Al Qaeda in Africa: The Creeping Menace to Sub-Sahara's 500 Million Muslims
ABSTRACT Since 2005, Al Qaeda has co-opted as franchises three armed and violent African Islamist movements that had established footholds in both East and West Africa. These movements have been able to exploit anarchy, instability, hopeless poverty, corruption, and ethnic exclusion to impose medieval Islamic governance that sub-Saharan Africans reject but cannot defeat without outside help. The countries currently directly affected are Somalia, Mali, and Nigeria. African governments understand the dangers to their sovereignty presented by Al Qaeda affiliates and have demonstrated determination to do whatever is necessary to stamp them out. All African governments welcome American assistance in their resistance to Islamist extremism, but the United States needs to be careful about keeping its military footprint in Africa as small as possible.
Boko Haram: On the Road to Algiers?
This paper establishes a chilling parallel between Algerian Islamic insurgency and Boko Haram terrorist attacks in Nigeria and parts of West and Central Africa and maps out Nigeria’s reaction to the Boko Haram insurgency, including mass atrocities perpetrated by Nigerian security troops. The paper lays out violations of international humanitarian law and human rights law perpetrated by both sides of the conflict, belatedly recognised as a non-international armed conflict in 2013 by the International Criminal Court (ICC). Focusing on Boko Haram’s most horrendous atrocities from 2010 to 2015, media coverage of these attacks is synthesised without discountenancing the horror and unimaginable pains experienced by the victims and the survivors of more numerous but lower casualty rates of Boko Haram attacks. Foreign response to the emergence of Boko Haram is also examined against the background of the requirements of international humanitarian law and international criminal law. Boko Haram insurgency in northern Nigeria evolved from a peaceful religious reaction to corrupt governance, by western educated elites, into violent murderous attacks against symbols of the Nigerian state and unarmed civilians. Most sections of northern Nigeria seem caught up in a time warp of arrested socio-economic development and never-ceasing endemic poverty, while tiny elites continue to live off state revenues. Accountable political leadership, with a clear focus and plan on tackling the socio-economic imbalances within the region and across the country, is the panacea to Boko Haram.
Hydrogen-rich gas production from biomass air and oxygen/steam gasification in a downdraft gasifier
Biomass gasification is an important method to obtain renewable hydrogen. However, this technology still stagnates in a laboratory scale because of its high-energy consumption. In order to get maximum hydrogen yield and decrease energy consumption, this study applies a self-heated downdraft gasifier as the reactor and uses char as the catalyst to study the characteristics of hydrogen production from biomass gasification. Air and oxygen/steam are utilized as the gasifying agents. The experimental results indicate that compared to biomass air gasification, biomass oxygen/steam gasification improves hydrogen yield depending on the volume of downdraft gasifier, and also nearly doubles the heating value of fuel gas. The maximum lower heating value of fuel gas reaches 11.11MJ/Nm3 for biomass oxygen/steam gasification. Over the ranges of operating conditions examined, the maximum hydrogen yield reaches 45.16gH2/kg biomass. For biomass oxygen/steam gasification, the content of H2 and CO reaches 63.27–72.56%, while the content of H2 and CO gets to 52.19–63.31% for biomass air gasification. The ratio of H2/CO for biomass oxygen/steam gasification reaches 0.70–0.90, which is lower than that of biomass air gasification, 1.06–1.27. The experimental and comparison results prove that biomass oxygen/steam gasification in a downdraft gasifier is an effective, relatively low energy consumption technology for hydrogen-rich gas production.