GOOD MORNING FROM UPPER DARBY!!!!!
Damn Nigger-Traitors.
Lemme see if I can FIND THE ARTICLE that CUTS INTO THE GUTS of what I just said....
FOUND IT! And sorry for the small print, but this article has been sitting on one of my storage drives and it took me a bit to find it. EITHER WAY!? Here you go;
The War Nerd: Nigeria’s Inevitable Mess
BY GARY BRECHER
ON MAY 17, 2014
ON MAY 17, 2014
Editor’s note: With Nigeria and Boko Haram back in the
headlines, this seemed like an appropriate time to republish Gary Brecher’s
essay on “Nigeria’s Inevitable Mess” which first appeared in NSFWCORP in March
2013, before it was acquired by Pando.
A few days ago, a suicide bomber got on a luxury commuter bus in
Northern Nigeria and blew himself up, along with 60 people who were heading
home from work.
It didn’t get much publicity. African
casualties rarely do, especially when there’s a depressing religious angle. The
suicide bomber came from the Northern Nigerian Islamist group “Boko Haram.” The
name is interesting: “Boko” comes from the English word “book,” as pronounced
by the Hausa, the biggest northern ethnic group. “Haram” (“forbidden”) is an
Arabic word, the Wahhabis’ favorite word of all. When people talk about
“Northern Nigeria” they mean “Muslim Nigeria.” There are three big divisions in
the country: The Muslim/Hausa North, the Christian/Igbo South, and the Yoruba
West. (The Yoruba are the only big group that’s mixed, with Christians and
Muslims). Boko Haram blew up those buses because the people on them were going
to an Igbo/Christian neighborhood of Kano, a Muslim/Northern city.
That’s already more than most
squeamish Westerners want to know. “Ah, it’s religious…” is about all they need
to hear before settling back into their comfy stances. Conservatives figure
it’s just one more proof that all Muslims are crazy. The left mumbles
“Islamophobia” and tries to change the subject to Palestine. So from left to
right on your radio dial, there’s not a lot of what my social-studies teacher
called “hunger for knowledge.”
It’s too bad, because what’s going
on in Nigeria is part of one of the biggest stories in the world: the fight for
the Sahel. All the wars along the southern edge of the Sahara are really one
huge war that stretches from Senegal to Sudan (from Senegal to Burma, actually
— but we’re sticking with Africa), veering north or south along the way. If
you’ve ever seen the edge of a brush fire, you know the way it flares up in
places, smokes in others, seems dead in patches? That’s how this war looks,
heating up and cooling off at different points along a line about 10 degrees north
of the Equator.
Northern Nigeria is one of the
oldest and longest burns on the line. It’s been going longer than a peat fire
in the Sacramento Delta. And it may be the most important of all the flare-ups
along the line, because Nigeria is by far the most important country straddling
that line. Mali, Mauritania, the Central African Republic—none of those places
will ever matter much. Nigeria does. It has a huge population, over 160 million
people, huge oil reserves, and at one time looked set to become one of the big
world powers. The reason it didn’t “reach its potential,” to borrow another
phrase I used to hear a lot at school, has everything to do with what’s going
on now in Northern Nigeria.
And there’s an even more urgent
reason to care what’s happening in Northern Nigeria: what’s going on there may
decide whether or not millions of poor kids around the world end up paralyzed.
That’s because that religious war in Northern Nigeria now provides one of the
few safe havens for the polio virus that used to leave millions of kids in
wheelchairs or lying in an iron lung. Polio made cripples of kids and young
adults all over Africa, until Nelson Mandela started the “Kick Polio out of
Africa” campaign in 1996. It worked so well that by 2003, the virus was wiped
out in most of the continent. That year they planned the final campaign to wipe
it out of Nigeria, which produced 80% of all the polio cases in Africa.
Volunteers fanned out, and managed to vaccinate the Western and South/Eastern
regions successfully, but when they got to the north, things got weird. The
spokesman for the Supreme Council for Sharia in Nigeria said that the vaccine
was created by “evildoers from the West” to make Muslim women infertile and
give Muslim men AIDS.
Islamist fighters started killing
vaccine workers and haven’t stopped yet. On March 8, 2013, killed nine vaccine workers in Kano — nine female workers. Thanks
to these quick-draw dudes on motorbikes defending family values in the local
style, the virus is coming back. There were 122
reported cases in Nigeria last
year, and 58 in Pakistan, where the Taliban has killed at least 16 polio
volunteers, focusing on women in particular.
If you live in a rich country, with
your own doctor, you don’t have to care, because your kids will be immunized
quickly. But if you live in a country like Nigeria, where it takes a huge
continent-wide effort like the one Mandela fronted for in 1996, you’re out of
luck. Your kids will have to take their chance. Maybe that’s why people in the
media-rich countries don’t seem to care much about this story.
If you do want to understand why
Northern Nigeria would do something as weird as turning down vaccines, you have
to look coldly at the way ethnic and religious politics play out up there.
Nigeria is a mess, but it’s an inevitable mess, a mess with deep roots and
plenty of blame to go around.
Nigeria’s three parts were
simply nailed together by the British for their Imperial convenience: The North is a Muslim
theocracy dominated by the Hausa and Fulani; the West, where
the Yoruba kings (Oba) ruled city-states; and the East, where
the Igbo operated on something a lot like ancient Greek assemblies, with every
freeborn man entitled to a voice.
There are about 240 other ethnic
groups, like the Niger Delta people, the Ijaw. Jonathan Goodluck, the current
president—dude with the cool black hat?—he’s an Ijaw. But for most of Nigeria’s
history, it’s been a three-sided fight: Yoruba vs. Igbo vs. Hausa-Fulani.
The Yoruba were the first to meet
the whites and take up Western education. They dealt with the British town by
town; to the Yoruba, your town was more important than the broader ethnic
identity. The Igbo came late to British rule but took to education very
quickly. The Igbo get called “the Jews of
Africa” because they’re good at book-learning and business.
And then there were the Northerners,
the Hausa-dominated Muslims of the dry inland territory. In a way, you wouldn’t
be far off thinking of the great Nigerian divide in California terms: the
coasts vs. the hot inland redneck zone. The North, in Nigerian terms, is
usually called “Hausa,” or “Hausa-Fulani,” but it includes the Kanuri of the
Northeast, who are the most remote from the coast and the fiercest opponents of
anything coastal, Christian, or modern. These were all war-forged Sahel
caliphates, with no tradition of local loyalties like the Yoruba, or
egalitarianism like the Igbo. They had the traditional Sahel-Muslim
organization, top-down all the way: Sultan gives orders to Omda, Omda gives
orders to Sheikh, Sheikh gives orders to commoners. And commoners obey.
That style can be adapted to warmer,
more moderate people like the Zaghawa, but among the Hausa and Kanuri it was
Sultan and Jihad all the way. Even between Muslims, Jihad was the norm, with
the Hausa northwest and Kanuri/Fulani Northeast fighting for the caliphate
right through the Fulani War in the early 1800s. The wars often started with
disgruntled Islamic scholars being kicked out of one sultanate, then declaring
jihad against the ruler who booted them. The jihad would usually feed into an
ethnic grudge, usually Hausa farmers vs. Fulani herders—the old Cain ’n’ Abel
war. But all the jihads and dynastic struggles had one feature in common: It
was always total war for control of the whole Western Sahel, with one man on
top. That made for a huge cultural gap between the north and the coastal
people, the localist Yoruba and the populist Igbo.
The British crushed the Northern
caliphates early in the 20th Century, but found that they liked the North best
of the three heads this Nigerian monster had. The second sons who were booted
out of England to run the colonies always got on best with aristocratic,
warlike desert people. They took to the Hausa-Fulani, with their cataphracts
and caste system, like they were an unguarded tray of cucumber sandwiches. Most
of all, the Empire appreciated the ease with which all of Northern Nigeria
could be bought. Thanks to the strict, militarized hierarchy of the North, all
the local British agent had to do was buy the Sultan and the whole people would
fall into line.
It was a very different matter when
they tried to tell the argumentative Igbo and localist Yoruba what to do. If
you remember Chinua Achebe’s great novel “Things Fall Apart,” you’ll get an
idea of what it was like when the Brits met the Igbo. And in a way, you can get
a sense of what the Brit-Yoruba encounter was like from Amos Tutuola’s
amazingly weird, cool books: “The Palm Wine Drunkard” and “My Life in the Bush
of Ghosts.” There weren’t any novels like that from the north, because the
North didn’t take to Western education and books. The Hausa had walled off
their world from the corrupt coasts. Come to think of it, the Saudis felt the
same way; Riyadh was their place, right in the middle of the ugliest desert you
ever saw. They called Jeddah, the port city, “decadent”—I swear to God, when I
was out there a Saudi cop once said that to me, “Jeddah is decadent.” At the
time, I was mainly awed that he knew the English word “decadent” when I was
still figuring out whether “Yameen” meant “Go left” or “Go right.” But
actually, if you’re a Saudi cop, “decadent” is probably one of the commonest
words in your English kit—and it always seemed to be applied to coastal areas.
Take Dammam —another coastal region, on the Persian (or Arab) Gulf. To the
Wahhabi, Dammam is “decadent” too, full of Shi’ite traitors in the pay of Iran.
I wonder if you could argue that extremely conservative theocracies do better
in isolated inland areas. It works for the Pashtun, the Saudis’ only rivals. No
Pashtun saw the sea till they started moving to Karachi a couple generations
ago.
You
might think that when the British grabbed Nigeria, they’d force the North to
deal with a scary new world, but that’s not what happened. Instead, the British
agents, always understaffed and eager to use local proxies, took a look at the
Hausa system and, with their usual flexibility, decided they’d rule the North
indirectly, through the Sultans. And if those Sultans wanted their realms
insulated from outside influences, the British were happy to agree. So while
Christian missionaries were embedded in every Yoruba and Igbo town, no
Christian missionaries were permitted to operate in the North. No visitors of any
kind were encouraged. In return for allegiance to the Crown, the Sultans’
hierarchy was untouched.
That’s
why the North was the only part of Nigeria that wanted to stay British. The
demand for independence was confined to “the coastal elites,” as they say in
Bakersfield. When Nigeria got its independence in 1960, the Igbo and Yoruba
were excited and eager. From the North there was only wary silence.
The Igbo and Yoruba started moving
out of their traditional areas. Soon there were thousands of Igbo in the
Northern cities like Kano and Maiguduri, buy and selling, making the locals
feel that they were being played for suckers by these infidels.
The Muslim proletariat dealt with
their resentment the way the Russians used to, before the Revolution: pogroms. Every
few weeks Hausa mobs would get stirred up by the usual mix of envy and
religious paranoia and chop up a few Igbo.
Independent, three-headed Nigeria
only lasted seven years before exploding. In 1967, after coup and counter-coup,
the Hausa decided, as they always do, that it was all the Igbos’ fault, and
launched a huge pogrom, like the ones the Russians launched in 1905, targeting
Igbo living in the Northern cities. In a few days, 30,000 Igbo trying to make a
living in the North had been panga’d — or beaten or burned to death — and the
Igbo had had enough. The survivors fled home, making sure everybody heard their
horror stories. On May 30, 1967, Igbo
officers declared the Southeast region an independent country to be called
Biafra.
Most people don’t remember Biafra
now, except as the second name of that spoken-word asshole Jello Biafra. It’s a
shame; the Igbo deserve to have their heroic war remembered and honored. But
like I said, nobody much cares about African casualties, and when they do, it’s
always Africans as helpless victims—never, ever Africans as brave and
well-organized armies. I’ve noticed that, over years of doing this column. When
Africans are threatening to form a strong, united country, like the Igbo, the
Tutsi or the Eritreans, they come in for some weirdly intense hate, and a lot
of times it comes from the bloodiest bleeding hearts around. Creeps me out,
actually, and I’m not easily crept.
The Igbo had the morale and the
technical know-how; the Nigerian Army had the numbers and the weapons and a
whole lot of ethnic hate going for them, along with consistent support from
Britain and the USSR. The small, badly-supplied Biafran Army smashed the
Nigerian Army in most stand-up fights, but thanks to numbers, foreign support
and logistics, the Nigerian Army was able to isolate the Igbo in a little
enclave of southeastern forest. Then they proceeded to starve the Igbo to
death. Not by accident, not as an unfortunate consequence, but as military
policy: avoid battle, starve the Igbo civilians to death.
And of course, you know who dies
first in a siege: children. By 1970 two million Igbo were dead, nearly all of
starvation, and the Southeast was part of Nigeria again.
Two million people. Don’t hear much
about them, do you? Nobody minded much. The French helped the Igbo a little,
and the Israelis, a few old-school Catholics, but nobody who mattered. Polite
opinion from commies to GOP was unanimous that it was just one of those things.
If Biafra had survived, it would be
the tech capital of Africa by now, and a serious competitor for the West. Maybe
that explains why the West was so eager to crush the Igbo. Harold Wilson’s
government in the UK went all-out to help the Nigerian Army, even as British
people were donating millions of dollars to send food to the starving Biafrans.
As Achebe wrote, “Wilson personally accused [Biafran leader] Ojukwu of
attempting to garner sympathy by exploiting the casualties of a war to which
his government was supplying arms!”
The US was neutral, too busy with
the idiotic distraction in Vietnam to pay any attention…or maybe the US was
also in favor of keeping Africa a continent full of coups and poverty. All I
know is that the more I look at the recent history of Africa, the more I see
unanimous opposition to the strong peoples like the Igbo and the Tutsi. Seems
like we like our Africans hungry and corrupt.
That’s exactly what we got in
Nigeria, after the Igbo were destroyed. A whole generation of Igbo children had
grown up in starvation, and studies show that starvation is a real good way of crippling somebody for
life, even if they feed well later on.
The Hausa have ruled Nigeria since
1970. When oil was found in the Niger Delta, far away on the coast, it was Hausa
governors and generals who took more than 80% of the profits. Just think
Oklahoma: When you’ve got enough religious hysteria going, the locals will
reelect you as long as you say the right prayers, loud enough and public enough
and often enough, no matter how much you steal and no matter how many people
you kill. The Northern Islamists have had things their way, in legal terms; 12
Northern provinces now use Sharia law, which ensures nobody shoplifts more than
twice unless they’ve got prehensile toes.
But the North isn’t happy. Boko Haram wants the people of the North to
withdraw completely from the tech world. They say it’s all haram: getting the
vaccination, studying computers, learning English, working in an office. It’s
all part of a big corrosive scheme.
And in a way they’re right. When
women start learning to read and write, like they’re doing now in parts of
Northern Nigeria, they have a different value in the local economy: higher as
potential office workers, lower as docile baby-makers. There’s an excellent survey from back in
1989 showing that parents from the countryside don’t want their daughters
getting an education, but city parents are for it.
And if you’re a Hausa man who
expects to have a couple of wives producing kids and doing what they’re told,
the notion that they’ll work in an office and make more than you do is, you
know — haram.
Of course there are millions of
women in countries like Iran who are not just literate but hyperliterate, and
still consider themselves strict Muslims. But Iran has always had an urban
civilization; Northern Nigeria hasn’t. Take the nastiest, most violent city of
all: Maiguduri, capital of Borno Province, the most northeasterly, remote
province in Nigeria and the birthplace of Boko Haram. Maiguduri has a
population of 1.2 million people.
Maiguduri didn’t even exist until
1907. That was when the British set up an outpost there. It’s hard even
imagining the rate of change you’ve had to live through if you’re from a place
like that. And if you’re a Kanuri, Hausa or Fulani male—a northern Nigerian
male—it’s obvious to you that all these changes are against Islam, because
“Islam” always comes to mean local norms, like “Christianity” means guns and
private property in the South.
In a strange way, Boko Haram’s take
on the place of religion in a culture is closer to the truth than the moderate
view you get from progressive, urban Islamic intellectuals. There’s something
very rigorous about Boko’s view: This is all of a piece, this world of ours,
and any change to any part of it will bring the whole thing down. That’s the
way it actually does work, and that’s something that’s understood by a lot of
sullen, inarticulate conservatives all over the world, from Bakersfield to
Kano. That’s what’s behind the rage of the silent majority in every country,
the knowledge that new money will reverberate in unexpected directions, and is
almost guaranteed to destroy the world you feel comfortable with, even if the
changes seem innocent and totally devoid of religious significance. So any
change is evil. Not just unveiled women or booze or churches, but all books,
all education, and even those women going around vaccinating kids. Strange to
think that, in understanding that much at least, the dumb thugs in Boko Haram
understand social change better than the professors…or at least better than the
professors are willing to say, in public.
And that’s the hope for Achebe’s
people, the Igbo, the ones who get burned and chopped and shot to death in the
Boko Haram attacks: They win, long-term, as the faster people, the corrosive
element. One Igbo politician, Orji Uzor Kalu, said “The Igbo are the salt of
Nigeria.” He’s echoing the Bible there, but I’d put it a little differently:
The Igbo are the solvent. Boko Haram is a defensive movement, and the Igbo,
forced to push out of their half-ruined home territory, have no choice but to
move north and squirm their way into the rigid old Sultanates. These small
merchants and schoolteachers who migrate north won’t see themselves as agents
of change; they’ll have their own agendas. But they’ll bring it down anyway.
The funny thing is, if Biafra hadn’t
been crushed, it would be rich now, and would draw migrants. By crushing the
Igbo’s country, the Hausa made it inevitable that desperate Igbo would migrate
north and start chewing away at the walls of their mud castles.
Postscript: Chinua
Achebe died while I was writing this article. Achebe was Igbo. He lived through
a terrible time for his people, and fought for them to the end of his life.
This is from his last book, There Was A Country, published in 2012: “For over
half a century the Federal [Nigerian] Government has turned a blind eye to
waves of ferocious and savage massacres of its citizens — mainly Christian
southerners, mostly Igbo.”
[Illustration by Brad Jonas for
NSFWCORP/Pando]
As you can see it is the SAME PATTERN EVERY TIME. The Politics of Power isn't something to underestimate or fool-around-with. This article is why I KNOW that Boko Haram is funded by Nazi-America OR SOMEONE ELSE WHITE. Because THE REGION THEY COME FROM, has ALWAYS did the bidding of Whites. It is funny in a sick-twisted way, because a slave is still a slave. No matter if the slave BELIEVES they have their own ability to do as they please. Whites have made a living off of exploiting Our Weaknesses of Ethnicity and they have INTENTIONALLY CREATED OTHERS, by pitting one Black Ethnicity against AND OVER another. There comes a point when a person has to stop playing the Game and get down to the business of seeing that they're GETTING PLAYED. And playing Us has become a fuckin racial past time for Whites. The only thing that will end this kind of crap is either negotiated-commonality. Where warring and differing Black Factions sit down and work something out and stop allowing Whites to play Us one side against the other, or? The Black Faction that constantly kowtows and sells out to Whites must be eradicated, which is fucked up, but? The White Game of Black Manipulation has to come to an end at some point or another and you shouldn't sit around waiting for Whites to "grow that conscience" that they keep proving they don't have....
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