In a nutshell, my understanding of North Africa/West Africa issues involved her.
Posted by
loosilu (aka loosilu2)
Jan 18 '13, 08:14
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caveat: take it all with a grain of salt. this is information gleaned from when I worked on this area. This is a super simplified version that represents just my understanding. Anything I say could be wrong.
You have to separate the groups from the income sources. Multiple groups might be involved in stealing oil or taking hostages. Of course there are many industries, but for the puproses of this conflict, I'm just picking out a few.
The main groups at play here are legitimate governments, private industry, drug traffickers (and human trafficking), pirates, AQIM, and any number of rebel groups.
In West Africa, the main sources of income at play (I'm including both legal and not) are oil and drugs. In North Africa, it's gas and kidnap for ransom.
So, any number of groups could be going after oil. There's a huge pirate industry (non political) aroudn Nigeria. There's a separate industry taking hostages for ransom, and they especially like kidnapping Westerners, because it's AQ.
Mali lies between West and North Africa, and it is the main route for trafficking drugs from South America (via West Africa) to Europe. AQ charges the drug runners to ensure their safe passage across the Sahara.
So as you can see, although these are very different interests, there is a lot of wheeling and dealing between them. It's not just about oil. Drugs and AQ are huge factors as well.
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