Growing Rebellion In Niger

Battle In A Poor Land For Riches Beneath The Soil -- International Herald Tribune

AIR MOUNTAINS, Niger: Until last year, the only trigger Amoumoun Halil had pulled was the one on his livestock-vaccination gun. This spring, a battered Kalashnikov rifle rested uneasily on his shoulder. When he donned his stiff fatigues, his lopsided gait and smiling eyes stood out among his hard-faced guerrilla brethren.

Halil, a 40-year-old veterinary engineer, was a reluctant soldier in a rebellion that had broken out over an improbable — and as yet unrealized — bonanza in one of the world's poorest countries.

A battle is unfolding on the stark mountains and scalloped dunes of northern Niger between a band of Tuareg nomads, who claim the riches beneath their homeland are being taken by a government that gives them little in return, and an army that calls the fighters drug traffickers and bandits.

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My Comment: This has all the ingredients to become another failed African state. Exploitation and development of this continent's resources has been a disaster for almost every country. With a history of tribal and cultural warfare, African nations have never been able to establish institutions among themselves that can govern in the 20th and 21rst century.

Niger is a classic poster child of this conflict. Different ethnic groups with a history of animosity cannot come to some level of cooperation and compromise. Because of this inability to come to an agreement .... warfare and conflict becomes the alternative.

Niger is just going to be another domino that is going to fall.