Sidelines

POLITICAL leaders welcome advice from other political leaders only when it corroborates what they want to hear and Libyan president Muammar Gaddafi’s suggestion to Nigeria’s acting president Goodluck Jonathan last month did not.  Instead, his advice that Nigeria should be split to create a Christian and a Moslem state so infuriated Jonathan that on March 18 he recalled Nigeria’s ambassador in Libya.

Sidelines

A COUPLE of weeks ago, a Mauritania-based cell of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) reportedly scooped a 2-million euro ransom payment for the freedom of Alicia Gamez, a Catalan charity worker, although the Spanish government insisted that no money had changed hands. Presumably there could be yet more to come as they are still holding Gamez’s two male colleagues but whether Madrid handed over ransom money or not, abducting Westerners represents yet another way of financing terrorism North African terrorism.

Sidelines

Russia has much to answer for by invading Afghanistan in 1979 and setting in motion the organised mujahideen resistance which started there and has spread throughout the world.  Its handling of Chechnya’s independence bid in the 90s then attracted the attentions of outsiders and Egyptian Mohammed Atta, leader of the September 11 attackers, is said to have come into contact with what is now loosely known as Al Qaeda after first volunteering to fight in Chechnya.