As Separatist Leader Faces Treason Charges, Followers Seize Control of Pipeline

ABUJA, Nigeria, Sept. 22 -- Moujahid Dokubo-Asari, a separatist leader in Nigeria's oil-producing south, was brought before a federal court on treason charges Thursday -- a crime that carries the death penalty -- and his followers reportedly retaliated by seizing at least one facility that controls oil pipeline flows.

The confrontation between Nigerian authorities and radical activists from the impoverished Niger Delta region could put new pressure on global oil prices at a time when destruction from Hurricane Katrina in the United States and the expectation of new carnage from Hurricane Rita already is pushing prices toward historic highs.

In southern Nigeria, militants seized a Chevron oil flow station and threatened more disruption, including the kidnapping of foreign workers, news services reported.

"We will blow every oil installation up," Alali Horsefall, the top aide to Dokubo-Asari in the Niger Delta People's Volunteer Force, told Agence France-Presse before setting off into the delta marshes with a group of men on a protest operation he called "240 hours of rage".

Nigeria is the fifth largest exporter of oil to the United States. The Niger Delta ordinarily exports 2.4 million barrels of oil a day.

In the morning on November 10, 1995, Ken Saro-Wiwa - Nigerian poet, writer, and the leader of a minority ethnic group called the Ogoni - was hanged by the Nigerian government for a trumped up crime.

His commitment to nonviolent protest of the environmental destruction created by Shell Oil and the Nigerian government brought him and his cause world notoriety. He mobilized tens of thousands in the Niger Delta to stand up against the environmental destruction wrought by Shell's oil drilling.

«« click on photo - 30 years history of terror»»

President Bush receives a briefing on national policy issues from VP Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Richard B. Myers, U.S. Air Force, at the Pentagon.
AP Photo/Department of Defense, Tech. Sgt. Kevin J. Gruenwald, U.S. Air Force  

Rather than being a tragic reminder of past Cold War conflicts, confined to a remote and barbarous country, Angola's present condition is an example of the handiwork of men like Secretary of Defence Rumsfeld, who strenuously lobbied for the removal of Congressional barriers on arming anti-government forces in the mid-1970s, Dick Cheney, a tireless supporter of UNITA, and George Bush senior, who both as president and head of the CIA prosecuted the war.

Angola--where 3.5 million people, a third of the population, have fled from their homes, where there are 86,000 disabled land mine victims and where a child dies of a preventable disease every three minutes--is the shape of things to come in many other countries if the right wing clique that currently dominates U.S. politics has its way.

In claiming that the Angolan war was the result of super-power rivalry, the U.S. press is echoing the words of Henry Kissinger. As Secretary of State he repeatedly claimed that the U.S. was forced to intervene in Angola because the Soviet Union was already providing military aid to the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) in the form of Cuban troops. Recently released documents demonstrate that this was untrue and that Kissinger lied to Congress in order to justify U.S. intervention.

Far from the war in Angola being the result of efforts to curtail Soviet ambitions, the new documents released by the National Security archive reveal that the Kremlin was reluctant to become involved in Angola. The Stalinist bureaucracy had no desire to encourage popular revolutionary movements that might threaten their own hold on power. It did not initiate a proxy war, but rather responded to U.S. moves.

Conflicting Missions - Henry Kissinger
Secret Cuban Documents on History of Africa Involvement

The United States bears some blame for Angola's brutal civil war because Savimbi was long the darling of American right-wing, conservative politicians and the CIA. Some fifteen years ago, President Ronald Reagan invited Savimbi to the White House and hailed him a "freedom fighter" for his efforts to oust dos Santos and the leftist Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA)--the party that has ruled Angola since its independence in 1975.

Background on this story and on the five Irishmen jailed at the behest of the Shell/Statoil/Marathon Oil conglomerate is here in a previous Daily Kos diary.

Anti Shell/Statoil/Marathon Oil Campaigners in Ireland campaigning against an unprecedented type of onshore gas pipeline were smeared today by the biggest selling newspaper in Ireland as - you've guessed it - Terrorists.