JOS CONFLICT ASSESSMENT

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 ABUJA 002347 SIPDIS DRL FOR KEIZER, ACCRA FOR KAMINSKI E.O. 12958: DECL: 09/18/2006 TAGS: PGOV PINS PREF CASC MOPS KIRF KISL EAID NI SUBJECT: JOS CONFLICT ASSESSMENT REF: (A) ABUJA 2290 (B) SECSTATE 160413 (C) ABUJA 2258 (D) ABUJA 2255 SUBJECT: ASSESSMENT OF CONFLICT IN JOS ¶1. (U) Summary. A team of officials from the U.S., U.K. and Netherlands diplomatic missions in Abuja drove to Jos on Friday, September 14, to meet with their nationals and to assess the situation there following the ethnic and religious conflict that began on September 7. It appears that over 2,300 people may have lost their lives in the conflict in the immediate vicinity of Jos, while a significant but unknown number of casualties also occurred in outlying villages and towns. Calm was restored following a flare-up of violence on September 12, and only two Amcit and two British families elected to depart Jos temporarily with the diplomatic convoy. We have not heard of further violence in the countryside. However the diplomatic team did not venture outside of town. Consular issues pertaining to the American community in Jos will be reported in septel. President Obasanjo has put pressure on Governor Dariye of Plateau State to take corrective measures to reconcile the two sides, but Dariye's government, through its pro-Christian partisanship, may have already forfeited its ability to be a fair arbiter for peace. End Summary. -------------- Background -------------- ¶2. (U) American citizen, governmental and private sources emphasized to Poloff that tensions had been building in Jos for months for several reasons. Primary among these was the influx of new residents from Kaduna and Kano in the aftermath of last year's crises there, which resulted in a near doubling of Jos' population. The immigrants included many ethnic Ibgos, Yoruba and other non-Muslim ethnic groups from Kaduna and Bauchi, but many others were Hausa. The influx of new residents sparked competition for state resources; chief among these was access to state and federal government positions in Plateau State. Even though Jos itself was initially founded largely by Hausa-Fulani families around the turn of the century, the non-Muslim ethnic groups indigenous to the surrounding area have refused to accord them the status of "indigenes," which Nigerians understand to mean a group possessing the right to lay claim to government resources and patronage. 
 ¶3. (U) While the status of its Hausa population has remained unsettled for years, the descendants of the early Hausa families in Jos have long dominated the city's economic life--provoking a certain amount of envy among their "indigenous" neighbors. The recent influx of Hausa-Fulani immigrants from elsewhere in the North, economic stagnation, and the introduction of different versions of criminal Shari'a law in the North, have all contributed to rising fear and resentment among major indigenous ethnic groups in northern Plateau State: the Birom, Anaguta, Jarawa and Niango. The recurring conflict between urban Hausa-Fulani Muslims in Tafawa Balewa in southern Bauchi, nearly 100 kilometers from Jos, and "indigenous" ethnic groups surrounding it, has also contributed to rising tensions in Plateau State. ¶4. (U) Against this backdrop, Alhaji Mukhtar Mohammed was in mid-August appointed to head the National Poverty Eradication Program (NPEP) for the Jos North Local Government Area. (Note: Jos is divided into two LGA's, North and South. Jos North contains most of the Hausa/Muslim population of the city, roughly 40%. End Note.) Mukhtar's appointment was strongly opposed by the non-Hausa-Fulani residents of Jos North. This appointment sparked a battle of increasingly strident ethnic and religious rhetoric between two youth organizations, the Jasawa Development Association for the predominantly Muslim Hausa-Fulani, and the Plateau Youth Council for the predominantly Christian other indigenous ethnic groups. Contacts in Jos have reported that both organizations consist of unemployed, uneducated and/or impoverished youth, seeking to create--and to capitalize upon--ethnic and religious conflict. ¶5. (U) As tensions rose in Jos, rumors began spreading of men having their genitals magically removed or shrunken by shaking hands with ill-intentioned magicians from the opposing ethnic groups. Christians also appear to have believed that a well-armed invasion of Muslim hordes from the core North, Niger and Chad was imminent. Oblivious to the potential for unrest, or perhaps relying on the fact that Jos had never suffered ethnic conflict, Governor Joshua Dariye left for the U.S. nearly one week prior to the outbreak of violence and was not present for the slaughter that ensued. -------------- The Conflict -------------- ¶6. (U) There are many stories about how the fighting was triggered. We have strong confidence in none of them, but most credible overall involved the attempt by a Christian woman to drive through a street near the Central Mosque, which was closed due to overflow crowds at Juma'at prayers on Friday, September 7. (Note: When urban mosques overflow on Friday, surrounding streets may be closed for 45-60 minutes, as worshippers roll out prayer mats and listen to the Imam on loudspeakers. End Note.) Both sides claim that the other had planned the violence--Muslims claiming that after the woman left they were attacked while at prayer, Christians claiming that the Muslims used this as an excuse for "jihad." It appears that members of the youth organizations on both sides--the JDA and the PYC--took the lead in initiating and expanding the violence. ¶7. (U) Unlike Kaduna, where there was mass destruction of property, the destruction in Jos was selective, and localized largely in Jos North and Bukaru, a southern suburb. The houses and businesses of the old Hausa families were particularly targeted by Christians, while Muslims also killed Christians and destroyed their property in Hausa-dominated neighborhoods. Throughout the town Poloff observed burned-out tanker trucks and other large transport vehicles, as well as burned fuel stations and car lots--all businesses associated with Hausa traders. -------------- The Military -------------- ¶8. (U) The Third Armored Infantry Division, joined by some personnel from the local Air Force base, were brought in to restore order on Saturday, September 8 (Ref C). Reports of their performance were largely positive. It appears that they did not use excessive lethal force, but were unable to immediately stop the violence, since much of it was surreptitious ethnic cleansing within neighborhoods rather than large mob action. Most sources report that by Sunday, September 9, the killings had ceased in Jos. On Wednesday, September 12, some youths apparently took advantage of a substantial downpour to loot shops in the market. The military were allegedly given the order on that day to shoot to kill, and began a massive display of firepower that began around 9:00 a.m. and ended around 3:00 p.m. This effectively stopped the looting. Forces are reported to have fired their weapons into the air, as well as into abandoned buildings, while Jos residents cowered in their homes. There were few casualties reported by hospitals on Wednesday, including five or six people injured by stray bullets. Some Christians reported that the flare-up on Wednesday was in response to "jubilation" among Jos Muslims about the attack on the U.S. on September 11. This macabre claim, reported in some newspapers as fact, was not borne out by our investigation. Either false or wildly exaggerated, such stories are indicative of the extent to which some predominantly Christian ethnic groups, who are opposed to Islam and its Hausa-speaking adherents, have seized on events in the U.S. in an attempt to discredit their Muslim compatriots, and to exacerbate conflict. See septel. -------------- Casualties -------------- ¶9. (SBU) Post has received reliable reports that the death toll in Jos exceeds 2300, not counting what may have occurred in surrounding areas. Amcits confimed the large number of casualties with eyewitness accounts of bodies being hauled out of town in open-top cattle trucks, about the size of a standard American semi-trailers, after the curfew was imposed. A colleague at the German Embassy reported that Julius Berger Nigeria reported to him that they provided earth-moving equipment to the military for digging mass graves. (Note: Nigerian officials, and the Army, have had plenty of experience with the danger of bodies being transported to other states, where they become the trigger for reprisals and counter-reprisals. In this case it was prudent from a security standpoint to bury all bodies as soon as possible, preventing them from being transported elsewhere for burial, but also preventing an accurate assessment of the loss of life. End Note.) ¶10. (C) One Amcit missionary who works as a medical doctor at the Jos University Teaching Hospital, one of two large hospitals in town, reported that roughly eighty percent of the casualties were Hausa, and the rest were spread among the other ethnic groups. Some Amcits reported pogroms against Hausa-Fulani living in villages outside of Jos, where entire village populations were murdered and their villages were burned down. Underlining the ethnic, rather than religious nature of the conflict, one Amcit reported that he witnessed Muslim Yoruba participating in killing their Hausa-Fulani co-religionists. -------------- Governmental Response -------------- ¶11. (C) Contacts in the Plateau State Government, including Deputy Governor Michael Botmang, Secretary to State Government Ezekiel Gomos, and the Permanent Secretary for Security Matters, Robert Taple, all revealed strongly pro-Christian biases regarding the violence in their discussions with Poloff. All repeated what can be called the Christian exculpatory story: the Hausa were planning this, they wanted to bring Shari'a law to Plateau, they brought in armed Muslim fighters from Niger and Chad to attack Christians and take over Jos. Unfortunately, this version of events did not square with what the delegation from Abuja witnessed on the ground, and the lack of objectivity on the part of Plateau State's Christian-dominated government was frankly disturbing. Permanent Secretary Taple went so far as to claim that a helicopter landed on the Bauchi Road (Jos North) to supply weapons to the Muslims. (Note: Operation Focus Relief has the only functioning helicopters in Nigeria at the moment. End Note.) ¶12. (U) Amcits complained of a lack of food in Jos, and said that the food security problem was exacerbating the larger security problem. The delegation noted bags of corn, rice and gari at Government House, which was to be distributed to the hungry. On Friday, September 14, there was no fuel to be found in Jos, as the Hausa fuel distributors would not risk sending another tanker truck after so many had been burned. President Obasanjo visited Jos on Saturday, September 15, and issued a press statement deploring the violence, and instructing Governor Dariye that he would be "watching closely" to see how things were handled by the current Government there. During a September 16 service at the Presidential Villa commemorating the dead in New York, Washington and Jos, Obasanjo talked of seeing evidence that human beings had been eviscerated like animals. The President said the humanity of persons who could commit such atrocities must be questioned. ¶13. (U) Comment: While the world's attention has been understandably focused elsewhere, Nigeria has suffered its worst bout of ethnic violence since the events in Kaduna in Fegruary, 2000. The death toll in Jos could well exceed one-half of those killed in the U.S. in the attacks on New York and Washington. President Obasanjo's personal attention to the situation in Plateau, although somewhat belated, was encouraging. Governor Ahmed Makarfi of Kaduna State reported to Poloff that he and his colleagues in the North were growing increasingly angry at what they perceive to be Dariye's mishandling of the situation in Plateau, which may have prompted the President's trip to Jos, and his warning for the Governor. Dariye's government has already lost credibility as an impartial arbiter that can lead the way to reconciliation, as was done in Kaduna, and his actions do not appear to have slowed the pace of Hausa-Fulani refugees departing Plateau State. ¶14. (C) Comment continued: Concern by both the Federal and State governments over this crisis reflects long experience with the cycle of ethnic reprisal and revenge in Nigeria. The only way forward in Jos is for both sides to accept responsibility and to work toward reconciliation. The Christians--in and out of Government--cling fiercely to the notion that the Muslims planned this, started it intentionally, and that Christians merely responded--inflicting an 80 percent casualty rate on their Hausa neighbors. Irrespective of who started it, this does not lay the foundation for reconciliation. Unlike in Kaduna, where losses were roughly equal and both sides quickly moved to acknowledge their own responsibility, the unrest in Jos has the appearance of ethnic cleansing, with the Hausas taking the worst hit. Because Hausa Muslims across the North feel that their people were victimized in Jos, this conflict, if not adequately addressed, will lay the foundation for later Hausa reprisals, in Jos or elsewhere. Many Nigerians are worried, with good reason, that if this kind of carnage can be triggered in traditionally peaceful Jos over the appointment of a minor official, what will happen in hotspots when campaigning for 2002 and 2003 elections begin in earnest. End Comment. Andrews