MEND is a militant group based and operating primarily in Nigeria’s Niger Delta region. It most recently declared a ceasefire in its ongoing battle against the Nigerian government that begins on Tuesday at midnight GMT.

It is most well known for its acts of militant sabotage against the petroleum industry (due primarily to the federal government’s past and present outrages in the region and the petroleum industry’s providing of the Nigerian feds with the cash to do such outrages), as well as its regularly-updated cache of expatriate employee hostages who are all scared shitless before being let go unharmed.

But what makes MEND particularly interesting among other current militant rebel groups in the Third World is the organization’s relationship with the media. Every time that it executes an attack on an oil pipeline, MEND makes sure to send a pseudonymous email to Reuters to tell of their intent.

Probably the most famous example of MEND’s relationship with the media is the 2006 excursion of CNN’s (former) correspondent Jeff Koinange to the hideout of MEND in the Delta:

This report put both Koinange and CNN in hot water with the feds (namely the government information minister, Frank Nweke, Jr.), who claimed that the report was staged. No doubt that Manila was a bit pissed by this display of Filipino hostages as well.

Also, MEND is known for never showing their faces on camera and always brandishing a weapon of some sort, and, as you probably saw in the video, either dancing (with guns) or riding shotgun on speedboats (with guns).

For the record, I laughed at the video when I saw it just now (it seemed a bit more serious back when I first saw it).

But it is funny, how an anti-government, anti-industrial rebel group has this much access to Western media outlets without ever taking off their masks and keeping a corrupt government and its even more corrupt military on its toes.

The theme or motive of MEND’s fight against the petroleum industry also comes at a time that the Western media has turned into a battleground between pro- and anti-petroleum constituents and PR agencies due to the global warming meme. In fact, it couldn’t have come at a better time to advance an anti-fossil fuel agenda both in the Third World and the First.

I don’t sympathize with MEND’s usage of violence and hostage-taking issues, by the way; neither do I sympathize with the Nigerian government or petroleum industry. It just seems a bit….weird.