Word: weste
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...world's poorest regions, West Africa already had its work cut out for it in trying to develop economically, fight the advance of the Sahara and establish rules of law. Now the world's largest terrorist group and biggest drug barons are in the mix - as in Afghanistan, only much larger. Niger adds an extra dimension to this worrying picture: it is home to Africa's largest deposits of uranium, needed to build nuclear power stations and weapons. And lawlessness is endemic. While I was reporting in Niamey last April, my car was attacked twice by mobs wielding steel poles...
...insecurity in the region? Two reasons are terrorists and drug smugglers, who have been attracted to West Africa by its weak governments and whose presence has weakened them further. First, the region has become a staging ground for operations by militant Islamists calling themselves al-Qaeda in the Land of the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), a group largely made up of Algerian fighters who fled south in the late 1990s after losing a decade-long war against the government. AQIM specializes in the kidnapping - and occasional execution - of foreigners, something that prompted the Paris-Dakar rally to move to South America...
...Second, West Africa has become a key route for the trafficking of South American cocaine to Europe. Guinea-Bissau is now awash with the stuff, which is off-loaded along its coast and then transported by air, sea or land to Europe. The overland route across the Sahara is facilitated by Niger's Tuareg tribe, which has been staging a low-level rebellion in the northern part of the country since 2007. "In some cases, the value of the drugs being trafficked is greater than the country's national income," Antonio Maria Costa, director of the U.N. Office on Drugs...
...Hope is becoming more common across Africa. Armed conflicts are on the decline, democracy is spreading, and economic growth is healthy. But rebirths can be fragile. And after a few years of optimism in West Africa, instability has suddenly returned. The past two years have seen coups in Guinea and Mauritania and the tit-for-tat assassinations of the President and army chief in Guinea-Bissau. More recently, the regional superpower, Nigeria, endured three months of political uncertainty when President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua underwent medical treatment in Saudi Arabia but refused to hand over power to his deputy...
...also among the world's poorest, subjected to periodic droughts and famine. But Tandja's claims were made hollow by his track record in office - his government has been accused of corruption and harassment of political opponents, journalists and aid workers. Among those unconvinced by his motives was the West African regional group ECOWAS, which suspended Niger last October over Tandja's moves to hold on to power. (See Johannesburg's preparations for soccer's World...