Qaddafi Regime's Legacy Fuels Violence in West Africa
- Weapons, mercenaries trained by Libya stoke regional conflicts
- Clashes between herders and crop farmers in Nigeria escalating
Photographer: Pius Utomi Ekpei/AFP via Getty Images
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Centuries-old communal tensions across West Africa are taking an increasingly bloody turn, fueled by competition for land and water and an influx of weapons and fighters from Libya.
Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari has blamed that cocktail of guns and gunmen for the intensifying clashes between crop farmers and herders as well as robberies and kidnapping by bandit gangs. The violence is stoking Nigeria’s ethnic and religious divisions and is rivaling Boko Haram’s nine-year-old Islamist insurgency in the northeast as the nation’s biggest security crisis.