Monday, May 24, 2004
Violence Jolts the Still Fragile Democracy in Nigeria
A rash of sectarian clashes has left dead bodies in the green highlands of central Nigeria, prompted tens of thousands of Muslims and Christians to flee in opposite directions and thrown Africa's most populous nation into one of the most serious political crises since the restoration of democracy just five years ago.
The latest and most widely publicized carnage was carried out on two days early in May, when a Christian militia, armed with Kalashnikovs and clubs, stormed this Muslim market town and crushed it.
Two weeks after that attack, Yelwa is a blackened shell. Houses and shops are burned. Cooking pots litter the streets. The town's people are huddled miles away in makeshift camps. The handful left here are piling their belongings into the backs of big trucks and leaving. Among them is a mother named Adama Ali, who has waited in vain for news of her baby girl. The child was taken from her arms, she said, by the gang that attacked this town.
The death toll here is impossible to verify: it ranges from an official figure of 67 to residents' estimates of up to 10 times that number.
Whatever the number, the consequences are echoing across the country. Towns and villages here in Plateau State have become Christian-only or Muslim-only enclaves. Outside, in northern Nigeria, in the fabled, politically volatile town of Kano, Muslims have rioted in retaliation for the Yelwa killings; some 20,000 Christians have fled their homes.
What made the Yelwa incident such a lightning rod was its potential to inspire even more violent reprisals, and not just in Plateau. Fueled less by religious passions than by deep-seated rivalries over land and power, the attack here was among the most violent and best organized in a string of recurrent tit-for-tat clashes.
The first of those came over a single week in September 2001, when 1,000 people were killed in Christian-Muslim violence in the state capital, Jos. The next year, Christian farmers slaughtered the cattle of Muslim herders, prompting a brutal attack on a cluster of Christian villages. In February of this year, Muslim youths attacked a Christian hamlet next to Yelwa. A few days later, a church in Yelwa was set ablaze, killing dozens inside, including the pastor. There are many other stories like those.
Then, on Tuesday, apparently in retaliation for the attack on Muslims in Yelwa, Muslim gangs set upon four Christian villages. In a familiar exodus, women and children marched along the highway this afternoon, heading north, balancing their worldly goods on their heads. Others piled into cars, with sleeping mats and bicycles strapped behind.
An elderly woman, feeble and dazed, sat on the side of the road under the midday sun. The woman, Rahuta Nicodemus, said she had fled her village of Sabon Gida so quickly that she forgot to bring even taxi money. Her husband, an old blind man, simply sat in front of their house, she said, refusing to budge. She heard later that he had been killed on the spot.
Along the road, opposite where Mrs. Nicodemus sat, small groups of young men walked up and down, with clubs and knives in hand; one held a bow and arrow.
...
Competition for political power has hardened ethnic and religious divides. As land has become scarcer, feuds between farmers and cattle herders have turned deadly. Grievances have intensified between those who claim to be indigenous to the land and others whom they describe as settlers.
The feuds are exacerbated by other fault lines. The people who call themselves indigenous to this region are mostly Christians, from a host of small ethnic groups. Those they tag as settlers are mostly Muslims from the Hausa and Fulani tribes, whose ancestors came from the north beginning 100 years ago. The indigenous people tend to be farmers; the settlers are usually cattle herders and traders.
...
On Sept. 7, 2001, a fight broke out when a Christian woman tried to walk through a Muslim congregation assembled on the street for Friday Prayer. During the next four days, 1,000 people were killed.
The violence did not end. It spiraled across the state. Some of the incidents started off with Muslim herders accusing Christian farmers of stealing cattle. Others were set off by farmers accusing herders of deliberately sending cattle to trample their cornfields.
Hostilities heated up earlier this year, when Fulani herders angered by cattle theft razed a cluster of mostly Christian farming villages. Saleh Bayeri, the blustery assistant secretary of the Fulani cattlemen's association, freely admitted that the Fulani raised money, bought guns and hired mercenaries from surrounding states. They went in with the intention of retrieving stolen cattle but ended up blasting away the villages and leaving several dead, including policemen who tried to intervene. "You know the Fulani man believes in vengeance," Mr. Bayeri said with relish. "There's no way you kill a Fulani man's cattle and he will not react."
...
On Tuesday afternoon, a cattle trader named Haruna Garma lay on a foam mattress in a crowded school complex about 80 miles away in a town called Lafia. Two bandages covered his big belly: one for where a bullet had gone in, the other for where it had come out. He was shot trying to catch up to his wife, he said. Four of his 10 children were killed. One died in the town hospital, when it was set on fire.
...
Another man, Lawal Kate Hamza, had gone back to Yelwa for just a night to salvage the one thing he could take from his home: the tin roof. There is no staying in Yelwa anymore, he said. His brother was shot and killed there. It is now empty. "There is no rest of mind," is how he put it.
A rash of sectarian clashes has left dead bodies in the green highlands of central Nigeria, prompted tens of thousands of Muslims and Christians to flee in opposite directions and thrown Africa's most populous nation into one of the most serious political crises since the restoration of democracy just five years ago.
The latest and most widely publicized carnage was carried out on two days early in May, when a Christian militia, armed with Kalashnikovs and clubs, stormed this Muslim market town and crushed it.
Two weeks after that attack, Yelwa is a blackened shell. Houses and shops are burned. Cooking pots litter the streets. The town's people are huddled miles away in makeshift camps. The handful left here are piling their belongings into the backs of big trucks and leaving. Among them is a mother named Adama Ali, who has waited in vain for news of her baby girl. The child was taken from her arms, she said, by the gang that attacked this town.
The death toll here is impossible to verify: it ranges from an official figure of 67 to residents' estimates of up to 10 times that number.
Whatever the number, the consequences are echoing across the country. Towns and villages here in Plateau State have become Christian-only or Muslim-only enclaves. Outside, in northern Nigeria, in the fabled, politically volatile town of Kano, Muslims have rioted in retaliation for the Yelwa killings; some 20,000 Christians have fled their homes.
What made the Yelwa incident such a lightning rod was its potential to inspire even more violent reprisals, and not just in Plateau. Fueled less by religious passions than by deep-seated rivalries over land and power, the attack here was among the most violent and best organized in a string of recurrent tit-for-tat clashes.
The first of those came over a single week in September 2001, when 1,000 people were killed in Christian-Muslim violence in the state capital, Jos. The next year, Christian farmers slaughtered the cattle of Muslim herders, prompting a brutal attack on a cluster of Christian villages. In February of this year, Muslim youths attacked a Christian hamlet next to Yelwa. A few days later, a church in Yelwa was set ablaze, killing dozens inside, including the pastor. There are many other stories like those.
Then, on Tuesday, apparently in retaliation for the attack on Muslims in Yelwa, Muslim gangs set upon four Christian villages. In a familiar exodus, women and children marched along the highway this afternoon, heading north, balancing their worldly goods on their heads. Others piled into cars, with sleeping mats and bicycles strapped behind.
An elderly woman, feeble and dazed, sat on the side of the road under the midday sun. The woman, Rahuta Nicodemus, said she had fled her village of Sabon Gida so quickly that she forgot to bring even taxi money. Her husband, an old blind man, simply sat in front of their house, she said, refusing to budge. She heard later that he had been killed on the spot.
Along the road, opposite where Mrs. Nicodemus sat, small groups of young men walked up and down, with clubs and knives in hand; one held a bow and arrow.
...
Competition for political power has hardened ethnic and religious divides. As land has become scarcer, feuds between farmers and cattle herders have turned deadly. Grievances have intensified between those who claim to be indigenous to the land and others whom they describe as settlers.
The feuds are exacerbated by other fault lines. The people who call themselves indigenous to this region are mostly Christians, from a host of small ethnic groups. Those they tag as settlers are mostly Muslims from the Hausa and Fulani tribes, whose ancestors came from the north beginning 100 years ago. The indigenous people tend to be farmers; the settlers are usually cattle herders and traders.
...
On Sept. 7, 2001, a fight broke out when a Christian woman tried to walk through a Muslim congregation assembled on the street for Friday Prayer. During the next four days, 1,000 people were killed.
The violence did not end. It spiraled across the state. Some of the incidents started off with Muslim herders accusing Christian farmers of stealing cattle. Others were set off by farmers accusing herders of deliberately sending cattle to trample their cornfields.
Hostilities heated up earlier this year, when Fulani herders angered by cattle theft razed a cluster of mostly Christian farming villages. Saleh Bayeri, the blustery assistant secretary of the Fulani cattlemen's association, freely admitted that the Fulani raised money, bought guns and hired mercenaries from surrounding states. They went in with the intention of retrieving stolen cattle but ended up blasting away the villages and leaving several dead, including policemen who tried to intervene. "You know the Fulani man believes in vengeance," Mr. Bayeri said with relish. "There's no way you kill a Fulani man's cattle and he will not react."
...
On Tuesday afternoon, a cattle trader named Haruna Garma lay on a foam mattress in a crowded school complex about 80 miles away in a town called Lafia. Two bandages covered his big belly: one for where a bullet had gone in, the other for where it had come out. He was shot trying to catch up to his wife, he said. Four of his 10 children were killed. One died in the town hospital, when it was set on fire.
...
Another man, Lawal Kate Hamza, had gone back to Yelwa for just a night to salvage the one thing he could take from his home: the tin roof. There is no staying in Yelwa anymore, he said. His brother was shot and killed there. It is now empty. "There is no rest of mind," is how he put it.
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