Starting Points: Nigeria

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Mar 11, 2010

Nigerians Recount Night of Their Bloody Revenge

By ADAM NOSSITER

JOS, Nigeria — Dispassionately, the baby-faced young man recounted his killings: two women and one man, first beaten senseless with a stick, then stabbed to death with a short knife.

The man, Dahiru Adamu, 25, was crouching on the floor in the sprawling police headquarters here, summoned to give an accounting of the terrible night of March 7, when, he said, he and dozens of other herdsmen descended on a slumbering village just south of here and slaughtered hundreds with machetes, knives and cutlasses in a brutal act of sectarian retribution.

On Monday and Tuesday, 332 bodies were buried in a mass grave in the village of Dogo Na Hawa, the Nigerian Red Cross said Wednesday. Human rights groups and the state government say that as many as 500 people may have been killed in the early hours of Sunday morning, in three different villages.

Sunday’s killings were an especially vicious expression of long-running hostilities between Christians and Muslims in this divided nation. Jos and the region around it are on the fault line where the volatile and poor Muslim north and the Christian south meet. In the past decade, some 3,000 people have been killed in interethnic, interreligious violence in this fraught zone. The pattern is familiar and was seen as recently as January: uneasy coexistence suddenly explodes into killing, amplified for days by retaliation.

Mr. Adamu, a Muslim herder, said he went to Dogo Na Hawa, a village of Christians living in mud-brick houses on dirt streets, to avenge the killings of Muslims and their cattle in January.

The operation had been planned at least several days before by a local group called Thank Allah, said one of Mr. Adamu’s fellow detainees, Ibrahim Harouna, who was shackled on the floor next to him. The men spoke in Hausa through an interpreter.

“They killed a lot of our Fulanis in January,” Mr. Adamu said, referring to his ethnic group. “So I knew that this time, we would take revenge.”

His victims were sleeping when he arrived, he said, and he set their house on fire. Sure enough, they ran out.

“I killed three people,” Mr. Adamu said calmly.

He and the other detainees showed no sign that they had been maltreated; some confessed to killings, and others denied them, speaking in front of the police.

The police quickly arrested about 200 people in connection with the killings, and many of them were crouching anxiously in rows on a bare concrete floor, outside the police headquarters on Wednesday morning. The police have confiscated 14 machetes, 26 bows, arrows, 3 axes, 4 spears and 44 guns. Victims, many of them women and children, were cut down with knives, short and long; few survived.

Usually in such attacks, there are twice as many injuries as deaths, said Ben Whitfield of the Doctors Without Borders team in Jos. “It’s unreal,” he said. “These people were definitely caught in the middle of the night and meant to be killed.” Like others in Jos, police officials say they are hoping for peace after years of sectarian killings in the region.

But they are not sure they will get it. The streets in this metropolis of several million were largely deserted Wednesday. Residents spoke of fear and anger, and about 4,300 have fled.

Christians, in interviews, voiced suspicion of the intentions of Muslims and associated them with the taint of terrorism. The state attorney general, Edward Pwajok, a Christian, said that on Wednesday morning he had prosecuted a Nigerian Muslim man living in a Jos suburb who had “acknowledged” being “a member of Al Qaeda.”

Mr. Pwajok said there was no indication that the man, Samsudeen Sahsu, was connected to the killings; he said DVDs of Al Qaeda’s activities had been discovered in the man’s home. The group is not previously known to have penetrated Nigeria, though Mr. Sahsu, in a written confession provided by the attorney general, named other members of the “AlKaida Islamic Association.”

He said the headquarters were in Maiduguri, where last summer a radical Islamic sect, Boko Haram, was bloodily suppressed by Nigerian security forces.

“Suspicion is still rife,” the state police commissioner, Ikechukwu Aduba, said in an interview in his office in Jos. “We are appealing to the youth to sheath their swords and give peace a chance.”

Mr. Aduba sharply disputed the elevated death toll reported by others, saying that the police could confirm only 109 deaths.

But a Nigerian Red Cross official in Jos, Adeyemo Adebayo, deputy head of disaster management, said that the number of dead was “possibly” even greater than the 332 buried in the mass grave, since many fled into the bush and could have been cut down there by their attackers. A respected Nigerian human rights group, the Civil Rights Congress, said Monday that its members had counted 492 bodies.

Their attackers had come on foot from nearby villages and had made no preparations for a getaway, said Adebola Hamzat, chief superintendent of the Jos police. “Many of them were still running around,” he said, when they were picked up by the security forces. And many were carrying “cutlasses” — long lethal-looking knives that the police produced for visitors on Wednesday — still stained with blood, he said.

“The person was coming toward me; I killed him with a cutlass,” said the young man next to Mr. Adamu, Zakaria Yakubu, 20, insisting that he was defending a fellow Fulani who had been shot. His victim “did not die right away,” Mr. Yakubu said. “When we got to Dogo Na Hawa, we were just looking for our cattle.” He was clutching some bread distributed by the Red Cross.

Next to him, Ibrahim Harouna, also 20, would say only that he had “killed some of the people’s pigs,” though the police said he was also suspected of having taken part in the killings.

On Wednesday, the mood in Jos was tense among Muslim traders, who complained of a sharp drop in business, and it was anything but forgiving among Christians. They complained that Muslims wanted to supplant “indigenes” — Christians long native to the region.

“Some people want to be rulers everywhere,” said Yohanna Yatou, a businessman. “It’s the Muslims. They said they are born to rule.” Williams Danladi said that Muslims “believe that if they die during this war, they will go to heaven.”

“We Christians, we don’t believe this,” he said.

Others expressed puzzlement and exasperation with the never-ending conflict. “This is a Christian, an indigene,” said Moussa Ismail, pointing to his friend sitting next to him on a downtown stoop, Jacob Ayuba. “We have done business for more than 20 years. How would I attack him?”

Mar 8, 2010

Death Toll From Nigeria Violence Hits 500

Image by missbax via Flickr

By ADAM NOSSITER

DAKAR, Senegal — Officials and human rights groups in Nigeria sharply increased the count of the dead after a weekend of savage ethnic violence, saying Monday that as many as 500 people — many of them women and children — may have been killed near the central city of Jos, long a flashpoint for tensions between Christians and Muslims.

The dead were Christians and members of an ethnic group that has been feuding with the Hausa Fulani, Muslim herders who witnesses and police officials identified as the attackers. Officials said the attack was a reprisal for violence in January, when dozens of Muslims were slaughtered in and around Jos, including more than 150 in a single village.

Early Sunday, the attackers set upon the villagers with machetes, killing women and children in their homes and ensnaring the men who tried to flee in fishnets and animal traps, then massacring them, according to a Nigerian rights group whose investigators went to the area. Some homes were set on fire.

The latest attacks were “a sort of vengeance from the Hausa Fulani,” said the Rev. Emmanuel Joel, of the Christian Association of Nigeria in Jos.

After the January attacks, “the military watched over the city, and neglected the villages,” he said. The attackers, said Mr. Joel, “began to massacre as early as 4 a.m. They began to slaughter the people like animals.”

The police said Monday that they had made 95 arrests, including a number of Hausa Fulani. The clothes of many of the suspects were blood-stained, said Mohammed Larema, a police spokesman in Plateau State.

Image by MikeBlyth via Flickr

The mood in Jos was tense Monday, as troops were deployed in the streets, shops closed early, and residents remained indoor. A few miles south of the city nearly 400 of the victims were buried in a mass grave in Dogon Na Hauwa, the village that was the site of the worst violence. Some of the bodies had been mutilated.

There, women cried unconsolably amid crowds of mourners, and the thick smell of burnt and decomposing flesh hung in the air. Officials meanwhile combed a large area around the village, continuing to find bodies of victims during the day.

Shehu Sani of the Nigerian Civil Rights Congress said in a telephone interview on Monday that members of his organization had counted 492 bodies, mainly in Dogon Na Hauwa. He said that security forces had not been much in evidence in the “vulnerable areas” south of Jos. Mr. Sani said that the attackers were motivated at least in part by a large-scale theft of cattle by members of the same Christian ethnic group as the victims.

“We were at the scene of the violence,” Mr. Sani said, suggesting that the local government figure of 500 was not an exaggeration. “We have counted as many bodies as that,” he said. “There are not enough functional mortuaries to take them. It’s possibly even more than that because many were buried without documentation.”

Mr. Sani said the latest violence strongly resembled the killings in January. One predominantly Muslim village of several hundred, Kuru Karama, was virtually wiped out, and bodies were thrown into pits and latrines.

Mr. Sani said he was not optimistic about an early end to the deadly cycle of violence. “Most likely there will be continuous acts of reprisal,” he said.

Jude Owuamanam contributed reporting from Dogon Na Hauwa and Jos, Nigeria.

Jan 16, 2010

Nigerian bloggers take on would-be bomber Umar Abdulmutallab

Image via Wikipedia

Friday, January 15th, 2010 @ 14:31 UTC

by Eremipagamo Amabebe

On December 25th, 2009 the world was taken by surprise when news broke that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a 23-year-old Nigerian citizen, had nearly succeeded in detonating explosives on a Northwest Airlines flight between Amsterdam and Detroit. The incident was the latest in a series of close-calls in airline terrorism since the attacks of

September 11, 2001 and was the first case of a Nigerian attempting to carry out a suicide bombing on American soil.

Image via Wikipedia

In the immediate wake of the attempt, there was much speculation about the young Nigerian's background, motives and possible connections to al-Qaeda. Over the next few days it emerged that Abdulmutallab was the youngest son of prominent Nigerian banker Alhaji Umaru Abdul Mutallab; soon after it was revealed that the “underwear bomber” - as Abdulmutallab became known - was a devout but conflicted Muslim and a lonely young man who had received much of his education in Dubai, the United Kingdom, and Yemen.

Prior to the attack, Abdulmutallab had gone missing in the latter country for two months, before which he reportedly told his family to “forget” about him as he was never coming back. Alarmed, his father notified the US Embassy in Abuja as well as other security agencies; as a result Abdulmutallab was added to the US's counterterrorism database, but was not added to the “no-fly list”.

After leaving Yemen, Abdulmutallab spent a short period in Ethiopia and Ghana, then passed briefly through Nigeria en route to the Netherlands where he would board NWA flight 253 to Detroit.

Image via Wikipedia

When news of the attempted attack first broke, many Nigerians were caught by surprise, some even doubting whether Abdulmutallab was truly a Nigerian.

Imnakoya at Grandiose Parlor wrote:

I wondered, is this Mudallad a real Nigerian? Having a Nigerian passport is not a cast-iron proof of nationality given the extent of corruption in the nation.

Jide Salu agreed:

Believe me; Nigerians are too cowardly to be terrorists. Our attitude to death is simple; let it be as natural as possible, preferably in bed, sleeping in total oblivion, after a good night out at a party.

When the news was released that Abdulmutallab was beyond doubt Nigerian citizen, some found consolation in the fact that many of his formative experiences had been made abroad. In a thoughtful post entitled “What does it mean to be a Nigerian?”, Seyi at Heal Nigeria wrote:

If Umar AbdulMutallab was a son of a “Mr Nobody”, it is likely that we will still be arguing over his nationality. It wouldn’t come as a surprise if the govt says, his father is an “illegal immigrant” in Nigeria.

Many have argued that Umar AbdulMutallab cannot be classified as typical Nigerian because of the length of time he spent overseas…. So as far as most Nigerians are concerned, Umar AbdulMutallab hasn’t exposed to the traditional Nigerian upbringing. And considering the limited time he spent living in his home country, there was no way he could have been ‘radicalised’ in Nigeria.

Image via Wikipedia

Jennifer Ehidiamen worried that Abdulmutallab's actions would sink Nigeria's already floundering reputation:

There’s an Igbo proverb that says, “If one finger touches palm oil, it spreads to all the other fingers.” This is indicative of how Nigerians the world over felt when they heard the news of a young man who attempted to detonate a bomb on U.S. soil in the name of Al Qaeda. Many of us worried that the actions of this one finger would spread to cover the entire 150 million of us.

Though she managed to find a silver lining in the events:

Then the next day, the news surfaced that the young man’s father had sent word months earlier to security forces saying he was worried that his son had become radicalized and might even be a threat. In an instant, I was again proud to be Nigerian. I was relieved that the shame that would have hung over my country’s reputation by adding terrorism to the list of already popular vices was abated. Yet somehow, the newsflash on CNN did not reflect this development as fervently as I’d hoped.

She concluded:

If all British citizens don’t have to carry the stigma of the shoe bomber, if all Oklahomans, don’t have to bear the shame of the Oklahoma bombings, then let the world be mindful of the invidious conclusions it so easily makes when someone from a poorer nation commits similar crimes. And if this is too much to ask, then let the oil of his father’s noble and highly sacrificial actions spread to cover those worried 150 million fingers.

And indeed, as many had feared, on January 4th, the US government added Nigeria to a 14 country “watch-list”. The list designates four “state sponsors of terrorism” (Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria) as well as 10 “countries of interest” including - in addition to Nigeria - Yemen, Pakistan, Iraq, and Algeria. Passengers flying to the United States from Nigeria and the 13 other countries listed will be subjected to enhanced security screenings, including full-body pat-downs.

Image by catface3 via Flickr

In the following days, many Nigerians vented their displeasure by commenting in facebook forums such as “150 million Nigerians disown Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab” and “Get us off that list: Nigerians are not terrorists.”

Chippla Vandu had a different take on “disowning ” Abdulmutallab:

To “disown” connotes a refusal to accept as one's own or to repudiate. Irrespective of what one may say or think, Umar Farouk is a Nigerian. And while his actions certainly do not represent what one could expect from a “typical” Nigerian male adult (Muslim or not), disowning him does not in any way help understand why he did what he did and ensure that such does not happen again.

Citing a Pew Research Center poll which found that 43% of Nigerian Muslims support suicide bombing, Chippla continued:

How does disowning him help Nigerians understand what role extreme Islamic ideology played in causing him to attempt detonating an explosive device on board a US-bound airliner? How does it help Nigerians understand the complex interplay of religious faith, access to extremist religious groups and ideological brainwashing?

Seyi at Heal Nigeria also saw broader implications in Abdulmutallab's actions, pointing out that the addition of Nigeria to the “Terror watch-list” was not prompted by the events of December 25th alone. Highlighting the recent clashes between Nigerian Security forces and militant Islamists groups such as Boko Haram and Kalo Kato, Seyi wrote:

For anyone to think that US govt reaction was just because of Umar AbdulMutallab’s terrorist expedition smacks of naiveté.

With the level of corruption in Nigeria, I’m convinced that a suicide bomber can pay his/her into a passenger aircraft. For the right price, such a person would be offered a ‘first class’ seat. It is in Nigeria where Customs officials aid and abet importation of fake drugs. It is in Nigeria where Immigration officials knowingly issue passports to non-citizens using false identity. There is no doubt that the new US policy would affect every Nigerian, irrespective of social status. Unfortunately, 150 million people will now pay for the sins of one stupid individual. Already a Nigerian traveling overseas is a suspected asylum seeker, suspected over stayer, suspected illegal immigrant, suspected identity fraudster, suspected drug courier, and now a suspected terrorist.

Seye Abimbola also wondered about increasing religious extremism in Nigeria, describing recent minor clashes at his university. Seye concluded:

Mild as these incidents were, what they show is that for these to happen in the liberal south, at the very bastion of southwestern Nigeria liberalism, you can imagine what possibly goes on in the north where some states already practice the Islamic Sharia legal system.

Chxta remarked that it was not the first time “'bigmen’ in Nigeria have gotten away with murder simply because they are ‘bigmen’”:

Earlier our beloved minister of information had attempted to shift the blame to our nice ‘bredas’ in Ghana, pointing out that the misguided young man spent only thirty minutes in Nigeria upon arrival from Ghana before he boarded that KLM flight. The memo that she did not read apparently is the one that states that if he was so disposed, he could have actually taken a motorcycle from the airport to as far as Surulere, collected the explosives there, and returned to the airport. All in less than thirty minutes. Of course at the airport no one would have asked him questions being that he is a ‘bigman’s' son.

Some were able to see a lighter side to the attempted attack: “Rejoice!!! For the terror suspect is not Igbo” wrote Sugabelly on December 26th. Later, in an update she took a more serious tone:

It's like everyone has lost their sense of humour fa! People on twitter are giving me a hard time because I tweeted this. Oya, I'm sorry. Ndo so.

We are all Nigerians and we are all going to get shit the next time we set foot inside an airport, but let's laugh at the lighter side of this (since no one was hurt).

Be honest, when you heard a Nigerian man tried to commit a terrorist act in America, how many of you immediately thought ‘Please don't let him be [insert your ethnic group]?

Arukaino wryly tied the whole incident back to the government campaign to re-brand Nigeria, he commented:

So much for the rebranding slogan “Nigeria: Good People, Great Nation”. As a result of Abdulmutallab’s failed bomb attempt in Detroit, maybe the US could now interpret it as, “Nigeria: Good People, one terrorist, but still a Great Nation…hmmn.

(For more reactions from the Nigerian blogosphere, check here, here, here and here).

Dec 29, 2009

In online posts apparently by Detroit suspect, religious ideals collide

Image via CrunchBase

By Philip Rucker and Julie Tate
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 29, 2009; A01

The 23-year-old Nigerian man accused of the attempted Christmas Day bombing of an American airliner apparently turned to the Internet for counseling and companionship, writing in an online forum that he was "lonely" and had "never found a true Muslim friend."

"I have no one to speak too [sic]," read a posting from January 2005, when Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was attending boarding school. "No one to consult, no one to support me and I feel depressed and lonely. I do not know what to do. And then I think this loneliness leads me to other problems."

The Washington Post reviewed 300 online postings under the name "farouk1986" (a combination of Abdulmutallab's middle name and birth year). The postings mused openly about love and marriage, his college ambitions and angst over standardized testing, as well as his inner struggle as a devout Muslim between liberalism and extremism. In often-intimate writings, posted between 2005 and 2007, he sought friends online, through Facebook and in Islamic chat rooms: "My name is Umar but you can call me Farouk." He often invited readers to "have your say" and once wrote, "May Allah reward you for reading and reward you more for helping."

Image via Wikipedia

A U.S. government official said late Monday that federal intelligence officials were reviewing the online postings but had not independently confirmed their authenticity.

Many of the biographical details in the writings, however, match up with facts already known about Abdulmutallab.

Farouk1986 wrote of being born in 1986 and having attended an elite British boarding school in Togo, where many of his classmates were British expatriates and students from around West Africa.

The postings also reference visits to London, the United States and other countries, including Egypt and Yemen. Department of Homeland Security officials said Monday that Abdulmutallab traveled to the United States in July 2004 to Washington and in August 2008 to Houston.

Farouk1986 wrote about considering applications to U.S. and British universities, including University College London, where officials said Abdulmutallab enrolled in a mechanical engineering course from September 2005 to June 2008. He also wrote about his family's wealth; Abdulmutallab's father, Alhaji Umaru Mutallab, a frequent visitor to the United States, retired this year as chairman of First Bank of Nigeria and still sits on the boards of several prominent Nigerian firms.

All of the postings are on the Islamic Forum Web site (http://www.gawaher.com), which uses a commercially available chat-forum software called IP.Board that automatically assigns dates to users' posts as they are created. Many of Farouk1986's postings drew comments from other forum members on the day they were written.

Taken together, the writings demonstrate an acute awareness of Western customs and a worldliness befitting Abdulmutallab's privileged upbringing as a wealthy Nigerian banker's son.

Embracing privilege

In a June 2005 posting, Farouk1986 wrote that he was in Yemen for a three-month Arabic course, saying that "it is just great." He described how many British people and Americans were in Sanaa, gushing about the capital's shopping and global cuisine (including, he noted, Pizza Hut and KFC).

The Yemeni Embassy said Monday that Abdulmutallab was in Yemen between August and December of this year to study Arabic at a language institute. He earlier spent time at the same institute, the embassy said.

Farouk1986 wrote often of the college admissions process, once describing his plans to study engineering at Stanford University, the University of California at Berkeley or the California Institute of Technology. But he also wrote of his disappointment in scoring a 1200 on the SAT. "I tried the SAT," he wrote in March 2005. "It was a disaster!!!"

On Facebook, Abdulmutallab's profile features a photo of him smiling, standing alongside two friends and wearing a sharp-looking pink polo shirt and sunglasses. He has 287 friends.

Fabrizio Cavallo Marincola, 22, who studied with Abdulmutallab at University College London, said Abdulmutallab graduated in May 2008 and showed no signs of radicalization or of links to al-Qaeda. "He always did the bare minimum of work," Marincola said of his classmate, who he said was nicknamed "Biggie."

"When we were studying, he always would go off to pray," Marincola continued. "He was pretty quiet and didn't socialize much or have a girlfriend that I knew of."

As a student at the British boarding school in Togo, Farouk1986 wrote that he was lonely because there were few other Muslims. "I'm active, I socialise with everybody around me, no conflicts, I laugh and joke but not excessively," he wrote in one posting seeking counseling from online peers. "I will describe myself as very ambitious and determined, especially in the deen. I strive to live my daily live [sic] according to the quran and sunnah to the best of my ability. I do almost everything, sports, TV, books . . . (of course trying not to cross the limits in the deen)." The deen is a religious way of life.

Ideals colliding

In his January 2005 posting about his loneliness, Farouk1986 wrote about the tension between his desires and his religious duty of "lowering the gaze" in the presence of women. "The Prophet (S) advised young men to fast if they can't get married but it has not been helping me much and I seriously don't want to wait for years before I get married," he wrote.

At 18, he added, he had not started searching for prospective partners because of social norms such as having "a degree, a job, a house, etc. before getting married." But, he said, "my parents I know could help me financially should I get married, even though I think they are also not going to be in favour of early marriage."

He also wrote of his "dilemma between liberalism and extremism" as a Muslim. "The Prophet (S) said religion is easy and anyone who tries to overburden themselves will find it hard and will not be able to continue," he wrote in 2005. "So anytime I relax, I deviate sometimes and then when I strive hard, I get tired of what I am doing i.e. memorising the quran, etc. How should one put the balance right?"

In December 2005, Farouk1986 wrote that his parents were visiting him in London and that he was torn about whether he could eat meat with them. "I am of the view meat not slaughtered by Muslims . . . is haram [forbidden] for consumption unless necessary," he wrote. "My parents are of the view as foreigners, we are allowed to . . . eat any meat. It occured [sic] to me I should not be eating with my parents as they use meat I consider haram. But I fear this might cause division and other complicated family problems."

He pleaded: "Please respond as quickly as possible as my tactic has been to eat outside and not at home till I get an answer."

Abdulmutallab, the youngest of 16 children and the son of the second of his father's two wives, was raised at the family home in Kaduna, a city in Nigeria's Muslim-dominated north. At boarding school, Farouk was easygoing and studious, earning the sobriquet "Alfa," a local term for Muslim clerics, because of his penchant for preaching Islam to colleagues, according to family members.

"Farouk was a devoted Muslim who took his religion seriously and was committed to his studies," said an uncle. "He was such a brilliant boy and nobody in the family had the slightest thought he could do something as insane as this."

Although Farouk hardly ever stayed in Nigeria and would visit only for holidays, family members and neighbors on Ahman Pategi Street in the rich Unguwar Sarki neighborhood in Kaduna also said he was easygoing and passionate about Islam. "He was of course a very religious, polite and studious fellow," said a cousin, "but it was unthinkable that he would do anything close to attempting to bomb a plane."

Explosive in Detroit terror case could have blown hole in airplane, sources say

Image by david real 1 via Flickr

By Carrie Johnson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 29, 2009; A01

A dangerous explosive allegedly concealed by Nigerian student Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab in his underwear could have blown a hole in the side of his Detroit-bound aircraft if it had been detonated, according to two federal sources briefed on the investigation.

Authorities said they are still analyzing a badly damaged syringe that Abdulmutallab allegedly employed as a detonating device on Christmas Day. But preliminary conclusions indicate that he allegedly used 80 grams of PETN -- almost twice as much of the highly explosive material as used by convicted shoe bomber Richard C. Reid.

A day after Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said there was "no indication" the incident was connected to a larger plot, there were increasing signs that the failed bombing may have represented one of the most serious terrorist threats in the United States since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

President Obama interrupted his vacation in Hawaii to declare that authorities "will not rest until we find all who were involved and hold them accountable." He also said he had ordered a review of the nation's terrorist watch-list system.

In a statement, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, a group based in Saudi Arabia and Yemen, asserted responsibility for the attempt to destroy the Northwest Airlines jet, saying it was a response to U.S.-backed airstrikes against the group in Yemen. Meanwhile, Yemen's government confirmed that Abdulmutallab was in the country from early August to early December after obtaining a visa to study Arabic at a language institute, and said that he had previously studied at the school.

Image by Peter Kaminski via Flickr

The suspect, 23, has told federal investigators that he had ties to al-Qaeda and that he had traveled to Yemen to collect the incendiary device he tried to use on the plane.

The Obama administration suffered blistering criticism for another day from national security experts and from Republican lawmakers, who demanded changes to the airline screening system and the use of more intrusive technology to detect explosives. Napolitano acknowledged on NBC's "Today" show Monday that "our system did not work in this instance. No one is happy or satisfied with that."

In London, Britain's home secretary, Alan Johnson, told the BBC that Abdulmutallab had been placed on a watch list in May and had been banned from entering the country. A British government source said the move came after Abdulmutallab, who in 2008 graduated from University College London, applied for a new visa to attend a college that was not deemed legitimate by authorities there.

Johnson said he also suspected Abdulmutallab may have been working with others: "We don't know yet whether it was a single-handed plot or were there other people behind it -- I suspect it's the latter rather than the former."

Law enforcement officials in the United States, Yemen, Nigeria and Britain spent a fourth day tracking the contacts and travel of Abdulmutallab, who is incarcerated on terrorism-related charges in Milan, Mich., 45 miles south of Detroit, until a bond hearing next week. His public defender, Miriam Siefer, did not return calls for comment.

Authorities remain particularly interested in the development of Abdulmutallab's radical beliefs. They are tracking Web postings and other communications he may have had with clerics in Yemen, including Anwar al-Aulaqi, who corresponded with the alleged Fort Hood, Tex., shooter, Maj. Nidal M. Hasan, months before the Nov. 5 gunfire rang out on the Army's largest base, sources said.

Image by The U.S. Army via Flickr

Abdulmutallab's relatives issued a statement from their home in Abuja, Nigeria, describing attempts by his father, a prominent banker, to warn Nigerian intelligence agencies and the U.S. Embassy there "about a month and a half ago" and to seek help in regaining contact with his son.

"The disappearance and cessation of communication which got his mother and father concerned to report to the security agencies are completely out of character and a very recent development," the statement said.

Authorities said there was no reason to suspect Abdulmutallab of dangerous activity until his father visited the embassy in Abuja on Nov. 19. The next day, under a program called Visa Viper, mandated by Congress to ensure all terrorism-related information is promptly reported to Washington, the embassy sent a cable saying the father was "concerned that his son was falling under the influence of religious extremists in Yemen," a State Department official said.

The State Department, under existing procedures, passed the Viper information to the National Counterterrorism Center for entry in its terrorism database. Neither the State Department nor the NCTC, officials said Monday, checked to see if Abdulmutallab had ever entered the United States or had a valid entry visa -- information readily available in separate consular and immigration databases. "It's not for us to review that," the State Department official said.

According to the Department of Homeland Security, Abdulmutallab has twice obtained U.S. visas, and before this month had visited the United States once in 2004 and once in 2008.

An intelligence official said that because Abdulmutallab had not previously been entered into the system as a terrorism suspect, procedures did not include such checks. Administration officials said these apparent gaps are among those to be studied in the review Obama has ordered.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said there should have been swift action after a prominent Nigerian alleged that his son was becoming radicalized.

"It seems to me that when this happens, the person should go automatically on the no-fly list," she said. "I'd rather, in the interest of protecting people, overreact rather than underreact."

"The Obama administration is flying solo on national security right now," said Rep. Peter Hoekstra (Mich.), ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee. Hoekstra said he wants to know more about Abdulmutallab's e-mail and other connections to radical clerics to determine whether red flags may have been missed.

"He also had no baggage. They knew he had been to Yemen. Come on, come on, come on. That is pretty suspicious," said Rep. Sue Myrick (R-N.C.), also a member of the House intelligence panel.

State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said that at the time the latest visa was issued, "there was nothing in his application nor in any database at the time that would indicate that he should not receive a visa. He was a student at a very reputable school. He had plenty of financial resources, so he was not an intending immigrant. There was no derogatory information about him last year."

In its statement, translated by SITE Intelligence Group, a Bethesda-based analytic service, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula praised Abdulmutallab. It said he had "penetrated all modern and sophisticated technology and devices and security barriers in airports of the world, with courage and bravery, without fearing death and with seeking the help of Allah."

A senior Yemeni government official insisted that al-Qaeda affiliates in the country are not getting stronger. But the branch's assertion of responsibility, the official said, underscores that fighting terrorism is a global issue and that Yemen needs help in tackling terrorists inside its borders. The statement of responsibility, if deemed credible by U.S. intelligence agencies, may mark the first time al-Qaeda affiliates outside Afghanistan or Pakistan have targeted American soil.

One of the top leaders of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is Said al-Shihri, 36, a Saudi national. He was captured in Pakistan in December 2001 and spent six years in the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, before being transferred to Saudi Arabia in November 2007.

In Saudi Arabia, he entered a highly praised rehabilitation program that uses dialogue and art therapy to persuade former militants to renounce extremism. But after graduating, Shihri crossed the border into Yemen and rejoined al-Qaeda.

Correspondent Sudarsan Raghavan in Sanaa, Yemen; special correspondents Karla Adam in London and Aminu Abubakar in Nigeria; staff writers Anne E. Kornblut in Hawaii and Karen DeYoung and Carol D. Leonnig in Washington; and staff researcher Julie Tate in Washington contributed to this report.

Dec 27, 2009

Fear and heroism aboard Northwest Airlines Flight 253 after attempted bombing

Image by Beverly & Pack via Flickr

By Peter Slevin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 27, 2009; A06

ANN ARBOR, MICH. -- First came an alarming popping sound, followed by silence, and then the unmistakable smell of smoke. Passengers began to shout and scream on Northwest Airlines Flight 253 from Amsterdam.

"People were just running, and they were scared," said Veena Saigal, who turned from her seat on the Christmas Day flight and saw the fire's glow six rows back. "They were running toward the center of the plane, running to get away from the flames."

Jasper Schuringa, an Amsterdam resident, lunged toward the fire in Row 19, jumping from one side of the plane to the other and over several other passengers. He burned his fingers as he grabbed a piece of melting plastic held by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian man accused Saturday of trying to bring down the passenger jet with a homemade explosive device.

Schuringa, a video producer, restrained Abdulmutallab as others used blankets and fire extinguishers to douse the flames.

"When I saw the suspect, that he was getting on fire, I freaked, of course, and without any hesitation I just jumped over all the seats," Schuringa told CNN on Saturday. "And I jumped to the suspect. I was thinking like, he's trying to blow up the plane."

The stretch of time from bafflement to abject fear to a calamity averted lasted just a few minutes on the flight, yet as they replayed those moments from their homes on Saturday, passengers described a drama that left many shaken long after the jetliner safely touched down.

"We heard a pop, then the smell and the reality kicked in for all of us. The reality was the fear in the flight attendants' eyes," said Charles Keepman, a Wisconsin businessman returning from Ethiopia, where he and his wife had adopted two children. "We're just thankful to the Lord that we were spared."

Janet Napolitano, the secretary of homeland security, praised the quick reactions of those on the plane, which recalled the heroism of passengers who had subdued so-called shoe-bomber Richard C. Reid as he tried to ignite chemicals on a flight in December 2001 and the actions of people on United Airlines Flight 93 on Sept. 11, 2001.

"I am grateful to the passengers and crew aboard Northwest Flight 253 who reacted quickly and heroically to an incident that could have had tragic results," Napolitano said in a statement Saturday.

The flight from Amsterdam to Detroit seemed long and uneventful until the final minutes, passengers said. Witnesses told the FBI that Abdulmutallab, 23, spent about 20 minutes in the bathroom before returning to Seat 19A and complaining of an upset stomach. He pulled a blanket over his head.

Then came the loud and sudden popping sound.

"What I heard was a firecracker, like a champagne bottle opening. I thought maybe something happened to a window or something hit the plane," said Saigal, who was returning to Ann Arbor from India in Row 13. "Then I smelled the smoke. When I turned around, I could see the fire glow."

Schuringa, on his way to Miami for vacation, leaped from the other side of the plane toward the fire as it spread from Abdulmutallab's pants to pillows on the floor. He said he reacted without thinking, fearful that the fire would cause an explosion that would bring down the plane and nearly 300 passengers and crew members.

As other passengers shouted for water, Schuringa pulled the melted plastic syringe from Abdulmutallab, shook it and threw it to the floor, the FBI said in an affidavit. Flight attendant Dionne Ransom-Monroe asked the suspect what was in his pocket, the FBI said, and he replied, "Explosive device."

The fire out, Schuringa marched Abdulmutallab to the front of the plane, helped by a flight attendant. They stripped off some of his clothes, searched him for weapons and handcuffed him, Schuringa said on CNN, explaining that the suspect seemed almost in a trance. Abdulmutallab said nothing and did not resist, he said.

"He looked like a normal guy," Schuringa said. "It's just hard to believe he was actually trying to blow up this plane."

Saigal, 63, said Schuringa "was holding him from the back, with a strong grip."

"When he went back to his seat, we all clapped," Saigal said of Schuringa.

Passengers and crew members worked to restore calm as the jet sped toward Detroit. Syed Jafry, an engineering consultant from Ohio who watched from Row 16, said the captain told passengers over the intercom: "There was an incident, and everything is under control. It is over. Fasten your seat belts. We are about to land."

As investigators explore how Abdulmutallab allegedly smuggled power and chemicals aboard the flight, Saigal and Keepman voiced distinctly different views of security in Amsterdam, the airliner's last stop before reaching Detroit.

"They're very thorough," Saigal said. "Always in Amsterdam, you go through people questioning you . . . and they put your hand baggage, your purse -- not your shoes -- through security again."

Keepman, however, said security procedures in Amsterdam seemed less rigorous than the measures he had faced at the Detroit airport on his outbound flight.

"I have to be honest, it was lax compared to here," said Keepman, who co-owns a transportation logistics company. "They push you through quite quickly, especially on international flights, because there are so many people to get through."

Keepman was not impressed with the questioning session.

"They ask the questions," Keepman said. "But the person's going to look you right in the eye and lie to you: 'Are you carrying something that could explode on the plane?' 'Certainly not, sir.' "

Alleged terrorist known but not thought a threat

Image by estherase via Flickr

By EILEEN SULLIVAN and DEVLIN BARRETT
The Associated Press
Sunday, December 27, 2009; 1:21 PM

WASHINGTON -- The alleged Christmas Day terrorist had been in one of the U.S. government's many terror databases since November, which is when his father brought him to the attention of embassy officials in Nigeria.

However, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab came to the attention of intelligence officials months before that, according to a U.S. government official involved in the investigation. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because it is ongoing.

Still, none of the information the government had on Abdulmutallab rose to the level of putting him on the official terror watch list or no-fly list. On Christmas Eve, the 23-year-old Nigerian - who later claimed to law enforcement that he was operating on orders from al-Qaida - was able to carry a concealed explosive device onto a U.S.-bound airplane.

Officials warn it is still early in the investigation. But lawmakers are already calling for hearings, and the government may order a review. As President Barack Obama received regular updates on the investigation from his staff, his national security and policy aides have been asking whether the policies the U.S. has in place are working. These internal discussions marked the informal start to what will likely become a formal executive branch inquiry into an attack that failed because the bomb did not go off as planned and not because the intelligence community stopped it.

Passenger accounts and law enforcement officials describe the events around the Christmas Day attack this way:

On December 24, Abdulmutallab traveled from Nigeria to Amsterdam and then on to Detroit with an explosive device attached to his body.

Part of the device contained PETN, or pentaerythritol, and was hidden in a condom or condom-like bag just below Abdulmutallab's torso. PETN is the same material convicted shoe bomber Richard Reid used when he tried to destroy a trans-Atlantic flight in 2001 with explosives hidden in his shoes. Abdulmutallab also had a syringe filled with liquid.

As the plane approached Detroit, Abdulmutallab went to the bathroom for 20 minutes. When he returned to his seat, he complained of an upset stomach and covered himself with a blanket.

Passengers heard a popping noise, similar to a firecracker. They smelled an odor, and some passengers saw Abdulmutallab's pant leg and the wall of the airplane on fire. Passengers and the flight crew used blankets and fire extinguishers to quell the flames. They restrained Abdulmutallab, who later told a flight attendant he had an "explosive device" in his pocket. He was seen holding a partially melted syringe.

The airplane landed in Detroit shortly after the incident.

On Saturday, federal officials charged the young man with trying to destroy the airplane. A conviction on the charge could bring Abdulmutallab up to 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

Image by dont look now! via Flickr

U.S. District Judge Paul Borman read Abdulmutallab the charges in a conference room at the University of Michigan Medical Center in Ann Arbor, Mich., where the former London university student was undergoing burn treatment. Abdulmutallab smiled as he was wheeled into the room, his left thumb and right wrist bandaged and part of the skin on the thumb was burned off. He was released Sunday to the custody of federal marshals, who said he was being held in an undisclosed location.

Abdulmutallab claimed to have received training and instructions from al-Qaida operatives in Yemen, law enforcement officials said. He is also believed to have had Internet contact with militant Islamic radicals.

While intelligence officials said Saturday that they are taking seriously Abdulmutallab's claims that the plot originated with al-Qaida's network inside Yemen, several added that they had to yet to see independent confirmation. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation is incomplete.

Four weeks ago, Abdulmutallab's father told the U.S. Embassy in Abuja, Nigeria, that he was concerned about his son's religious beliefs. This information was passed on to U.S. intelligence officials.

Abdulmutallab received a valid U.S. visa in June 2008 that is good through 2010.

His is one of about 550,000 names in the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment database, known as TIDE, which is maintained by the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center and was created in response to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Intelligence officials said they lacked enough information to place him in the 400,000-person terror watch list or on the no-fly list of fewer than 4,000 people who should be blocked from air travel.

---

Associated Press writers Larry Margasak, Pamela Hess, Matthew Lee and Lolita Baldor in Washington and Philip Elliot in Hawaii contributed to this report.

Plane suspect was listed in terror database after father alerted U.S. officials

Image via Wikipedia

By Dan Eggen, Karen DeYoung and Spencer S. Hsu
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 27, 2009; A01

A Nigerian man charged Saturday with attempting to blow up a U.S. airliner on Christmas Day was listed in a U.S. terrorism database last month after his father told State Department officials that he was worried about his son's radical beliefs and extremist connections, officials said.

The suspect, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, was added to a catch-all terrorism-related database when his father, a Nigerian banker, reported concerns about his son's "radicalization and associations" to the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria, a senior administration official said. Abdulmutallab was not placed on any watch list for flights into the United States, however, because there was "insufficient derogatory information available" to include him, another administration official said.

Abdulmutallab was granted a two-year tourist visa by the U.S. Embassy in London in June 2008. He used the visa to travel previously to the United States at least twice, officials said.

On Friday, Abdulmutallab, 23, was subdued by passengers and crew members onboard Northwest Airlines Flight 253 after he allegedly ignited an explosive device that set afire his pants leg and part of the airplane during preparations to land in Detroit.

The incident marks the latest apparent attempt by terrorists to bring down a U.S. aircraft through the use of an improvised weapon, and set in motion urgent security measures that disrupted global air travel during the frenetic holiday weekend.

The case also reignited a partisan debate within Washington over whether the Obama administration was doing enough to guard against terrorist attacks after the shootings last month at Fort Hood, Tex., and other incidents.

Passengers on international flights bound Saturday for the United States were required to undergo more stringent searches before boarding and were ordered to remain glued in their seats for the final hour of many flights. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said domestic passengers may notice additional security measures in coming days, but she did not specify them.

Abdulmutallab was charged Saturday in U.S. District Court for Eastern Michigan with attempting to destroy an aircraft and with placing a destructive device onboard a plane, each of which is punishable by up to 20 years in prison. U.S. District Judge Paul D. Borman informed Abdulmutallab of the charges during a hearing at the University of Michigan Health System in Ann Arbor, where he is being treated at the burn unit.

The suspect was rolled into a conference room in a wheelchair for the hearing. Asked whether he understood the charges against him, he replied, "Yes, I do." When a federal prosecutor asked how he was doing, Abdulmutallab replied, "I feel better."

The suspect allegedly told FBI agents after his arrest that he had received training and explosive materials from al-Qaeda-linked terrorists in Yemen, a claim that U.S. law enforcement officials were still attempting to verify Saturday. The FBI said the device strapped to Abdulmutallab contained PETN, or pentaerythritol, which is the same plastic explosive used by al-Qaeda operative Richard C. Reid in his December 2001 attempt to destroy a U.S.-bound airliner by igniting a homemade bomb in his shoe.

A senior administration official said Abdulmutallab, who had studied engineering at University College London, was issued a two-year U.S. tourist visa in June 2008 in London and did not raise any red flags during screening before boarding Northwest Flight 253 at Amsterdam's Schiphol airport, one of the most heavily secured air facilities in the world.

Administration officials acknowledged Saturday that Abdulmutallab's name was added in November to the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, or TIDE, which contains about 550,000 individuals and is maintained by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence at the National Counterterrorism Center. TIDE is a catch-all list into which all terrorist-related information is sent.

Some, but not all, information from TIDE is transferred to the FBI-maintained Terrorist Screening Data Base (TSDB), from which consular, border and airline watch lists are drawn. The Transportation Security Administration has a "no-fly" list of about 4,000 people who are prohibited from boarding any domestic or U.S.-bound aircraft. A separate list of about 14,000 "selectees" require additional scrutiny but are not banned from flying.

Abdulmutallab's name never made it past the TIDE database. "A TIDE record on Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was created in November 2009," one administration official said, but "there was insufficient information available on the subject at that time to include him in the TSDB or its 'no fly' or 'selectee' lists."

Several top Republicans criticized the administration's approach to counterterrorism, saying the government had not pieced together warning signs in recent cases, including the slayings of 13 people at Fort Hood, allegedly by a Muslim soldier. "I think the administration is finally recognizing that they got this terrorism thing all wrong," said Rep. Peter Hoekstra (Mich.), the ranking Republican on the House intelligence committee and a state gubernatorial candidate. "I think we came very, very close to losing that plane last night."

After being briefed by federal authorities, Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) said Abdulmutallab did not undergo body scans that might have helped detect the explosive material when he went through security at airports in Nigeria and Amsterdam.

Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.), chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, released a statement saying he was "troubled by several aspects" of the case, including the visit by Abdulmutallab's father to the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria.

Democrats in the House and Senate vowed to hold hearings in January but also urged caution in jumping to conclusions. Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Homeland Security subcommittee on intelligence, said a federal official briefed lawmakers about "strong suggestions of a Yemen-al-Qaeda connection and an intent to blow up the plane over U.S. airspace."

Administration officials said President Obama is seeking accountability in the incident, although he has not demanded any sort of special review. He is getting detailed briefings on the facts of the case and the airport security changes while on vacation in Hawaii, the officials said.

One administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly, said Abdulmutallab received his 2008 tourist visa from the U.S. Embassy in London. "We interviewed him, and his name was run against the watch list maintained by [the Department of Homeland Security] and the FBI," the official said. "There was no indication of any derogatory information. There is every indication that whatever radicalization took place occurred recently."

In a new emergency order effective until Wednesday, TSA is requiring that all passengers bound for the United States undergo a "thorough pat-down" at boarding gates, concentrating on the upper legs and torso. All carry-on baggage also should be inspected, focusing on syringes with powders or liquids, TSA said.

In addition, passengers must remain seated and may not access carry-on baggage for the final hour before the landing or hold any personal item on their laps.

The extraordinary steps came as former senior U.S. officials spoke in unusually blunt terms about the apparent failure of aviation security measures to detect a common military explosive allegedly brought on board.

Michael Chertoff, who was homeland security secretary from 2005 to 2009, said terrorists appear to have exploited the natural inhibition of screeners to conduct overly intrusive searches, and he renewed calls for widespread expansion of whole-body imaging scanners that use radio waves or X-rays to reveal objects beneath a person's clothes. Chertoff said the government has sought to expand use of imaging scanners, but privacy advocates and Congress have raised objections.

"This plot is an example of something we've known could exist in theory, and in order to be able to detect it, you've got to find some way of detecting things in parts of the body that aren't easy to get at," Chertoff said. "It's either pat-downs or imaging, or otherwise hoping that bad guys haven't figured it out, and I guess bad guys have figured it out."

Sep 18, 2009

Scenes from the violent twilight of oil - By Peter Maass | Foreign Policy

It succors and drowns human life. And for the last eight years, oil -- and the people and places that make it -- was my obsession.

BY PETER MAASS | SEPT. / OCT. 2009

Across the globe, oil is invoked as an agent of destiny. Oil will make you rich, oil will make you poor, oil will bring war, oil will deliver peace, oil will shape our world as much as the glaciers did in the Ice Age.

But how?

Oil is not a machine that can be disassembled or schematized for comprehension. It is a liquid. How do you coax secrets from a liquid? To know a person, you talk to him. To know a country, you visit it. To know a religion, you study sacred texts. Oil defies these norms of interrogation. It is a commodity that is extracted, refined, shipped, and poured into gas tanks with few people seeing it. It has no voice, body, army, or dogma of its own. It is invisible most of the time, but like gravity, it influences everything.

Over the course of eight years, I tried to solve this puzzle by talking with people who worked in the industry, visiting people who were touched by its operations, and taking a look not only at oil fields but the battlefields they have spawned. I met with oilmen in Houston, princes in Riyadh, lobbyists in Washington, roughnecks in Baku, warlords in the Niger Delta, leftists in Caracas, billionaires in Moscow, environmentalists in Quito, generals in Baghdad, traders in Manhattan, wildcatters in Midland, and diplomats in London. If you have conversations with people such as these, the topics you discuss include not just politics and economics but history, geology, geography, chemistry, engineering, physics, climatology, ecology, accounting, law, corruption, culture, psychology, anthropology, greed, envy, disease, ego, and fear. The world of oil is an intellectual as much as a physical space, and my years of journeying took me through a crude world that is as dark and amazing as the liquid that casts a spell on all of us.

NIGERIA

The canoe that carried me into the Niger Delta had an outboard engine that conked out several times before reaching Tombia, which was then the latest target in Nigeria's long-running oil war. Tombia was a shambles, half its homes burned or bombed beyond repair. A dozen survivors came to the creek, and their manner was not warm. They were young men, fighters, some with soiled bandages. Fingers and hands were missing; limbs were swathed in pus-caked gauze. Government forces had attacked Tombia in the brutal way they usually do, with helicopter gunships strafing anything that moved and speedboats disgorging soldiers who shot their way through town. A dozen people were reported killed, and most of the town's population was too frightened to return -- but in any event, there was not much to return to.

The leader of these survivors, whose nickname was Prince, angrily pointed out the town's destruction with the stump of what used to be his right hand. Even the Lutheran cathedral, St. Stephen's, was destroyed. Its timid pastor, living in a shack and shivering from malaria or fear of the bitter youths who now ruled this wasteland, said it had been constructed by British missionaries in 1915. A sign by the church declared in English, "Tombia is dedicated to God. Jesus the King over the land. Holy ghost in charge."

A boy who looked 12 years old and was blind in one eye stood in front of a house that had burned to its concrete foundation. His older brother had been killed, he said, and the town was now dead and his river was dead too, tainted by oil. Because of the pollution, he could not possibly catch enough fish to nourish himself and his dead brother's family. He was angry and hopeless; the result was listlessness. The government, the Army, Royal Dutch/Shell, the warlords, the writer who would leave in a few minutes -- they would not help. His only hope was, it seemed, the Holy Ghost.

I returned to the canoe and it was not long, just an hour or so, before I reached Oro Sangama. Its defining feature was apprehended on first inhalation -- a heavy odor of sewage that had fused with humidity to form a fecal mist. It existed because Sangama's residents relieved themselves in a creek just a few steps from their homes; the creek was dead, or nearly so, as was the sickly jungle around it.

Oro Sangama had another peculiar feature: There was a steady roar around it, like the sound of a giant flamethrower. Across the fetid creek stood a natural gas plant operated by Shell. The village was in the shadow of its largest flare, which shot into the air a plume of fire. As darkness fell, Sangama became illuminated by the flare's reddish glow and remained lit in this fashion until the sun rose in the morning. The Martian light was deadly rather than helpful because the flare spews into the air a cocktail of toxic substances.

Photo Essay: Scenes from the Violent Twilight of Oil

Oil may be making its long goodbye, but twilight or not, the Oil Age still defines our world.

Soon I was greeted by King Tom Mercy, leader of the local Ijaw community. He wore a T-shirt and a frown. "This is where the oil and gas comes out," he said. "They could give us water, give us light, give us scholarships, give us jobs. We would not quarrel with anyone again. We have tried everything, used lawyers and dialogue, and we see there is no way. The next thing is violence. We don't care if everyone dies; we will burn it."

Aboard his canoe the next day, we moved through mangrove creeks in which there was no screeching of monkeys, no hippos or crocodiles in the water, no butterflies floating in the air. Between the war and the pollution, this was both a dead zone and a killing zone. At some spots, the shoreline was shaved of vegetation and fenced off, to protect flares and pits that burned off excess oil and gas. The earth in these places was, quite literally, on fire.

This journey required, for comprehension, the imagination of a science fiction devotee. We passed a small island known as Little Russia. The origin of its name was not clear, but the island served a distinct purpose -- it was where prostitutes lived, servicing the needs of soldiers and oil workers. On its shore, young women stood in the shade of shacks fronted with empty beer bottles and off-kilter picnic tables. The girls waved.

The smell of oil was strong, even when wells or flares were not visible. Where did it come from? I looked down and saw a film of oil on the river. At a flow station where fluids dripped into the water from a tangle of metal pipes that had the appearance of industrial art, a Shell sign said, "Keep Nigeria Safe and Clean." The canoe stopped in front of six wellheads coated in oil that fell, drop by drop, into the water. If a match was thrown into the river, we would be engulfed in flames.

"How can we expect to catch fish?" King Tom asked.

His anger was no performance.

"Let's go," he ordered.

We soon passed a patrol boat with unsmiling soldiers.

"You see how we live."

HOUSTON

One evening I joined more than a thousand oil executives in a Houston ballroom that was large enough for a jumbo jet or two. The pinstriped diners were served plates of mixed salad, grilled salmon, and chocolate mousse by overworked waiters whose service was as gentle as cowboys heaving bales of hay to livestock. This was the gala evening of an annual oil conference at the Westin hotel. Drawn from across the globe, the men and just a few women in the chandeliered cavern constituted an oilpalooza.

The attraction on this February evening in 2003 was a chemical engineer from South Dakota. Since 1963 he had worked for just one company, eventually becoming its chairman and chief executive. He made everyone else in his hard-bitten industry seem gentle. He was gruff even to members of Congress and scoffed at global warming long after scientists proved it. Greenpeace called him the "Darth Vader of global warming." He was superficially unappealing too, with a misshapen lip, an ample belly, and a set of jowls that cartoonists would judge absurd. But in the oil industry you do not need to be pretty or kind to succeed, and this oilman had succeeded beyond anyone's imagining. Lee Raymond had turned ExxonMobil into the largest and most profitable corporation in the United States. He was rewarded with an astounding $686 million in compensation during his 13-year tenure as chief executive, which breaks down to about $144,000 a day, or more than $6,000 for every hour he worked, slept, ate, or golfed.

But Raymond was nearly unknown outside the environmental lobby that despised him, the financial industry that swooned over him, and the oil industry that feared him (Exxon's executive suite was known as "the God Pod"). Think of the tycoons who are part of the contemporary lexicon -- Gates, Murdoch, Buffett, Jobs -- and realize that absent from their ranks is the man who oversaw one of the most profitable multinationals of the 20th century. I wanted to see him on this evening because he was not just at the highest echelon of his industry's ruling class, but seemed its epitome.

After the mousse plates were cleared, Raymond lumbered onto the ballroom stage. The crowd offered a round of applause that was more akin to a handshake than a hug. In this industry, there was no need to feign love; grudging respect would do. His speech was an industrial mission statement. His listeners, who included ministers, princes, and CEOs, were reminded of how vital their work was, how underappreciated they were, how they must labor harder than ever, how the future will be grander than the already-blessed present. A video screen enlarged Raymond's presence to superhuman proportions. It was part Tony Robbins, part Billy Graham, with a whiff of a mumbling Leonid Brezhnev.

Invoking a sacred industrial purpose, Raymond recited his version of the inspirational commandments of the oil world:

"We all have a tremendous opportunity and a responsibility to improve the quality of life the world over. Virtually nothing is made without our energy and our products.

"Our industry's best years lie ahead, surpassing even the greatest achievements of the century gone by.

"We condemn the violation of human rights in any form and believe our stand on human rights sets a positive example for countries where we operate."

The audience's reaction was ritualized, less a genuine wave of applause than an obligatory simulation. I was reminded that in this brutal business, it was best to save your enthusiasm for crushing a rival rather than congratulating him.

VENEZUELA

Venezuela, which has the world's seventh-largest oil reserves, is a classic example of what economist Joseph Stiglitz calls "a rich country with poor people." Caracas, the capital, is surrounded by coils of barrios; voters from these impoverished areas are the electoral base for President Hugo Chávez, who promises to create true prosperity from the oil riches. I stopped by Miraflores, the presidential palace, to see how Chávez was performing the trick that eluded so many of his predecessors.

The Miraflores event was part of the great game of our times -- the superpower search for steady supplies of energy. China, which didn't import much petroleum until 2000 yet is now the second-largest importer after the United States, was doing whatever it could to win the friends and resources it needed. To woo Caracas, China had just agreed to help launch a communications satellite on favorable terms. In a conference hall at the palace, Chávez was getting ready to break this news to the world. Onstage, several executives from the China Great Wall Industry Corporation sat beside the stout Venezuelan president.

After the Chinese and Venezuelan anthems were sung, Chávez launched into a speech of the sort that is his trademark -- a presidential stream of consciousness. He congratulated the Chinese for being clever at math and saluted their women for being so beautiful. He thanked the Chinese government for training Venezuelans in satellite technology, saying they were teaching Venezuela "how to fly." As a visual aid, he flapped his arms like wings. He added that the Chinese had learned to fly under "the great Mao Zedong," and because Chávez drew inspiration from Mao's one-party, one-truth pedigree, he smiled broadly and exhorted, "Long live the Chinese revolution!"

The Chinese businessmen, as rigorously mercantilist these days as John Rockefeller was in his time, gazed at Chávez. They didn't seem to know whether the desired response was sardonic smiles or clenched fists, but their expressions veered toward the safe harbor of nodding approval. One of them adjusted the volume on his translation headset as Chávez said, "We don't want to earn money out of this. We're not capitalists. This is about the survival of our country and the destruction of capitalism. Capitalists are generating death!"

Yet capitalists are still buying oil from Venezuela, and lots of it; most of Venezuela's oil exports go to the United States. A president can flap his arms in Caracas and hold his nose at the United Nations and promise to remake his nation, but reality is crude in many ways. There is a saying that Venezuela does not have good or bad presidents, just presidents who serve at times of high or low oil prices. Chávez, running for president in 1998 as the main political parties all but collapsed from decrepitude, had the great luck of being elected when oil sold for $12 a barrel. As his presidency began, prices started climbing, on their way to more than $140 by 2008. Venezuelans had seen this before -- presidents who became popular by increasing public spending and who became unpopular when the oil boom ebbed. Chávez's announcement at Miraflores -- indeed, his entire presidency -- had the feel of what Venezuelan scholar Fernando Coronil described as a state limited to "magic performances, not miracles."

Magic can obscure reality but not make it disappear.

SAUDI ARABIA

When our paths crossed, Mohammed Ibrahim Abdul Aziz was 20 years old. He seemed young for his age -- his sparse facial hair gave him the look of a teenager. He had studied at King Saud University in Riyadh but had not been inspired by his teachers and had not been hopeful of finding work after graduation. The paradoxes of Saudi Arabia include the fact that it has oceans of oil but not an economy that offers jobs its citizens want. This is one of the problems of the oil industry: It generates lots of cash but very little work. Mohammed dropped out of school and like many Saudi youths spent his spare time cruising the Internet. When I asked which fundamentalist Web sites he'd visited, Mohammed couldn't remember precisely because there were so many, all extolling the glory of doing battle against infidels.

I met Mohammed in Samarra, Iraq, where he had gone to fight Americans in 2005. He had been captured a few days before our encounter, and he had certainly seen better days. He was wearing a green frock covered in mud and his eyes were bloodshot. He had been interrogated almost nonstop. A soiled bandage was wrapped around his head; he said he was injured when the car he was traveling in, with two members of his insurgent cell, was attacked by Iraqi soldiers. It was just as probable that he had been roughed up but did not want to say so. We talked in an office in a library that had been converted to a detention center. A desk in our midst had bloodstains down its side. From parts of the detention center I was not allowed to visit, I could hear prisoners screaming and retching.

Mohammed's career as a holy warrior had lasted a few weeks. He had no skills to offer the insurgency because he had never fired a weapon or built a bomb, did not know his way around Iraq, and could not even blend into a crowd because his Saudi accent gave him away. When he realized his insurgent cell was led by a man who seemed more interested in stealing cars than killing Americans, he wanted out. His capture came as a relief, which is why he had not been tortured to the edge of death -- he was more than happy to tell everything he knew.

"I made a mistake," Mohammed said. "I just hope I will be allowed to go back to Riyadh. I want to leave."

He would not be going home soon. A U.S. military advisor, dressed in jeans and with a pistol strapped to his thigh, was monitoring my talk with Mohammed. The Iraqi who interpreted, also with a pistol on his hip, was an overweight police official. The Saudi, the American, and the Iraqi in this room were in a deep mess, as were their homelands. There were many reasons, and a core one was evoked when Mohammed ventured a guess as to why Iraq had been invaded.

"The Americans want to control Iraq's resources," he said. "They came here for oil."