otics may lead to future antibiotic-resistant infec - Kuwait Times

FRIDAY, MARCH 16, 2012
Mozambique denies
cutting Zimbabwe
power over debts
HARARE: Mozambique’s Cahora Bassa dam yesterday
denied cutting power to Zimbabwe, which had claimed
the state-owned company had pulled the plug over
unpaid bills totaling around $75 million. “Hydro Cahora
Bassa switched off supplies to Zimbabwe on Thursday or
Friday last week over the money owed which is around
$75 million or $76 million,” Energy and Power
Development Minister Elton Mangoma told AFP.
“We are now switching off defaulters as part of efforts
to raise the money,” he said. But the Cahora Bassa dam,
which supplies nearly a fifth of the power it produces to
Zimbabwe, said this was not the case. “We would like to
inform you that we have not cut electricity to Zimbabwe.
That information is misinformed,” Rosaque Guale, a board
member of the state-owned Cahora Bassa Hydropower
Company told AFP.
Several suburbs of the capital Harare have gone for
days without electricity, while other places suffer up to 10
hours of power cuts, as the utility Zimbabwe Electricity
Supply Authority (ZESA) comes under pressure to save
power. Zimbabwe needs 2,200 megawatts of electricity at
peak but generates just 1,300 megawatts and imports the
remainder, including 100 to 185 megawatts from Hydro
Cahora Bassa. The dam produces 2,075 megawatts of
energy a year. South Africa buys 65 percent, while
Zimbabwe gets a 19-percent share. Last month, Mangoma
warned a parliamentary committee that Zimbabwe risked
being cut off if it failed to settle its debt with Hydro. He
said ZESA had accumulated almost a billion dollars in
unpaid electricity imports, unserviced loans and outstanding
contributions to a joint power project with
neighbouring Zambia. The firm also plans to introduce
pre-paid meters to improve its revenue collection. Last
year ZESA announced it would hand out more than 5.5
million power-saving fluorescent light bulbs to households
across the country to curb consumption. — AFP
NAIROBI: Bomb attacks in Nigeria, Kenya and
Somalia rose in 2011 as Al-Qaeda-affiliated terror
groups used more sophisticated devices to
kill more people with each explosion, the
Pentagon’s anti-IED unit said. Nigeria saw a
nearly fourfold jump in the number of improvised
explosive device incidents last year, while
Kenya saw an 86 percent increase, according to
the unit. Underscoring the threat, both nations
saw deadly blasts last weekend: A car bomb
attack on a church during Mass in Nigeria and
grenades thrown at Kenyans as they waited at a
crowded bus stop.
Militants last year began using a deadlier
type of bomb known as a shaped charge for the
first time in both Somalia and Nigeria, John
Myrick, a US military bomb expert told The
Associated Press. Advanced bomb-makers use
shaped charges to increase the force of a bomb
so that it can penetrate armor.
Such deadly explosives were used repeatedly
by militants at the height of the Iraq war, and to
a lesser extent in Afghanistan. The migration of
the deadlier bombs to Africa is evidence that
more sophisticated Al-Qaeda-linked groups are
advising and training African militants. While
Somalia saw only a small increase in attacks, the
newer technology lead to greater casualties and
deeper impact on Africa Union forces, Myrick
said. On Wednesday, a suicide bomb attack
aimed at the main government compound in
Mogadishu killed at least three people, said the
spokesman for the African Union force known as
AMISOM. Bombs in Somalia “are definitely more
sophisticated and they’re definitely more effective
against AMISOM armored vehicles, which
represents an advance in the capabilities of the
insurgents,” said Myrick, the chief of the global
missions task force for the Pentagon’s Joint IED
ABUJA: Nigeria’s government has in
the last week held its first indirect peace
talks with Islamist sect Boko Haram,
meeting mediators to discuss a possible
ceasefire, political and diplomatic
sources told Reuters yesterday. Two
people close to Boko Haram have been
carrying messages back and forth
between the sect’s self-proclaimed
leader Abubakar Shekau and government
officials, the sources, who asked
not to be named, said.
It was not clear whether any mediators
met with President Goodluck
Jonathan himself. A presidency
spokesman said he could not immediately
comment. Boko Haram has said it
wants to impose sharia, or Islamic, law
across a country split equally between
Christians and Muslims. The group has
killed hundreds this year in bomb and
gun attacks, mostly in the majority
Muslim north of Africa’s top oil producer.
“BH (Boko Haram) has mentioned a
conditional ceasefire but it wants all its
members released from prison. The government
sees this as unacceptable but is
willing to release foot soldiers,” a traditional
leader and civil rights activist
involved in the talks told Reuters, asking
not to be named.
“It is the first time a ceasefire has
been mentioned, so it is a massive posi-
tive, but given the lack of trust a resolution
is still a way off,” he added.
Jonathan’s national security adviser,
General Owoye Andrew Azazi, told
Reuters in January that Nigeria was considering
making contact with moderate
members of the shadowy Boko Haram
via “back channels”. A source at the
presidency confirmed that efforts are
being made to reach out to the sect’s
negotiators, but that direct talks had not
yet begun. A well-respected Islamic cleric
has been contacted to reach out to
them, he said.
Shekau has appeared in two video
tapes posted on YouTube in January
claiming leadership of the sect and making
bellicose threats against security
forces. Since then, however, Nigeria’s
military has made some key arrests and
senior members of the sect have been
killed, while the sophistication and scale
of its attacks have fallen since a wave of
deadly strikes from November to
January. Two security sources said one
of the people involved in the negotiations
was a close ally of Mohammed
Yusuf, the founder of Boko Haram who
died in police custody in 2009, triggering
a widespread violent uprising by the
sect. They were both members of a
group called the Spring Council of
Sharia. Shekau has not said the group
International
Nigeria starts mediated
talks with Boko Haram
Defeat Organization. Myrick said that the more
effective bombs and attacks “indicate an
increase in logistical support from some of the
more sophisticated groups on the continent,
and also an increase in training.”
Specifically, the anti-IED unit says Al-Qaeda’s
North African branch is increasing support to
Nigerian militants, and another affiliate, Al-
Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), is supporting
Somali militant groups. Nigeria saw 196
bomb incidents in 2011, compared with 52 incidents
in 2010, US military numbers show. An
incident is when a bomb detonates or is discovered
before detonation. The Pentagon’s anti-IED
Discussion of possible ceasefire
unit expects Nigeria to see a slight increase in
bomb incidents this year, before attack numbers
plateau because militants will have reached
their capacity to produce them, Myrick said.
The Joint IED Defeat Organization says mili-
tants are increasingly targeting events that will
produce mass casualties. A Christmas Day blast
that struck St. Theresa Catholic Church near
Nigeria’s capital killed 44 people. Nigeria Police
Commissioner Ambrose Aisabor, who oversees
the Nigeria Police Force’s anti-bomb squad,
blamed the increase on a radical Islamist sect
known as Boko Haram, whose name means
“Western education is sacrilege” in the Hausa
was interested in dialogue in his videos
and neither has the group’s spokesman,
Abu Qaqa, who holds sporadic telephone
interviews with local media in the
sect’s heartland of Maiduguri. But they
have not ruled them out completely
either. Jonathan told Reuters in January
that the government was open to dialogue
but said sect members were hidden
and therefore direct talks were
unlikely. He noted that talks to resolve
the conflict in the oil producing Niger
Delta, that ended with an amnesty in
2009, were different in that officials
knew who the militants’ leaders were
and how to contact them. Jonathan had
previously drawn fire for treating Boko
Haram as a purely security matter, rather
than as a problem requiring a political
solution that would address northern
grievances. The military’s efforts to stem
the sect’s insurgency have had mixed
results in the past, with human rights
groups saying heavy-handed tactics
have worsened resentment of authorities.
But more recently there have been
arrests of senior figures and some have
died in clashes with security forces,
security sources say. They include Abu
Qaqa, Nigeria’s secret service have said,
although a man claiming to be him
phoned journalists to say it was another
senior figure. —Reuters
Somalia, Kenya, Nigeria bombings deadlier in 2011
MOGADISHU: In this Tuesday, Oct 4, 2011 file photo, Somalis carry a wounded man at the
scene of a suicide explosion which killed more than 100 people in Mogadishu, Somalia. —AP
language of Nigeria’s north.
“Since the past two years, the activities of
Boko Haram have been on the increase,” he told
AP. “A lot of IEDs are being detonated in the
northeastern part of the country.” Officers with
the anti-bomb squad recently returned from a
US training session on explosives organized by
the US Embassy and the FBI. The FBI already has
an agent working with Nigerian authorities on
improvised explosives and how to conduct
investigations after a bombing, US Ambassador
Terence P. McCulley has told AP.
Still, the police force remains mired by ineffective
training inside the country, poor equipment
and a corrupt system that drives officers to
seek bribes on a regular basis. The poor training
was apparent Feb. 14, when a bomb squad officer
approached a suspicious plastic bag in the
city of Kaduna, where other explosives had detonated
that day. Video by the state-run Nigerian
Television Authority showed the officer, wearing
no protective gear, look inside the bag. The
explosives detonated, killing him instantly.
State-run TV aired the video throughout the
day, intensifying fears of a public already overwhelmed
by Boko Haram violence. Across Africa,
the US military said the number of IED incidents
rose from 547 in 2010 to 626 last year, a 14 percent
increase. Algeria saw the number of bomb
incidents drop from 251 to 137.
Somalia saw a slight rise - from 182 to 191 -
while incidents in neighboring Kenya jumped
from 14 to 26. Many of Kenya’s bomb attacks
were near the Somali border and appeared to
have been planted by Somali militants Al-
Shabab. Kenya also suffered several grenade
attacks in its capital. Al-Shabab denied it was
behind last weekend’s grenade blasts, which
killed nine people.—AP