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WEST AFRICA
IRIN-WA Weekly Roundup 225
8 - 14 May 2004


CONTENTS:

CHAD: Militias are "out of control" cattle raiders
NIGERIA: 57,000 people displaced by sectarian violence in two states
LIBERIA: UNMIL says 26,000 disarmed so far
GUINEA-BISSAU: Young technocrats prominent in new elected government
COTE D IVOIRE: AIDS activists angry at slow disbursement from Global Fund
COTE D IVOIRE: Demonstration against UN goes off peacefully
MALI: Rogue village continues to spread guinea worm



NIGERIA: 57,000 people displaced by sectarian violence in two states

At least 57,000 people have fled their homes this week following sectarian
violence involving Christians and Muslims in northern and central Nigeria,
officials said on Friday.

More than 30,000 Christians have been displaced from their homes in Kano,
the largest city in northern Nigeria, which was racked by religious
violence on Tuesday and Wednesday, they said.

A further 27,000 displaced people had sought refuge in Bauchi state in
east central Nigeria following a massacre of Muslims by Christian gangs in
neighbouring Plateau state earlier this month, the officials added.

The Nigerian Red Cross has said at least 36 people in Kano were killed as
mobs of Muslim youths attacked the Christian minority in the city.

Mohammed Balarabe, an official of the Kano State Emergency Agency, said
more than 30,000 people had fled their homes in the city of eight million
and were now taking refuge at six centres across the city, including
police and army barracks.

"We are doing our best for them but 30,000 is a lot," Balarabe said,
adding that the displaced people needed more relief assistance.

Meanwhile, the government of Bauchi state in east central Nigeria said it
was dealing with more than 27,000 people who had fled their homes, many of
whom had fled there from Plateau state.

"We have more than 27,000 people in 35 camps spread across Bauchi,"
Mohammed Abdullahi, state government spokesman, told IRIN. Most of them
were Muslims who feared reprisals by the predominantly Christian
communities in which they lived, he added.

The latest outburst of religious violence in Nigeria erupted on 2 May when
a Christian militia force from the Tarok tribe killed more than 600
Muslims in the small town of Yelwa in Plateau State. Most of those killed
were members of the staunchly Muslim Hausa and Fulani ethnic groups which
dominate northern Nigeria.

This week's violence in Kano was sparked off by a Muslim protest
demonstration against the Yelwa killings.


For related articles see:

14 May: http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=41068
13 May: http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=41044
12 May: http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=41022
11 May: http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=40994
10 May: http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=40976



CHAD: Militias are "out of control" cattle raiders

The Arabic-speaking Janjawid militia groups fighting alongside Sudanese
government forces against rebels in Sudan's western Darfur province have
been blamed for a series of ceasefire violations within Darfur and have
now begun terrorising villages across the border in eastern Chad.

Diplomats and Chadian government officials say these cattle raiders
equipped by the Sudanese government with modern weaponry need to be
reigned in quickly if rapidly souring relations between the desert
neighbours are to be salvaged.

However, they question how much control Khartoum has over these nomadic
horsemen and whether the Sudanese government has the will or the
capability to bring them back under government control.

"Either the Sudanese government does not control the militia and requests
international assistance to neutralise the militia and secure the border,
or they could do it themselves, but just don't want to," Ahmad Allami,
President Idriss Deby's official spokesman, told IRIN.

"Now, there is the feeling that Sudan does not have control over the
militia and needs assistance," he continued.

The United Nations is also growing increasingly worried about the
activities of the Janjawid.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan sent a letter to Sudanese President Omar
Hassan al-Bashir on Thursday urging him to disarm the militias, whose
attacks on civilians in Western Darfur have sent more than 800,000 people
fleeing from their villages, many of them across the border into Chad.

Bertrand Ramcharan, the acting UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, told
reporters after briefing the Security Council in early May: "One, there is
a reign of terror in this area. Two, there is a scorched earth policy.
Three, there are repeated war crimes and crimes against humanity. And
four, this is taking place before our very eyes."

The scale and frequency of Janjawid incursions into Chad appears to be
increasing, threatening the safety of more than 110,000 refugees from
Darfur who have sought shelter there and threatening to end Chadian
government's official neutrality in the conflict.

Diplomats told IRIN that there was nothing new about tribal clashes
between nomads of Arabic extraction and village farmers belonging to local
African tribes in Darfur, but these days they have become much more deadly
because the raiders were better armed - by the Sudanese government.

"The Janjawid have kept their traditional values and ways of living. They
do the same as they used to: they steal to get. Only this time, their
weapons are more sophisticated," the diplomat, who asked not to be named,
told IRIN.

http://www.irinnews.org/frontpage.asp?SelectRegion=West_Africa&SelectCountry=Chad


LIBERIA: UNMIL says 26,000 disarmed so far

The United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) said on Wednesday that
nearly 26,000 fighters had been disarmed so far by international
peacekeepers, but with the disarmament programme yet to extend into rural
areas, the total number likely to come forward was still unknown.

Major General Joseph Owonibi, the deputy commander of UNMIL, said no
target had been set for the number of fighters that the UN was aiming to
disarm in Liberia.

"The only time we will be able to give a figure is at the end of the
disarmament," he said.

UNMIL estimated late last year that Liberia's three armed factions had a
total of 38,000 combatants, but subsequent official estimates have
fluctuated up to 60,000.

"The commission, along with the political leadership of the former warring
factions, unanimously believe that the figure being represented by the UN
is under-estimated. As the disarmament progresses, we would suggest
working around a figure of between 55,000-60,000 ex-fighters," Moses
Jarbo, the hed of Liberia's disarmament and demobilisation commission told
IRIN.

Jacknik said that of the 12,385 disarmed by UN peacekeepers since 15
April, 8,710 had already been discharged from the four cantonment sites
for reintegration into local communities.

He also reiterated that plans were underway to create additional
disarmament centres in remote parts of rural Liberia where there are
believed to be more fighters waiting to disarm.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=41023



GUINEA-BISSAU: Young technocrats prominent in new elected government

A new government led by the PAIGC took power in Guinea-Bissau this week
following elections to choose a new parliament at the end of March.

Carlos Gomes Junior, a 55-year old banker and businessmen who is reputed
to be the richest man in this small West African country, was officially
appointed as prime minister on Monday. Gomes Junior's 15-member cabinet,
which is dominated by young technocrats, was sworn in on Wednesday.

Notable new faces include Soares Sambu as Foreign Minister. He was
director of the PAIGC's election campaign and served as first vice
president of Guinea-Bissau's previous parliament, which was disolved in
November 2002.

Aladje Fadia, a former senior official of the Central Bank of West Africa
in Dakar, makes his debut in government as Finance Minister.

And Defence Minister Daniel Gomes, the former spokesman of the PAIGC,
enters the cabinet for the first time as Defence Minister.

The new government also includes five veteran PAIGC ministers who served
under former president Joao Bernardo Vieira who came to power in a coup in
1980.

The main challenges facing Gomes Junior and his new team are to restore
foreign aid flows to Guinea-Bissau, one of the poorest countries in
Africa, and to reactivate schools, hospitals and health clinics, whose
staff were unpaid during the final years of Kumba Yala - the former
President was deposed in a bloodless coup last September.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=41045



COTE D'IVOIRE: AIDS activists angry at slow disbursement from Global Fund

AIDS activists are angry that six months after Cote d'Ivoire received a
US$91 million grant to fight the disease, not a penny of the money has
been spent on actual projects to fight the spread of the HIV virus or help
those living with AIDS.

A first tranch of $28 million from the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Malaria
and Tuberculosis was finally made available to the government of Cote
d'Ivoire in December last year after being held up by several months of
infighting between different ministries over who would get to spend it.

But the representative of one Ivorian non-governmental organisation (NGO)
involved in the fight against AIDS complained to IRIN: "Projects have been
submitted to the committee that is coordinating how the funds will be
spent, but nothing has been done yet."

Cote d'Ivoire, which has been split in two by a civil war which erupted
two years ago, is believed to have the highest rate of AIDS infection in
West Africa. According to the Ministry of Health, 10 percent of the
country's 16 million population is HIV positive.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=40995



COTE D'IVOIRE: Demonstration against UN goes off peacefully

Several hundred youth supporters of President Laurent Gbagbo staged a
peaceful demonstration against the United Nations in Abidjan on Thursday
as the UN prepared to publish a report on the security forces' bloody
repression of an opposition protest in March.

The demonstrators staged a sit-in near the headquarters of ONUCI, the UN
peacekeeping force in Cote d'Ivoire, which lasted several hours.
Contingents of police stood by but did not intervene, despite an order by
Martin Bleou, the Minister for Internal Security, that they should not be
allowed near the UN installations.

A delegation of protestors was allowed into the ONUCI headquarters to
present a statement demanding that UN Secretary General Kofi Annan declare
the report by three international human rights experts as null and void
and disassociated himself from its authors.

Radio France Internationale (RFI) published what it said was a leaked copy
of their report earlier this month. The document, which was published in
full on RFI's website, accused "the highest authorities of the state" in
Cote d'Ivoire of deliberately planning and carrying out "the
indiscriminate killing of innocent civiliians by the security forces."

An investigation is being conducted into the leak of the report, which was
officially released on Friday.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=41046



MALI: Rogue village continues to spread guinea worm

The government of Mali has launched a new campaign to eradicate guinea
worm, focussing on a rogue village near the southern border with Burkina
Faso, which inadvertently is exporting the water-borne parasite throughout
West Africa.

The problem is that the 2,000 inhabitants of Niagassadiou in the Mopti
region of south central Mali drink polluted water from local wells without
filtering the liquid in order to remove the guinea worm larvae. These
eventually grow into metre-long parasites inside their body.

Because the inhabitants of Niagassadiou are extremely poor, many of them
leave home after each harvest to seek work elsewhere in Mali, across the
border in Burkina Faso and even as far away as Saudi Arabia.

Wherever they go, they take the guinea worm with them. Last year 11 cases
of guinea worm in Burkina Faso and four in other parts of Mali were traced
back to Niagassadiou.

Health workers are worried by a recent rebound in the number of cases
across Mali.In 1994, when Mali launched its first campaign against guinea
worm, the government recorded 5,581 cases of the disease. By 2000 the
number had fallen to 290. But by by last year the number of casese had
crept back up to 829.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=40991



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