RLPB 352. Sudan & Nigeria: Invisible Jihads

Religious Liberty Prayer Bulletin | RLPB 352 | Wed 13 Apr 2016

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SUDAN & NIGERIA: INVISIBLE JIHADS
plus draconian preaching law looms for Kaduna
By Elizabeth Kendal

SUDAN: GOVERNMENT WAGES JIHAD AROUND NUBA MOUNTAINS

Updating RLPB 344 (14 Feb) and RLPB 345 (23 Feb) -- Government forces are pressing in on the 'rebel' (Nuba) capital of Kauda from positions in the east and south. Aerial bombardment has also reached the outskirts of Kauda. Though massively outnumbered and out-gunned, the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army-North (SPLA-N) is holding its ground. The Sudan army, along with its allied Islamic paramilitaries, has vowed to continue military operations in South Kordofan until the 'rebellion' is 'crushed'. Meanwhile, the 'international community' is pressing the Nuba to accept the Government of Sudan (GoS)-approved Framework Agreement and agree to a ceasefire. It is worth remembering that this 'rebellion' only exists because the Arab Islamist GoS reneged on its promise -- sealed in the January 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement -- to conduct popular consultations in South Kordofan, Blue Nile and Abyei, so that the concerns of the non-Arab, mostly non-Muslim peoples might be addressed. Opting instead to ethnically cleanse and occupy the resource-rich 'new south', in 2011 the GoS launched a genocidal jihad. The 'international community' remains silent in the hope that Khartoum will provide intelligence for the 'war on terror', something Khartoum, a major sponsor of international terror, will never do. Meanwhile, the mostly Christian Nuba struggle to fend off genocidal jihad.

NIGERIA: TOWN-BY-TOWN JIHAD BY PROXY

Nigeria's new president, Muhammadu Buhari, might be making some ground in the fight against Boko Haram, but the perpetual southward advance of the Muslim Fulani receives little attention. This advance involves the ethnic cleansing of Christians across the volatile Middle Belt and now increasingly in the South. Desertification and modernisation have caused the cattle-herding nomadic Muslim Fulani to migrate south into Christian regions. Clashes erupt when Fulani herdsmen invade private farms so their cattle can feed on the crops, as well as when Muslim Fulani settlers subsequently compete with Christian indigenes for land, water, jobs and political power.

Agatu, Benue State, 12 March 2016
Senator David Mark suspects
 'orchestrated genocide'.

Boko Haram and Islamists in the Nigerian military support the Fulani Muslim, providing them with high-powered weapons and back-up to facilitate a 'predatory migration' and Islamic jihad by proxy. Furthermore, many Christian leaders are of the opinion that Muslim governors are 'beating the drum' to which the Muslim Fulani 'are dancing'. The town-by-town ethnic cleansing of Christians and eventual occupation and rule by Muslims attracts scant attention from mainstream media -- obsessed as they are with politically-correct messages -- as does the fact that some 1.3 million Nigerian Christians are this day internally displaced.

From 22 to 29 February Fulani herdsmen massacred an estimated 300 mostly Christian farmers in the Agatu Local Government Area of the mostly Christian state of Benue, in Nigeria's volatile Middle Belt. The destruction was enormous, with whole villages razed and some seven thousand Christians displaced. Whilst churches were burned, mosques were spared. Christian Solidarity Worldwide reported on 7 April that more than ten villages remained under siege and that continuing violence had caused the death toll to rise to some 500.

click on map to enlarge

Recent Fulani attacks in Ondo State in Nigeria's deep south-west has led Ondo Governor Olusegun Mimiko to warn that this 'monster' has become a threat to national security. In the southern state of Edo, Governor Adams Oshiomhole warned on 11 April that the situation risks escalating 'beyond what we can manage quietly'. The government needs to act.

[For more details on the crisis facing the Church in Nigeria, see report by Open Doors: 'Crushed But Not Defeated' (Feb 2016).]

KADUNA: DRACONIAN LAW BEFORE PARLIAMENT

On the pretext of preserving social cohesion, Kaduna State governor, Nasir El-Rufai, has proposed a truly draconian religious preaching bill, which is currently before the Kaduna State House of Assembly for consideration. Gov. El-Rufai also inflamed Christian leaders by publicly declaring that Kaduna state was 70 percent Muslim, when in reality it is 55 percent Christian. The religious preaching bill proposes that offences including preaching 'without a valid licence', or 'disturbing public peace,' or the use of 'any derogatory term in describing any religion' ... 'shall be liable on conviction to a term of imprisonment not exceeding two years or a fine of two hundred thousand naira or both.' [The full text of the bill can be found here (beneath the lead article).]  Christian leaders fear that, if this preaching law is enacted in Kaduna, it will spread, furthering Nigeria's Islamisation. 

Update to RLPB 350 (30 March 2016): On 21 March, three leading figures from the United Church of Christ in Nigeria were abducted on the southern outskirts of Kaduna. The body of Rev Iliya Anto has been recovered, and Rev Dr Emmanuel Dziggau and Rev Yakubu Dzarma were released on the night of 30 March. No further details are available.


PLEASE PRAY SPECIFICALLY THAT GOD WILL

* intervene for his besieged and imperilled people, giving wisdom to all leaders and 'strength to those who turn back the battle at the gate' (from Isaiah 28:5-6 ESV).

'And David came to Baal-perazim, and David defeated [the Philistines] there. And he said, "The LORD has broken through my enemies before me like a breaking flood." Therefore the name of that place is called Baal-perazim [meaning: the Lord of the breakthrough]' (from 2 Samuel 5:17-25 ESV).

* provide for his persecuted, displaced, fearful and grieving people: may all their needs be met -- spiritual and pastoral, emotional and psychological, and physical (i.e. medical care, clean water and food security, shelter and education). May God fire up the Church, his human instruments, to come to their aid.

SUMMARY FOR BULLETINS UNABLE TO RUN WHOLE ARTICLE
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INVISIBLE JIHADS IN SUDAN & NIGERIA

The Government of Sudan (GoS) has been waging a genocidal jihad against the predominantly Christian Nuba of South Kordofan since June 2011. GoS forces are presently pressing in on the 'rebel' (Nuba) capital of Kauda, with both ground troops and aerial bombardment. Despite being massively outnumbered, the rebel SPLA-N army is holding its ground, preventing genocide. Meanwhile in Nigeria, Boko Haram and Islamists in the military and government are supporting the southward migration of the nomadic cattle-herding Muslim Fulani, facilitating a 'predatory migration' which is effectively an Islamic jihad. Fulani expansion involves the ethnic cleansing and then occupation of Christian villages, compounding the Islamisation of Nigeria and the suffering of the Church. Meanwhile, a draconian religious preaching law looms over Kaduna. Please pray for the Church in South Kordofan and Nigeria.

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PLEASE NOTE: Elizabeth Kendal will be speaking at two conferences in Canberra between 15 & 19 April. Consequently, next week's RLPB (353) will be issued a day later than usual.

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Elizabeth Kendal is the author of Turn Back the Battle: Isaiah Speaks to Christians Today (Deror Books, Dec 2012) which offers a Biblical response to persecution and existential threat.
 

Her new book, After Saturday Comes Sunday: Understanding the Christian Crisis in the Middle East, is presently being published by Wipf and Stock (Eugene, OR, USA) and will be available shortly. 

RLPB 351. Azerbaijan: War Looms Over Nagorno-Karabakh

Religious Liberty Prayer Bulletin | RLPB 351 | Wed 06 Apr 2016

Please forward this prayer bulletin widely, and encourage others to sign up to the Religious Liberty Prayer Bulletin (RLPB) blog. "The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective." (James 5:16 NIV)

AZERBAIJAN: WAR LOOMS OVER NAGORNO-KARABAKH
By Elizabeth Kendal

Caucasus
 South Caucasus MAPS

CONTEXT: Located between the Black and Caspian Seas, the Caucasus states sit on a volatile, geo-strategic, ethnic religious fault-line between three powers: Turkey, Iran and Russia. Over recent decades, oil and gas pipeline politics has caused the strategic and economic value of these states to skyrocket. Should war erupt in the South Caucasus (specifically between Armenians and Azerbaijan) it would be likely to take on regional dimensions, with Russia backing Armenia, and Turkey backing Azerbaijan.

BACKGROUND: In 1915 some 1.5 million Armenians were slaughtered and starved to death in the Armenian Genocide. Many thousands more were expelled or forcibly Islamised and 'Turkified' as Turkish ultra-nationalists incited ethnic-religious cleansing to rid the Anatolian Peninsula of non-Turks. In May 1918 the newly independent state of Armenia was declared, alongside the newly independent state of Azerbaijan. Although Nagorno-Karabakh (N-K) was historically, culturally and demographically Armenian (94.5 percent), Azerbaijan claimed the mountainous territory as its own. War erupted. Exploiting the chaos, the Soviets invaded and annexed the region, dividing it between the Soviet Republic of Armenia and the Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan.

source (Armenia Now)

To compensate Armenia for its massive territorial losses -- specifically the loss of Western Armenia to Turkey -- N-K was awarded to Armenia. However, when Turkic Azeri communists protested, Stalin stepped in. In 1923, to appease both Turks and Communists, he handed N-K (Armenian Christian) to Azerbaijan (Turkic Muslim), with N-K having the status of an autonomous oblast (province). For decades, ethnic-religious tensions were suppressed due to Soviet Communist repression.

In the 1980s glastnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring) converged with Islamic revival to awaken Islamic identity and to fuel Islamic zeal. In 1990 the Soviet empire unravelled and Armenia declared independence. When Azerbaijan declared independence in 1991 it immediately abolished the N-K autonomous oblast. Horrified, N-K's Armenian Christians held a referendum on self-determination in which 99 percent of voters supported independence. Azerbaijan responded by launching a war of ethnic cleansing against Armenian 'separatists' and 'occupiers'. By 1993 Azerbaijan -- then a terror hub servicing the Chechen War -- had incorporated some 2000 Chechen and Afghan jihadis into its armed forces to fight the Armenian Christians.

Despite overwhelming odds, the N-K Armenians not only prevailed but occupied some 20 percent of Azerbaijan so as to create a buffer zone around N-K to protect civilians from shelling. In 1994 a ceasefire froze the conflict. While Azerbaijan insists that N-K is its territory, the Armenians of N-K would rather die fighting than surrender their historic Christian homeland to Turkic Muslims whom history has taught them not to trust.

CRISIS: While border clashes have flared routinely over the years, the fighting that erupted on Saturday 2 April was different. Just one day after Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev and US Vice-President Joe Biden met for talks in Washington, it was the worst violence since 1994. Today, as Azerbaijan states its willingness to 'liberate' N-K militarily, it is receiving loud support from neo-Ottoman Turkey. The US too -- being heavily invested in oil-rich Azerbaijan -- has declared its support for Azerbaijan's 'territorial integrity', while asserting that the status quo is unacceptable. 

So in attacking and provoking N-K now, what might Azerbaijan be hoping to achieve? Is Baku threatening to trigger a regional conflict: drawing in neo-Ottoman Turkey (to support Turkic Azerbaijan) and then Armenia (to support N-K); Russia (to support Armenia); the US (to protect its considerable economic interests in Baku); and transnational jihadis -- all in the hope of effecting a final solution on N-K and even possibly on Armenia itself? Such a scenario represents a pan-Turkist's dream and an Armenian's nightmare. Fighting has died down since a ceasefire was declared on 5 April, but tensions are soaring and the situation is highly volatile. 

PLEASE PRAY SPECIFICALLY THAT GOD WILL

* expose lies, propaganda, greed and megalomania for what they are: sins that give the devil a foothold to bring darkness, chaos and devastation to the earth, and great suffering to God's people; may all such evil be recognised and rejected and justice prevail.

* draw Armenians and indeed all Christians into prayer, so they might put their trust not in weapons, not in defences, and not in humanity, but in the Lord their God who has promised that, when exalted and honoured, he will be 'strength to those who turn back the battle at the gate' (Isaiah 28:5-6).

* intervene for the sake of his people, so that all things might work together for the good of those who love him, according to his good purpose. (Romans 8:28)


SUMMARY FOR BULLETINS UNABLE TO RUN WHOLE ARTICLE
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WAR LOOMS IN AZERBAIJAN OVER NAGORNO-KARABAKH

Situated between Turkey, Iran and Russia, the Caucasus sits on a geo-strategic, ethnic-religious fault-line. Despite being historically, demographically and culturally Armenian and Christian, the region of Nagorno-Karabakh (N-K) is claimed by Azerbaijan (Turkic Muslim). In 1923 Stalin awarded the region to Azerbaijan in a move to appease Turks and Azeri Communists. In 1991 the Soviet Union unravelled and war erupted over N-K. The N-K Armenians prevailed despite overwhelming odds, retaining their autonomy and establishing a buffer zone to protect civilians from shelling. In 1994 a ceasefire froze the conflict. The violence which erupted on 2 April was the worst violence since 1994. A ceasefire was declared on 5 April and fighting has subsided, but tensions are soaring and the situation is highly volatile. Please pray for the Armenian Christians of Nagorno-Karabakh.

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Elizabeth Kendal is the author of Turn Back the Battle: Isaiah Speaks to Christians Today (Deror Books, Dec 2012) which presents a Biblical response to persecution and existential threat.

Elizabeth Kendal’s new book, After Saturday Comes Sunday: Understanding the Christian Crisis in the Middle East, is presently being published by Wipf and Stock (Eugene, OR, USA) and will be available shortly.