For African rebel groups, the Web becomes a weapon

NAIROBI -- The leaders of the main rebel movement in Sudan's Darfur region were once brothers in arms. But last year, the two powerful men had a falling-out, and each proclaimed he was the rightful president of the Sudanese Liberation Army. Things got ugly.

But not a single shot was fired. Instead, the insurgents battled as bloggers over the Internet.

''I got his e-mails and read those bitter diaries," said Mohamed al-Nur, a founder of the rebel group, at a conference held here late last year by the United States to try to bring the two sides together.

''That's the only place we hear from you -- on that Internet!" said Saif Haroun, a spokesman for Minni Arko Minnawi, the newly proclaimed leader. ''You run your rebellion from a computer?"

Africa is the world's least developed continent, and most rural inhabitants live without electricity or running water. But in some of its poorest and most remote corners, the Internet has become a powerful weapon for rebel and opposition leaders.

In countries where newspapers and radio stations are routinely shut down and dissidents are often jailed, the Internet is giving Africans new freedom to debate political and social issues. ''The Internet is a war weapon," Aboude Coulibaly, director of the New Forces rebel group in Ivory Coast, wrote in a recent e-mail. In 2002, the group used its website and television station to launch a mutiny that toppled the government. ''In these matters of revolution, we have to be wired to win," he wrote.

Taking over state radio and television stations is often the first act of a coup d'etat. But having access to a website, e-mail, and a Thuraya brand satellite phone has become increasingly important to African rebels.

Some rebel leaders now think of themselves as ''cyberdissidents," Nur said. Improved and accessible technology has allowed them to send and receive e-mail, create websites, even keep online diaries or blogs, with satellite phones or dishes providing links.

State censorship is not a problem, since African rebels operate in desolate pockets beyond government control. While they might have to charge their personal satellite units on a car battery, they are not at the mercy of state-run telephone systems that could shut down Internet cafes and bring about the arrest of bloggers, researchers said.

African rebels often live in squalid shacks or forest redoubts, from which they might emerge to snatch food, vehicles, weapons, and women. Now, they are also stealing phones and satellite dishes.

''My lovely [satellite] phone was the first thing the rebels stole. I was really upset because I was totally cut off from e-mailing and the world at large," Leon Nkunda, the postmaster in Bunia, a town in the lawless northeastern corner of Congo, said by telephone.

The region is home to several rebel groups. The elusive Mai Mai insurgents believe water protects them from bullets and use rusty AK-47 assault rifles to control pockets of mineral-rich land. But they also have a website, Congo-mai-mai.net, to promote their mission and make their demands.

Rebels aren't the only ones taking advantage of cyberspace. In Ethiopia, which the US-based Committee to Protect Journalists ranks as one of the worst places in the world for press freedom, citizen journalists have started dozens of sites from crowded urban Internet cafes.

Some cafes are housed in mosquito-ridden, tin-roofed shacks, where the dial-up speed is agonizingly slow but the determination to connect is strong.

During several outbursts of political violence, especially in the capital, Addis Ababa, after the disputed May election, no news organization was able to report on events as fast as online instant messages and posted diaries.

On Nazret.com, a call went out for bloggers ''to blog on events unfolding in Ethiopia." The site, ''Live from Addis Ababa Ethiopia," had some of the most vivid reporting of the November unrest, in which an estimated 40 people were killed when police fired live bullets into protests.

''I was shopping with a friend when all of a sudden I heard people screaming and running around me. There were bullets flying past us," wrote a young woman who called herself Mimi.

During protests June 9, there were minute-by-minute witness reports from the blog on Meskel Square.com. One blogger wrote:

''Just for the record, I saw 11 bodies at the Black Lion and Zawditu hospitals, all with gunshot wounds, some to the head. As you know, the official count at the moment is 22 dead."

Countries such as Nigeria, Kenya, Zimbabwe, South Africa, and Egypt have a few hundred bloggers each, according to Ethan Zuckerman, a blogging specialist at Harvard Law School.

''How important is blogging for the continent? In the long term, it's critical," Zuckerman wrote in an e-mail.

Governments in Africa have begun paying more attention.

But only Tunisia and Egypt have censored access to the Internet and are tracking bloggers in a widespread way, according to researchers.