The wild wild (north-)west, Nigeria’s Waziristan, By Osmund Agbo

The volatile region of Waziristan, an area often referred to by the western press as Pakistan’s lawless territory represents one of the seven districts that border Afghanistan called the Federally Administered Tribal Areas . FATA, part of Pakistan’s colonial inheritance came to be as a concession by the British Raj to the Pashtun tribes. Pashtuns had long resisted being controlled from the outside and so were granted autonomy to run their internal affairs.

Like Pakistan’s Waziristan, Nigeria’s northwest region has become a lawless territory where dens of armed bandits operate and control swaths of land with little or no challenge from government authorities. What began as a communal rivalry in 2011 between the nomadic Fulani herders and sedentary Hausa farmers, has now morphed into garden varieties of lethal militia groups and organized crime syndicates with multinational dimension.

Those are hardly the reason for thousands of bandits that currently operate throughout the Northeast today. Instead, lots of young Fulanis now see banditry as a very lucrative business, far better than having to log in thousands of miles in unfriendly forests with herds of cow. The activities of illegal miners from China, Russian and even South Africans are also alleged to be a big source of illegal arms supply. This contributes significantly to the crisis at least in the resource-rich but developmentally-starved Zamfara. Oftentimes, Helicopters were seen in the area dropping off weapons in exchange for gold.

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