LAGOS, Nigeria, July 28 (UPI) -- Islamic militants in Nigeria, calling themselves "the Taliban," have launched a series of attacks against security forces in recent days, raising the specter of a jihadist-inspired sectarian war in Africa's most populous country and leading oil producer.
More than 100 people have been killed in gun battles that erupted Sunday and Monday in the northern Nigerian cities of Potiskum, Maidguri, Wudil and Bauchi.
The militants, apparently followers of a preacher who opposes Western-style education, went on a rampage during which they torched churches, schools, police and customs facilities and other government buildings in four states.
The violence inflamed sectarian tensions between Muslims and Christians that have flared periodically for years and killed more than 10,000 people since 2000.
Muslims dominate Nigeria's north, Christians are the majority in the south, although large Christian minorities have settled in the north's main towns and cities.
The Nigerian military is waging a major offensive against tribal militants in the south, the country's main oil-producing center. Those militants have been attacking oil facilities since 2004 in an escalating campaign of violence.
They want a more equitable share of Nigeria's immense oil wealth. Their campaign in the swampy Niger Delta has slashed Nigeria's oil production from 2.6 million barrels a day in 2006 to 1.7 million bpd.
The country has also been plagued by a crime wave. Federal authorities in Abuja, the capital, said this month that more than 500 people have been kidnapped so far this year, a 70 percent increase over 2008, as militants and criminals expand their operations to political and religious figures.
Western intelligence services believe that Islamic extremists are making a determined effort to penetrate West Africa, an emerging world-class oil giant.
But it is far from clear whether the latest eruption of Muslim violence was linked to al-Qaida or its affiliates. Earlier bloodletting often appeared to be rooted more in domestic sectarian rivalries than Osama bin Laden's global jihad.
But Nigeria, with the largest Muslim population in Africa after Egypt, has witnessed mounting Islamic militancy and growing anti-Western hostility in recent years that makes it fertile ground for extremist recruiters.
Radical Arab Islamic preachers and bin Laden's agents have sought to fan the flames of sectarian rivalries.
In February 2004, bin Laden listed Nigeria as one of six countries that needed to be "liberated" from U.S. "enslavement" and called on Nigerian Muslims to overthrow the country's "apostate regime."
The United States is deploying small groups of Special Forces throughout the impoverished Sahel region states of Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger north and northwest of Nigeria to counter infiltration by Islamic Salafist militants moving south from Algeria.
Ensuring that Nigeria's oilfields, which could account for as much as 25 percent of U.S. oil imports within a few years, are secure will be a key mission for U.S. forces.
Nigeria has periodically teetered dangerously close to major upheaval that would threaten its fragile unity. Its 130 million people are divided about equally between Hausa-speaking Muslims in the north and Christians of the Igbo and Yoruba tribes in the south.
Religious and political rivalries, not just in the north but across the country, have been steadily worsening since the end of 15 years of often brutal military rule in 1999.
Ironically, the advent of democracy meant that military repression was lifted, releasing deep-rooted frustrations and anger among Nigeria's religious and ethnics groups.
Religious riots in the northern city of Kaduna in 2000 triggered communal violence across the country in which more than 3,000 people perished, the worst bloodletting since Nigeria's civil war in the 1960s in which 1 million people perished.
Former President Olusegun Obasanjo, an ex-general, declared a state of emergency in central Plateau state in May 2004 after months of ferocious sectarian fighting in which hundreds perished.
He said the violence "has become a near mutual genocide" that "constitutes a grave threat to the security and unity of Nigeria."
Only last November, more than 700 people were slaughtered in Jos, capital of Plateau state, when a political feud over a local election degenerated into fierce clashes between Muslims and Christians.
