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May 23, 2013
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 Nigeria’s Unholy WarPosted on Apr 6, 2010
You may have heard about the city of Jos, the capital of Plateau state in Nigeria’s Middle Belt, and wondered why it is a flashpoint of unspeakable violence. Clashes between Muslims and Christians in September 2001 killed more than 1,000 people. A similar uprising killed up to 700 people in 2004. Another round of riots claimed more than 400 lives in 2008 and displaced several thousands. This year alone, Jos has witnessed two such bloodbaths. On Jan. 17, mobs killed about 400 residents of Jos. The second round of attacks, on March 7, was even more vicious. Human rights groups and government sources say as many as 500 people may have been killed in the attacks. Among the dead were a 4-day-old infant and a 3-month-old baby. A 2-year-old boy had both eyes plucked out and his legs severed from his body. He died screaming in pain. “I killed three people; two men and a woman. ... I killed them with a stick, with a knife,” Dahiru Adamu, 25, a cattle herder, says in explaining his part in the last round of attacks. “In the first crisis, they killed most of my brothers,” Adamu says, justifying his viciousness. He first beat his victims into a stupor with a stick, after which he stabbed them to death with a short knife. Adamu and his cohorts, dozens of Muslim, Hausa/Fulani herdsmen, descended on the village of Dogo Na Hawa, south of Jos, in the dawn of March 7 and slaughtered hundreds with machetes, knives and cutlasses. The villagers were sleeping when the attackers arrived and set their houses on fire to smoke them out. Of course, they ran out. The victims, mostly the old, the infirm, women and children, were cut down with an assortment of knives and machetes. Advertisement Mark Lipdo, an official of the Stefanos Foundation, a Christian charity group, says the village of Zot, another settlement that was attacked, was almost wiped out in the violence. He says: “we saw mainly those who are helpless, like small children and then the older men, who cannot run, these were the ones that were slaughtered.” It was an act of retribution. The residents of Dogo Na Hawa, a village of Christians, were marked since Jan. 17 when Christian mobs killed about 400 Hausa Muslims in Hai Kura Karama, south of Jos. Their bodies were disposed of in wells and sewers. “They killed a lot of our Fulanis in January,” Adamu says, referring to the fate of his ethnic group in the January attacks. “So I knew that this time, we would take revenge.” Peam Shut, a survivor, says he lost about 17 members of his family. Shut was awakened that gruesome Sunday morning by a gunshot. He ran outside and found a group of men, armed with machetes and clubs, throwing a petrol bomb at his brother’s house. He watched as his brother’s wife, Hanatu, tried to flee. Hanatu could not escape her cruel fate. She was butchered. The attackers then turned his way and shouted: “There are the other cattle.” Peam Shut ran. He got away. But his wife and son were not so lucky: They were cut to pieces. Pastor Johana Gyang Jugu lost his family and his church building. Like most of the other people, he was wakened by gunfire. His wife, Rose, and 18-year-old daughter, Mary, ran with him but were separated in the confusion. He turned back to see them both hacked to death. He ran for his dear life. “I tried my best,” he says, as if to apologize to the dead. “There is nothing I can do, I am just crying.” According to eyewitnesses, attackers yelled “Allahu Akhbar” before burning down churches and homes. Survivors say the attackers were mostly members of the Muslim Fulani clan, while the victims were mostly Christians. Some say the attackers killed anybody they captured if they could not answer in Fulani, the language of the attackers. On the other side of the conflict, however, is Hassan Harouna, 2, who has to lie on his front on his bed at La Tahzan Clinic, in Jos. Hassan sustained his injuries in an attack by Christians on Muslims on Jan. 17. The skin from his lower back over his buttocks and down his left leg was burned. He was tied to his mother’s back (as women carry their babies in this part of the world) when they were both doused in petrol and set ablaze. Human Rights Watch put the death toll in the January clashes at 492, and said that 364 of those killed were Muslims. According to Hassan’s father, Abdullahi Harouna, armed men invaded their village of Kuru Karama and started to burn down houses. “They herded us into one place and started chopping people with machetes,” he recalls in agony. Abdullahi escaped with three of his children. But Hassan and his mother were not so lucky. Hassan lay among the dead in a mass grave for 24 hours before he was found. While the March attack of Muslims on Christians was purely retaliatory, there are conflicting reports of what triggered the January attack of Christians on Muslims. Community leaders insist that it began with an argument over the rebuilding of a Muslim home, destroyed in November 2008 violence, in a predominately Christian neighborhood. Police sources, however, say it started when Muslim youths set a Catholic church, filled with worshippers, on fire. Who would believe that Jos was once Nigeria’s top tourist destination and was known as “the home of peace and tourism”? Indeed, the name Jos is an acronym for Jesus Our Savior, reflecting the influence of Christian missionaries. Located on a tableland in central Nigeria, its area covers about 3,000 square miles (8,000 square kilometers) and has an average elevation of 4,200 feet (1,280 meters), with the surrounding high plains exceeding 3,200 feet. Because the city lies at an elevation of 1,300 meters above sea level, it is cooler than anywhere else in Nigeria. This makes Jos attractive to Europeans and others from temperate regions.
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By Inherit The Wind, April 7, 2010 at 2:26 pm Link to this comment
Tribalism in its worst form is racism. Even without Europeans, Africa has a history of racism. Masai and other black tribes absolutely HATED Hottentots and bushmen who are smaller in stature and lighter in color. Bushmen didn’t have the concept of ownership, particularly of animals and would kill cattle—which the Black tribes considered the ultimate form of wealth, thus infuriating them against the Yellow tribes.
But tribalism isn’t selectively African. It’s American as well, both North and South. It’s European, and Asian. It’s “Us” versus “Them”.
Report thisBy gerard, April 7, 2010 at 2:00 pm Link to this comment
Common sense based on experience tells me that it isn’t “hate” that does it. Hate is the last stage before hysterical violence, and often it has to be artificlally, deliberately, sponsored by interests behind the scenes.
Report thisIn order for such a condition to occur, there has to be prejudice, separation, emphasis on fear of differences, calls for “protection from the others.” If there is economic desperation, it is easy to sew seeds of blame and a desire for revenge. If there are no respectable jobs, it is easy to lead men into killing, partly out of inarticulate rage, partly out of a sense of worthlessness.
The sad pattern goes on and on, psychologically complicated and insidious. Grasping the problem carefully and kindly in its earliest stages, it can (could) be prevented from reaching its inevitable conclusion. But it means understanding and treating the causes, not laying on some “message” from the outside or exploiting the situation by pretending to “win hearts and minds” for ulterior reasons.
PS—This is not news, by the way.
By Leefeller, April 7, 2010 at 12:32 pm Link to this comment
It is most enlightening to receive personal insight
to problems like these, the MSM offers little to
form opinion on, for their job is not to educate,
rather to manipulate.
“Also, since this article is about Nigeria, aren’t
Israel and the Palestinians a bit off topic?”
Possibly; Israel/Palestin problem may be off topic
if they become exclusive here, though I suggest,
demonizing people because of differences happens
every where in the world. This seems to be proven by
history, demonizing seems a propagation of hate and
is not exclusive to Nigeria.
Though this article is about Nigeria, it may be
useful to attempt to understand why these kinds of
things seem rampart around the world?
No place in the world is exempt from hate, except
Report thismaybe the South Pole, with global warming this may
no longer be true!
By gerard, April 7, 2010 at 12:28 pm Link to this comment
I have a sneaking suspicion that small arms manufacturers in “enlightened” countries are enjoying the revenue they receive from selling weapons to all sides of these massacres. Years ago at a world peace conference I heard a weeping young African gentleman plead the case for which he had come all the way from abroad: “Please, I beg you, stop selling weapons that enable my brothers to kill each other!”
Report thisI will never forget it—nor have I been able to do anything to answer his plea. Why can’t we get hold of this filthy armaments business and stop the universal killing?
By Night-Gaunt, April 7, 2010 at 11:52 am Link to this comment
Africa was and still is called the “Dark Continent” not because of the color of the locals skin, you can find just as dark all around the equatorial belt, but the unknown nature of it. Now today the only excuse for that in this day and age of instant communication is lack of interest is media black or brown out. The UN failed in Darfur and the USA didn’t care for the moment what happened there. Though I would have expected them to support the Christians in those areas and get to the oil wealth there. [That may still happen.]
Seems to me no one should play favorites, the only reason why the Palestinians get any air time at all is what happens to them from Israel who is the stronger and aggressive party in that area. However Darfur wasn’t ignored by the Left anymore than Biafera was. But as to being able to do something is different from talking about it. We must not pick sides and in what is happening in Nigeria all sides are in need of help and condemnation. Both aggressor and retaliators and all of those who suffered from each.
Report thisBy gerard, April 7, 2010 at 11:23 am Link to this comment
I have to admit that I know almost nothing about African cultures and politics. That’s not accidental. Africa doesn’t figure big in American educational institutions for the same reasons, probably, rooted in racism. If we know nothing, we can’t do anything. Furthermore, if we know nothing we don’t have to worry about starvation, disease, hopelessness and inter-tribal mayhem. That way the oil companies and the mineral miners can just go on year after year drilling and mining and exploiting and taking advantage of the ignorance and carelessness.
I’m amazed that more doesn’t filter through to us from the U.N. where reps from African localities meet together. What are they doing? What do they want to see happen? Can’t they break through the awful media silence with something more than brutality and violence? Or are we only supposed to see Africa through dark glasses?
Report thisBy Leefeller, April 7, 2010 at 9:20 am Link to this comment
If I have a dogma, it may be my feeling of discontent
with religion. Though religion seems only an excuse for
the manipulations are ever present via politics,
society economics or religion, little difference except
in the one who is pulling of the strings.
Can it be opportunists are ever present to manipulate
these events for their own ends?
As the world becomes smaller and smaller, it seems this
Report thismay be the constant story.
By Ayo, April 7, 2010 at 2:14 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
i cant figure out what seem to be happening to Nigeria…..“suicide bomber"guys this foul play people killing each other not given prospect to religion.guys lets think about what we are doing its not time to be killing each other its time to work hand in hand to see how things will work out.mere reading the article about jos crisis is mad enough without even thinking about what has gone down there.kudos to the survivors you guys are the luckiest people on earth just try to stay strong for your people,its hard but you guys just have to try…..i’m out
Report thisBy ritamary, April 7, 2010 at 12:05 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
I lived in Lagos for two years in the 1970s and have to agree with the Nigerian Marxist’s take on the problems in Nigeria. There is a total failure of national leadership, both Christian and Muslim, and the most abject poverty imaginable.
The Biafran War was about oil with a big helping hand extended by some Western intelligence agencies. The oil is in eastern Nigeria where the Ibos live. The oil wealth was/is taken out of eastern Nigeria and stolen by the upper class Western-educated Nigerians.
What I observed on a personal level is what Nigerians call tribalism. Tribalism is something akin to racism. For example, at the secondary school where I taught English the ethnic groups would sit separately when we ate lunch. The Ibos would sit in one area and the Yorubas would sit in another. And guess what, all the Ibos were Christians and so were most of the Yorubas. These two groups of people did not like each other and religion had nothing to do with it.
Is it possible that tribalism is playing a large part in what is happening in Jos? The genocide in Rwanda was committed by Hutu Christians against Tutsi Christians. Or that particular genocide just does not fit in with the theories of you brave anti-Islamic warriors out there?
Also, since this article is about Nigeria, aren’t Israel and the Palestinians a bit off topic? Or bringing that issue into any discussion is never off topic for some.
Report thisBy Inherit The Wind, April 6, 2010 at 7:56 pm Link to this comment
OM:
Sure, I remember Biafra. It was an attempt by the Ibo tribe to set up an independent state to escape discrimination. My cousin was there in the Peace Corps. One day, while he was on a trip, his village that he was a guest in, was attacked. He was never able to go back there, lost every possession he wasn’t carrying, including his precious tape recorder he used for audio letters, illustrated with color slide. He was lucky to escape alive.
Unlike you, I have nothing against Islam. Christians, though were both friends and the bane of my existence growing up (not the same ones, of course). Fundamentalists of EVERY religion repel me, whether Islamic, Robertson/Fallwell Christians, or neo-Zionist Orthodox Jews. I am equally repelled by fundamentalist fanatical Hindus. All are equally violent and equally corrupting of their religions, in their zeal to TELL other people what THEY should do, and then enforcing it on them, even to death.
Not one of “The Contingent” has ever answered the question: Why didn’t the 22 Arab nations, with 3/4 of a billion people, and land area 2 or 3x that of the USA, refuse to take their “brethren” in?
Watch the excuses that fly in response to that—and the abuse they’ll heap on me (and you, and Shenonymous) rather than give the REAL answer: The Arab nations don’t and never have given a $#!T about the Palestinians. They are merely pawns in the game each Arab leader is playing his quest to become the next Caliph, either him or his sons. That’s what they all dream of, like medieval European kings dreaming of being crowned Holy Roman Emperor. Germans and Austrians named their king the Kaiser, pronounced EXACTLY as Caesar is pronounce in Latin. Russians named THEIR king Czar: Cee-Zar, get it?
This is what “The Contingent” fails to acknowledge. Unfortunately, the neo-Zionists currently leading Israel are as dangerous and bumble-headed as the neo-Cons who lead our nation into disaster after disaster under Bush.
But for all their “humanity”, they have none to spare for the victims in Darfur, Nigeria, or, by far the worst of all, Congo, where the UN estimates over 5 MILLION have died in the battle of the warlords for the mineral wealth and power that goes with it.
Yeah, I’m a liberal. But I don’t turn my brain off and get my marching orders from Chris Hedges or Ralph Nader.
Report thisBy OzarkMichael, April 6, 2010 at 7:22 pm Link to this comment
Yes, ITW. But i propose we should do our homework. Learn some history. But trying to review history with the Contingent is like hammering nails into concrete.
You already know something about Darfur, its 3 million dead, mostly african Christians at the hand of Muslims. Likely you do not remember Biafra, which I suspect may have been a type of ‘Darfur’ played out in this very place, Nigeria. History repeats itself, but we forget the last go round. Thats why everything is such a surprise.
Eh, nevermind.
Nobody understood Biafra at the time, and nobody cares about it now. Quite unlike tiny Palestine, which was discussed at the UN daily for 40 years(that I recall), more than any other topic in the history of the UN. And Palestine was spread upon the newspaper pages daily for 40 years(that I can recall), and thus over time Palestine has been tranformed into a mythos which exemplifies the relationship of the world to Islam. The mythos seems to be that the Palestinian in Gaza is just like Mohammed, the Mohammed of the Holy Koran, who must have been dispossessed and oppressed by western colonialism.
Now the conservative sheds this mythos easily, but this mythos is an integral part of the Leftist worldview. It can see the speck of suffering in Palestine clearly but then cannot see the long and sorry log of Islamic conquest and oppression.
But I digress. I shall at the very least place this slaughter of Christians in the proper context of the last few months. That shouldnt be too much to ask.
Or maybe it is, becuase the MSM today is filtering information to keep up the appearance that Islam is the Religion of Peace, that Islam is the “the great victim of the world”.(Someone at Truthdig actually wrote that. While it is perfectly false, it does accurately describe the narrative that the Leftist and MSM keep jamming into our heads)
Nevertheless, I would like to examine the earlier January massacre in Nigeria, where “the Christians slaughtered the Muslims”, supposedly setting up this recent massacre as “retaliation”. Yes, thats how the news media portrays it.
But that isnt what happened.
In January the Christians were attacked by Muslims as they were going to church, so Christians fled into an already full church nearby. This had nothing to do with economic or pastoral vs agricultural disputes. The Muslims set fire to the church packed full of Christians(rich or poor, bankers or farmers, it didnt matter), burning them all alive. The Muslims kept attacking other Christians in the area and the bodies piled up for hours.
Up till this point, the Muslims have nothing to complain about, do they? Or to retaliate for?
But then other Christians in Jos heard what had happened and they did fight back. Not only against the perpetrators, but some Christians went out searching for Muslims to kill. It wasnt the right thing to do. But that is what happened.
In the end of the January fight far more Christians were dead than Muslims. The body count tells the truth. Isnt that the way that The Contingent sees the truth, ie, in the body count in Gaza vs the body count in Israel? You can tell who the good guy becuase he suffers more casualties, right?
Right?
Ah, but with Nigeria they ignore the Christian bodies. I guess that is a dead end too.
ITW, the other Leftists really go for “Islam, the great victim of the world” as their narrative in spite of every fact that this weary world bring against it. So this makes you remarkably different. Shenonymous too.
I would like to explore why that is. Before the Contingent arrive (for those who dont know, “The Contingent” is a term Shenonymous invented for Internet Jihadists and their useful idiot Leftist supporters.
Things will warm up shortly. Write back soon.
Report thisBy Inherit The Wind, April 6, 2010 at 3:27 pm Link to this comment
Ask “The Contingent”. It’s only genocide when Christians are killing Muslims, but not when Muslims are killing Christians. Of course, according to “TC”, the only REAL genocide or ethnic cleansing is when Jews kill Arabs. Remember: “The Contingent” contends that there’s no genocide in Darfur, either.
It’s all genocide.
Report this