Heres a piece I just put up about how climate change and other environmental factors are stoking Boko Haram violence: Blessing sits on the floor, knees into chest, in an empty room in Bukakotto village in eastern Nigeria. Shes 40 something, but looks 25, and her face is scarred with tribal markings razor cut into her face as a baby. Just the day before, her sister was murdered. She went to her farm to look for firewood, Blessing says through a translator, and she was knifed to death by nomadic cattle herders with machetes. They hacked her all over. A pink and white scarf hangs off Blessing’s head, and she arranges and rearranges it as she speaks, looking straight ahead into nothing. We picked up her corpse and buried it yesterday. Blessings sister is another casualty in Nigerias long-running battle between mostly Christian farmers and mostly Muslim cattle herders over access to land. This increasingly violent clash is playing out alongside the Boko Haram terror campaign that has captivated the world since the group kidnapped more than 300 schoolgirls in April. On the surface, the two conflicts—which have both resulted in thousands of deaths over the past few years—appear unrelated. One is centered around Islamic fundamentalism, the other around grass and water. But look a bit further and you find that both conflicts are deeply tied to a massive ecological crisis that is breeding desperate poverty in the north of the country. -Erika
Posted on: Tue, 10 Jun 2014 16:00:01 +0000
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