On January 7, the BBC had a brief report about clashes in northern Nigeria between the government and radical Muslim youth who have formed an organization they call the Taleban, after the Afghanistan Muslim extremists.
Clashes and riots involving Muslims in northern Nigeria are nothing new, anad soldiers apparently crushed the Nigerian Taleban’s version of an uprising. But the numerous incidents — the rioting over the Miss Universe beauty pageant, the use of sharia to sentence people to be stoned to death for adultery, and the emergence of radicalized Muslim youth (who have little else to do given Nigeria’s poverty) is troubling.
It becomes even more troubling in light of a January 29 BBC report that Nigeria admits to planning meetings with North Korean officials about acquiring ballistic missile technologyies from that country. Nigeria says it is not pursuing nuclear technology, but the possibility of Nigeria acquiring advanced ballistic missile technology and then falling to a Muslim insurgency or civil war is not a very comforting one.