2012 and March 2013-quickly creating a significant deficit in a young economy so heavily reliant on oil for its revenues and gross domestic product (GDP). The government's sudden loss of over 90 percent of cash from oil revenues disrupted entrenched patterns of corruption and tested the limits of the violent kleptocratic system, culminating in a bloody conflict in December 2013. This crisis in turn plunged South Sudan into a series of interrelated economic, fiscal, security, political, and humanitarian crises. In South Sudan's system of violent kleptocracy, leaders have hijacked institutions and stoked violent conflict, committed mass atrocities, and created a man-made famine. Amid the chaos of war, the ruling elites ransacked various sectors of the economy. South Sudan's violent kleptocracy has distorted the country's institutions, heaping catastrophic consequences on the national monetary reserve and creating an atmosphere in which too many hands are left to freely and repetitively reach into the public treasury with impunity. Services remain undelivered, business practices undermine the rule of law, and corruption abounds. While poor regulatory mechanisms made it easy to loot the public treasury with little consequence, the ruling elites could have chosen to improve institutions of accountability rather than deliberately dis-empower them. South Sudan's leaders have incorporated corrupt practices inherited from the north-south war into the current government. Without strong and effective institutions in place, military leaders dominate the decision-making processes on public spending to wield both power and money opportunistically. These leaders have abused their positions of power to steal from public coffers, wage war, and enlarge patronage networks. Violent conflict in South Sudan today stems from competitive corruption that has characterized governance since 2005. Leaders use violence as a means of capturing the national economy and budget and to prolong their stay in power for the purpose of self-enrichment. Oil has represented the key prize in South Sudan since independence. The political elites enrich themselves with oil revenues at the public's expense and to the detriment of the economy and ordinary citizens. Nevertheless, the status quo could be different. U.S. policymakers and international partners can now use the power of the U.S. dollar and the international financial system-on which South Sudanese leaders rely almost exclusively - to target these leaders' finances and the networks that enable the violent kleptocracy to continue to harm the South Sudanese people. In September 2017, the U.S. Department of the Treasury initiated a process of holding South Sudan's leaders accountable for the egregious corruption that feeds war in their country. In the wake of the recently concluded peace agreement, the financial pressures enacted by the Treasury Department must continue because the deal itself lacks meaningful stipulations to end the endemic corruption, heightening the potential for a return to conflict. To be fully effective in thwarting the interests of leaders who may choose to violate the latest peace deal, network sanctions, anti-money laundering measures, prosecutions, and enhanced travel bans must be applied in a genuinely concerted and comprehensive manner. It is also crucial to focus on grievances, inequalities, and violence at the ground level. Primarily, the international community and the region should make it clear they stand with the people of South Sudan: implement and aggressively enforce these enhanced measures of financial pressure that can begin to build leverage over the competing elites, and deliver justice and accountability for the many victims of the war to foster long-term stability. There needs to be a greater focus on removing the rewards of competitive corruption by focusing on both South Sudan's decision-makers and the international firms that enable them. The priority should be to monitor these entities and implement the necessary pressures needed to stop them and thereby dismantle the entrenched violent kleptocratic system, which is a prerequisite for lasting peace, good governance, and human rights in South Sudan. Instead of trying to forge comfortable power-sharing agreements, the focus from the region and broader international community must be on creating consequences for bad actors, as this is the only path to a transformed and reformed functional state in South Sudan. These pressures can help deny the leaders material resources used to perpetuate large-scale violence in South Sudan. This pressure also needs to extend in the region. In June 2018, the U.S. Treasury Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, Sigal Mandelker, traveled to Uganda and Kenya to deliver a strong message on the need for action against the proceeds of South Sudanese corruption that are laundered into neighboring banking systems. This message must continue to be developed with specific pressures delivered not only by the United States, but also by the United Nations (U.N.) Security Council, European Union, African Union, and regional bodies. Details: Washington, DC: Enough Project, 2019. 55p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed February 14, 2019 at: https://enoughproject.org/wp-content/uploads/AHijackedState_Enough_February2019-web.pdf Year: 2019 Country: Sudan URL: https://enoughproject.org/wp-content/uploads/AHijackedState_Enough_February2019-web.pdf Shelf Number: 154610 Keywords: Exploitation of Natural ResourcesFinancial CrimesPolitical CorruptionViolent Conflict |