Word: niger
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2010-2019
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...chain smoker who has been ill for years, left for Saudi for treatment for a heart condition from where he is yet to return, and the peace process - and all Nigeria - were left in limbo. In December, the main rebel group, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), announced it had lost patience with the delay and re-started its campaign of attacks on pipelines and installations and kidnappings of Western oil workers. A few thousand gunmen with a thing for shades, bandoliers and fast boats had the global price of crude back in their crosshairs...
...have been abducted by AQIM in North Africa in the last three years. While the group has unleashed many of its most violent terrorist acts (bombings and shootings) in cities like Algiers, its kidnappings have all taken place in the vast Sahel region stretching across Mauritania, Morocco, Algeria, Mali, Niger, Libya and Tunisia. According to experts, the number of insurgents roaming the desert area in four-wheel vehicles has increased from a few score to perhaps 200 in the past two years, including both hard-core members and supporters who periodically participate in missions...
...kidnapping foreigners, analysts believe another motivation is terrorizing the West. A French foreign intelligence official tells TIME that militants executed a British hostage last May, for example, simply to horrify the world after efforts to secure a ransom reportedly failed. The man, Edwin Dyer, was abducted while traveling in Niger in January 2009, and in exchange for his freedom, AQIM demanded $14 million and the release of a radical cleric being held in a British prison. When Britain balked, Dyer was executed less than 24 hours later. Some analysts now say that the demands could have been a ruse...
...damaging potential of this paralysis began to be realized this week when fractious rebels from the southern Niger delta first reunited, then on Saturday ended their four-month cease-fire and promised an "all-out onslaught" on foreign oil companies in which "nothing will be spared." A second giant worry is that the political impasse will exacerbate tension between northern, mostly Muslim Nigerians - who dominate the army and government and from whose ranks Yar'Adua hails - and southern Christians, whose most senior leader is the Vice President, Goodluck Jonathan. As always, the split is the key issue in Nigerian politics...