Fallout from Khadafy’s downfall fuels conflicts

ABUJA, Nigeria — Centuries-old communal tensions across West Africa are taking an increasingly bloody turn, fueled by competition for land and water and an influx of weapons and fighters from Libya.

Nigeria President Muhammadu Buhari has blamed that cocktail of guns and gunmen for the intensifying clashes between crop farmers and herders as well as robberies and kidnapping by bandit gangs. The violence is stoking Nigeria’s ethnic and religious divisions and is rivaling Boko Haram’s 9-year-old Islamist insurgency in the northeast as the nation’s biggest security crisis.

The fallout from the downfall of Moammar Khadafy’s regime in Libya almost seven years ago is worsening conflict in Nigeria and other countries in the region such as Mali and Niger where al Qaeda- and Islamic Stateinspired groups operate, according to Nnamdi Obasi of the Brusselsbased International Crisis Group.

“Some arms looted after Khadafy’s fall have been acquired by various groups, including Islamist insurgents, cattle rustlers and other bandits, herders and farming communities, aggravating conflicts and insecurity in northern Nigeria,” he said in an interview. “Secondly, some of the fighters that fled Libya have reportedly offered mercenary services to groups in conflict elsewhere or probably formed deadly bandit groups themselves.”

In Nigeria, 937 people were killed by gunmen and in farmer-herder violence from Jan. 1 to April 30, officials say.