Battle in a Poor Land for Riches Beneath the Soil

AIR MOUNTAINS, Niger — Until last year, the only trigger Amoumoun Halil had pulled was the one on his livestock-vaccination gun. This spring, a battered Kalashnikov rifle rested uneasily on his shoulder. When he donned his stiff fatigues, his lopsided gait and smiling eyes stood out among his hard-faced guerrilla brethren.

Mr. Halil, a 40-year-old veterinary engineer, was a reluctant soldier in a rebellion that had broken out over an improbable — and as yet unrealized — bonanza in one of the world’s poorest countries.

A battle is unfolding on the stark mountains and scalloped dunes of northern Niger between a band of Tuareg nomads, who claim the riches beneath their homeland are being taken by a government that gives them little in return, and an army that calls the fighters drug traffickers and bandits.

It is a new front of an old war to control the vast wealth locked beneath African soil. Niger’s northern desert caps one of the world’s largest deposits of uranium, and demand for it has surged as global warming has increased interest in nuclear power. Growing economies like China and India are scouring the globe for the crumbly ore known as yellowcake. A French mining company is building the world’s largest uranium mine in northern Niger, and a Chinese state company is building another mine nearby.

Uranium could infuse Niger with enough cash to catapult it out of the kind of poverty that causes one in five Niger children to die before turning 5.

Or it could end in a calamitous war that leaves Niger more destitute than ever. Mineral wealth has fueled conflict across Africa for decades, a series of bloody, smash-and-grab rebellions that shattered nations. The misery wrought has left many Africans to conclude that mineral wealth is a curse.

Here in the Sahara, the uranium boom has given new life to longstanding grievances over land and power. For years, the Tuareg have struggled against a government they largely disdained. But this new rebellion has shed the parochial complaints of an ethnic minority, claiming instead that the government is squandering the entire country’s resources through corruption and waste. Armed with a slick Web site and articulate spokesmen in Europe and the United States, the movement has gotten sympathy from Westerners drawn to the mysterious Tuareg and their arguments for justice.

It has also pulled in a wide variety of fighters — not only illiterate herdsmen but also college students, aid workers, even former pacifists like Mr. Halil.

“This uranium belongs to our people; it is on our land,” Mr. Halil said. “We cannot allow ourselves to be robbed of our birthright.”

Useful or Useless

When Mr. Halil was in high school, an old French map hung in his classroom. The verdant crescent along the southern border was labeled “useful Niger.” The vast, dun-colored swath across the north that he called home was labeled “useless Niger.”

It was a profound lesson, in politics as well as geography. The agricultural belt along the south had all the power. The herders of the north were irrelevant.

It had not always been so. The Tuareg have plied the barren peaks here for centuries, ruling over the caravan routes that crossed the Sahara with the riches of Africa — from salt to slaves. With their camels and swords, they enriched themselves through tribute and plunder.

By the time Mr. Halil was born, that era was long gone. As a boy he dreamed of having a huge herd of camels, as his father had before the great droughts of the 1970s wiped out the herd. After excelling in school, Mr. Halil went to college in Benin, but he failed to get the Niger government to give him a scholarship to veterinary school abroad.

“My family had no connections,” he said. “Unless you have a friend in government, your chances of getting a scholarship are zero.” …

www.gainesville.com