Ecoterra Press Release 312 – The Somalia Chronicle January – April 2010, no 5
Dr. Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis
April 16, 2010
ECOTERRA Intl.
SMCM
Somali Marine & Coastal Monitor
ECOTERRA INTERNATIONAL - UPDATES & STATEMENTS, REVIEW & CLEARING-HOUSE
2010-01-08 * FRI * 13h36:12 UTC
Issue 312
A Voice from the Truth- & Justice-Seekers, who sit between all chairs, because they are not part of organized white-collar or no-collar-crime in Somalia or elsewhere, and who neither benefit from global naval militarization, from the illegal fishing and dumping in Somali waters or the piracy of merchant vessels, nor from the booming insurance business or the exorbitant ransom-, risk-management- or security industry, while neither the protection of the sea, the development of fishing communities or the humanitarian assistance to abducted seafarers and their families is receiving the required adequate attention, care and funding.
standing against mercantilism, sensationalism and venality as well as banality in the news -
"During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act." George Orwell
The right to know the truth ought to be universal. Tom Paine warned that if the majority of the people were denied the truth and ideas of truth, it was time to storm what he called the "Bastille of words". That time is now."
EA ILLEGAL FISHING AND DUMPING HOTLINE: +254-714-747090 (confidentiality guaranteed) - email: somalia[at]ecoterra.net
EA Seafarers Assistance Programme EMERGENCY HELPLINE : SMS to +254-738-497979 or sms/call +254-733-633-733
"The pirates must not be allowed to destroy our dream !"
Cpt. Florent Lemaçon - F/Y Tanit - killed by French commandos - 10. April 2009 / Ras Hafun
NON A LA GUERRE - YES FOR PEACE
(Inscription on the sail of S/Y TANIT - shot down on day one of the French assault)
We have the obligation to fight oppression and cruelty wherever it appears, and believe that anybody who is degrading other people and peoples has to be fought against with whatever appropriate tools people have available.
Clearing-House: Cut out the clutter - focus on facts !
(If you find this compilation too large or if you can't grasp the multitude and magnitude of important, inter-related and complex issues influencing the Horn of Africa - you better do not deal with Somalia or other man-made "conflict zones". We try to make it as easy and condensed as necessary.)
Breaking:
Yemeni boat rescued by Puntland forces heads home
By Hussein Farah (Horseed Media)
A Yemeni boat hijacked by Somali Pirates heads home to Yemen on Thursday (January 07), after being rescued by Puntland forces near the coastal town of Bosaso.
Puntland officials met with rescued Yemeni crew in a small ceremony held at Bosaso main sea port.
One week ago, the boat named Mohamed II, was rescued by Puntland forces after it was hijacked by Somali pirates, east of the commercial town of Bosaso.
The boat which was transporting a commercial goods to Berbera port in neighboring Somaliland, was hijacked off the coast of Eelayo village, east of Bosaso.
On 31st of December, Puntland forces boarded the hijacked boat capturing nine of the pirates.
The deputy Police Chief of Puntland, Col.Mohamed Said Jaganaf, told the reporters that all of the pirates were well known gangs, he said some of the were even Police officers taking part of the piracy activities.
During today´s ceremony, the governor of Bari region, Haji Muse Gele Yusuf, announced that the boat will head back to Yemen, he also said there was historical and close ties between the people of Puntland and Yemen.
The captain of the boat, Al-Saacid told Horseed Media, that he was happy to be rescued and that together with his crew were now safely on their way back to home.
The MV AL MAHMOUD 2 was eized around December 24, 2009. The Yemeni cargo and fishing vessel with a crew of 15 Yemeni nationals was seized off Puntland. The vessel, owned by a Yemeni businessman, was allegedly fishing in Somalia's waters.
Latest:
Status of Abducted Vessels and Crews in Somalia
Summary: Today, 08. January 2010, 18h00 UTC, at least 12 foreign vessels plus one barge are kept in Somalia against the will of their owners, while at least 278 seafarers - including an elderly British yachting couple - suffer to be released.
Cases not completely closed:
MS INDIAN OCEAN EXPLORER and S/Y SERENITY - presumed sunken, wrecks not secured.
BARGE NN - an unnamed barge is held at Kulule (near Bendar-Beyla) since mid march. Ownership and circumstances not yet clarified. In the meantime local people have developed some ailments.
S/Y JUMLA or YUMLA ? - a mysterious yacht kept near Dinooda.
MT AGIA BARBARA: INDIAN AND SYRIAN CREW STILL WANTED FOR MURDER - vessel escaped from Somalia after the murder of a TFG policeman and the attempted murder of another to the UAE - unhindered by international naval forces. See our respective updates.
Cases in negotiations:
FV WIN FAR 161 - The Taiwanese fishing vessel was seized April 6, 2009 near the Seychelles. Said to have been observed earlier to fish illegally in Somali waters. It had after the sea-jacking been involved in the attack on MV ALABAMA. The crew of 30 (17 Filipinos, six Indonesians, five Chinese and two Taiwanese) is still together and on board, but in awful condition. The ship's skipper and first engineer are Taiwanese nationals and the 700-ton long-liner is owned by a Taiwanese company, which regularly sent their vessels into Somali waters from the Seychelles - a key transshipment point for poached tuna from the Indian Ocean to Japan. The Government of the Philippines seems to be pretty helpless to even find the manning agency, who lured the 17 Pinoy sailors into the fish-poaching operation. Naval fire damaged the vessel when it was moored about 7 nm from Garacad at the north-eastern Indian Ocean coast for a long time. She lost all her oil but it could be replaced with help from sea-jacked Theresa VIII and she was able to sail again. Shortly thereafter the vessel sailed to Hobyo at the Central Indian Ocean coast of Somalia, where it is held now. The vessel can be moored on the heavy anchor obtained from another, former sea-jack hostage - the MV Hansa Stavanger. The governments of the crew members seem not to be able to push the owner to come to terms while the crew is in a horrible state. "Let's concentrate on getting the crew of WIN FAR 161 free," commented a spokesman from ECOTERRA Intl. after the release of MV Charelle and added "that crew suffers at the moment the longest and the most, whereby the US naval vessel close by is not helping in any way to ease the plight of the 30 sailors from five nations." The vessel is now held 4.5nm north from Hobyo, but the group holding it apparently lack an interpreter for proper negotiations.
Sea-jacked British couple, Paul and Rachel Chandler, aged 58 and 55, were abducted from their 38-ft yacht S/Y LYNN RIVAL, seized October 22, 2009 en route to Tanzania, and are still held in Somalia. The yacht was recovered by the crew of UK naval vessel Waveknight, after they witnessed the transfer of the Chandlers to commandeered MV KOTA WAJAR. The yacht was brought back to England. The elderly couple is now held on land close to Harardheere
MV AL KHALIQ: Seized on Oct. 22, 2009. The Panamanian-flagged 22,000 dwt handymax bulker MV AL KHALIQ was abducted around180 miles west of the Seychelles. The crew consists of 24 Indian sailors and two Burmese nationals. EU NAVFOR patrol aircraft confirmed the hijacking, with 6 pirates seen on board and two skiffs in tow. A third, the 'mother ship' had apparently already been winched onto the ship's deck. The vessel with over 35,000 metric tons of wheat grain is now moored near Harardheere and the crew is on board. Negotiations have started in earnest.
FV THAI UNION 3: Seized on Oct. 29, 2009. Pirates on two skiffs boarded the tuna fishing boat with a crew of 27 with 23 Russians, two Filipinos and two nationals from Ghana about 200 nautical miles north of the Seychelles and 650 miles off the Somali coast. During the attack the Russian captain was shot in the left elbow. The Russian and US navies tried to provide medical aid to the captain, while the captors themselves took him to hospital, had him treated and returned him to the vessel. The fishing vessel and its crew were held just around 1.5nm from where FV ALAKRANA was held at Ceel Huur, near Harardheere at the central Somali coast of the Indian Ocean but now have been moved to Ga'an - south of Hobyo. Negotiations were said already earlier not to go ahead well and apparently have now stalled.
MV FILITSA: Seized on Nov. 10, 2009. The 1996-built, 23,709 dwt cargo-ship has a crew of 22, including three Greek officers and 19 Filipinos. The Marshall Islands-flagged ship had been heading from Kuwait to Durban in South Africa when it was attacked 513 nautical miles northeast of the Seychelles as it was sailing from Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to the port of Durban in S. Africa loaded with fertilizer. The ship belongs to the Greek company Order Shipping Co. Ltd. and is held near Harardheere. Negotiations have concluded.
MV THERESA VIII: Seized on Nov. 16, 2009. The chemical tanker was hijacked in the southern Somali Basin, north-west of the Seychelles. The 22,294 dwt tanker has a crew of now only 28 North Koreans, since the captain of the tanker died from gunshot wounds sustained during the hijack. The vessel went last night to Garacad but then returned to Harardheere. The exact content of the vessel is not known and the case is shrouded in secrecy. Apparently a conflict has developed among pirates on board and their masterminds on land.
VLCC MARAN CENTAURUS: Seized Nov 29, 2009. The tanker was sailing from Kuwait to the Gulf of Mexico when it was seized north-east of the Seychelles about 800 miles (1,300 km) off the coast of Somalia.. The dwt 300,294 tonnes tanker has a crew of 28 sailors with nine Greeks, two Ukrainians, one Romanian and 16 Filipinos on board. Negotiations are ongoing. The vessel is held 27 nm north of Harardheere and negotiations are ongoing.
MV NESEYA : Seized Dec. 6, 2009: Indian-flagged cargo vessel with 13 sailors of Indian nationality aboard. Abducted off the coast of Kismayo in southern Somalia. The incident took place some 170 nautical miles northeast of Mombasa / Kenya. It is assumed that the vessel is at the moment used as mother ship for further pirate activities. The present location of the vessel is not known.
MV SOCOTRA 1: Seized December 25. 2009. The vessel carrying a food cargo for a Yemeni businessman and bound for Socotra Archipelago was captured in the Gulf of Aden after it left Alshahr port in the eastern province of Hadramout. 6 crew members of Yemeni nationality were aboard, in the archipelago.
MT ST JAMES PARK: Seized December 28, 2009 at position 12°58'4N-48°34'1E which is in the Gulf of Aden International Recognised Transit Corridor (IRTC), while on voyage from Tarragona, Spain to Tha Phut , Thailand. There are 26 crew members on board including the Russian captain and their nationalities are: 6 Indian, 5 Bulgarian, 3 Russian, 3 Filipinos, 3 Turkish, 2 Romanian, 2 Ukrainian, 1 Polish, 1 Georgian. The ship was registred with MSC HOA and was transiting north west towards the International Recommended Transiting Corridor that she was expected to enter 3 Jan. The UK-flagged chemical tanker sent a security alert 14:20 GMT (17:20 Local Time) she also sent an unspecified distress message which was received by RCC Piraeus. The St James Park loaded at Assemini and Tarragona her cargo of 13,175 tonnes of EDC (Ethyl Dichlorine - used in the manufacturing of plastics and not dangerous in normal carriage conditions). The vessels's last port of call was Jeddah, where she stopped for Bunkers on 24th December 2009. The vessel is held near Hobyo at the Central Somali coast. Negotiations have started.
MV NAVIOS APOLLON: Seized December 28, 2009. The Panama-flagged 52,000 dwt, Greek-owned bulker has 19 member crew (presumedly Greek captain and 18 Filipinos) and was captured at around 17h00 (14h00 UTC) in the Indian Ocean near the Seychelles en route from Tampa, Florida/USA to Rozy / India with a cargo of fertilizer.
MT PRAMONI: Seized January 01, 2010. The Singapore-flagged and Indonesian-owned MT PRAMONI, a chemical/oil-products tanker, was sea-jacked in the morning of the New Years day in the Gulf of Aden at position Lat 12º 30'N Long 47º 17'E while en route from Genoa, Italy eastbound.to Kandla - India. The vessel was on its way from to Kandla, India. The 24 crew of the 19,998 dwt vessel consists of 17 Indonesians, 5 Chinese 1 Nigerian 1 Vietnamese and is reportedly safe. The vessel is held at Garacad.
VC ASIAN GLORY: Seized January 02, 2010. The UK-flagged, UK-owned car carrier was taken around 620nm off the Somali coast in the Indian Ocean, while after leaving the South Korean port of Ulsan en route from Singapore to the Gulf of Aden and Saudi Arabia. The 25 crew members -- eight Bulgarians, including the captain, 10 Ukrainians, five Indians, two Romanians are said to be unharmed.
News from sea-jackings, abductions, newly attacked ships as well as seafarers and vessels in distress
Indonesian Union Urges Action over hijack
By David Hughes (MN)
The Indonesian seafarers´ union Kesatuan Pelaut Indonesia (KPI) is urging its government to press the Singaporean authorities for intervention to secure the release of the 17 Indonesian seafarers onboard a hijacked vessel.
The20,000 dwt Singapore-flag chemical tanker Pramoni was hijacked on 1 January 2010 off the coast of Somalia. International Transport Worker's Federation (ITF-)-affiliated KPI says that as the tanker was flying a Singapore flag, it is the Singapore government´s responsibility to settle the case and secure the release of the seafarers.
The ITF says that, although said by the the ITF to be ultimately Norwegian-owned and managed and operated by Jakarta, Indonesia-based company Berlian Laju Tanker the 22 crew – 17 of whom are Indonesian - are protected by the Singapore Maritime Officers´ Union, also an ITF affiliate.
KPI president Hanafi Rustandi says: "The Singapore government's active role is very crucial, because the oil tanker of a Norwegian company was flying the Singaporean colours."
It is understood that the seafarers are safe; meanwhile the KPI says it is monitoring developments in the case.
Indonesia urges release of 17 hostages held by Somali pirates (Xinhua)
Indonesia on Friday called for release of its 17 citizens taken hostage by Somali pirate last week.
"We keep monitoring the development of the case along with the foreign ministry," said Bobi Mamahit, secretary of the marine transport department of the transport ministry.
The Singaporean-flagged Pramoni, a chemical tanker with a crew of 24, 17 of them Indonesian workers, was seized on Jan. 1 by pirates in the Gulf of Aden, one of the world's busiest waterways.
It was not the first time ships with Indonesian crew on board were hijacked by Somali pirates.
Somali pirates have so far set more than 70 Indonesian workers free.
Platou clarifies ship ownership (fairplay)
Norway's Platou Finance today denied being the owners of hijacked ship Pramoni.
The company told Fairplay that it is the corporate manager of the 19,998dwt vessel, and set up the company that owns it, but has no involvement in its operation.
The comments from Platou representative Axel Aas, who was personally responsible for setting up the ownership deal two years ago, followed reports in other news outlets which stated that Platou owned the seized chemical tanker. Aas confirmed to Fairplay that Pramoni is leased to Indonesian shipowner Berlian Laju Tankers (BLT), who is the only company responsible for negotiating the release of the vessel. "We have a strong interest in the ship being returned but the risks and costs are for BLT," said Aas, adding: "All communication is through BLT, and they are informing us of what is happening daily."
Platou Finance set up the Pramoni deal, which involved creating a "single-purpose" ownership company Seminyak in Norway, Aas explained. Pramoni was then leased on charter to BLT, who refused to comment on the hijacking and negotiations when Fairplay phoned today.
"We´re not allowed to give out comments so we can´t help you," a representative of GBLT Ship management – a UK-based, wholly owned subsidiary of BLT– told Fairplay.
Singapore-flagged tanker Pramoni was seized on 1 January in the Gulf of Aden.
With the latest captures and releases now still at least 12 seized foreign vessels (13 sea-related hostage cases since yacht SY LYNN RIVAL was abandoned and taken by the British Navy) with a total of not less than 278 crew members (incl. 71 Filipinos and the British sailing couple) are accounted for. The cases are monitored on our actual case-list, while several other cases of ships, which were observed off the coast of Somalia and have been reported or had reportedly disappeared without trace or information, are still being followed too. Over 134 incidences (including attempted attacks, averted attacks and successful sea-jackings) had been recorded for 2008 with 49 fully documented, factual sea-jacking cases for Somalia and the mistaken sinking of one vessel by the Indian naval force. For 2009 the account closed with 228 incidences (incl. averted or abandoned attacks) with 68 vessels seized for different reasons on the Somali/Yemeni captor side as well as at least TWELVE wrongful attacks (incl. one friendly fire incident) on the side of the naval forces.
For 2010 the account stands at two attacks and two sea-jackings.
The naval alliances had since August 2008 and until December 2009 apprehended 613 suspected pirates, detained and kept or transferred for prosecution 351, killed 44 and wounded 20 Somalis. (New independent update see: http://bruxelles2.over-blog.com/pages/_Bilan_antipiraterie_Atalanta_CTF_Otan_Russie_Exclusif-1169128.html).
Not fully documented cases of absconded vessels are not listed in the sea-jack count until clarification. Several other vessels with unclear fate (although not in the actual count), who were reported missing over the last ten years in this area, are still kept on our watch-list, though in some cases it is presumed that they sunk due to bad weather or being unfit to sail - like the S/Y Serenity, MV Indian Ocean Explorer. Present multi-factorial risk assessment code: GoA: RED / IO: RED (Red = Very much likely, high season; Orange = Reduced risk, but very likely, Yellow = significantly reduced risk, but still likely, Blue = possible, Green = unlikely). There will be a shift from Indian Ocean activities to areas closer to the Gulf of Aden due to presently rough seas in the Indian Ocean. Piracy incidents usually degrade during the monsoon season in winter and rise gradually by the end of the monsoon season starting from mid February and early April every year.
Directly piracy, abduction, mariner or naval upsurge related reports
Perfect Pirate Club
http://www.southparkstudios.com/episodes/220764
http://www.southpark.de/clips/sp_vid_225458/
Somalia's pirates
A long war of the waters (The Economist)
Thanks to greater vigilance and naval patrols, the seas off Somalia may be a bit less dangerous than they were. But they are still the riskiest in the world.
Two years ago Somalia´s weak transitional government agreed to let foreign navies chase pirates into its territorial waters. Since then, the sea off Somalia´s coast has seen an increasing number of warships mainly from rich countries trying—with partial success—to fend off pirates from the poorest. Ships steaming along maritime corridors in convoys are safer than they were. So the pirates are being forced to venture ever farther out into the Indian Ocean to seize their booty. This means that the remoter reaches are still very dangerous.
Many of the world´s most powerful navies are involved. The French and American ones have killed Somali pirates while freeing their own citizens. For the past year the European Union has deployed its first-ever joint naval force, named Operation Atalanta, to protect ships passing in and out of the Red Sea on their way from or to the Suez canal. Russia has an active anti-piracy mission, helping, among other things, to revive its rusting navy. China has asked if it could set up a naval base in Kenya or elsewhere in the region to support its anti-piracy patrols. The Japanese and South Koreans have sent warships to protect ships carrying their cars. India, Malaysia, Indonesia and South Africa have also joined the anti-piracy fray.
Yet the pirates are still hijacking ships and receiving ransoms with apparent impunity. In the past fortnight they have captured four more big ships. Two of them, the Singaporean-flagged Pramoni and the British-flagged St James Park, both tankers carrying chemicals, were nabbed under the nose of the foreign navies patrolling the Gulf of Aden.
The pirates´ methods remain rudimentary. They use hijacked tuna-fishing boats or local dhows as the mother ship, then launch attacks from skiffs, usually at dawn or dusk. They hold the crews hostage with machine-guns and semi-automatic pistols, then force the captain to anchor off the northern part of Somalia´s coast for several weeks until a ransom is paid.
The patrolling navies say they have begun to do better. Yet the number of recorded hijackings rose from 32 in 2008 to 42 in 2009. The average ransom paid by shippers also rose, from $1m to $2m. If unpublicised pay-offs are included, some by Spain´s government, the pirates probably earned around $100m last year. That must be shared with their financial backers, especially in Lebanon, Somalia and the United Arab Emirates. Well-organised criminal gangs in Yemen also help.
To avoid the patrols, the pirates´ geographical range has increased sharply (see map). Shippers must pay extra insurance premiums, even if they ply a course far from Somalia´s waters. A Greek-owned freighter, Navios Apollon, was captured by Somalis on December 28th, fully 370km (200 nautical miles) east of the Seychelles, which is more than 1,300km from Somalia.
Plainly there is no purely naval way to stop the pirates. Somalia´s coast is more than 3,000km long. They seem unafraid of the warships. If accosted, the pirates usually dump their guns and grapple-hooks in the sea. The patrolling navies are reluctant to arrest them because of the legal complexities. On the rare occasions when pirates are taken aboard, they are usually given medicine, water and enough fuel to go back to Somalia. Within days they will set off again to seek their prey.
The EU has signed a deal with Kenya to imprison captured pirates. But there are concerns that Kenya is asking for too many favours in return for embarking on what is bound to be a messy legal process. If the EU and other concerned countries could get the governments of Tanzania, the Seychelles and other countries in the region to agree to prosecute pirates in their own courts, the legal deterrent against them would be stronger.
The pirates´ main advantage is the lawlessness of Somalia which has long been enmeshed in a civil war. Western governments fear that if they were to send their security forces to attack towns such as Haradheere, a pirate haven, the Islamist fighters of the Shabab militia, which controls much of south and central Somalia and is linked to al-Qaeda, might be strengthened.
Besides, the pirates could yet prove to be odd allies in stopping the Islamists from spreading their jihadist net. The Shabab considers piracy for profit unIslamic. The militants violently disapprove of the pirates´ boozing and whoring. The pirates and the Shabab could yet fight each other, which might benefit everyone else. So far, however, the pirates´ wealth protects them at home. Somalia is one of the world´s poorest countries, yet a low-ranking pirate can probably earn at least $20,000 a year.
The EU says its naval force´s main mission is to protect freighters carrying the food aid on which Somalis have depended for the past five years, and has thus staved off a full-blown famine. Its next priority is to "deter and disrupt" piracy in general. The warships may also deter illegal fishing in Somali waters and the dumping of toxic waste. But they are a small force in a big sea. At last count, there were seven patrolling vessels from six EU countries.
In any event, some shipping people privately say that the effects of piracy have been exaggerated. It may still be cheaper and more convenient to pay higher insurance fees and risk being attacked by pirates than to incur the extra cost of diverting vessels around the Cape of Good Hope.
The International Maritime Bureau in London says that last year 22,000 ships passed safely through waters in range of Somali pirates, whereas actual attacks were in the low hundreds. The bureau also reckons that, as ships take more precautions, the pirates´ success rate will drop.
Most ships now steam along narrow corridors at night and at full speed. In the Gulf of Aden they are usually in a convoy. Many raise the height of the freeboard (between the waterline and the deck) to make it harder for pirates to haul themselves up the side. Others are poised to use sirens and fire hoses. Some American-flagged vessels now have security guards, though it is generally agreed that they should remain unarmed, otherwise the violence and deaths would probably increase.
Plainly, the problem is far from solved. As ransoms go up and get paid, pirates will think it worth taking the risk. Above all, they are sure to persist as long as most of Somalia, including its ports along the coast, remains an ungovernable hell.
Bulgarian Socialists Slam PM over Somali Pirate Ransom Payment (Novinite)
BSP secretary, Korneliya Ninova, said that her party would make a request in Parliament to find out how Borisov paid the ransom.
The Bulgarian Socialist Party has slammed Wednesday´s statement by Bulgaria PM Boyko Borisov regarding the payment of a ransom for Bulgarian sailors.
BSP MP Kiril Dobrev stated Thursday that Borisov´s comments yet again showed that the current center-right GERB government can not cope with foreign policy.
"Regarding what was said yesterday, is it true or it is yet another blunder? Because if it is true, can I ask a few questions: When will our current 13 Bulgarian sailors being held by Somali pirates be released? Does Borisov only negotiate for the release of our sailors or for our partners as well? Can all kidnapped Bulgarian citizens rely on the GERB government to pay for their release? Last question - With what money did Mr. Borisov pay the ransom money, from the 2010 or 2009 state budget, or from his personal pocket?
BSP secretary, Korneliya Ninova, said that her party would make a request in Parliament to find out how Borisov paid the ransom. She added that most countries have a policy of not giving in to the demands of terrorists.
Borisov replied by saying that "I leave today's press conference of the BSP on the conscience of the BSP party leader and former Prime Minister Sergey Stanishev." He added; "I hope Mr Stanishev says what financial obligations he has left for me and the new government."
On Wednesday Borisov stated that a ransom had been paid by his government for the release of Bulgarian sailors but he did not state for which case or any specific details.
The ship Malaspina Castle was hijacked on April 6, 2009, in the Gulf of Aden. 16 of its 24-member crew were Bulgarians. A USD 2 M ransom was allegedly paid for the release of the crew but this happened before Borisov came to power.
Last week two UK-flagged ships – the St. James Park and Asian Glory – were hijacked by Somali pirates with a total of 13 Bulgarian sailors on board.
Bulgaria PM Hits Back at Socialists over Somali Pirate Ransom (Novinite)
Borisov said that BSP had made a big mistake. "Stanishev knows that I am careful with classified information, so I will not say what he has done and will leave it on his conscience," he added. Photo by BGNES
Bulgaria PM Boyko Borisov has made it clear that former PM and BSP leader Sergey Stanishev ordered a ransom to be paid for the release of 16 Bulgarian sailors who were kidnapped by Somali pirates last April.
Borisov hit back at Bulgarian Socialist Party MPs who yesterday slammed him for paying part of an alleged USD 2 M ransom for the release of 16 Bulgarian sailors aboard the Malaspina Castle ship in the Gulf of Aden. He strongly suggested that his GERB government had been forced to pay the ransom that Stanishev had ordered.
Borisov said that BSP had made a big mistake. "Stanishev knows that I am careful with classified information, so I will not say what he has done and will leave it on his conscience," he added.
Regarding BSP MP Kiril Dobrev´s comments suggesting that Bulgaria´s EU Commissioner designate Rumiana Jeleva should be sent to Somalia to deal with the hunger there and the pirates Borisov concluded; "These people don´t know what their leaders have done and this allows them to talk like that."
Meanwhile, pirate experts have announced that the negotiations for the release of the Bulgarian sailors currently held in Somalia may continue for up to 3 months. Last week two UK-flagged ships – the St. James Park and Asian Glory – were hijacked by Somali pirates with a total of 13 Bulgarian sailors on board.
Maersk Tankers Stop East Africa Calls
By Peter T. Leach (The Journal of Commerce Online)
Carrier cites pirate danger after attack in December
A.P. Moller-Maersk said Wednesday that its tanker division, Maersk Tankers, stopped calling at ports in East Africa because of the danger of pirate attacks in the area.
The decision came after a pirate attack on the Maersk Regensberg in December. Soon after that attack, Maersk Tankers diverted the Brigit Maersk, another tanker that was near the site of the attack, to a waiting position off the Seychelles until it could be secured against an attack.
It hired a Tanzanian navy vessel to protect the Brigit Maersk before it resumed its voyage to Mombasa in Kenya with a cargo of vegetable oil.
"To ensure the safety of the crew, vessel and cargo she was sent south of Madagascar and Maersk Tankers via a private Danish security enterprise contracted with the Tanzanian navy for an escort," said Maersk spokesman Michael Storgaard. Payment was an amount equal to the fuel and food consumed on the vessel during the escort, which took five days.
"Maersk Tankers assured itself of the legality of the contract and naturally consulted and informed all relevant parties," Storgaard told The Journal of Commerce.
"Since then Maersk Tankers has ceased closing contracts calling in East Africa," he said.
Storgaard said this was the first and only time the company contracted with the Tanzanian Navy escort, or any other East African Navy. He said the company does not consider use of the Tanzanian Navy "in any way a permanent solution or one we are considering in lieu of others."
Lloyd's Analyzes New and Changing Risks (Lloyd's of London)
The start of a new decade is always a time to take stock in what the past has brought, and what the future may bring. As part of its "360 Risk Insight" series, Lloyd's of London queried "a cross section of experts to highlight potential risks to look out for in 2010 and beyond."
Daniel Golding, risk analyst at Lloyd's insurer Chaucer, "warned of macro-economic risks, such as inflationary pressures and the potential collapse of the carbon credit market. According to Golding, there is a possibility that the value of assets or income will decrease as inflation shrinks the purchasing power of a currency."
He described the emerging risk as "due to factors such as quantitative easing, increasing government debt, inconsistencies in the CPI index and a peak of oil production. All of this will likely contribute to a significant increase in inflation over the next year."
He also pointed out that instability in the US or UK economy could lead to a second financial crisis. "Debt to GDP ratio for all levels of US government debt is 87 percent, but inclusive of household and business debt and government-sponsored enterprises the ratio rises to 331 percent. Inclusive of Social Security and Medicare, the ratio rises to 1,000 percent. This is unsustainable and could result in a financial crisis far greater than that experienced to date," he warned.
On the subject of cutting CO2 emissions, Golding expressed concerns that carbon credits are being packaged into increasingly complex financial products, similar to the "shadow finance" around sub-prime mortgages which triggered the recent economic crash.
"As recession slashes output, companies pile up permits they don't need and sell them on," he continued. "The price falls, and anyone who wants to pollute can afford to do so. The result is a system that does nothing at all for climate change but a lot for the bottom lines of mega-polluters."
Finally, Golding pointed to the lack of social responsibility among some businesses. "There is a growing need for companies to take account of their presence in the community and their effect on it. This includes the downside impact of transacting with nefarious individuals and questionable companies."
He added: "There is an increasing propensity for organizations to suffer reputational, legal, political and regulatory repercussions from focusing purely on financial success without considering 'softer' ethical motivations."
Dan Trueman, an underwriter at Lloyd's insurer Kiln, expressed confidence that the insurance market can step up to such challenges: "The key message is that while the world readdresses itself to the changing issues it faces over the next year, many threats present opportunities for the insurance industry to show how creative and flexible it can be in providing solutions. For Lloyd's, in particular, this innovative approach is, and must remain, a key source of competitive advantage."
Trueman, a specialist in intellectual property, brand and reputation risk, expects recent controversies to influence business risk priorities in 2010: "Hard on the heels of the adverse media reports about Tiger Woods and the subsequent impact on his sponsors, organizations are once again examining the value of their reputation and the possibility of protecting against a loss of revenue when it is damaged."
"Such reputational risk events that we are beginning to see include the effect of data privacy breaches, the longer term effect of product recalls, as well as the behavior of key directors and officers of organizations," he stated.
As pirate attacks off Somalia continue unabated,
Lloyd's remains in the forefront of marine and its increasingly sought after adjunct, kidnap and ransom coverage.
According to Guillaume Bonnissent, kidnap and ransom underwriter at Hiscox: "In 2010 it is likely that we will see the expansion of piracy attacks into new waters. Last year saw pirates become more daring in their tactics, demonstrating that they can avoid waters protected by warships and attack vessels more than 1,000 nautical miles from the coast."
He also noted that there has been a substantial increase in the size of ransoms that have been paid to pirates in the last 12 months, creating more problems for ship owners. "The publicizing of these amounts in the press is likely to fuel copycat attacks, with pirates evolving their techniques in response to measures being taken against them," he observed.
Natural catastrophes are likely to continue as well, with the possibility that 2010 will experience an active hurricane season. This "raises a warning flag for catastrophe modelers," Lloyd's said. George Davis, vice president at AIR Worldwide, believes that insurers must improve the quality of exposure data in 2010, or suffer the consequences.
"Companies rely on catastrophe models to provide reliable estimates of loss, whether for purposes of managing risk over the long term or for understanding their loss potential in real time as an actual event unfolds," Davis told 360 Risk Insight. "However, the reliability of model output is only as good as the quality of the exposure data used as input. Information on property valuation, location, and building characteristics needs to be readily available and reliable."
He added: "With the constant threat of increasingly large catastrophe losses driven by an expanding concentration of property value in at-risk areas, the need for companies to reassess exposure data collection practices and put processes in place to enhance data quality is more important than ever."
Ecosystems, marine environment, IUU fishing and dumping, UNCLOS, ecology
Cyclone Waning
Madagascar: A cyclone and no money on the horizon (IRIN)
A tropical cyclone will "probably" hit Madagascar on 14 January, but a funding shortfall means the enormous Indian Ocean island maybe more vulnerable than usual.
According to Madagascar's Meteorological office, "tropical cyclone Edzani is progressively intensifying in the Indian Ocean . 3,100 km off the coast . [and] will probably make landfall on 14 January 2010."
Madagascar lies in the main path of storms crossing the western Indian Ocean and is battered by cyclones every year; five have struck it in the last two years, affecting over 463,000 people.
The UN Country Team raised concern over the approaching cyclone season in November 2009, when it appealed for US$6 million in urgent funding to pre-position emergency supplies in the most vulnerable regions of the country.
But "we didn't get anything. There has been interest, but no money," said Pierre Bry, Senior Humanitarian Affairs Officer at the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Madagascar.
"Unfortunately it makes sense given the political situation," he told IRIN.
Political unrest that began in January 2009 ousted President Marc Ravalomanana and replaced him with his rival, Andy Rajoelina, who was supported by sections of the military. The resulting disengagement by international donors has had an impact on aid flows.
During the past year, humanitarian agencies have exhausted their emergency stocks in responding to drought in the south, and cyclones that hit the island in early 2009. According to a November 2009 UN Country Team statement, "losses of supplies related to the political crisis" have not been replaced.
Bry said the capital, Antananarivo, was particularly vulnerable to flooding during cyclone season. If a serious one hit the island "up to 20,000 people could be at risk," he noted.
Dia Styvanley Soa, spokeswoman for Madagascar's disaster response agency, BNGRC, was more optimistic. "Madagascar will be ready," she told IRIN.
"Instead of prepositioning food items in regions, this year, we will buy directly what will be needed in the affected regions," Soa noted. It was not clear whether the government had the necessary funds to purchase the food, shelter and emergency items or whether they would be available locally.
According to John Uniack Davis, Country Director of the Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere (CARE), an international aid agency, "the probability of any specific storm system hitting Madagascar is relatively low, but the cumulative probability of a direct hit in January or February is relatively high."
"After last year's relatively light season, the various emergency actors here fear that this year's season could be worse. As Edzani approaches and the path becomes clearer, we will have a better sense of the probability of a direct hit on Madagascar's coast," he added.
Cyclone season usually starts in December and runs through April, affecting some of the poorest regions of the country; around 70 percent of Madagascar's people live on less than a dollar a day.
Outrageous Conduct on the High Seas
(Written by Malcolm Brenner)
To: Japanese Consul Yoshiharu Namiki
Japanese Consulate
Miami, Florida
Dear Sir,
I am outraged by the Shonan Maru #2's unprovoked attack on the Ady Gill, an unarmed private yacht which was attempting to halt Japan's illegal, immoral and unethical whale kill in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary. The video shot from the Shonan Maru and shown by many news services early today clearly shows that the Ady Gill was motionless in the water at the time of the attack, and on the Shonan Maru's starboard (right) side. According to universally-acknowledged Law of the Sea, a vessel under way must always yield to another vessel on it's starboard side, which the Shonan Maru clearly did not do.
It was only luck that no one on the Ady Gill was killed or seriously injured.
Furthermore, having sliced off the Ady Gill's bow, the captain of the Shonan Maru apparently did not stop to offer aid, as required by the Law of the Sea. The captain and crew of the Shonan Maru are thus criminals three times over: once, for whaling in an internationally-recognized whale sanctuary; twice for striking another vessel while under way; and the third time for failing to stop and offer aid. They should be ashamed! Their families should be ashamed, as should their revered ancestors and the entire Japanese nation.
Whaling is immoral and unethical because it is a protracted and excruciatingly painful way to slaughter an animal. No slaughterhouse or abattoir in the world would be allowed to operate if it slaughtered animals the way whalers do, by firing an explosive fragmentation grenade into their guts, then dragging them backward through the water in an attempt to drown them. With an animal as big as a whale, there is NEVER any possibility of a "clean kill." Even a .50 caliber rifle is a puny weapon against a whale.
Whaling is also immoral because there is little or no demand for whale meat in Japan. Articles in the Asahi Shinbun and the Japan Times have revealed that modern Japanese do not enjoy the taste of whale meat. It is eaten by less than three percent (3%) of the population. Unlike the evil days before WWII, when the Japanese Army was fed on whale meat during the Rape of Nanking, or the grim days afterward, when your people were starving, there is no need to kill whales for protein. It is widely available from more humane sources.
Even "whale oil" can be replaced by non-animal products, as the American scientist Thomas Kenjii Miwa showed three decades ago!
Furthermore, whaling is immoral and unethical because legitimate scientific research (as opposed to what the Institute for Cetacean Research conducts) has shown that whales have the capacity for communication and intelligence beyond that of most domesticated animals. Some species of cetaceans have been shown to create and pass on "culture" to their offspring. I contrast recent American calls for dolphins to be granted special status as "non-human persons" with the barbaric and brutal conduct of Taiji's fishermen, as shown in the award-winning documentary film "The Cove."
The ultimate impression I get is that Japan, for some illogical reason, believes it has the right and authority to lay claim to whatever swims in the ocean and do with it as it wants, and damn the consequences. The Japanese as a people appear insensitive to the pain and suffering of other animals on this planet, and deaf to the worldwide outrage against their corporate
misconduct. This is not a failure of the Japanese people, but a failure of their government, civic and news institutions to act with authority and compassion on their behalf. It is quite obvious to everyone that the whaling industry and the oceanariums are determining policy, not the other way around!
I call for an immediate and permanent end to whaling in the Southern Ocean Sanctuary, an immediate and permanent end to coastal dolphin drive fishery, and the establishment of legitimate and impartial policies which will protect and preserve the Earth's dwindling marine resources.
Japan should formally apologize for sinking the Ady Gill and pay reparations to Sea Shepherd Society for destroying this unique and historic vessel, the first to circle the Earth on a single tank of fuel!
Until then, I will be asking the Florida state government to abandon its relationship with Wakayama province, and all "sister cities" in Florida to protest against this outrageous act of violence and aggression. I am only one person, an American citizen, but I will do whatever I can to defeat Japan Inc.'s war on whales and dolphins.
Thank you for your prompt attention to this important matter.
Sincerely yours, Malcolm J. Brenner, BA
cc: Sea Shepherd Society & everybody else I know who gives a damn
Collision between Japanese whaler, protest vessel creates waves in Japan and abroad (MN)
The collision between an anti-whaling vessel operated by the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and a Japanese whaler has sparked protests and discussion in Japan over the possibility of applying anti-piracy laws against the society.
In a news conference on Thursday, Senior Vice Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Akira Gunji heavily criticized Sea Shepherd, saying it was responsible for the accident. He said he had asked countries involved to crack down on the group, and indicated that if protest activities escalated, there was a possibility Japan's anti-piracy law could be applied.
"It was dangerous behavior that threatened a ship from our country together with the lives of the crew and their property. It cannot be forgiven under any circumstances," Gunji said at the news conference.
Gunji said that protests had been lodged with New Zealand, where the Sea Shepherd protest vessel was registered, and Australia, where the conservation group's port of call is located. Australia has been struggling to cope with the group's increasingly extreme protests amid strong anti-whaling sentiment in the country.
In New Zealand, Japanese Ambassador Toshihiro Takahashi lodged a protest saying that the collision occurred as a result of the protest activities, adding that it threatened the safety of the vessel and the crew.
Gunji, commenting on calls for Sea Shepherd to be recognized as a pirate group under Japan's anti-piracy law, said discussion with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and other bodies was necessary, but added, "If activities that threaten people's lives and property continue then there will be grounds for discussing the issue."
The anti-piracy law was established in June last year for the purpose of cracking down on pirates off the coast of Somalia and other areas. If it is applied to Sea Shepherd, then the Japan Coast Guard and Maritime Self-Defense Force will be able to use public authority including the use of weapons to control activities occurring on the open sea.
Governmental sources said that when Shigeru Ishiba was minister of agriculture, forestry and fisheries, he had argued that Sea Shepherd and other organizations should be made subject to the law, but caution had been voiced over such a move, and the issue was shelved.
An official at Japan's Fisheries Agency expressed hope over such designation, but doubted whether patrol boats would be able to counter small, high-speed protest vessels.
Meanwhile, an official from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs added, "It has already been agreed that the law (which defines piracy as taking money or hostages), does not apply to Sea Shepherd."
Isn't Hit and Run at Sea Illegal?
By Dexter Phoenix (Salem-News)
The area where this incident occurred was still in Australian controlled waters. That Whaler ship "apparently" was fishing illegally there anyway.
In the recent case of the Japanese whaler ramming an activist boat near Antarctica, you can clearly see that the Japanese ship was heading straight for the Sea Shepard stealth ship.
Their full intentions by doing that, via constantly aiming and shooting off water cannons at the boat, were quite obvious.
As soon as they crashed right on to the boat (if you watch the footage they were very lucky that the whaling ship did not run over the whole boat completely)...they "still" carried on firing there water cannons at the damaged boat, with no consideration of the wounded that could of been aboard.
They then veered off and banked sharp to the left afterwords, showing you how movable that whaling ship is.
That ship's crew could have moved around the Sea Shepard boat, or at least slowed down...but instead decided to accelerate toward the boat in an defensive attack position.
That Sea Shepard boat is an extremely expensive bit of kit; the last thing they would try to do is try to ram it into a huge steel hulled ship. The captain on that whaler should get arrested for some kind of dangerous act.If that was a car and the driver decided to intentionally ram another car or a pedestrian then that would end up in the "attempted man slaughter" category.
You would think under some kind of Maritime law, that at least the captain of the whaler ship would loose his license and the owner of the ship fined for damages.
It seems like liability and the ability to sue on the waters only cover tourist areas, or public accessed areas like tourist beaches and lakes.
The area where this incident occurred was still in Australian controlled waters. That Whaler ship was operating illegally in the area.
Also you have Australian citizens on that boat that was rammed. I think the Australian Police as well as the Navy should be more involved in this, as it is clearly getting out of hand. The Australians are suppose to be very protective in what swims around in there oceans, as well as being very eco friendly.
I am sure most Australians would back that idea of having there waters protected more, especially when it comes to protecting there whales and dolphins.
There is also the threat of over fishing that could effect the Australian fishing trade.
What else are the Australians doing with their Navy anyway?, apart from protecting oil rigs.
(*) Dexter Phoenix has worked as a staff and freelance photographer since the mid-1990's. Covering war, world politics and celebrities, he has a wealth of professional experience.
Today's "too many" can quickly be gone tomorrow!
a warning also concerning the fish "resources" in the Indian Ocean.
Giant river fish faces extinction after years of overfishing
By Rory Carroll (guardian)
A report in the Journal of Applied Ichthyology, a branch of zoology devoted to fish, said there were four sub-species of arapaima – not just one, as previously thought – and that they were under severe pressure from fishermen. Arapaima mature relatively late and need specific habitats to live and reproduce. The fish's size – it can grow to more than 2m and weigh over 200kg – and need to surface to breathe have left it vulnerable to harpoons and gill nets, said the authors, Leandro Castello of the Woods Hole Research Centre in Falmouth, Massachusetts, and Donald Stewart of the State University of New York. "They have the curse of being tasty and of having to breathe air," Castello told the BBC. Much of what is known about the arapaima, also known as pirarucu or paiche, is based on a taxonomic review conducted over 160 years ago.
The researchers analysed nearly all preserved museum specimens of supposed arapaima and found only one specimen of Arapaima gigas. The others are suspected to be closely related species. "Our new analyses indicate that there are at least four species of arapaima," said Castello. "So, until further field surveys of appropriate areas are completed, we will not know if Arapaima gigas is extinct or still swimming about."
Fishermen ignore regulations intended to manage stocks, he said, and there is a lack of data about population numbers. "The present situation may be one in which one species of arapaima is recovering in certain areas, while unrecognised species are going extinct."
The arapaima, a giant Amazon river fish that can grow longer and heavier than a human adult, is at risk of extinction, according to a new study. Overfishing and errors in classification are believed to have left the world's largest scaled freshwater fish critically endangered.
Anti-piracy measures
Socialist proposes Bulgaria´s future EU commissioner to cope with Somali pirates issue Bulgaria´s future EU (FNA)
Commissioner Rumyana Zheleva, who is to take up the portfolio for International Cooperation, Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Response, should be commissioned to the crisis region of Somalia to fight the hunger and the Somali pirates.
This is the proposal of socialist MP Kiril Dobrev with the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP), expressed at a news conference organized by the party, FOCUS News Agency reports.
Dobrev´s statement came in response to a statement by Prime Minister Boyko Borisov, who said that he and his government have paid for the released Bulgarian sailor kidnapped in Somalia.
Kiril Dobrev said further: "I wish to know whether PM´s statement made yesterday is true or was it just his latest blunder? If it is true, I may ask him certain other questions, too – when the abducted Bulgarian sailors will return home? Did Mr. Borisov offere his help to the EU, the USA and Russia for such hard situations, which emerge in other countries, too? Should all Bulgarian citizens count that Mr. Borisov is ready to pay for their release if every being kidnapped? What money did he use to pay for the sailor – from budget 2009 or budget 2010, or was it from his personal savings?"
US Navy Concerned About Alleged Al-Qaida Threat to US Ships
By Alisha Ryu (VOA)
The U.S. Navy says it is on heightened alert after receiving what it calls "credible" al-Qaida threats against American warships and commercial vessels in the Gulf of Aden, the Arabian Sea, and the Persian Gulf. The latest threat from Osama bin Laden's terror network calls on followers to gather intelligence about ships and their sailors so that they can be targeted for attacks.
The threat, made on December 31 in a message posted on an extremist Internet Web site, prompted the Naval Criminal Investigative Service to elevate the risk for all U.S. military and commercial ships sailing through an area stretching from Somalia to the Persian Gulf.
The message contained detailed instructions, particularly on what type of intelligence should be collected from each U.S. warship. The unnamed author says al-Qaida will use the information to target American vessels, including aircraft carriers, submarines, and all naval equipment deployed in the region. He urges potential informants not to underestimate the importance of any piece of information they can gather.
Navy spokesman Lieutenant Nathan Christiansen tells VOA that sailors and their families have been warned to be careful not to reveal any information that could be used against them.
"It is important that Navy families remain vigilant in not sharing potentially sensitive or secure information by any non-secure means, and that includes letters, e-mails, phone conversations, or social media including Facebook," he said.
Fifth Fleet would not comment on what additional security measures are being taken to protect its ships and personnel.
The U.S. Navy has a significant presence in the region, especially in the Gulf of Aden - a busy commercial shipping lane off the northern coast of Somalia. The U.S. Navy and the navies of dozens of other countries are patrolling the narrow waterway to deter ship hijackings-for-ransom by pirate gangs.
Reports that al-Qaida-trained operatives may be poised to attack American commercial and passenger vessels in the Arabian Sea are being widely circulated in Arab-speaking Gulf states, including Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, and United Arab Emirates. Western intelligence officials have reportedly urged each country to boost security measures and to provide better protection for ships, especially oil and gas tankers.
On Thursday, a Kuwaiti newspaper, al-Qabas, said unnamed Kuwaiti security sources confirmed that al-Qaida has regrouped in the region in recent months, thanks largely to the deteriorating security in Somalia and Yemen.
Both countries are home to militant anti-West insurgent groups that have publicly claimed allegiance to al-Qaida. The group in Yemen, al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, is believed to have ties with Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian man accused of trying to blow up a U.S. passenger jet on December 25.
Al-Qaida has targeted the U.S. Navy in the past. In 2001, al-Qaida boasted that it had carried out the October 2000 bombing of USS Cole while the destroyer was refueling at a port in southern Yemen. The blast killed 17 sailors and wounded 39 others.
U.S., NATO Expand Afghan War To Horn Of Africa And Indian Ocean
By Rick Rozoff
In parallel with the escalation of the war in South Asia - counterinsurgency operations in Afghanistan and drone missile attacks in Pakistan - the United States and its NATO allies have laid the groundwork for increased naval, air and ground operations in the Horn of Africa and the Gulf of Aden.
During the past month the U.S. has carried out deadly military strikes in Yemen: Bombing raids in the north and cruise missile attacks in the south of the nation. Washington has been accused of killing scores of civilians in the attacks in both parts of the country, executed before the December 25 Northwest Airlines incident that has been used to justify the earlier U.S. actions ex post facto. And, ominously, that has been exploited to pound a steady drumbeat of demands for expanded and even more direct military intervention.
The Pentagon's publicly disclosed military and security program for Yemen grew from $4.6 million in 2006 to $67 million last year. "That figure does not include covert, classified assistance that the United States has provided." [1]
In addition, "Under a new classified cooperation agreement, the U.S. would be able to fly cruise missiles, fighter jets or unmanned armed drones against targets in the country, but would remain publicly silent on its role in the airstrikes." [2]
On January 1 General David Petraeus, the chief of the Pentagon's Central Command, in charge of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as operations in Yemen and Pakistan, was in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad and said of deepening military involvement in Yemen, "We have, it's well known, about $70 million in security assistance last year. That will more than double this coming year." [3]
The following day Petraeus was in the capital of Yemen where he met with the country's president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, to discuss "continued U.S. support in rooting out the terrorist cells." [4]
White House counterterrorism adviser (Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism) John Brennan briefed President Barack Obama on Petraeus' visit to Washington's new war theater and afterward stated "We have made Yemen a priority over the course of this year, and this is the latest in that effort." [5]
The alleged terrorist cells in question are identified by U.S. and other Western governments as being affiliated with al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). However, on January 4 CNN reported that "A senior U.S. official cited a rebellion by Huti [Houthi] tribes in the north, and secessionist activity in the southern tribal areas" as of concern to Washington. [6]
The Houthis' confessional background is Shi'a and not Sunni Islam and the opposition forces in the south are led by the Yemeni Socialist Party, so attempts to link either with al-Qaeda are inaccurate, self-serving and dishonest.
In both the north and south the United States, its NATO allies - Britain and France closed their embassies in Yemen earlier this week in unison with the U.S. - and Saudi Arabia are working in tandem to support the Saleh government in what over the past month has become a state of warfare against opposition forces in the country. Saudi Arabia has launched regular bombing raids and infantry and armored attacks in the north of the country and, according to Houthi rebel sources, been aided by U.S. warplanes in deadly attacks on villages. Houthi spokesmen have accused Riyadh of firing over a thousand missiles inside Yemen, and in late December the Saudi Defense Ministry acknowledged that its military casualties over the preceding month included 73 dead, 26 missing and 470 wounded. In short, a cross-border war on the Arabian peninsula.
The West, though, has even larger plans for Yemen, ones which include integrating military operations from Northeast Africa to the Chinese border. Typical of recent statements by U.S. officials and their Western allies, last weekend British Prime Minister Gordon Brown disingenuously claimed that "The weakness of al Qaeda in Pakistan has forced them out of Pakistan and into Yemen and Somalia." [7]
Brown told the BBC on January 3 "Yemen has been recognized, like Somalia, to be one of the areas we have got to not only keep an eye on, but we've got to do more. So it's strengthening counter-terrorism cooperation, it's working harder on intelligence efforts." [8] It is up to Mr. Brown to explain why, if al-Qaeda has been "forced out" of Pakistan, he is adding soldiers to the U.S. and NATO surge that will soon bring combined Western troop numbers to over 150,000 in Afghanistan while intensifying deadly attacks inside Pakistan itself.
The British prime minister has also called for an international meeting on Yemen for later this month and announced that "The UK and the US have agreed to fund a counter-terrorism police unit in Yemen...." [9]
In Western news reports, or rather rumor peddling, Yemeni rebels are accused of supplying weapons to Somali opposite numbers and the second are reported to have offered fighters to the former.
In short the officially discarded but in fact revived and expanded "global war on terrorism" is now to be fought in a single theater of war that extends from the Red Sea to Pakistan. A joint endeavor by the Pentagon's Central and Africa Commands and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to build upon the consolidation of almost the entire European continent under NATO and Pentagon control and the ceding of the African continent to the new U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM). (Except for Egypt, an individual Pentagon asset and NATO Mediterranean Dialogue partner.)
In fact the Central Command was inaugurated by the Ronald Reagan administration in 1983 on the foundations of the Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force (RDJTF) that his predecessor Jimmy Carter activated three years before. [10] The latter developed out of the Rapid Deployment Forces (RDF) launched directly to counter developments in Afghanistan and Somalia in 1979 (an integral component of the Carter Doctrine) and was deliberately designed to establish military control of the Horn of Africa, the Arabian Sea and the Western Indian Ocean.
Administrations may depart - George W. Bush and Tony Blair have left public office - and names may change - the global war on terror has been rechristened overseas contingency operations - but Washington's global geopolitical ambitions, limitless since the collapse of the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union in 1991, have only grown more universal and the military means employed for their realization more aggressive.
The White House and its European allies have of late resuscitated and inflated the al-Qaeda specter to a degree not witnessed since the immediate aftermath of September 11, 2001.
Under the guise of protecting the American homeland from this shadowy and ubiquitous entity, the Pentagon is involved in military operations from West Africa to East Asia against among other decidedly non-Osama bin Laden-linked forces left-wing groups in Colombia, the Philippines and Yemen; Shi'a militias in Lebanon and Yemen; ethnic rebels in Mali and Niger; a Christian extremist rebellion in Uganda.
Like the infamous 19th century grave robbers William Burke and William Hare, paid so well to provide cadavers to the Edinburgh Medical College that, running out of corpses to sell, created them, al-Qaeda is a dependable villain to be evoked as needed.
Al-Shabaab fighters in Somalia can be conflated with pirates in the Gulf of Aden to provide the pretext for a permanent NATO and allied European Union naval presence in a nexus that includes the Red Sea, the Arabian Sea leading into the Persian Gulf and most of the eastern coast of Africa.
The American component of the Greater Afghan War is Operation Enduring Freedom, which takes in Afghanistan, Cuba (Guantanamo Bay Naval Base), Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Jordan, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, the Philippines, Seychelles, Sudan, Tajikistan, Turkey, Uzbekistan and Yemen.
Djibouti, which hosts some 2,500 U.S. military personnel in the Pentagon's first permanent base in Africa, is also the headquarters of the U.S.'s Combined Joint Task Force - Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA), set up in 2001 several months before Operation Enduring Freedom and overlapping with it in many respects. The CJTF-HOA, based in the French military base of Camp Lemonier, was transferred from the Pentagon's Central Command to its Africa Command on October 1, 2008 when AFRICOM was formally activated.
Its area of responsibility includes Djibouti, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya, Seychelles, Somalia, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda and Yemen. Its areas of interest are Comoros, Mauritius, and Madagascar. The last three are, like Seychelles, island nations in the Indian Ocean. The U.S. expanded Camp Lemonier to five times its original size in 2006 and troops from all branches of the U.S. armed services "use the base when not working 'downrange' in countries such as Kenya, Ethiopia and Yemen." [11]
In announcing recently that "Yemen has received military equipment from the United States to aid the government's fight against the al-Qaeda network in the south of the country," a German news agency added this background information: "Yemen, in the 1990s, welcomed back Arab fighters who left Afghanistan after the fall of the Soviet Union." [12]
As with Afghanistan itself and other locations where the American military is fighting insurgent groups - the Philippines, Somalia and Yemen - the Pentagon is frequently confronting fighters funded, armed and trained by its own government in Pakistan from 1978-1992 under Operation Cyclone, the largest-ever CIA covert undertaking.
A 2008 edition of U.S. News & World Report, a magazine that can hardly be accused of being unfriendly to the White House and the Pentagon, wrote of the war in Afghanistan that "two of the most dangerous players are violent Afghan Islamists named Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Jalaluddin Haqqani, according to U.S. officials." [13]
An assessment repeated in the August 30, 2009 Commander's Initial Assessment of General Stanley McChrystal, commander of all U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan. The report, the basis for the White House increasing troop strength in the war theater to over 100,000, stated that "The major insurgent groups in order of their threat to the mission are: the Quetta Shura Taliban (05T), the Haqqani Network (HQN), and the Hezb-e Islami Gulbuddin (HiG)."
The U.S. News & World Report feature provided this background information:
"[T]hese two warlords — currently at the top of America's list of most wanted men in Afghanistan — were once among America's most valued allies. In the 1980s, the CIA funneled hundreds of millions of dollars in weapons and ammunition to help them battle the Soviet Army....Hekmatyar, then widely considered by Washington to be a reliable anti-Soviet rebel, was even flown to the United States by the CIA in 1985."
"U.S. officials had an even higher opinion of Haqqani, who was considered the most effective rebel warlord....Haqqani was also one of the leading advocates of the so-called Arab Afghans, deftly organizing Arab volunteer fighters who came to wage jihad against the Soviet Union and helping to protect future al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden." [14]
In the name of combating the very same bin Laden and al-Qaeda, the U.S. and its NATO allies are now, in addition to increasing combined military forces waging a war in Afghanistan now in its ninth year to over 150,000, more than the Soviet Union ever deployed to that nation:
Intensifying deadly drone missile, helicopter gunship and commando attacks inside neighboring Pakistan. A recent government report in that nation tabulated that 708 people had been killed last year in CIA drone attacks alone. Only five of those were identified as al-Qaeda and Taliban suspects. [14] On January 6 at least thirteen more were killed in a missile attack in the Pakistani tribal agency of North Waziristan.
Last month an American military newspaper reported that "A 1,000-strong Marine combat task force capable of rapidly deploying to hot spots could soon be at the disposal of the new U.S. Africa Command," which announcement came "just a few months after U.S. Special Forces staged a daring daylight raid deep inside southern Somalia" and after another Marine force "had already deployed in support of training missions in Uganda and Mali." [15]
In late October of last year NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen was in the United Arab Emirates [UAE] to rally NATO's Istanbul Cooperation Initiative partners for a future confrontation with Iran. Addressing a conference on NATO-UAE Relations and Future Prospects of the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative, he expanded his mission to recruit the Persian Gulf monarchies for the ever-expanding Greater Afghan War. "We have a shared interest in helping countries like Afghanistan and Iraq to stand on their feet again, fostering stability in the Middle East...and preventing countries like Somalia and Sudan from slipping deeper into chaos." [16]
Two months earlier it was reported that "About 75 U.S. military personnel and civilians will be headed to the Seychelles islands in the coming weeks to set up...Reaper operations, which could start in October or November. U.S. Africa Command is calling the Navy-led mission Ocean Look.
"The U.S. will base the Reapers - to be used for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance - at Seychelles' Mahe regional airport...." [17] The Reaper is the Pentagon's newest "hunter-killer" unmanned aerial vehicle (drone) which is equipped with fifteen times the firepower and travels at three times the speed of its Predator forerunner, used to devastating effect in Pakistan and Somalia. Last October Somali rebels claimed to have shot down an American drone and local "residents routinely report suspected US drones flying over [their city]. The drones are believed to be launched from warships in the Indian Ocean." [18]
The permanent stationing of U.S. military forces in Seychelles is part of a pattern in recent years of basing American troops to man missile batteries, interceptor missile radar sites, air bases, counterinsurgency forward bases and other installations in countries where their presence would have been inconceivable even a few years ago: Afghanistan, Colombia, Bulgaria, Djibouti, Iraq, Israel, Kyrgyzstan, Mali, Poland and Romania. A report of January 7 claims that the U.S. plans to establish an air base in Yemen in the Socotra archipelago in the Indian Ocean. [19]
Later it was revealed that "In addition to the Reaper UAVs, the U.S. military is also considering basing Navy P-3 Orion patrol aircraft in the Seychelles for a limited time. Like the Reaper, the Orion can survey a large region...." [20]
A Middle Eastern news source reported on this development as follows:
"The United States is taking its military venture in Africa to new levels amid suspicions that Washington could be advancing yet another hidden agenda.
"American operatives are expected to fly pilot-less surveillance aircraft over the Seychellois [Seychelles] territory from US ships off its coast, in what Washington claims are [deployments] meant to spy on Somali pirates....[S]imilar pretexts were used to justify the US invasion of Afghanistan, the missile attacks in Pakistan, and its waning military operations in Iraq....Washington has also started to equip Mali with USD 4.5 million worth of military vehicles and communications equipment, in what is reported to be an increasing US involvement in Africa." [21]
It did not take long for the U.S. to put the Reapers into operation. In late October Associated Press reported "U.S. military surveillance drones are patrolling off Somalia's coast for the first time....U.S. military officials say unmanned drones called Reapers, stationed in the island nation of Seychelles, are patrolling the Indian Ocean. [22]
"The developments come as the White House seeks grounds to establish a major military presence in Africa.
"The US military says it has deployed its drones ['the size of a jet fighter'], capable of carrying missiles to patrol waters off Somalia...." [23]
Washington's attempt to establish an Afghanistan-Pakistan-Somalia-Yemen connection is intimately connected with its plans for Africa as a whole. [24]
On January 4 a U.S. military website published this update:
"U.S. Africa Command has bolstered its anti-piracy forces with the recent addition of maritime patrol aircraft and more personnel in the Seychelles islands.
"The Navy last month deployed three P-3 Orion aircraft from the Maine-based VP-26 Tridents, along with 112 sailors, to the Seychelles to patrol the waters off East Africa....Patrol Squadron 26's insignia, a skull over a compass and two bombs or torpedoes that form an X, resembles the Jolly Roger flag, which symbolizes piracy." [25]
What sort of pirates the Pentagon is using as the pretext for its military buildup in the Horn of Africa and Eastern Africa as a whole was demonstrated last September when "Foreign troops in helicopters strafed a car...in a Somali town...killing two men and capturing two others who were wounded, witnesses said. U.S. military officials said American forces were involved in the raid."
"Two U.S. military officials said forces from the U.S. Joint Special Operations Command were involved." [26] The Joint Special Operations Command was headed up by Stanley McChrystal from 2003 to 2008. He has moved on from overseeing counterinsurgency operations in Iraq during those years to assuming control over all U.S. and NATO operations in Afghanistan.
A witness also reported that "the helicopters took off from a warship flying a French flag" [27] and a rebel source said "We are getting information that French army gunships attacked a car, destroying it completely and taking some of the passengers." [28]
French military forces remain in the former colony of Djibouti where they train for operations not only in Afghanistan but in several former African possessions. Troops, warplanes and armored vehicles from NATO nations - under the flags of NATO itself, the European Union, France and the United States - have intervened in civil and cross-border conflicts across the entire width of Africa over the past few years: Somalia, Djibouti-Eritrea, Chad, the Central African Republic, the Darfur region of Sudan and the Ivory Coast; from the Horn of Africa to the oil-rich Gulf of Guinea.
A report from last month provides some indication of the French role on the continent. Radio France Internationale described "French soldiers in Djibouti train[ing] for Afghanistan and keep[ing] an eye on Africa" with the following details:
"Twelve special forces commandos arrived first" and "the army...storm[ed] the beach....The exercise, seen as crucial for battle preparedness in a region infamous for its fractious politics, included all the country's military sectors - sea, land and air.
"As desert tanks zoomed onto the shore Mirage jets criss-crossed the open sky. Meanwhile, land troops were dispatched from the mouths of armoured personnel carriers and helicopters airlifted artillery guns onto the ground.
"'It's a show of force. It shows what France is able to do militarily,' said one army officer.
"In recent years French troops in Djibouti have been involved in a number of...military missions in Africa. They helped reinforce the UN brigade patrolling Cote d'Ivoire and last year provided logistical and tactical help to Djiboutian soldiers warding off an attack from neighbouring Eritrea.
"For the time being, the first theatre of combat these troops will see is Afghanistan, where France is part of the Nato contingent. The mountainous, arid countryside closely resembles Djibouti's own undulating moonscape.
"The troops taking part are a contingent of a 2,500-strong force based in Djibouti." [29]
In addition to intermittent armed clashes between troops from Djibouti and Eritrea, in the past weeks reports have surfaced of deadly fighting within Eritrea and between that nation and neighboring Ethiopia. Djibouti and Ethiopia are the West's client regimes and military proxies in the Horn of Africa and, as is demonstrated above, the integration of the South Asian and Northeast African war fronts is proceeding rapidly.
Starting in the autumn of 2008 NATO began what it calls counter-piracy operations off the coast of Somalia and further into the Gulf of Aden, often in league with comparable deployments by the European Union, with which it shares warships, commanders and "common strategic interests" under the Berlin Plus and other arrangements. [30]
The NATO naval surveillance and interdiction operation in and near the Horn of Africa is an extension of its effective takeover of the entire Mediterranean Sea with Operation Active Endeavor [31] initiated in 2001 under the Alliance's Article 5 mutual military assistance clause and augmented by the blockade of Lebanon's Mediterranean coast by NATO nations' warships under UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) auspices that began after Israel's assault on the country in 2006. The latter's Maritime Task Force (MTF) "has hailed some 27,000 ships and referred nearly 400 suspicious vessels to Lebanese authorities for further inspection.
"Thirteen countries – Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Indonesia, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden and Turkey – have contributed naval units to the MTF." [32]]
The NATO and EU deployments in the Gulf of Aden are the first such naval operations in the region in both organizations' history and the EU's first in African coastal waters.
The expansion of military presence into the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea gives NATO nations control of waterways ranging from the Strait of Gibraltar to the Strait of Hormuz.
As veteran Indian diplomat and analyst M K Bhadrakumar described it in 2008, "By acting with lightning speed and without publicity, NATO surely created a fait accompli.
"NATO's naval deployment in the Indian Ocean region is a historic move and a milestone in the alliance's transformation. Even at the height of the Cold War, the alliance didn't have a presence in the Indian Ocean. Such deployments almost always tend to be open-ended.
"In 2007, a NATO naval force visited Seychelles in the Indian Ocean and Somalia and conducted exercises in the Indian Ocean and then re-entered the Mediterranean via the Red Sea in end-September." [33]
He added: "US officials are on record that Africom and NATO envisage an institutional linkup in the downstream.
"The overall US strategy is to incrementally bring NATO into Africa so that its future role in the Indian Ocean (and Middle East) region as the instrument of US global security agenda becomes optimal." [34]
Last August the chief of AFRICOM, General William Ward, said that Somalia was "a central focus of the U.S. military on the continent."
To indicate the scope of Pentagon plans in not only Somalia but the region, "General William Ward has pledged continued support to Somalia's transitional federal government....He made his remarks during a visit to Nairobi, Kenya, which is a key U.S. ally in the region.
"When asked about U.S. warnings to Eritrea against its alleged support of al-Shabab, the U.S. general condemned any outside support for the Somali rebels." [35]
U.S., British and other Western officials have been straining to establish (the most) tenuous connection between the so-called AfPak war front and the need for direct military intervention in East Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, as was seen earlier with the British prime minister's risible claim that NATO has been so successful in expelling alleged al-Qaeda elements from Pakistan that they have sought refuge in Somalia and Yemen. Rather than, more logically, in locations like Kashmir, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
Similarly, Western governments are sparing no effort to fabricate or exaggerate links between the numerous armed conflicts in the Horn of Africa. Somali rebels are accused of supporting the government of Eritrea in its border conflict with Djibouti; they are also accused of offering fighters for the internal conflict in southern Yemen.
In return, Yemeni rebels are accused of providing arms for Somalia's al-Shabaab fighters and hovering over it all is the implication that Iran is sponsoring Arab Shi'a forces in Yemen's north.
There is a plethora of evidence, however, documenting genuine foreign intervention in the region: U.S. missile, bombing, helicopter and special forces attacks in Somalia and Yemen and coordination with the armies of Djibouti and Ethiopia in conflicts inside Somalia and with Eritrea. Saudi air and land assaults in Yemen with the resultant deaths of hundreds and displacement of thousands of civilians. French commando operations in Somalia and combat training in Djibouti for warfare in the area and beyond.
The true outside forces engaged in military actions are ignored in the West in favor of unsubstantiated contentions that the region is being inflamed by the same adversaries the U.S. and NATO are waging war against on the Indian subcontinent and that the villains in and near the Horn of Africa are, in addition to being the local al-Qaeda franchise, inextricably linked and moreover somehow tied with piracy operations. Such are the tortured logic and far-fetched subterfuges used to prepare Western publics for an escalation of military intervention over 3,000 kilometers across the Indian Ocean from the Afghanistan-Pakistan war theater.
NATO warships are bridging the two extremes. Last August the military bloc launched its second naval operation off the coast of Somalia the name of which, Ocean Shield, alone indicates the scope of the Alliance's objectives in the Africa-Asia-Middle East triangle. The mission includes military ships from Britain, Greece, Italy, Turkey and the U.S. and according to NATO "other countries are thinking of coming to reinforce the operation which could evolve at any moment." A NATO spokesman said at the time, "No timeframe has been set for this long-term operation, which will last as long as it's deemed necessary." [36]
The European Union is conducting a complementary mission, Operation Atalanta, "which has six frigates and works with fleets from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the U.S.-led coalition" and "operates in the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean...from Somali territorial waters east to 60 degrees longitude, which runs south from the eastern tip of Oman and 250 miles east of the Seychelles." [37] Rear Admiral Peter Hudson at the fleet's command center in Britain announced last month that the operation may expand its range even further, taking in most of the western Indian Ocean.
Last September the commander of NATO's Maritime Group 2 in the Gulf of Aden met with officials of Somalia's Puntland autonomous region to plan operations.
In mid-December NATO made a direct link between its South Asian war and its expansion into the Indian Ocean by announcing it was considering dispatching AWACS surveillance aircraft to the second location. "Commanders are seeking to back up a five-ship counterpiracy task force with one of the airborne warning and control system surveillance planes, possibly sharing it with the allied International Security Assistance Force fighting in Afghanistan." [38]
On the first day of this year a Canadian news agency, in a feature titled "Canada to help defend Yemen from al-Qaida reinforcements," revealed that "A NATO spokeswoman said warships patrolling international shipping lanes through the Gulf of Aden, which separates Somalia from Yemen, were aware al-Shabab, an al-Qaida-inspired armed group based in Somalia, had announced plans to send fighters to Yemen" and as a result "A Canadian warship involved in NATO-led counter-piracy operations off Somalia's coast now has an additional task...." [39]....
Somalia and Yemen lie across from each other on either end of the Gulf of Aden where the Red Sea meets the Arabian Sea and the Mediterranean is connected with the Indian Ocean. An arc that effects the conjunction of three of the world's five most important continents. Territory too important for the United States, whose head of state last month proclaimed himself commander-in-chief of the world's sole military superpower, and what for the past decade has declared itself expeditionary and global NATO to leave untouched.
Notes:
1) Reuters, January 1, 2010
2) Russian Information Agency Novosti, December 30, 2009
3) Reuters, January 1, 2010
4) CNN, January 4, 2010
5) CNN, January 2, 2010
6) CNN, January 4, 2010
7) Agence France-Presse, January 4, 2010
8) Xinhua News Agency, January 4, 2010
9) Press TV, January 3, 2010
10) Cold War Origins Of The Somalia Crisis And Control Of The Indian Ocean Stop NATO, May 3, 2009
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/08/28/cold-war-origins-of-the-somalia-crisis-and-control-of-the-indian-ocean/
11) Combined Joint Task Force - Horn of Africa, April 17, 2009
12) Deutsche Presse-Agentur, January 1, 2010
13) U.S. News & World Report, July 11, 2008
14) Ibid
15) Stars And Stripes, December 16, 2009
16) Al Arabiya, November 1, 2009
17) Stars and Stripes, August 29, 2009
18) Press TV, October 19, 2009
19) Press TV, January 7, 2010
20) Voice of America News, September 2, 2009
21) Press TV, October 21, 2009
22) Associated Press, October 23, 2009
23) Press TV, October 25, 2009
24) AFRICOM: Pentagon Prepares Direct Military Intervention In Africa
Stop NATO, August 24, 2009
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/09/02/africom-pentagons-prepares-direct-military-intervention-in-africa
AFRICOM Year Two: Seizing The Helm Of The Entire World
Stop NATO, October 22, 2009
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/10/22/africom-year-two-taking-the-helm-of-the-entire-world
25) Stars and Stripes, January 4, 2010
26) Associated Press, September 14, 2009
27) Ibid
28) Agence France-Presse, September 14, 2009
29) Radio France Internationale, December 11, 2009
30) NATO http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/topics_49217.htm
31) NATO http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/topics_7932.htm
32) UN News Centre, August 31, 2009
33) Asian Times, October 20, 2008
34) Ibid
35) Voice of America News, August 21, 2009
36) Agence France-Presse, August 17, 2009
37) Bloomberg News, December 11, 2009
38) Bloomberg News, December 21, 2009
39) Canwest News Service, January 1, 2010
Obama whistles and Harper follows ... even easier to sell to taxpayers than "piracy":
Frigate to focus on keeping militants out of Yemen
By Jorge Barrera (CNS)
Canadian frigate HMCS Fredericton tests a 57 mm Bofor gun on its decks. The ship will shift its focus to counter-terrorism at the end of February amid increased global concern over the movement of Somalian extremists into nearby Yemen. Its previous mission has been focused on counter-piracy.
Photograph by: Marcel Mochet, AFP/Getty Images
Ottawa — A Canadian frigate patrolling the Gulf of Aden on a NATO counter-piracy mission will shift its focus to counter-terrorism at the end of February amid increased global concern over the movement of Somalian extremists into nearby Yemen.
HMCS Fredericton will be put under the command of an Australian warship leading the counter-terror mission that will also include U.S, British and Pakistani ships along with some from other Middle Eastern countries, Cmdr. Matt Plaschka, a maritime operations officer with the Canadian Expeditionary Force Command, said Wednesday.
Fredericton has been running escort missions through shipping lanes in the Gulf of Aden where Somali pirates have preyed on vessels ranging from private yachts, to container ships and an oil tanker.
Piracy has attracted sporadic global interest in the region over the last two years, and the gradual strengthening of the al-Qaida inspired group al-Shabab in Somalia has set off some alarm in the West.
The region was suddenly thrust up the list of Western priorities after a Nigerian student, charged after a failed attempt to blow up a U.S. airliner near Detroit on Dec. 25, was linked to al-Qaida in Yemen.
Yemen is south of Saudi Arabia and a short voyage from Somalia.
Since then, the U.S. has said instability in Yemen is a global threat. The British have also called for an international meeting at the end of the month to focus on Yemen. Canada has yet to be invited to the meeting, according to Foreign Affairs.
A senior al-Shabab figure claimed recently that the group plans to send fighters across the gulf to aid al-Qaida in Yemen, prompting western security experts to focus on links between extremists in the two countries.
It is amid these heightened tensions that HMCS Fredericton enters the counter-terror fray, switching from a law-enforcement mission to one under the "law of armed conflict," said Plaschka.
"It is very much like, if not identical, to the type of mission our soldiers are doing in Afghanistan," he said.
Plaschka, however, said the Canadian warship was scheduled to participate in the ongoing counter-terror operation by coalition forces before its deployment. Recent events did not have an impact on timing of the shift in missions, he said.
Plaschka said Fredericton will be expected to cover waters beyond the Gulf of Aden, but up through the Red Sea or east into the Arabian Sea if called for.
In 2008, HMCS Charlottetown was the last Canadian warship to participate in ongoing counter-terror operations in the region, which are run out of coalition headquarters in Bahrain, said Plaschka. HMCS Winnipeg, which was in the region in early 2009, stuck to counter-piracy operations.
Fredericton is expected back in Canada by the end of April.
"Somali pirates should be tried under watch of UN," Turkey says (Xinhua)
Suspected pirates off the coast of Somalia should be prosecuted under the supervision of the United Nations, according to a letter sent by Turkey to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and made public here on Wednesday.
In the letter, Turkey's permanent representative to the UN, Ertugrul Apakan, suggested the formation of a judicial system to punish perpetrators and deter potential pirates from a life of criminality.
"Turkey believes that it would be useful if a mechanism is put in place in one of the countries of the region, under the supervision of the United Nations, to effectively prosecute persons suspected of piracy and armed robbery at sea off the coast of Somalia," said Apakan.
Currently, no clear legal regime exists to hold pirates off the coast of Somalia accountable. Normally, under the United Nations' Law of the Sea Treaty, Somalia would try its citizens. But Somalia never ratified the treaty, and is largely deemed a lawless nation without a viable government.
To make do, countries like the United States and Britain have signed Memorandums of Understanding with the Kenyan court system to try suspected pirates in a kind of Hague international tribune.
But without a clear international legal framework, many countries, like Turkey, are calling for the United Nations to coordinate a comprehensive judicial mechanism.
The increase in the number of pirate attacks in 2009 indicates the international community's failure to curb a growing threat to peace and security, said Apakan.
"One of the main factors is undoubtedly the lack of capacity to detain and punish the perpetrators that are apprehended," he said.
In 2009, pirates in the Gulf of Aden attacked 214 vessels, resulting in 47 hijackings, according to the Piracy Reporting Center of the International Maritime Bureau. As of Dec. 29, 12 of those ships, with a total of 263 crew members, were being held for ransom.
In comparison, 111 ships were attacked in the region in 2008, according to the maritime bureau.
Apakan said that thus far, four vessels owned by Turkish citizens and with Turkish crews have been kidnapped and held hostage by pirates while several other Turkish vessels have survived pirate attacks.
"Being among those countries suffering from this scourge, Turkey deplores and condemns these acts," he said.
Turkey is a founding member of the UN's Group on Piracy off the Coast of Somalia, which was created on Jan. 14, 2009.
N.B.: While some Turkish judge might dream about himself working in a floating courtroom cruising along the Somali coast with deep-sea-fishing for leisure - and forgetting that during the night they could become an easy target for Cole-style attacks -, it only shows that coward-countries are always trying to coerce the United Nations into doing something, which they can not fulfil, while themselves they are not willing to stand up to their own duties. Since the UN is just following the money trail, they even might take up such nonsense ideas - if countries like Turkey pay.]
New Satellite Services to the Defense Market in Somalia
TS2 Satellite Technologies company is introducing new satellite link products to the Defense Market in Somalia.
Warsaw, Poland, January 08, 2010 -- The most popular satellite service in Somalia is a broadband two-way satellite transfer system (VSAT), which provides quality access to the internet in even the least accessible areas. It not only provides an internet connection but also a wide range of additional services.
´We provide secure and encrypted satellite connections particularly for the military sector, for any military units, literally in any part of the world, on the national firing ground and during all international trainings.´ – said Marcin Frackiewicz, CEO of TS2. He also added: ´We have mobile and stationary solutions dedicated to work in difficult conditions´.
TS2 provides in Somalia following services: two way internet broadband access, VSAT Private Network, broadcasting services, SCPC/SCPC, SCPC/DVB, MESH services, STAR/DAMA, VSAT Mini Hub Solution, VNO and many more.
TS2 provides in Somalia also new mobile services. BGAN deliver seamless network coverage across most of the world´s landmass. Users are able to get broadband wherever they go, not just in major cities or airports. BGAN is currently accessible in Somalia, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Asia, North and South America.
No real peace in sight yet
Calls to Rescue the Somali People From the Islamist Militias in the Country
In mid-December 2009, a Somali man who had been convicted of adultery by an extremist Islamic militia was put to death by stoning, while his girlfriend was given 100 lashes. In response to this incident, the Iraqi-born sociologist and human rights activist Dr. Hamid Al-Hashemi, who resides in Europe, wrote an op-ed that was published on the liberal website Elaph.[1] In it, Dr. Al-Hashemi demanded that the international community, as well as the Arab countries, rescue the Somali people from the extremist militias that are taking over their country. He went on to contrast the Righteous First Caliphs' tolerant and moderate treatment of similar offenses with the intolerance of the extremists, and warned that action must be taken lest the chaos in Somalia spread to the surrounding countries.
The following are excerpts from Dr. Al-Hashemi's op-ed:
"The Muslim Somali People … Suffer from Insecurity, Poverty, and Poor Health"
"…[I would like] to direct [the public's] attention to the tragedy that the Muslim Somali people are experiencing. [This people] suffers from insecurity, poverty, and poor health; it lacks educational and other basic administrative services, and it is sunk in civil war. Such has been the situation since the [1991] fall of the government of Mohamed Siad Barre.
"It appears that the current era is the most dangerous [yet] for this good people. The Islamic groups [rose to power] in order to implement their religious belief in their homeland… at a time when the world was searching for every error and flaw in Islam and in the Muslims. On December 14, 2009, we were informed that an adulteress was to receive a flogging, and that an adulterer was to be stoned to death, in the Somali [town] of Afgooye – and this punishment is not the first of its kind [to be implemented by this group]."[2]
Past Caliphs Showed Mercy and Pardoned Sinners
"I do not intend to deny that this sentence was implemented at [various] times in the history of the Islamic state… but every shari'a ruling [is given] in accordance with the [unique] conditions and circumstances [of the particular case]. The ruling is shaped by the judge in accordance with the shari'a, and [also] by the society in which it is implemented. It is known that [the second] Caliph, 'Omar bin Al-Khattab [584-644 AD], stopped a thief from having his hand amputated as punishment[3]… [Fourth] Caliph 'Ali bin Abi Taleb [661-599 AD] likewise [mitigated] several sentences [meted out] for prostitution and adultery, [even though] he treated the matter with gravity…
One of these cases was of a man who had sodomized a youth. [Caliph Ali] told him: Choose one of three [ways of being put to death]: I collapse a wall on top of you, or I kill you with my sword, or I burn you with fire. [The man] said: Oh Emir of the Believers, what is the harshest punishment of the three? ['Ali] told him: Burning by fire. [The man] said: Then burn me. So the Emir of the Believers lit the fire. [The man] told him: Oh Emir of the Believers, wait until I bow twice [in prayer, and Ali] told him: Pray.
"After he finished praying, [the man] raised his hands heavenwards and said: Oh Lord of the Worlds, I have committed a loathsome act that You have forbidden; I came before the ruler You have set, before the deputy of Your Emissary [Muhammad], and I told him of it. I asked him to guide me [in atoning for my sin], and he gave me a choice of three [ways of being put to death]… I asked him: Which of these is the harshest punishment, which does not rescue one from the fires of Hell on Judgment Day? He told me: Burning by fire. And I chose that.
"The Emir of the Believers wept, as did the people around [him]. Then the Emir of the Believers said: Allah has already forgiven you. Then one of the men got up and said: 'Oh Emir of the Believers, how can you rescind one of the punishments of Allah the Almighty? ['Ali] answered: Woe to you! The Imam is the [ruler] set by Allah, and because the sinner has atoned… he must be forgiven.
"There are other incidents from the lives of the Caliphs and of the Companions of the Prophet, who were appointed as judges, [in which they] opposed such [death] penalties. Self-restraint, investigation [of the incident], and sensitivity were characteristic of the punishments [that they handed down]; rectification and a lesson were the first aims [of the punishment], and this while considering the overall circumstances in the country and the individual circumstances of the perpetrator."
"Rescue this Wretched People from the Hands of these Hasty Groups, whose 'Shari'a' Judgments are Nothing to be Proud of"
"Can this be compared to [the situation in] Somalia, which is today in such a miserable state? Was it thoroughly proven by evidence that these 'criminals' needed to be judged, and then that they must be given such severe punishments? [Moreover,] the youths who judged and carried out the judgment – are they of such a [high] degree of perfection and justice? Are they so noble as to be worthy of carrying out such judgments? And not only that – [one of the women] who were stoned to death was a mere child, and had not yet reached the age of maturity..
"I call on the international community to intervene to rescue this wretched people from the hands of these hasty groups, whose 'shari'a' judgments are nothing to be proud of. I also call on the international community to help this people manage its affairs, to provide it with food and medicine, and also with educational [frameworks] so that it can build itself up. There is also room for Muslim and Arab countries to participate in this mission – primarily because they are not distant [from Somalia and are likely to be harmed] by the spread of this country's chaos and suffering. The deeds of these pirates is the simplest proof of that."
Endnotes:
1] Elaph.com, December 15, 2009.
2] There have also been numerous cases in Somalia of women and girls stoned for adultery. See for example http://english.aljazeera.net/news/africa/2008/11/2008111201216476354.html, and http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8366197.stm.
3] According to Tunisian researcher Dr. Iqbal Al-Gharbi, the sentence was rescinded for military reasons, namely that the amputation would prevent the man from becoming a soldier. About this and other examples of revoking and amending the laws of the shari'a, see MEMRI Special Dispatch No. 795, "Tunisian University Lecturer: Shari'a Must Not Be Implemented Today," October 6, 2009.
´Time for a new Somalia policy´
By Afyare Abdi Elmi (Al Jazeera)
In his testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on May 21, 2009, Admiral Michael Mullen, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, set a broad agenda for Afghanistan from which Senator Corker interpreted that Mullen was calling for "nation-building".
Mullen was asked why the US was focusing on Afghanistan while al-Qaeda has spread its wings throughout the region, including Yemen and Somalia.
Mullen responded that Afghanistan is critical because that is where it all began.
History of failure
Mullen´s response played more to domestic political considerations on what the US public will support rather than strategic thinking about dealing with the problem at hand.
The unanswered question is what Washington can and should do in order to reduce the threats stemming from other stateless countries such as Somalia?
US policy toward Somalia has been a continual failure since 1978 when Zbigniew Brzezinski, the then US national security adviser, declared that the Cold War was being lost on the sands of the Ogaden desert when Soviet-supported troops were helping its ally Mengistu Haile Mariam, the president of Ethiopia, to defeat the Somali army that had captured the Ogaden region.
During President Bill Clinton´s era Operation Restore Hope was turned into the nightmare known today as Black Hawk Down.
Under George W. Bush outsourcing the ´war on terror´ to warlords to assassinate al-Qaeda operatives in Somalia backfired – forcing the Islamists to unite under the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC), which brought order to the country but disorder to Washington´s counter-terrorism tactics.
The US also supported Somalia´s warlords by providing money, information and legitimacy even though the Somali government had pleaded with Washington for help.
President Abdullahi Yusuf´s government tried to secure financial and military assistance from the US in 2004 and 2005, although, interestingly, the Bush administration opted for the warlords, directly undermining the government.
Compounding the error, after the Somali Islamists defeated the warlords in 2006, the Bush administration supported the Ethiopian invasion in order to destroy the UIC and uphold a transitional Somali government.
Apparently, Washington was not aware that one of the few things that can unite Somalis is an effort to undermine Ethiopian dreams for regional domination.
A failed state
I believe that the US has an interest in doing better than this. The pay-off from reducing the threat of piracy off the coast of Somalia and defeating the uncompromising threat to both Western and Somali interests posed by Somalia´s extremist groups and the country´s statelessness would be great.
The US´ national security strategy during the Bush administration focused on fighting terrorism, which it defined as "premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against innocents".
According to this strategy, Washington considered failed states a threat to its security.
The rationale was clear. Since al-Qaeda used a failed state – Afghanistan – as a base and attacked Western interests, the US should treat all failed states, especially in the Muslim world, as a security threat.
Piracy and poverty
The Somali state´s failure has yielded other public problems. The upsurge in piracy and the increase in extremism that has drawn in foreign fighters are two examples.
In 2008, Somali pirates attacked 111 ships and hijacked 42 of those they attacked.
This led to significant increases in insurance rates for ships and products that travel through the Gulf of Aden.
Additionally, many countries sent war ships to patrol the area, thus affecting their military budget – there are currently about 23 ships in the area helping to protect the ships passing through.
Still worse for the local population is the fact that piracy affected the humanitarian aid and business goods reaching Somalia.
Foreign fighters
Moreover, the presence of non-Somali fighters in Somalia is becoming a glaring fact.
Abul-Yazeed, the leader of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, gave an interview to Al Jazeera in which he talked about the relationship between al-Qaeda and al-Shabab, one of Somalia´s radical Islamist groups.
He confirmed that the two groups had good relations although they are not united under one organisation and also mentioned that some of al-Qaeda leaders in the region, such as Abu-Dalha al-Sudani, were killed in Somalia while fighting Ethiopian forces.
Muqtar Robow, al-Shabab´s former spokesperson, and Ali Fidow, the group´s current spokesperson, have said that al-Shabab shares the same objectives and enemies as al-Qaeda.
Both sides are proud of their collaboration and openly talk about it.
Some al-Shabab leaders went to Afghanistan and fought there while al-Qaeda sent fighters to Somalia to help al-Shabab.
The time when most analysts misunderstood the relationship between al-Shabab and al-Qaeda has long passed.
Foreign abuses
The statelessness in Somalia has also made the country and its people vulnerable to foreign abuses.
European-based companies typically use Somalia as a dumping ground for toxic waste.
After the Tsunami hit the Indian Ocean in 2004, a mysterious disease killed many Somalis. Somalis named it "Kaduudiyow" – which is best translated as describing how a person shrinks.
There has also been widespread illegal fishing in Somali waters and the UN´s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has estimated that 700 vessels fished illegally in Somali waters in 2005.
Somalia´s pirates take advantage of this fact to justify their piracy – calling themselves coastal guards and arguing that piracy began as a response to the abuses that foreign fishing companies committed against Somali fisheries.
Somalia´s misery, neighbours´ gain
All of this is being further complicated by the fact that Somalia´s neighbouring countries have exploited Somalia´s miseries for their own gain.
Both Ethiopia and Kenya have played a role in perpetuating the Somali conflict.
Ethiopia has been intimately involved in setting Somali clans against one another by arming clan warlords for the purpose of permanently making the Ogaden region its own and to allow it to rule Somalia indirectly through its proxy warlords.
Kenya benefits from the chaos in Somalia, despite the cost of housing refugees, through the presence of thousands of middle class Somali merchants.
Furthermore agents from international organisations, foreign embassies and NGOs operate from Kenya – filling up its hotels and making Nairobi the de facto capital of Somalia.
Somalia is also a landmark case when it comes to how a collapsed state environment can threaten civilian lives.
For the past 20 years, tens of thousands of Somalis have died because of the civil war and drought.
According to the Save the Children Foundation, one in every 10 school age children go to school.
Malnutrition is also rampant because the world has neglected Somalia since Black Hawk Down.
Misguided policies
Interestingly, even though the US national security strategy claims that failed states are a threat, Washington has supported the forces that have perpetuated statelessness in Somalia – that is Ethiopia – which has been meddling in Somali politics since Somalia became independent in 1960 – and the Somali warlords.
Moreover, Washington´s misguided policies toward Somalia have strengthened the forces it claims it is trying to defeat.
The Bush administration helped to destroy the UIC under the pretext that al-Shabab was part of the heterogeneous groups that expelled the warlords from Mogadishu. At this time, al-Shabab was a minority group within the ICU and did not even dare to openly reveal its programme.
Ironically, the Washington-supported Ethiopian invasion replaced the conditions that favoured moderates with conditions that favoured al-Shabab and other radical elements.
Interestingly, when he came to power, Barack Obama ordered inter-agency policy review in which he asked all of the agencies that worked on Somalia to revisit previous strategies.
The committee doing this review is expected to finalise their recommendations and policy guidelines within the next few months.
Now, with the withdrawal of Ethiopian troops from Somalia, the accommodation of the moderate Islamists to the peace process and the government´s decision to adopt Sharia, those conditions that favoured the radicals have been reversed and the opportunity for defeating extremism has presented itself again.
So the Obama administration should capitalise on this, rectify previous bad policies and do all it can to support the establishment of a strong state in Somalia.
(*) Dr. Afyare Abdi Elmi teaches international politics at the Qatar University´s International Affairs Department and is the author of a forthcoming book, Understanding the Conflagration of Somalia: Identity, Islam and Peacebuilding by Pluto Press.
Somalia's World Cup singer:
Let my people stay (TheEconomist)
Why the World Cup´s Somali singalong rapper is proud of his kinsmen?
The latest African voice to resonate across the world belongs to a 31-year-old Somali singer known simply as K´naan. His hip-hop number, "Waivin´ Flag," is poised to bring him global stardom, because it has been chosen by Coca-Cola, a sponsor of the coming football World Cup in South Africa, as the tournament´s anthem. It will be released in 150 countries and some predict it will even outsell Luciano Pavarotti´s rendition of "Nessun Dorma", the cup´s theme tune when it was held in Italy in 1990.
Born Keynaan Warsame in Somalia´s seaside capital, Mogadishu, he is now a citizen of Canada. But he cherishes his Somali roots. Several tracks on his new album, "Troubadour", have Somali lyrics. "Waivin´ Flag" refers to Somalia´s banner, a five-pointed white star on a bright blue background.
K´naan´s appeal is wide. He has been singing alongside the football trophy on its journey through 15 African countries. At last year´s South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas, known as SXSW, he entranced a huge crowd from the cowboy state. "I figured I´d like it," says an American radio presenter. "I just didn´t expect to see people crying." His latest album was recorded at the house of the late Bob Marley, the reggae king, in Jamaica.
The Somali rapper says he suffers "something like survivor guilt", thinking of the people he grew up with. Several of his boyhood friends were shot dead in front of him. He handled a machinegun and exploded a hand-grenade accidentally but says he never killed anyone. His family was intellectual and well-connected. His Aunt Magool was a famous singer. But as Somalia collapsed, he fled abroad aged only 13.
More recently he has stirred controversy by partially excusing the activities of Somalia´s pirates. He blames Western companies for illegally hoovering up tuna fish off Somalia´s coast and says that European criminal gangs have dumped toxic waste along it. Piracy, he says, is an understandable response. He told an American radio station that the pirates had at least had the effect of "cleaning up the environment": on that score, he has a point.
In any event, K´naan says he wants to help unite Somalis. Fighting between the clans has been a cause of the country´s breakdown. For that reason he refuses to say which clan he hails from.
Were he to return home, that might not help him. The Shabab fighters who control swathes of the country have banned music. Some Shabab commanders have publicly whipped musicians. "They don´t like me very much," says K´naan. A suicide-bomber might even target him.
For all that, he and his music are defiantly hopeful. Despite their warrior reputation, Somalis love poetry and music. K´naan thinks the Shabab´s austere version of Islam will fail. The country´s vibrant culture, he insists, will win the day.
Sharif Appeals to Elders to Restore the Peace
The president of the Transitional Federal Government Sharif Sheik Ahmed held a meeting on Friday with several Somali elders and scholars in the presidential palace in Mogadishu on Thursday and appealed to the elders to support his government for the restoration of security, peace and stability to the country.
The president called on all elders and scholars to put the pressure on working for peace and stabilization of the country to achieve the restorations of the stability reiterating the role of both elders and scholars was very important to the government to take over whole control of the country.
"We need from the Somali clans and their elders to fully support and work with the government," said president Sharif Ahmed.
"What we are feeling is only to get the clans and elders' support to the Somali government to achieve our goals. To take control of whole the country," added president Sharif
The clan elders who met the president welcomed his call and also gave consultations to the president.
The statement of the transitional Federal Government president Sharif Sheik Ahmed concerning this meeting was released while heavy shelling caused many casualties and injuries among the civilian population in the capital on Thursday.
Hawiye clan elders have strongly condemned the mortar shelling which killed over 20 civilians in Mogadishu.
Ahmed Derie Ali, the spokesman of the elders described the shelling as something intolerable and accused the warring sides in the capital of being behind the massacre of the civilians.
Remaining civilians flee from north Mogadishu (Mareeg)
Most remaining civilians in north Mogadishu have started to flee from their houses in the capital Friday after mortar shelling killed more civilians in the area.
At least 20 civilians have been killed and 40 others have been injured in heavy shelling that hit in the north part of the capital late on Friday.
Residents say they could not tolerate the endless wars between the soldiers of the government and the Islamist militants and also the heavy mortars that hit in their houses.
Most people fled from Mogadishu when the hardline cleric Sheikh Aweys declared war on the government and the African Union troops in May last year.
Hundreds of people have been killed and thousands have been displaced from their homes in Mogadishu.
Most civilians reside alongside the long road between Mogadishu and Afgoye, a town 30 km south of the capital.
More other civilians fled to neighbouring countries and most of them are in the overcrowded refugee camps of Dadab in Kenya.
Somalia's army chief escapes bomb attack (AFP)
Somalia's military chief escaped a roadside bomb attack Thursday which killed at least one soldier in the war-torn capital Mogadishu, officials and witnesses said.
The bomb exploded as newly-appointed military chief Mohamed Gele Kahiye was riding in his vehicle in southern Mogasihu.
"The roadside bomb was targeting the Somali military commander but he escaped the attack. One of his security guards was killed," police spokesman Abdulahi Hasan Barise told a press conference.
"The attack was planned by the violent terrorists who were trying to assassinate the commander."
The Al Qaeda-inspired Shebab militants claimed responsibility.
"The attack was part of efforts to eliminate the apostate commanders," said a Shebab commander who did not want to be named.
"We got information indicating that the apostate government is planning an offensive against the holy warriors, but with the help of Allah we will destroy their intentions," he added.
A witness, Abdi Elmi, said several people were injured in the blast, adding that "the government forces opened fire in all directions after the explosion."
The Shebab and its Hezb al-Islam allies have carried out scores of deadly attacks against the internationally-backed Somali transitional government and the African Union peacekeepers protecting it.
Shelling kills at least 11 in Somali capital
By Abdi Sheikh and Abdi Guled (Reuters)
Heavy fighting regularly rocks the port city, where the Western-backed government controls little more than the palace, the airport, sea port and a few streets in between.
Residents said Islamist rebels opened fire on the hilltop Villa Somalia palace on Thursday, prompting a volley of shells in return that mostly struck the Yaqshid district of northern Mogadishu.
"We have so far collected 11 dead bodies and 34 people who were injured in the shelling," Ali Muse, coordinator of the city's ambulance service, told Reuters by telephone.
"All these people were injured or killed in various districts in the north of Mogadishu. The death toll may rise because the shelling is still going on sporadically." Somalia has had no central government for 18 years, and efforts to install one have been undermined by an insurgency led by the al Shabaab rebel group, which Washington accuses of being al Qaeda's proxy in the failed Horn of Africa state.
Fighting has killed 19,000 Somalis since the start of 2007 and driven another 1.5 million from their homes, triggering one of the world's worst humanitarian emergencies.
Somalia and the year 2010 (Somalia Research Report)
Somalia features in The World in 2010 not as an emerging market but as "the worst country in the world." The World in 2010 editors passed the judgement alliteratively: "piracy, poverty and perdition, Somalia takes our unwanted prize. Calling Somalia a country is a stretch"
Three categories—mortality rate, worst corruption and riskiest businesses environments—were used to place countries in a "league of degradations."
Somalia was rated in the first two categories, and ranked first in the worst corruption category and nineteenth in the mortality rate category with a rate of 142. Sierra Leone ranked first in the mortality rate category with a rate of 262; Afghanistan ranked the second with a rate of 257. Given the two phenomena with which Somalia is associated—piracy and religious extremism—
The World in 2010 paints a bleaker picture: "The world´s most failed state , regrettably, threatens to become a bigger problem for the rest of the world."
The World in 2010
The worst country on Earth
By Leo Abruzzese (Economist)
Piracy, poverty and perdition: Somalia takes our unwanted prize
Just trying to improve
Fed up with awards for the best? The World in 2010 asked the analysts at the Economist Intelligence Unit, a sister company of The Economist, to identify the world´s worst country in the year ahead. Previous winners of this dubious honour have included (pre-2001) Afghanistan and Turkmenistan. This time, the champion is in Africa. Plagued by civil war, grinding poverty and rampant piracy, Somalia will be the world´s worst in 2010.
Calling Somalia a country is a stretch. It has a president, prime minister and parliament, but with little influence outside a few strongholds in the capital, Mogadishu. What passes for a government is protected by an African Union peacekeeping force guarding the presidential palace. Most of the country is controlled by two armed, radical Islamist factions, al-Shabab (the Youth) and Hizbul Islam (Party of Islam), which regularly battle forces loyal to the government. Both demand the imposition of strict Islamic law, in what would amount to the Talibanisation of Somalia. Al-Shabab took responsibility for suicide-bombings in Mogadishu in September that killed 17 peacekeepers; America considers the group an al-Qaeda ally.
Poor countries are often defined by their weak health, education and income measures, but conditions in Somalia are mostly too wretched to record. What little data can be gleaned are truly awful: according to the UN´s World Food Programme, more than 40% of the population need food aid to survive, and one in every five children is acutely malnourished. The constant fighting has internally displaced more than 1.5m people, with a third living in dire, makeshift camps. Aid workers have been able to supply them with less than half the daily water needed.
Somalia would be little noticed were it not for its fastest-growing industry: piracy. Somalia drapes over the tip of east Africa and into the Gulf of Aden, one of the world´s busiest shipping lanes. More than 20,000 merchant vessels pass through the Gulf each year, an inviting target for Somali pirates, who have developed a lucrative business seizing and holding ships for ransom. The International Maritime Bureau counted around 40 successful hijackings in 2008 and another 31 in the first half of 2009. Warships from the European Union, the United States and other powers now patrol the waters, but pirates have shifted their attacks farther offshore.
Somalia´s future is bleak. What little income it can muster comes from its diaspora, but remittances have slowed with the global slump. International agencies have promised more aid, but lack of security stands in the way. Peacekeepers are too few in number to make a difference. Most disturbing, many young Somalis are becoming increasingly radicalised, leaving little hope that the political situation will stabilise. The world´s most failed state, regrettably, threatens to become a bigger problem for the rest of the world.
(*) Leo Abruzzese is the editorial director, North America, Economist Intelligence Unit - Article from The World in 2010 print edition
Does Al Shabaab benefit from money remittances?
Following the foiled attempt of the Umar Farouk Abdulmattaleb to bomb an American airline midair, Peter Beaumont, foreign affairs editor at the London based Observer, highlights the possibility that money remittances from the Somali Diaspora may be used by Al Shabab.
"More than $1bn a year in remittances goes back to Somalia, [and] ... (sic) the Shabaab would not be short of money for operations," wrote Peter Beaumont in the Observer.
The humanitarian disaster which followed the closure of Al Barakat money transfer, which was later cleared of all charges, should not be forgotten, because any further choking of the Somali economy and survival money for individual families only will cause further radicalization.
But money remittances are sent to individuals, not to organisations. Since 2002 Somali owned transfer companies have been complying with money transfer regulations, and keep a data base against which they check the details of anyone sending or receiving money. Al Shabab has not levied tax on money transfer companies´ agents operating in areas it controls.
The most important point is that the Al Shabaab network apparently seems to not rely on money transfer companies at all, as recent findings of suitcases with millions of Dollars at Mogadishu's airport showed.
However, Beaumont rightly points finger at the US policies that undermined the Union of Islamic Courts that restored law and order in many parts of Southern Somalia.
Al-Qaida has changed its face and operates from a different base
By Peter Beaumont (TheObserver)
Somalia and Yemen have become the hot spots for jihadist activities and recruitment
So what, precisely, should we believe? The reality is that there have always been Islamist groups in Africa who have described themselves as being al-Qaida. While some have been more closely associated with the core of Osama bin Laden's ideology and were involved in early al-Qaida spectaculars in Africa, others have used the name as a cover for criminality.
In the past two years, however, there have been a number of significant changes in Somalia and Yemen that have contributed to the emergence of a more widespread and cohesive jihadi ideology far more closely aligned to al- Qaida's aims and agendas.
In large part – at least in Somalia – US intervention has been responsible for the radicalisation. When the Islamic Courts Union emerged in Somalia in 2006 and brought a brief period of relative calm to the country it was America that encouraged its toppling. The consequence was a splitting away of a hardline faction of the courts' militia – known as the Shabaab – who the US defined as al-Qaida allies or proxies and have targeted, including with drones.
The emergence of the Shabaab, which controls large swaths of Somalia, has coincided – if the claims of the US intelligence agencies are to be believed – with events in the "Af-Pak" theatre. Seasoned Arab al-Qaida fighters have been replaced by Central Asians and transferred to Yemen and Somalia under the guidance of its chief of external operations, Saleh al-Somali, who was killed in a drone attack in Waziristan this month.
What has also been well documented in the past few months has been the existence of an active recruitment system targeting young Somalis with US, European and Australian passports to train in camps that have sprung up in Somalia in particular. Twenty, it is believed, traveled from Minneapolis alone. Twenty more from Stockholm are also thought to have attended training camps, along with dozens of young British Somalis. Last spring it emerged that some of the four Australian citizens arrested and charged with planning to attack an army barracks had trained in Somalia.
It is not only in Somalia that it is claimed al-Qaida is reconstituting itself. In Yemen an insurgency in the remote Shabwa region backed by groups claiming loyalty to al-Qaida has provided a second regional centre. It was there, four days ago, that an al-Qaida-supporting group said it had declared war on the US.
Large questions remain. A number of those who have gone back to fight – or be recruited for training – appear to have died fighting, particularly in Somalia. And while more than $1bn a year in remittances goes back to Somalia, suggesting that the Shabaab would not be short of money for operations, it is unclear how well al-Qaida operations in both Yemen and Somalia are organised.
Equally uncertain is the scope of their agenda: whether they are more focused for now on a local, rather than international, jihad. One thing, however, is quite clear. It is that the new al-Qaida has a very different face and a different base. If the threat is as real as suggested by the attempted attack on Northwest Airlines, the West's security services will be playing catch-up.
A few months ago the story about al-Qaida was how, under pressure in Afghanistan and Pakistan, it had largely been unravelled and its operational abilities degraded. Now, after the attempted downing of a US jet bound for Detroit, the same sources – the US and UK intelligence agencies – say not only that al-Qaida is still a dangerous threat, but that it may have managed to export and reconstitute parts of its operations to Somalia and Yemen.
Puntland frees journalist without charges
By Hussein Farah (HorseedMedia)
Wednesday, the authorities of the semi autonomous region of Puntland state of Somalia, have released Mohamed Yassin Ishak a journalists, who was detained for more than 16 days without charges.
Mohamed Yassin told Horseed Media, that he was doing fine, adding he still does not know why he was arrested.
Mohamed Yassin Ishak, the Voice of America reporter in Puntland, was arrested on 21st of December 2009, after a midnight raid on his Galkacyo home by security agents. The detention appears to contravene Puntland law requiring that charges be filed within 48 hours of arrest.
Last month, the newly named Puntland´s information Minister Abdihakim Ahmed Guled, told in an interview with the BBC Somali service, that Mohamed Yassin was arrested because, he was suspected to be involved in recent unrest in Puntland. But the minister did not elaborate.
According to sources close to the security agencies, Mohamed Yassin was arrested in request by the President´s office. Still there is no word from the Presidents office.
Recently, Journalists in Puntland have seen deteriorating press freedom conditions, including detentions, censorship, harassment, and direct attacks by police officers.
In Novemer 2009, Mohamed Yassin was wounded in a police shooting. The police shot at least 15 times at Isak´s car at a checkpoint in front of the regional governor´s office in Galkayo, the Media Association of Puntland reported. Isak suffered a wound to his left arm.
Police shot at another reporter in December. An unidentified officer at Galkayo Airport opened fire on Radio Galkayo Director Hassan Jama without provocation, according to local reports. Jama, who did not know why he was targeted, said two of the shots narrowly missed him.
On Wednesday, in an open letter from The Committee to Protect Journalists called for the President of Puntland, Abdirahman Mohamed Farole, to order an immediate investigation into the shootings of Isak and Jama, to halt government-sponsored harassment and censorship, and to ensure journalists are allowed to work without threat or intimidation.
VOA: Somali stringer released from jail after 17 days (AP)
The Voice of America broadcast service said Wednesday that a Somali stringer who had been jailed without charges since late December has been released.
The VOA stringer, Mohamed Yasin Isahaq, had been held in the semiautonomous region of Puntland, the broadcaster said.
"Mr. Isahaq is an excellent journalist and we join his colleagues and his family in welcoming his release," Gwen Dillard, director of VOA's Africa Division, said in a statement from Washington.
On Dec. 20, the Somali government's Puntland Intelligence Services surrounded Isahaq's house with armed vehicles and took him into custody, VOA said.
His arrest came days after he reported a story for VOA on the plight of internally displaced Somalis in and around the southern part of Galkayo, Puntland.
In November 2009, Isahaq suffered a minor chest injury after police in Galkayo shot at his car at a police checkpoint.
The Committee to Protect Journalists has expressed concern about what it calls a "deteriorating situation" for journalists in Puntland and the rest of Somalia. CPJ's Africa Program coordinator Tom Rhodes has praised Isahaq as one of "the best journalists "working in the region.
VOA's Somali service broadcasts 3 1/2 hours of radio programming daily, seven days a week, aimed at Somalia and the rest of the Horn of Africa region.
The Voice of America, which first went on the air in 1942, is a multimedia international broadcasting service funded by the U.S. government through the Broadcasting Board of Governors.
VOA broadcasts approximately 1,500 hours of news, information, educational, and cultural programming every week to an estimated worldwide audience of more than 125 million people. Programs are produced in 45 languages and are intended exclusively for audiences outside of the United States.
Cartoonist Attacker Linked To Mogadishu Suicide Bomber
Posted By: Intellpuke
The man accused of trying to kill Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard and December's Mogadishu suicide bomber were in Sweden together, according to a Swedish newspaper, the Danish Politken reports..
The 28-year-old Somali who is charged with attempting to kill the Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard and the man suspected of being the suicide bomber who killed some 24 people in Mogadishu several weeks ago were in Sweden together last year, according to the Swedish newspaper Expressen.
The Somali believed to have been the Mogadishu bomber, who killed four government ministers in the attack on a graduation ceremony on Dec. 3, is also thought to have lived in Denmark for some time.
The Expressen report, citing sources in the Somali community in Sweden, says the two men were in the country to collect money for Somalia's al-Shabab organization, which controls much of southern Somalia.
"We are following this very closely and have extensive cooperation with the Danish Security and Intelligence Service," Sweden's Intelligence Service (SAPO) spokesman Patrik Peter tells the newspaper.
Suicide bombings have become increasingly frequent in Somalia, where the weak central government only controls a small section of the capital. There are concerns that al-Qaeda could be gaining a foothold in the lawless country, where piracy has also flourished.
The focus has been on young Danish Somalis after an ax-wielding Somali man broke into the house of Westergaard, who has lived under police protections since his caricature of the Muslim Prophet Muhammad was published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten in September 2005. His caricature, depicting the Prophet with a bomb in his turban, was one of a dozen cartoons that provoked riots and protests throughout the Muslim world.
However, Sweden also has its own problems with young ethnic Somalis who appear to be drawn to terrorist activities.
"Throughout 2009 we have raised the issue of Swedes going to Somalia to training camps. Of these, several have been found dead after violent episodes. There are currently about 10 Swedes in Somalia," says Peter.
SAPO has previously warned that young Swedes in Somalia could take part in terrorist attacks "in the near future."
Reports, news and views from the global village with an impact on Somalia -
Must Read:
Terrorism, Nature and Lessons Learned
By Muhammad Bilal Iftikhar Khan (groundreport)
Observation I
You cannot destroy liquid. Stab a knife into a glass of water and water will give way to knife. Then after some time the rusting process will start and ultimately solid knife will rust away.
But if you put fire under the glass, the water will start evaporating but will only change form. Soon glass will be empty but water will still remain same but in other form.
Lessons
You cannot defeat a liquid force by just utilizing power of muscle. The strategy of use of force is counterproductive. If you want to defeat a liquid force you need to break it at atomic and molecular level.
Al Qaeda and Taliban cannot be defeated by sheer use of Force. Lessons of Operation Khanjer have clearly taught that troop surge will be waste of time. Use of force will only help extremists. With every innocent dead they will get more support.
They are liquid force, they will give way but this giving way is not victory because soon the rusting process will start on those who fight them. It´s exactly what happened to Soviet forces.
To break this extremist force you need to break it on atomic and molecular level.
This means stop use of force which cause collateral damage.
It also means eliminate the conditions which help extremist forces.
It also means to reckon demographic and ground realities and correct the mistakes committed.
It also means winning hearts and minds of Muslims by adopting just policies in Palestine and Kashmir and Muslim Ummah in which they don´t feel losers.
It also means to respect Muslims and their choices. Don´t force dictators on masses by supporting them.
And most importantly don´t fight extremism with extremism. When a civilized person becomes extremist, he become idiot and commits stupid mistakes. When US president has announced troops surge in Afghanistan, reports are coming that al Qaeda is shifting to Yemen and Somalia.
Al Qaeda is showing better strategic thinking. They are widening the battle field and exploiting the effects of American policies. More battle fields means US and NATO to stretch more. This means dispersion of force and resources. Extremists have advantage of flexibility, where as this advantage is not enjoyed by other side. Fights against these extremists according to their own wishes have already brought global economic recession. People of our world are crushing between civilized extremists and religious extremists.
To defeat religious extremists first of all stop fighting war according to their wishes.
Please throw pre conceive ideas about each other. The amount of Islam phobic people in west and Europhobic/ west phobic people in Islamic world are the reason rationality is getting defeated and extremism weather Islamic or Western is winning.
West should forget its colonial thinking pattern. They must see non western people as equivalent. Their thinking pattern is causing their double standards which are adding fire to already tense situation.
Leaders of west have greater responsibility because they owe their wealth and advancement to East which they exploited fully when they were colonial masters. They should give a small amount of riches back by investing in their old colonies for development. Remember empty stomach and poverty forces people to crime and incubate the extremist ideologies.
Observation Number II
Water always flows from high ground towards low ground. According to Law of Nature water will not flow back to mountains. From seas and rivers it will get evaporated, form clouds and winds will push it towards mountains.
Lessons
Extremism starts from the advance nations. Palestine issue is one big example. Colonial era and treatment of people of colonies is also another example. Then western support of dictators and those disliked by their people is another example.
Recent example of Prophet´s cartoons on which Majority of west exhibited more extremism the third world extremists is another big example. In west denying Holocaust is crime but to degrade a person who have billions followers is freedom of speech. Like Bulleh Shah, the Famous Sufi Poet said "Thief is in my clock"
West should understand that a real extremist lies in their ranks. Its only third law of motion which becomes a reality in many cases.
Observation Number III
A capitalist does everything for the love of capital. Money is cold and non living that´s why those who love money become cold.
Lessons
I agree that Human are selfish by nature. In East and West ideologies are sold not for betterment of people but to achieve interests. Here Mullah sells religion. They have big Madrassas big cars etc
In west those who advocate war and advocate extremism versus extremism, have big commercial interests. Some want to sell their arms and ammunition, other have their eyes on resources.
In east we have religious extremists and in west we have economic extremists. Both exploit common man. These vulture control media and information outlets. They motivate common man to become fodder of their selfish interests. A common man in East, like his human brother in west wants an honest life with food and security and a good life. He doesn´t want war or insecurity. His leaders on other hand, weather economic, political/ religious or military, know if conflict ends how will he earn?
It´s surprising to see how thinking pattern of OBL, Ayman Al Zawahiri, Billy Graham, and Garry Fall well, GW Bush, Tony Blair, and BAL Thackeray etc is the same and on other side thinking pattern of a common man living in East or in West matches.
It´s really tough to create but very easy to destroy. Our leaders both in East and in West like to destroy not to build
Observation Number IV
If you have to walk a thousand miles or just 10 steps, 1st step counts the most.
Lessons
I am not socialist, but I agree with socialists on couple of Points. We, the citizens of World should understand how we all are being exploited by our religious, economic and political elite.
We must understand, Our God, call him Allah, God, El, Baghwan … honored us by making us humans. If we cannot become humans we can never become Muslims, Hindus or Christians. Becoming a human is best way to thank creator.
Secondly if my neighbor is not happy, I cannot become happy. We live in a globalized world where world has become a global village. If there is suffering in Palestine, I cannot run away from its effects. I know my leaders will never like conflicts and real politics to end because that´s how they earn and become rich but as human it´s my duty to elect humans not cold capitalists, and force them to formulate policies which will bring peace and prosperity not only for me but my other brethren with whom I share common ancestry and world.
Published by the government of Zimbabwe
Africom - Latest U.S. Bid to Recolonise Continent
By Tichaona Nhamoyebonde
African revolutionaries now have to sleep with one eye open because the United States of America is not stopping at anything in its bid to establish Africom, a highly-equipped US army that will be permanently resident in Africa to oversee the country's imperialist interests.
Towards the end of last year, the US government intensified its efforts to bring a permanent army to settle in Africa, dubbed the African Command (Africom) as a latest tool for the subtle recolonisation of Africa.
Just before end of last year, General William E. Garret, Commander US Army for Africa, met with defence attaches from all African embassies in Washington to lure them into selling the idea of an American army based in Africa to their governments.
Latest reports from the White House this January indicate that 75 percent of the army's establishment work has been done through a military unit based in Stuttgart, Germany, and that what is left is to get an African country to host the army and get things moving.
Liberia and Morocco have offered to host Africom while Sadc has closed out any possibility of any of its member states hosting the US army.
Other individual countries have remained quiet.
Liberia has longstanding ties with the US due to its slave history while errant Morocco, which is not a member of the African Union and does not hold elections, might want the US army to assist it to suppress any future democratic uprising.
Sadc's refusal is a small victory for the people of Africa in their struggle for total independence but the rest of the regional blocs in Africa are yet to come up with a common position. This is worrying.
The US itself wanted a more strategic country than Morocco and Liberia since the army will be the epicentre of influencing, articulating and safeguarding US foreign and economic policies.
The other danger is that Africom will open up Africa as a battleground between America and anti-US terrorist groups.
Africom is a smokescreen behind which America wants to hide its means to secure Africa's oil and other natural resources, nothing more.
African leaders must not forget that military might has been used by America and Europe again and again as the only effective way of accomplishing their agenda in ensuring that governments in each country are run by people who toe their line.
By virtue of its being resident in Africa, Africom will ensure that America has its tentacles easily reaching every African country and influencing every event to the American advantage.
By hosting the army, Africa will have sub-contracted its military independence to America and will have accepted the process that starts its recolonisation through an army that can subdue any attempts by Africa to show its own military prowess.
The major question is: Who will remove Africom once it is established? By what means?
By its origin Africom will be technically and financially superior to any African country's army and will dictate the pace for regime change in any country at will and also give depth, direction and impetus to the US natural resource exploitation scheme.
There is no doubt that as soon as the army gets operational in Africa, all the gains of independence will be reversed.
If the current leadership in Africa succumbs to the whims of the US and accept the operation of this army in Africa, they will go down in the annals of history as that generation of politicians who accepted the evil to prevail.
Even William Shakespeare would turn and twist in his grave and say: "I told you guys that it takes good men to do nothing for evil to prevail."
We must not forget that Africans, who are still smarting from colonialism-induced humiliation, subjugation, brutality and inferiority complex, do not need to be taken back to another form of colonialism, albeit subtle.
Africom has been controversial on the continent ever since former US president George W. Bush first announced it in February 2007.
African leaders must not forget that under the Barack Obama administration, US policy towards Africa and the rest of the developing world has not changed an inch. It remains militaristic and materialistic.
Officials in both the Bush and Obama administrations argue that the major objective of Africom is to professionalise security forces in key countries across Africa.
However, both administrations do not attempt to address the impact of the setting up of Africom on minority parties, governments and strong leaders considered errant or whether the US will not use Africom to promote friendly dictators.
Training and weapons programmes and arms transfers from Ukraine to Equatorial Guinea, Chad, Ethiopia and the transitional government in Somalia, clearly indicate the use of military might to maintain influence in governments in Africa, remains a priority of US foreign policy.
Ukraine's current leadership was put into power by the US under the Orange Revolution and is being given a free role to supply weaponry in African conflicts.
African leaders must show solidarity and block every move by America to set up its bases in the motherland unless they want to see a new round of colonisation.
Kwame Nkrumah, Robert Mugabe, Sam Nujoma, Nelson Mandela, Julius Nyerere, Hastings Kamuzu Banda, Kenneth Kaunda, Augustino Neto and Samora Machel, among others, will have fought liberation wars for nothing, if Africom is allowed a base in Africa.
Thousands of Africans who died in colonial prisons and in war fronts during the liberation struggles, will have shed their blood for nothing if Africa is recolonised.
Why should the current crop of African leaders accept systematic recolonisation when they have learnt a lot from colonialism, apartheid and racism? Why should the current crop of African leaders fail to stand measure for measure against the US administration and tell it straight in the face that Africa does not need a foreign army since the AU is working out its own army.
African leaders do not need prophets from Mars to know that US's fascination with oil, the war on terrorism and the military will now be centred on Africa, after that escapade in Iraq.
(*) Tichaona Nhamoyebonde is a political scientist based in Cape Town, South Africa.
Kenya deports controversial Jamaican Muslim cleric to Gambia
By Juma Kwayera (PANA)
Jamaican Muslim cleric Sheikh Abdullah al-Faizal, who has been at the centre of a deportation controversy in Kenya for almost a week, was finally deported to Gambia at his request, Kenya's Immigration Minister Ot ieno Kajwang said here Thursday at a press conference.
After Tanzanian declined Wednesday to accept back al-Faizal, who was early in the week slapped with a prohibited immigrant tag, the government had reportedly planned to deport him to lawless Somalia.
However, the move was met with stiff resistance from the Muslim leadership, with the chairman of the Muslim Human Rights Forum (Muhuri), Mr Al Amin Kimathi, accusing the government of 'renditioning' the scholar who had been invited to give lectures at various centres in the coastal town of Mombasa.
Al-Faizal, who five years ago completed a seven-year jail term in a Britain for terrorism-related activities and hate speeches, is on the international blacklist for his links with Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
His presence in Kenya heightened the often-testy relation relations between the government and religion.
The immigration minister told journalists at his office, 'We could not find an airline to ferry him straight to his home country. The only way possible could have been through the US, but the country has already made its position over the matter known â" they don't want him there.'
The departure of the cleric ended a blame-game between Kenya and Tanzania, which at times degenerated into a circus as each attempted to distance itself from the whereabouts of the scholar, who arrived Kenya from South Africa by road. He travelled through Zimbabwe, Malawi and Tanzania.
Kenya had wanted Tanzania to host al-Faizal, arguing that it was the last country he was in before arriving in Kenya.
The latter declined to accept him back and did not even allow him cross the Taveta border post, where he had entered the Kenyan territory.
The deportation is likely to be a major talking point during Friday afternoon prayers, which quite frequently turn into angry demonstrations against unpopular government decisions.
Prior to his deportation, al-Faizal had been dumped at the Jomo Kenytta International Airport.
Slave trade booms as poverty bites
By Abdullahi Jamaa (BW)
A group of young are gathered behind a makeshift structure where they have been living on the edge. They have been sitting idle for some hours. Their discussion returns to poverty, and how to overcome it. Sweats are beading on their worried foreheads.
Indeed, if there is a poverty-stricken place near Garissa Town, it is Bulla Masalani Village. The sun sets gently, leaving a cloudless sky and the first hints of cool air begin to blow through the thatched houses that make most homes.
"The sun rises everyday and it sets everyday, and like that sun, poverty rises here everyday, making us a lost generation," says a 20-year-old youth we shall call Sheikh.
Seek asylum
"The only option now is to move out of this county and seek asylum." For months Sheikh has been weighing the possibility of making the long journey to Africa´s biggest economy: South Africa. "We know that the journey is dangerous, but I cannot allow myself to be consumed by poverty. I better die elsewhere.
"We cannot further our education here, we cannot do business, we cannot get meals, so why should we stay in this horrible condition," he asks the man who completed secondary school two years ago. He has borrowed the money required for the voyage South, now he has only few weeks the journey with human traffickers this month.
"Many friends and relatives have already gone, some died on the way and others are surviving. The one important thing is to run away from Kenya," he says. Human trafficking business in the North Eastern region is getting bolder with every passing day.
"Of course we will have to seek better life elsewhere. We are concerned. Living conditions are getting worse by the day" says, Ahmed 19. Human traffickers have established a strong network to make money from those who are fleeing the sheer crumbling economy and the shocking unemployment that has ravaged most of Kenyan youth.
And here in the North, the scale of human trafficking is alarming. "Trafficking of people is very rampant here. It is a multi-million dollar business that is getting bold in much of the Great lakes and Horn of Africa region," says Mr Abdullahi Hirsi, the executive director of Northern Heritage, a local aid agency in Garissa.
"In the past few years alone, because of droughts, we have seen a huge number of economic refugees targeted by human traffickers with a promise of better life elsewhere," he said. A spot-check in Garissa, Wajir and Mandera shows that the illegal business is conducted daily, final arrangements done in Nairobi.
"In Garissa, at least five persons are trafficked in each of the more than 10 buses plying the route to Nairobi. You can imagine the number of people on sale everyday — more than 50," says an anti-trafficking activist who sought anonymity due to security reasons. "This depicts a completely worrying picture."
Nairobi´s´ Eastleigh has been the hub of the internationally denounced trade. Economic and conflict refugees from Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Kenya are sold in the sprawling commercial centre to move to other countries. "Eastleigh is a connection point for most victims. It is where the journey starts and it is where most monies exchange hands," says Amina Kinsi of Ngazi Moja Foundation, a lobby group in Eastleigh.
According to a recent report released by US State Department in June 2009, Kenya is a source, transit and a destination country for men, women and children trafficked for the purpose of better lives, forced labour and sexual exploitation. Victims take tedious routes to South Africa and sometimes to some European countries. Traffickers make millions of dollars every month by arranging and directing the journey to South Africa. Some victims end their travels with shocking deaths.
The cheapest illegal migration goes well over $600 while the most expensive takes more than $2,000 for a journey that sometimes takes several months. "Sometimes, you become stranded in a town where you know no one. I spent more than a week in Zambia as I had run out of cash," said Farah, who returned from South Africa at the height of Xenophobia against Somalis.
"I reached Johannesburg after more than three weeks of journeying. It was the worst journey ever for me." The cartel of human traffickers usually collect per-head fee at every entry point of these countries. "Traffickers use unmanned border towns, often meeting with little police and security restrictions," says Mr Hirsi of Northern Heritage.
Some of this money is usually meant to pay kickbacks to Immigration officials and border police.
"We travelled in group of about 10. At every point we paid about $100. If you don´t have enough money, you are left alone and you may get lost. That could mean losing your money or even your life," says Farah.
The International Organization for Migration says women and girls are vulnerable to sexual abuse including rapes by even their own traffickers. Corruption among public officers has made life easy for benefiting from the sale of stricken villagers. Anti-trafficking NGOs in North Eastern say corrupt police officers are part and parcel of the business. Intelligence officers in the province agree. The authorities are incapable of changing things to stop the slave trade.
However, the North Eastern PC James Ole Serian says the government is making efforts to investigate and prosecute officials suspected of involvement. "We are having names of about seven individuals allegedly taking part in the illegal trade of selling people. We are investigating their case and we will obviously arraign them in court," he says.
Pressure groups are saying that bus companies from the region to the capital Nairobi traffic even young children. "Bus conductors and some police officers on major roadblocks are major players," says an activist. But as public transport gets tough for those involved in the business, the provincial authorities say these thieves have now resorted to more unlikely means.
Over the past few months, boats and dhows have been used to transport victims across River Tana. More are reportedly using government vehicles that are not searched by police.
Groups campaigning
Groups campaigning against the illegal trade are worried that trafficking industry continues to be a profitable one in much of the Horn, but there is misery involved. An assessment carried out by the International Organization for Migration in the target regions of Kenya establishes poverty and the search for livelihood as key factors that render people vulnerable to trafficking.
Over the years, trafficking has grown a well organised crime that operates on a global scale, with an estimated trade value of $32 billion a year. Lack of global action and accords to prevent the trade is one key problem.
"In Kenya for instance, there are no immediate laws that can be used to address this problems. Some laws and amendments are urgently needed to stop the vice," says Mr Hirsi. "You can realise the state of our lives. We are seeing traffickers are making money from people like us but we have accepted ourselves to be trafficked just to reach greener pastures," Sheikh finally says.
Despite need for more Western aid, US faces few options in Yemen
By France 24
Despite Yemen's long-running requests for more international aid to combat extremism, the US and other Western powers face limited options for counter-terrorism operations in the country.
Longtime concerns over the activities of Islamist militants in Yemen were again thrown into the spotlight when al Qaeda´s branch in the country claimed responsibility for a failed attack on Christmas Day in which a Nigerian national tried to blow up a US-bound passenger plane over Detroit.
In recent weeks, Yemeni forces have stepped up operations against militants based in the country, launching raids on suspected al Qaeda targets in areas north of the capital, Sanaa, on December 17 and 24, killing more than 60 militants. Two more suspected Islamists were killed in Monday clashes as Yemeni forces searched the Arhab region for suspected al Qaeda leader Mohammed al-Hanq, who managed to flee the fighting. Thousands of troops have been mobilised against al Qaeda over the past three days.
The scale of the militant threat Yemen is facing is not lost on the West, with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warning this week that the trouble brewing in the country would have consequences across the globe.
"The instability in Yemen is a threat to regional stability and even global stability," Clinton told journalists after Monday talks with Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem bin Jabr al-Thani.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown called last week for an international conference on extremism and security threats originating in Yemen to be held on January 28 in London.
Western help on terrorism ´inadequate´
But even as Yemen tries to disrupt al Qaeda´s terrorist networks in the country, it faces an additional military threat from Shiite fighters in the north and political fracture in the south as an independence movement gains momentum.
Yemeni officials have repeatedly requested Western aid in the country´s counter-terrorism efforts, but that help has been slow in coming despite the widespread view that Yemen has become a safe haven where militants can plot attacks to be carried out beyond its borders.
Foreign Minister Abubakr al-Qirbi reiterated on Monday that Yemen needs help to tackle its militants and emphasised that it is in the global interest that it succeed. "Certainly there is a problem with al Qaeda and an interest among the international community in its activities," Qirbi said while on a visit to Qatar. "Yemen is capable of confronting these groups, but it needs international aid to form and train anti-terrorist units, as well as economic aid."
In an interview last week with the BBC, Qirbi singled out the United States, Britain and the larger European Union, saying more assistance from them would be needed if Yemen is to bring its militants to heel.
"There is some support that is coming, but I must say it is inadequate," he told the broadcaster. "We need more training, we have to expand our counter-terrorism units, and this means providing them with the necessary military equipment and ways of transportation."
"We are very short of helicopters," he added.
US President Barack Obama´s counter-terrorism adviser, John Brennan, said on Sunday that the United States was in a "determined and concerted effort" to help fund Yemen's counter-terrorism efforts.
A January 3 statement from Brown's office said that Britain and the United States had agreed to fund counter-terrorism efforts in Yemen and boost peacekeeping in Somalia. "Downing Street and the White House have agreed to intensify joint US-UK work to tackle the emerging terrorist threat from both Yemen and Somalia in the wake of the failed Detroit terror plot," the statement said.
Diplomatic efforts have also been stepped up, with the top US commander in the region, General David Petraeus, meeting Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh on Saturday to, among other things, congratulate the Yemeni leader "for the success of the operations" against Al-Qaeda and reaffirm Washington's support for Yemen in its efforts to fight terrorism.
Total US development and security assistance to Yemen is expected to rise to $63 million in the 2010 fiscal year, up from $40.3 million dollars in 2009, according to the State Department. The Pentagon has been helping train and equip Yemeni security forces since 2006.
No US military option?
Beyond boosting aid to the Yemeni government, however, Washington´s options may be limited. US military action could prove counterproductive for a US ally whose weak government presides over a population where anti-American sentiment is rife.
The addition of a US troop presence in Yemen would be complicated by geography, with Washington´s longtime ally Saudi Arabia at risk of finding itself with US troops at its frontiers with both Yemen to the south and Iraq to the north -- a prospect that is likely to prove politically unpopular.
"American military cannot deploy in Yemen the way they have been able to in Iraq and Afghanistan," says Ginny Hill, director of the Yemen Forum at London-based think tank Chatham House. "They are going to have to find a way to adapt to the specific location of Yemen."
Asked what the reaction in Yemen would be to a US troop incursion aimed at routing al Qaeda, Yemen´s ambassador to France, Khaled Ismail al Akwah, was unequivocal.
"Look, no one sends any troops to a sovereign country," al Akwah told FRANCE 24. Instead, he said, "there is cooperation between countries, there is exchange of information and there is an exchange of intelligence information".
Sending US troops would be "like an invasion", Akwah said. "I don´t think this is in anybody´s mind."
But if faced with a US request to host troops, would Yemen welcome the military support?
"I think Yemen is capable of facing the challenges it is facing at the moment, provided they [are] given the adequate technology and assistance," al Akwah said.
Mathieu Guidère, a professor at the University of Geneva and co-author of the Al Qaeda Recruitment Manual (Le Manuel de Recrutement d´Al-Qaida) agreed that there is no US military option in Yemen. "It would be a catastrophe for all the region," he said.
Guidère says the international community must pursue a two-pronged strategy, tackling the terrorist threat and the trend toward radicalisation simultaneously.
To counter the radicalisation of the population, he says solving Yemen´s economic problems, better education and ensuring water security are key. But counteracting the terrorist threat is a question of addressing ideological and political issues, including the country´s widespread corruption.
Political analyst Khaled al Haroji agreed that solving the country´s systemic economic problems must be part of any successful counter-terrorism strategy. "The economic problems faced by Yemen, and the high rate of unemployment and poverty, is a suitable breeding ground for al Qaeda," al Haroji told FRANCE 24. "Many young Yemenis are frustrated, and will turn to this organisation."
With al-Qaeda in Yemen, why are we in Afghanistan?
By Joel Brinkley (McClatchy-TNS)
Al-Qaeda in Yemen has grown so strong and adept that the United States, Britain, France, Germany and Japan were forced to close their embassies in Sanaa, Yemen, this week - so seriously are they taking al-Qaeda's "live and active threat," as John Brennan, the White House counter-terrorism adviser, put it. "They've grown in strength."
Ten days earlier, it was able to send a man to the United States on a mission to blow up an airplane. He almost succeeded. What does all of that say? It says to me: Why on Earth is the U.S. sending 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan?
Speaking to cadets at West Point last month, Obama said: "I am convinced that our security is at stake in Afghanistan and Pakistan. This is the epicenter of the violent extremism practiced by al-Qaeda. It is from here that we were attacked on 9/11, and it is from here that new attacks are being plotted as I speak."
Actually, as he spoke, al-Qaeda in Yemen was plotting that airliner attack. It failed, but set off weeks of familiar recrimination and confession. At the very same time, fatalities in Afghanistan were mounting and set a record for the entire period of the West's engagement there, since October 2001. Seven Central Intelligence Agency officers were killed last week. One-third of all Americans killed in Afghanistan died during 2009. The number of British fatalities doubled.
Taliban fighters killed those soldiers. The United States and NATO are fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan, not al-Qaeda, which now has only a negligible presence - fewer than 100 men, the U.S. says.
Certainly the Taliban is a despicable, radical group, intent on enforcing the most extreme interpretation of Islamic law, turning women into uneducated chattel and men into cowed adherents. But has anyone ever shown evidence that the Taliban are a direct threat to the United States or the West? No.
Certainly the Taliban gave cover to al-Qaeda in Afghanistan prior to October 2001, and the two groups are allies of sorts in the tribal regions of western Pakistan now. But Matthew Hoh, a State Department officer stationed in Afghanistan, resigned last fall, upset over the conduct of the war - particularly what he called the conflation of the Taliban with al-Qaeda, he told numerous interviewers.
"Al-Qaeda is a worldwide organization with an apocalyptic vision to establish an Islamic caliphate throughout the world," he told the New York Post. "The Taliban's views are very local. They are not in cahoots. They have separate goals."
The fear, of course, is that if allowed to retake power in Afghanistan, the Taliban would give al-Qaeda its old haven once again. Osama bin Laden could leave his cave and climb down from the mountains. Perhaps. But this time the United States would be watching closely. If bin Laden resurfaced, he would almost certainly be captured or killed.
So what exactly are we fighting for - particularly since we now know that al-Qaeda has several other safe havens from which is it able to carry out deadly attacks. Pakistan, Somalia, Indonesia - and Yemen. Don't forget: Al-Qaeda in Yemen attacked the USS Cole off the southern city of Aden 10 years ago, killing 17 U.S. servicemen.
"The attack on the USS Cole should have been the loudest wake-up call against al-Qaeda," Abdul Karim al-Iriyani, a former prime minister of Yemen, remarked last week.
Of course, Pakistan also remains an important headquarters. Last fall, FBI agents in New York arrested Najibullah Zazi and his father on charges of planning a terror attack in the United States using sophisticated homemade bombs. The two received extensive instruction in bomb making and terrorist strategies from al-Qaeda - at a training camp in Pakistan.
Hoh, the former American diplomat, noted that a terrorist operative can plan an attack from almost anywhere. All he needs is an Internet connection, as was the case for the logistician behind the Sept. 11 attacks. He planned everything from a small apartment in Hamburg, Germany.
Still, Yemen offers a congenial location for a terrorist headquarters. Its people live in abject poverty; the average annual income is $870. Only 59 percent of the adult population can read and write. Only one person of every 100 uses the Internet. All of that presents fertile ground for al-Qaeda recruiters so that, now, Yemen has far more al-Qaeda operatives than Afghanistan, the White House says.
So, besides incurring ever-more casualties, what's the U.S. doing in Afghanistan?
(*) Joel Brinkley is a former Pulitzer Prize-winning foreign correspondent for The New York Times and now a professor of journalism at Stanford University.
The Yemen Hidden Agenda:
Behind the Al-Qaeda Scenarios, A Strategic Oil Transit Chokepoint
By F. William Engdahl (Global Research)
On December 25 US authorities arrested a Nigerian named Abdulmutallab aboard a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Detroit on charges of having tried to blow up the plane with smuggled explosives. Since then reports have been broadcast from CNN, the New York Times and other sources that he was "suspected" of having been trained in Yemen for his terror mission. What the world has been subjected to since is the emergence of a new target for the US ´War on Terror,´ namely a desolate state on the Arabian Peninsula, Yemen. A closer look at the background suggests the Pentagon and US intelligence have a hidden agenda in Yemen.
For some months the world has seen a steady escalation of US military involvement in Yemen, a dismally poor land adjacent to Saudi Arabia on its north, the Red Sea on its west, the Gulf of Aden on its south, opening to the Arabian Sea, overlooking another desolate land that has been in the headlines of late, Somalia. The evidence suggests that the Pentagon and US intelligence are moving to militarize a strategic chokepoint for the world´s oil flows, Bab el-Mandab, and using the Somalia piracy incident, together with claims of a new Al Qaeda threat arising from Yemen, to militarize one of the world´s most important oil transport routes. In addition, undeveloped petroleum reserves in the territory between Yemen and Saudi Arabia are reportedly among the world´s largest.
The 23-year-old Nigerian man charged with the failed bomb attempt, Abdulmutallab, reportedly has been talking, claiming he was sent on his mission by Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), based in Yemen. This has conveniently turned the world´s attention on Yemen as a new center of the alleged Al Qaeda terror organization.
Notably, Bruce Riedel, a 30-year CIA veteran who advised President Obama on the policy leading to the Afghan troop surge, wrote in his blog of the alleged ties of the Detroit bomber to Yemen, "The attempt to destroy Northwest Airlines Flight 253 en route from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas Day underscores the growing ambition of Al Qaeda's Yemen franchise, which has grown from a largely Yemeni agenda to become a player in the global Islamic jihad in the last year…The weak Yemeni government of President Ali Abdallah Salih, which has never fully controlled the country and now faces a host of growing problems, will need significant American support to defeat AQAP."[1].
Some basic Yemen geopolitics
Before we can say much about the latest incident, it is useful to look more closely at the Yemen situation. Here several things stand out as peculiar when stacked against Washington´s claims about a resurgent Al Qaeda organization in the Arabian Peninsula.
In early 2009 the chess pieces on the Yemeni board began to move. Tariq al-Fadhli, a former jihadist leader originally from South Yemen, broke a 15 year alliance with the Yemeni government of President Ali Abdullah Saleh and announced he was joining the broad-based opposition coalition known as the Southern Movement (SM). Al-Fadhli had been a member of the Mujahideen movement in Afghanistan in the late 1980´s. His break with the government was reported in Arab and Yemeni media in April 2009. Al-Fadhli´s break with the Yemen dictatorship gave new power to the Southern Movement (SM). He has since become a leading figure in the alliance.
Yemen itself is a synthetic amalgam created after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990, when the southern Peoples´ Democratic Republic of Yemen (PDRY) lost its main foreign sponsor.
Unification of the northern Yemen Arab Republic and the southern PDRY state led to a short-lived optimism that ended in a brief civil war in 1994, as southern army factions organized a revolt against what they saw as the corrupt crony state rule of northern President Ali Abdullah Saleh.
President Saleh has held a one-man rule since 1978, first as President of North Yemen (the Yemen Arab Republic) and since 1990 as President of the unified new Yemen. The southern army revolt failed as Saleh enlisted al-Fadhli and other Yemeni Salafists, followers of a conservative interpretation of Islam, and jihadists to fight the formerly Marxist forces of the Yemen Socialist Party in the south.
Before 1990, Washington and the Saudi Kingdom backed and supported Saleh and his policy of Islamization as a bid to contain the communist south.[2] Since then Saleh has relied on a strong Salafist-jihadi movement to retain a one-man dictatorial rule. The break with Saleh by al-Fadhli and his joining the southern opposition group with his former socialist foes marked a major setback for Saleh.
Soon after al-Fadhli joined the Southern Movement coalition, on April 28, 2009 protests in the southern Yemeni provinces of Lahj, Dalea and Hadramout intensified. There were demonstrations by tens of thousands of dismissed military personnel and civil servants demanding better pay and benefits, demonstrations that had been taking place in growing numbers since 2006. The April demonstrations included for the first time a public appearance by al-Fadhli. His appearance served to change a long moribund southern socialist movement into a broader nationalist campaign. It also galvanized President Saleh, who then called on Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Cooperation Council states for help, warning that the entire Arabian Peninsula would suffer the consequences.
Complicating the picture in what some call a failed state, in the north Saleh faces an al-Houthi Zaydi Shi´ite rebellion. On September 11, 2009, in an Al-Jazeera TV interview, Saleh accused Iraq´s Shi´ite opposition leader, Muqtada al-Sadr, and also Iran, of backing the north Yemen Shi´ite Houthist rebels in an Al-Jazeera TV interview. Yemen´s Saleh declared, "We cannot accuse the Iranian official side, but the Iranians are contacting us, saying that they are prepared for a mediation. This means that the Iranians have contacts with them [the Houthists], given that they want to mediate between the Yemeni government and them. Also, Muqtada al-Sadr in al-Najaf in Iraq is asking that he be accepted as a mediator. This means they have a link."[3]
Yemen authorities claim they have seized caches of weapons made in Iran, while the Houthists claim to have captured Yemeni equipment with Saudi Arabian markings, accusing Sana´a (the capital of Yemen and site of the US Embassy) of acting as a Saudi proxy. Iran has rejected claims that Iranian weapons were found in north Yemen, calling claims of support to the rebels as baseless. [4]
What about Al Qaeda?
The picture that emerges is one of a desperate US-backed dictator, Yemen´s President Saleh, increasingly losing control after two decades as despotic ruler of the unified Yemen. Economic conditions in the country took a drastic downward slide in 2008 when world oil prices collapsed. Some 70% of the state revenues derive from Yemen´s oil sales. The central government of Saleh sits in former North Yemen in Sana´a, while the oil is in former South Yemen. Yet Saleh controls the oil revenue flows. Lack of oil revenue has made Saleh´s usual option of buying off opposition groups all but impossible.
Into this chaotic domestic picture comes the January 2009 announcement, prominently featured in select Internet websites, that Al Qaeda, the alleged global terrorist organization created by the late CIA-trained Saudi, Osama bin Laden, has opened a major new branch in Yemen for both Yemen and Saudi operations.
Al Qaeda in Yemen released a statement through online jihadist forums Jan. 20, 2009 from the group´s leader Nasir al-Wahayshi, announcing formation of a single al Qaeda group for the Arabian Peninsula under his command. According to al-Wahayshi, the new group, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, would consist of his former Al Qaeda in Yemen, as well as members of the defunct Saudi Al Qaeda group. The press release claimed, interestingly enough, that a Saudi national, a former Guantanamo detainee (Number 372), Abu-Sayyaf al-Shihri, would serve as al-Wahayshi´s deputy.
Days later an online video from al-Wahayshi appeared under the alarming title, "We Start from Here and We Will Meet at al-Aqsa." Al-Aqsa refers to the al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem that Jews know as Temple Mount, the site of the destroyed Temple of Solomon, which Muslims call Al Haram Al Sharif. The video threatens Muslim leaders -- including Yemeni´s President Saleh, the Saudi royal family, and Egyptian President Mubarak -- and promises to take the jihad from Yemen to Israel to "liberate" Muslim holy sites and Gaza, something that would likely detonate World War III if anyone were mad enough to do it.
Also in that video, in addition to former Guantanamo inmate al-Shihri, is a statement from Abu-al-Harith Muhammad al-Awfi, identified as a field commander in the video, and allegedly former Guantanamo detainee 333. As it is well-established that torture methods are worthless to obtain truthful confessions, some have speculated that the real goal of CIA and Pentagon interrogators at Guantanamo prison since September 2001, has been to use brutal techniques to train or recruit sleeper terrorists who can be activated on command by US intelligence, a charge difficult to prove or disprove. The presence of two such high-ranking Guantanamo graduates in the new Yemen-based Al Qaeda is certainly ground for questioning.
Al Qaeda in Yemen is apparently anathema to al-Fadhli and the enlarged mass-based Southern Movement. In an interview, al-Fadhli declared, "I have strong relations with all of the jihadists in the north and the south and everywhere, but not with al-Qaeda."[5] That has not hindered Saleh from claiming the Southern Movement and al Qaeda are one and the same, a convenient way to insure backing from Washington.
According to US intelligence reports, there are a grand total of perhaps 200 Al Qaeda members in southern Yemen. [6]
Al-Fadhli gave an interview distancing himself from al Qaeda in May 2009, declaring, "We [in South Yemen] have been invaded 15 years ago and we are under a vicious occupation. So we are busy with our cause and we do not look at any other cause in the world. We want our independence and to put an end to this occupation."[7] Conveniently, the same day, Al Qaeda made a large profile declaring its support for southern Yemen´s cause.
On May 14, in an audiotape released on the internet, al-Wahayshi, leader of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, expressed sympathy with the people of the southern provinces and their attempt to defend themselves against their "oppression," declaring, "What is happening in Lahaj, Dhali, Abyan and Hadramaut and the other southern provinces cannot be approved. We have to support and help [the southerners]." He promised retaliation: "The oppression against you will not pass without punishment… the killing of Muslims in the streets is an unjustified major crime." [8]
The curious emergence of a tiny but well-publicized al Qaeda in southern Yemen amid what observers call a broad-based popular-based Southern Movement front that eschews the radical global agenda of al Qaeda, serves to give the Pentagon a kind of casus belli to escalate US military operations in the strategic region.
Indeed, after declaring that the Yemen internal strife was Yemen´s own affair, President Obama ordered air strikes in Yemen. The Pentagon claimed its attacks on December 17 and 24 killed three key al Qaeda leaders but no evidence has yet proven this. Now the Christmas Day Detroit bomber drama gives new life to Washington´s "War on Terror" campaign in Yemen. Obama has now offered military assistance to the Saleh Yemen government.
Somali Pirates escalate as if on cue
As if on cue, at the same time CNN headlines broadcast new terror threats from Yemen, the long-running Somalia pirate attacks on commercial shipping in the same Gulf of Aden and Arabian Sea across from southern Yemen escalated dramatically after having been reduced by multinational ship patrols.
On December 29, Moscow´s RAI Novosti reported that Somali pirates seized a Greek cargo vessel in the Gulf of Aden off Somalia's coast. Earlier the same day a British-flagged chemical tanker and its 26 crew were also seized in the Gulf of Aden. In a sign of sophisticated skills in using western media, pirate commander Mohamed Shakir told the British newspaper The Times by phone, "We have hijacked a ship with [a] British flag in the Gulf of Aden late yesterday." The US intelligence brief, Stratfor, reports that The Times, owned by neo-conservative financial backer, Rupert Murdoch, is sometimes used by Israeli intelligence to plant useful stories.
The two latest events brought a record number of attacks and hijackings for 2009. As of December 22, attacks by Somali pirates in the Gulf of Aden and the east coast of Somalia numbered 174, with 35 vessels hijacked and 587 crew taken hostage so far in 2009, almost all successful pirate activity, according to the International Maritime Bureau's Piracy Reporting Center. The open question is, who is providing the Somali "pirates" with arms and logistics sufficient to elude international patrols from numerous nations?
Notably, on January 3, President Saleh got a phone call from Somali president Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed in which he briefed president Saleh on latest developments in Somalia. Sheikh Sharif, whose own base in Mogadishu is so weak he is sometimes referred to as President of Mogadishu Airport, told Saleh he would share information with Saleh about any terror activities that might be launched from Somali territories targeting stability and security of Yemen and the region.
The Oil chokepoint and other oily affairs
The strategic significance of the region between Yemen and Somalia becomes the point of geopolitical interest. It is the site of Bab el-Mandab, one of what the US Government lists as seven strategic world oil shipping chokepoints. The US Government Energy Information Agency states that "closure of the Bab el-Mandab could keep tankers from the Persian Gulf from reaching the Suez Canal/Sumed pipeline complex, diverting them around the southern tip of Africa. The Strait of Bab el-Mandab is a chokepoint between the horn of Africa and the Middle East, and a strategic link between the Mediterranean Sea and Indian Ocean." [9]
Bab el-Mandab, between Yemen, Djibouti, and Eritrea connects the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea. Oil and other exports from the Persian Gulf must pass through Bab el-Mandab before entering the Suez Canal. In 2006, the Energy Department in Washington reported that an estimated 3.3 million barrels a day of oil flowed through this narrow waterway to Europe, the United States, and Asia. Most oil, or some 2.1 million barrels a day, goes north through the Bab el-Mandab to the Suez/Sumed complex into the Mediterranean.
An excuse for a US or NATO militarization of the waters around Bab el-Mandab would give Washington another major link in its pursuit of control of the seven most critical oil chokepoints around the world, a major part of any future US strategy aimed at denying oil flows to China, the EU or any region or country that opposes US policy. Given that significant flows of Saudi oil pass through Bab el-Mandab, a US military control there would serve to deter the Saudi Kingdom from becoming serious about transacting future oil sales with China or others no longer in dollars, as was recently reported by UK Independent journalist Robert Fisk.
It would also be in a position to threaten China´s oil transport from Port Sudan on the Red Sea just north of Bab el-Mandab, a major lifeline in China´s national energy needs.
In addition to its geopolitical position as a major global oil transit chokepoint, Yemen is reported to hold some of the world´s greatest untapped oil reserves. Yemen´s Masila Basin and Shabwa Basin are reported by international oil companies to contain "world class discoveries."[10]
France´s Total and several smaller international oil companies are engaged in developing Yemen´s oil production. Some fifteen years ago I was told in a private meeting with a well-informed Washington insider that Yemen contained "enough undeveloped oil to fill the oil demand of the entire world for the next fifty years." Perhaps there is more to Washington´s recent Yemen concern than a rag-tag al Qaeda whose very existence as a global terror organization has been doubted by seasoned Islamic experts.
F. William Engdahl is the author of Full Spectrum Dominance: Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order
Notes
1. Bruce Riedel, The Menace of Yemen, December 31, 2009, accessed in http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-12-31/the-menace-of-yemen/?cid=tag:all1.
2. Stratfor, Yemen: Intensifying Problems for the Government, May 7, 2009.
3. Cited in Terrorism Monitor, Yemen President Accuses Iraq´s Sadrists of Backing the Houthi Insurgency, Jamestown Foundation, Volume: 7 Issue: 28, September 17, 2009.
4. NewsYemen, September 8, 2009; Yemen Observer, September 10, 2009.
5. Albaidanew.com, May 14, 2009, cited in Jamestown Foundation, op.cit.
6. Abigail Hauslohner, Despite U.S. Aid, Yemen Faces Growing al-Qaeda Threat, Time, December 22, 2009, accessed in www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1949324,00.html#ixzz0be0NL7Cv.
7. Tariq al Fadhli, in Al-Sharq al-Awsat, May 14, 2009, cited in Jamestown Foundation, op. cit.
8. al-Wahayshi interview, al Jazeera, May 14, 2009.
9. US Government, Department of Energy, Energy Information Administration, Bab el-Mandab, accessed in http://www.eia.doe.gov/cabs/World_Oil_Transit_Chokepoints/Full.html.
10 Adelphi Energy, Yemen Exploration Blocks 7 & 74, accessed in http://www.adelphienergy.com.au/projects/Proj_Yemen.php.
F. William Engdahl is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by F. William Engdahl
"It is a further verification of the hypothesis that whenever the U.S. intervenes and does not allow an Islamic government establish its base, this causes a mass of young people, Somalis, Yemenis, organizations seeking to take retaliatory measures." says American sociologist and author, Prof. James Petras.
Yemen rejects U.S. intervention in Qaeda fight
By Cynthia Johnston (Reuters)
Yemen, hunting al Qaeda within its borders, believes its own security forces must fight militants on its territory and rejects any direct U.S. intervention, the foreign minister said.
Yemen, the poorest Arab country, was thrust into the foreground of the U.S.-led war against Islamist militants after a Yemen-based wing of al Qaeda said it was behind a Christmas Day attempt to bomb a U.S.-bound plane.
Asked by CNN whether Yemen would accept direct U.S. intervention, Foreign Minister Abubakr al-Qirbi said: "No, I don't think we will accept that. I think the U.S., as well, have learned from Afghanistan and Iraq and other places that direct intervention can be self-defeating.
"We think this is the priority and the responsibility of our security forces and the army," Qirbi told the U.S. news channel.
Yemeni authorities launched an operation this week to root out al Qaeda militants who they said were behind threats that forced Western embassies to close.
The raid, which killed two militants, allayed U.S. concerns and allowing its heavily fortified mission to reopen.
"What we need from the United States and other partners is to build our capability to provide us with the technical know-how, with the equipment, with the intelligence information and with the firepower," Qirbi said.
Yemen has sent troops to take part in a campaign against al Qaeda in three provinces over the past four days. One security source said forces had set up extra checkpoints on main roads.
Yemeni forces surrounded a suspected a Qaeda regional leader near the capital on Wednesday, and have captured eight rank-and-file al Qaeda militants in recent days, including three wounded in Monday's raid, security sources said.
Multiple Points
Placed strategically on the Arabian Peninsula's southern rim, Yemen is trying to fight a threat from resurgent al Qaeda fighters while a Shi'ite revolt rages in the north and separatist sentiment simmers in the south.
"I think our thought was that maybe we should spare al Qaeda in the last year because of the confrontation in the south and with the Houthis (rebels). But al Qaeda took advantage of that," Qirbi said, adding that the militant network had tried to make inroads with northern rebels and southern separatists.
"Then they went even further to arrange for some suicidal attacks in Sanaa. And this is why it was important that our security forces should take action against them," he added.
The West and Saudi Arabia fear al Qaeda will take advantage of Yemen's instability to spread its operations to the neighbouring kingdom, the world's biggest oil exporter, and beyond. Yemen is a small oil producer.
Yemen, with shrinking oil reserves, a water crisis and fast-growing population, has stepped up security on its coast to block militants from reaching its shores from Somalia. Qirbi said there were about 200 to 300 al Qaeda operatives in Yemen.
"How many of them are going to entertain terrorist attacks is something that is obviously of concern to us. This is why we always stress the importance of cooperation with United States and other countries in the region," he said.
Yemeni officials acknowledge the need for U.S. help with counter-terrorism, but say the government also lacks resources to tackle the poverty that widens al Qaeda's recruiting pool.
Defence and counter-terrorism officials say Washington has been quietly supplying military equipment, intelligence and training to Yemen to root out suspected al Qaeda hide-outs.
Civil war and lawlessness have turned Yemen into an alternative base for al Qaeda, which U.S. officials say has been largely pushed out of Afghanistan and is under military pressure from the Pakistani army in bordering tribal areas.
Obama's War on Yemen
By Stephen Lendman (*)
Besides waging direct or proxy wars on multiple fronts in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, the Philippines, Sudan, Eastern Congo, elsewhere in Africa, and likely to erupt almost anywhere at any time, Yemen is now a new front in America's "war on terror" under a president, who as a candidate, promised diplomacy, not conflict, if elected.
In 2008, he told the Boston Globe that:
"The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation."
None exists, yet he's done the opposite and much more. He:
reinvented a "Cold War" with Russia;
is encircling it and China with military bases, and proceeding with provocative plans to install interceptor missiles in Poland (for offense, not defense) and advanced tracking radar in the Czech Republic;
escalated war in Afghanistan;
appointed a hired gun assassin to lead it, General Stanley McChrystal, infamous for committing war crime atrocities as former head of the Pentagon's Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC);
authorized death squad assaults to pursue it, including extrajudicial assassinations, torture, and indiscriminate bombing of Afghan communities without regard for civilian lives;
expanded the war into Pakistan and now to Yemen;
is militarizing Latin America using Colombia and the Dutch islands of Aruba and Curazao to fly unmanned surveillance/attack drones over Venezuela and perhaps elsewhere in the region;
plans to use Colombian insurgents to commit "false positive" border incidents blaming Venezuela as a pretext for a retaliatory attack, supported, of course, by Washington as a way to target and perhaps remove Hugo Chavez;
failed to subvert Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's reelection; continues destabilization tactics for regime change; and may, preemptively without cause, attack Iran's nuclear facilities;
ousted the democratically elected Honduran president, installing a fascist regime to replace him;
supports the worst of Israeli war crimes and oppression against Palestinians;
governs America under police state laws to resist unrest if it arises in the wake of outlandish administration policies; and according to some
plans a major false flag US attack to enlist popular support, divert attention from the deepening economic crisis, and provide a pretext for new fronts in the "war on terror" with unlimited funding to pursue them at the expense of neglected homeland needs.
Target Yemen
Journalist Patrick Cockburn calls Yemen:
"a dangerous place. Wonderfully beautiful, the mountainous north of the country is guerrilla paradise. The Yemenis are exceptionally hospitable....humorous, sociable and democratic, infinitely preferable as company to the arrogant ignorant playboys of the (rich regional) oil states."
Sana'a is the capital, home to the central government and largest city, an ancient one dating back to the 6th century BC Sabaean dynasty. However, it's power is limited, given the strength of tribes, clans, and influential families in a society very much a gun culture and prone to direct action.
On average, Yemenis own three guns per person in a nation of 21 million people, including one or more automatic weapons, like an AK-47 as well as heavier arms. Yemeni Professor Ahmed al-Kibsi once told a British reporter: "Just as you have your tie, the Yemeni will carry his gun," and isn't at all shy about using it.
As a result, Cockburn says "Yemen has all the explosive ingredients of Lebanon, Somalia, Iraq and Afghanistan," so entanglement there may become another quagmire, besides the others in the region already. "It is extraordinary to see the US begin to make the same mistakes in Yemen as it previously made in Afghanistan and Iraq" - overextending and getting too involved to exit.
William Hartung, Arms and Security Initiative director at the New York-based New America Foundation, calls the Yemeni government one of the most unstable in the world, so weapons, training, and direct intervention may backfire if an anti-Washington regime replaces it.
Cockburn says America doesn't "learn from past mistakes and instead....repeats them by fresh interventions in countries like Yemen." Perhaps not, however, since part of Washington's scheme is to keep fighting, divert people from more pressing issues at home, and enrich thousands of war profiteers with public money, leaving future generations with the bill.
The UN says poverty in Yemen is widespread with about 45% of the population living on less than two dollars a day. The New York Times calls Yemen one of the world's oldest civilizations and poorest Middle East country (ignoring Occupied Palestine), "as well as a haven for Islamic jihadists:" to wit, the ubiquitous Al Qaeda, a 1980s CIA creation always trotted out whenever "war on terror" efforts need stoking and a convenient enemy to be blamed.
According to The Times:
"Yemen gained new attention in 2009 from American military officials, who are concerned about Al Qaeda's efforts to set up a regional base there."
In December, US officials claimed Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a Nigerian citizen, traveled to Yemen, was trained by Al Qaeda, obtained explosive chemicals (PETN), and tried using them to blow up an Amsterdam-Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day.
According to Webster Tarpley in a December 29 Russia Today interview, Abdulmutallab is a CIA "protected patsy (for the) provocation designed to facilitate US meddling in (Yemen's) civil war (pitting) the Saudi-backed central government against the Iranian-backed Shiite Houthi rebels," being bombed by US and Saudi air strikes.
He was denied a UK entrance visa, wasn't on a No Fly List, paid cash for a one-way ticket to Detroit, checked no luggage, had a US visa but no passport, and was helped on board by a "well-dressed Indian" to facilitate what appears to be a Washington false flag plot using Abdulmutallab as a convenient dupe.
The Wayne Madsen Report adds more calling the airliner incident a false flag operation "carried out by (the) intelligence tripartite grouping of CIA, Mossad, and India's Research and Analysis Wing (RAW)." Earlier they "worked together along with former Afghan KHAD intelligence agents to assassinate former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto....to destabilize Pakistan" for planned balkanization, the same scheme planned for Afghanistan.
Madsen added that Abdulmutallab's PETN "was weak (exploding like a fire cracker), technically deficient (and failed to go off properly)."
What's at stake? At most, Yemen has four billion proved barrels of oil reserves and modest amounts of natural gas, hardly a reason for war. More important is its strategic location near the Horn of Africa on Saudi Arabia's southern border, the Red Sea, its Bab el- Mandeb strait (a key chokepoint separating Yemen from Eritrea through which three million barrels of oil pass daily), and the Gulf of Aden connection to the Indian Ocean.
Tarpley believes Washington is:
"play(ing) Iran against Saudi Arabia so as to weaken both the pro-Moscow Ahmadinejad government in Iran, and also those Saudi forces that are fed up with their status as a US protectorate. The US is openly now sponsoring a regroupment of Al Qaeda in Yemen, including by sending fighters direct from Guantanamo. The new CIA-promoted synthetic entity is Al Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsule (AQAP), a gaggle of US patsies, dupes, and fanatics which is claiming credit for the (Abdulmutallab) incident."
Washington's usual tactics are at work:
create a false flag incident;
heighten fear through the complicit media;
ride to the rescue with popular support;
keep oil prices high;
boost market opportunities for security equipment manufacturers;
weaken civil liberties through new police state measures;
erode Iranian and Russian influence; and
gain greater control over the region's southern portion, the entire Middle East and all of Eurasia.
Coming next may be another enlisted or unwitting stooge to take down an airliner, blame it on Iran, Yemeni rebels, or Al Qaeda and provide an excuse for greater intervention, mass slaughter and destruction in another country, then on to the next one as part of an offensive to expand regional war and destabilization toward the ultimate goal of global "full spectrum dominance.
At Washington's behest, the Saudis began bombing and using tanks against Yemen in early November. So far, hundreds have been killed or wounded and thousands displaced. In addition, a rebel group called the Young Believers claims US jets launched multiple attacks in Yemen's northwest Sa'ada Province. Britain's Daily Telegraph also reports that US Special Forces (meaning death squads like in Afghanistan) are training Yemen's army, and likely operating covertly on their own.
On December 29, Iran accused Washington, the UK, and other western countries of fomenting the week's anti-government protests. Foreign Ministry spokesperson Ramin Hahmanparast claimed a complicit minority in the country was involved with outside support, saying:
"This is intervention in our internal affairs. We strongly condemn it," after president Obama praised "the courage and the conviction of the Iranian people (and condemned the government's) iron fist of brutality."
Iranians have long memories of US meddling. In 1953, CIA operative Kermit Roosevelt, grandson of Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin's cousin, engineered a successful coup ousting democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadeq (the country's most popular politician) after he nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company following a dispute about revenue sharing. Now it's all about terrorism, Islamic extremists, and the ubiquitous Al Qaeda as convenient excuses Washington uses to threaten or attack anywhere.
It's no wonder that legitimate commentaries accuse America of fanning the flames of war with rhetoric, new troop deployments to Afghanistan, and General McChrystal naming the country's major insurgent group threats as the Qjetta Shura Taliban, the Haqqani Network (closely aligned with the Taliban), and the Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin (HIG, linked to Afghanistan's Hezbi Islami Party) - the latter two former CIA assets in the 1980s, and the Taliban an ally before 9/11.
They're now claimed to be active in Pakistan and mortal enemies in America's "war on terror," about to consume Yemen in Washington's fury, helped by headlines like the December 29 Times Online saying:
"Hundreds of al-Qaeda militants planning attacks from Yemen," according to its Foreign Minister, Abu Bakr al-Qirbi, appealing for help to equip counterinsurgency forces.
"Of course there are....al-Qaeda operatives in Yemen and some of their leaders," he said. "We realize the danger. They may actually plan attacks like the one we have just had in Detroit."
On December 30, The New York Times published a Reuters report headlining, "US Seeks to Boost Yemen For Expanded Al Qaeda Fight," saying America plans:
"to expand military and intelligence cooperation with the government of Yemen to step up a crackdown on al Qaeda militants believed to be behind a failed plot to blow up a US passenger jet," according to unnamed US officials.
President Obama vowed "to use every element of our national power to disrupt, to dismantle, and defeat the violent extremists who threaten us - whether they are from Afghanistan or Pakistan, Yemen or Somalia, or anywhere where they are plotting attacks against the US homeland."
Without elaborating, Pentagon spokesperson Bryan Whitman said "We are going to work with allies and partners to seek out terrorist activity, al Qaeda....This is not new."
Increased US-Saudi attacks and military aid are part of the effort - up from $4.6 million in FY 2006 to $67 million in FY 2009, and according to the Wall Street Journal, citing an unnamed senior Pentagon official, to as much as $190 million in FY 2010. Included also are unknown black budget amounts, greater numbers of US Special Forces on the ground for training and covert death squad activities, and stepped up air attacks.
Whitman explained that Yemen is now America's second largest recipient of overt counterterrorism aid, after Pakistan, a sign of the area's importance to Washington. US Special Forces operated there in 2002, and according to The New York Times, the CIA sent in many counterterrorism operatives in 2008 along with other US forces for overt and covert purposes.
Reports in the US and foreign media suggest larger scale US-backed Yemeni attacks are imminent, and according to CNN, citing two unnamed senior US officials:
"The US and Yemen are now looking at fresh targets for a potential retaliation strike. The effort is to see whether targets can be specifically linked to the airline incident and its planning....the agreement would allow the US to fly cruise missiles, fighter jets or unmanned armed drones against targets in Yemen with the consent of that government," that's, of course, gotten and will proceed with or without it.
Inflammatory US media reports and commentaries now promote war by portraying Yemen as a hotbed of terrorism, citing ubiquitous Al Qaeda forces creating chaos throughout the country, and saying unless America acts, conditions will worsen and spread.
According to The New York Times on December 27:
Washington "has quietly opened (a) largely covert front against Al Qaeda in Yemen," using CIA operatives and Special Operations commandos, according to an unnamed Agency official. Writers Eric Schmitt and Robert Worth call the country:
"a refuge for jihadists, in part because (the) government welcomed returning Islamist fighters who had fought in Afghanistan during the 1980s. (These) militants have made much more focused efforts to build a base in Yemen in recent years, drawing recruits from throughout the region and mounting attacks more frequently on foreign embassies and other targets."
Washington has close relations with Field Marshall Ali Abdullah Saleh, Yemen's ruling despot. From 1978 - 1990, he was president of the Yemen Arab Republic, and since then headed the united Republic of Yemen. During the Cold War, America backed the Islamist regime in the North against southern secular nationalists aligned with the Soviets. In the country's 1994 civil war, former Yemeni Afghan fighters helped Saleh secure the power he still holds.
Washington recruited him for its expanded regional wars. They cause great loss of lives, wider instability, an unsustainable expense, and leave vital homeland needs unmet, but are a bonanza for the war profiteers fueling them and others to follow for a sure-fire stream of blood money.
What's Next?
Up the ante in Afghanistan and Pakistan, entanglement in Yemen, then perhaps confront Iran with White House spokesman Robert Gibbs saying on November 27:
"Our patience and that of the international community is limited, and time is running out. If Iran refuses to meet its obligations, then it will be responsible for its own growing isolation and consequences." Apparently a "package of consequences" are planned, according to another unnamed official.
Air attacks may be one of them with New York Times support. On January 10, chief diplomatic correspondent, David Sanger, reported on US - Israeli talks over the past year about possibly striking Iran's nuclear sites as well covert sabotage efforts "to undermine electrical systems, computer systems and other networks on which Iran relies."
Like Judith Miller's press agent role for the Pentagon in the run to the Iraq war, Sanger is a notorious Pentagon and State Department conduit, so his reports read more official propaganda than legitimate journalism - a longstanding Times pro-war, pro-business, anti-labor bias going back decades, and very evident now.
On December 23, The Times gave Alan Kuperman, Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Program director at the University of Texas, op-ed space to headline, "There's Only One Way to Stop Iran," and he doesn't suggest diplomacy.
He says Obama should welcome Iran's rejection of his nuclear deal because it "did not require Iran to halt its enrichment program," even though it's in full compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) giving Washington and other nations no right to stop it.
Yet Kuperman insists Iran will likely divert its surplus higher-enriched fuel to weapons, and President Ahmadinejad "initially embraced the deal because he realized it aided Iran's bomb program."
However, "peaceful carrots and sticks cannot work, and an invasion would be foolhardy, (so Washington) faces a stark choice: military air strikes against Iran's nuclear facilities or acquiescence to Iran's acquisition of nuclear weapons."
IAEA inspections show no proof of a secret nuclear weapons program, and former IAEA director general, Mohamed ElBaradei, said in February 2009 said "many other countries are enriching uranium without the world making any fuss about it."
Five days before he retired on November 27, he told Reuters:
"We have no indication that there are other undeclared facilities in Iran. I want to be very clear about that." He also urged patience because Iran posed no imminent threat, and said "people should stop threatening the use of force because that simply....creates a justification or pretext for countries....to go underground because (they're) threatened."
He stressed that the IAEA found no evidence that Iranians had technology needed to assemble a nuclear warhead or that they're even trying.
Kuperman isn't convinced and accuses Iran of "suppl(ying) terrorist groups in violation of international embargoes. (So, if it) acquire(s) a nuclear arsenal, the risks would simply to too great that it could become a neighborhood bully or provide terrorists with the ultimate weapon, an atomic bomb."
Never mind that America's 2002 and 2006 National Security Strategy (NSS) and 2001 Nuclear Policy Review authorize the development of new type nuclear weapons, and the right to use them in first-strike preventive wars under the doctrine of "anticipatory self-defense."
Iran threatens no one, but Kuperman recommends military strikes anyway, regardless of the law, whether they'll succeed, and no matter the potentially horrific consequences, including inflaming the whole region, disrupting oil supplies, harming world economies when they're most vulnerable, and making America more hated than ever.
Still he says:
"Postponing military action merely provides Iran a window to expand, disperse and harden its nuclear facilities against attack. The sooner the United States takes action, the better."
In other words, two fronts aren't enough so add Yemen. Then make it a foursome with Iran, the sooner America does it the better, and The New York Times promotes this view after expressing caution in its January 3 editorial headlined, "No delusion of bombing Iran" and saying:
"Fortunately, President-elect Barack Obama says his approach to Iran will include 'a new emphasis on respect and a new emphasis on being willing to talk....' "
This approach "may or may not work," says The Times. "But it is a road that (should be tried and) should have been taken years ago."
Not now apparently or earlier, in fact, as Times writers play an indispensable role feeding misinformation to the world and supporting imperial wars with the rest of the dominant media.
They'll have plenty to say as a new Yemen front unfolds and maybe an Iran one to follow.
(*) Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com
The Anti-Empire Report - January 6th, 2010
By William Blum
The American elite
Lincoln Gordon died a few weeks ago at the age of 96. He had graduated summa cum laude from Harvard at the age of 19, received a doctorate from Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, published his first book at 22, with dozens more to follow on government, economics, and foreign policy in Europe and Latin America. He joined the Harvard faculty at 23. Dr. Gordon was an executive on the War Production Board during World War II, a top administrator of Marshall Plan programs in postwar Europe, ambassador to Brazil, held other high positions at the State Department and the White House, a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, economist at the Brookings Institution, president of Johns Hopkins University. President Lyndon B. Johnson praised Gordon's diplomatic service as "a rare combination of experience, idealism and practical judgment".
You get the picture? Boy wonder, intellectual shining light, distinguished leader of men, outstanding American patriot.
Abraham Lincoln Gordon was also Washington's on-site, and very active, director in Brazil of the military coup in 1964 which overthrew the moderately leftist government of João Goulart and condemned the people of Brazil to more than 20 years of an unspeakably brutal dictatorship. Human-rights campaigners have long maintained that Brazil's military regime originated the idea of the desaparecidos, "the disappeared" , and exported torture methods across Latin America. In 2007, the Brazilian government published a 500-page book, "The Right to Memory and the Truth", which outlines the systematic torture, rape and disappearance of nearly 500 left-wing activists, and includes photos of corpses and torture victims. Currently, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is proposing a commission to investigate allegations of torture by the military during the 1964-1985 dictatorship. (When will the United States create a commission to investigate its own torture?)
In a cable to Washington after the coup, Gordon stated — in a remark that might have had difficulty getting past the lips of even John Foster Dulles — that without the coup there could have been a "total loss to the West of all South American Republics". (It was actually the beginning of a series of fascistic anti-communist coups that trapped the southern half of South America in a decades-long nightmare, culminating in "Operation Condor", in which the various dictatorships, aided by the CIA, cooperated in hunting down and killing leftists.)
Gordon later testified at a congressional hearing and while denying completely any connection to the coup in Brazil he stated that the coup was "the single most decisive victory of freedom in the mid-twentieth century."
Listen to a phone conversation between President Johnson and Thomas Mann, Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, April 3, 1964, two days after the coup:
MANN: I hope you're as happy about Brazil as I am.
LBJ: I am.
MANN: I think that's the most important thing that's happened in the hemisphere in three years.
LBJ: I hope they give us some credit instead of hell.1
So the next time you're faced with a boy wonder from Harvard, try to keep your adulation in check no matter what office the man attains, even — oh, just choosing a position at random — the presidency of the United States. Keep your eyes focused not on these "liberal" ... "best and brightest" who come and go, but on US foreign policy which remains the same decade after decade. There are dozens of Brazils and Lincoln Gordons in America's past. In its present. In its future. They're the diplomatic equivalent of the guys who ran Enron, AIG and Goldman Sachs.
Of course, not all of our foreign policy officials are like that. Some are worse.
And remember the words of convicted spy Alger Hiss: Prison was "a good corrective to three years at Harvard."
Mothers, don't let your children grow up to be Nobel Peace Prize winners.
In November I wrote:
Question: How many countries do you have to be at war with to be disqualified from receiving the Nobel Peace Prize?
Answer: Five. Barack Obama has waged war against only Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia. He's holding off on Iran until he actually gets the prize.
Well, on December 10 the president clutched the prize in his blood-stained hands. But then the Nobel Laureate surprised us. On December 17 the United States fired cruise missiles at people in ... not Iran, but Yemen, all "terrorists" of course, who were, needless to say, planning "an imminent attack against a U.S. asset".2 A week later the United States carried out another attack against "senior al-Qaeda operatives" in Yemen.3
Reports are that the Nobel Peace Prize Committee in Norway is now in conference to determine whether to raise the maximum number of wars allowed to ten. Given the committee's ignoble history, I imagine that Obama is taking part in the discussion. As is Henry Kissinger.
The targets of these attacks in Yemen reportedly include fighters coming from Afghanistan and Iraq, confirmation of the warnings long given — even by the CIA and the Pentagon — that those US interventions were creating new anti-American terrorists. (That's anti-American foreign policy, not necessarily anything else American.) How long before the United States will be waging war in some other god-forsaken land against anti-American terrorists whose numbers include fighters from Yemen? Or Pakistan? Or Somalia? Or Palestine?
Our blessed country is currently involved in so many bloody imperial adventures around the world that one needs a scorecard to keep up. Rick Rozoff of StopNATO has provided this for us in some detail.4
For this entire century, almost all these anti-American terrorists have been typically referred to as "al-Qaeda", as if you have to be a member of something called al-Qaeda to resent bombs falling on your house or wedding party; as if there's a precise and meaningful distinction between people retaliating against American terrorism while being a member of al-Qaeda and people retaliating against American terrorism while NOT being a member of al-Qaeda. However, there is not necessarily even such an animal as a "member of al-Qaeda", albeit there now exists "al-Qaeda in Iraq" and "al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula". Anti-American terrorists do know how to choose a name that attracts attention in the world media, that appears formidable, that scares Americans. Governments have learned to label their insurgents "al-Qaeda" to start the military aid flowing from Washington, just like they yelled "communist" during the Cold War. And from the perspective of those conducting the War on Terror, the bigger and more threatening the enemy, the better — more funding, greater prestige, enhanced career advancement. Just like with the creation of something called The International Communist Conspiracy.
It's not just the American bombings, invasions and occupations that spur the terrorists on, but the American torture. Here's Bowe Robert Bergdahl, US soldier captured in Afghanistan, speaking on a video made by his Taliban captors: He said he had been well-treated, contrasting his fate to that of prisoners held in US military prisons, such as the infamous Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. "I bear witness I was continuously treated as a human being, with dignity, and I had nobody deprive me of my clothes and take pictures of me naked. I had no dogs barking at me or biting me as my country has done to their Muslim prisoners in the jails that I have mentioned."5
Of course the Taliban provided the script, but what was the script based on? What inspired them to use such words and images, to make such references?
Cuba. Again. Still. Forever.
More than 50 years now it is. The propaganda and hypocrisy of the American mainstream media seems endless and unwavering. They can not accept the fact that Cuban leaders are humane or rational. Here's the Washington Post of December 13 writing about an American arrested in Cuba:
"The Cuban government has arrested an American citizen working on contract for the U.S. Agency for International Development who was distributing cellphones and laptop computers to Cuban activists. ... Under Cuban law ... a Cuban citizen or a foreign visitor can be arrested for nearly anything under the claim of 'dangerousness' ."
That sounds just awful, doesn't it? Imagine being subject to arrest for whatever someone may choose to label "dangerousness" . But the exact same thing has happened repeatedly in the United States since the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. We don't use the word "dangerousness" . We speak of "national security". Or, more recently, "terrorism". Or "providing material support to terrorism".
The arrested American works for Development Alternatives, Inc. (DAI), a US government contractor that provides services to the State Department, the Pentagon and the US Agency for International Development (USAID). In 2008, DAI was funded by the US Congress to "promote transition to democracy" in Cuba. Yes, Oh Happy Day!, we're bringing democracy to Cuba just as we're bringing it to Afghanistan and Iraq. In 2002, DAI was contracted by USAID to work in Venezuela and proceeded to fund the same groups that a few months earlier had worked to stage a coup — temporarily successful — against President Hugo Chávez. DAI performed other subversive work in Venezuela and has also been active in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and other hotspots. "Subversive" is what Washington would label an organization like DAI if they behaved in the same way in the United States in behalf of a foreign government.6
The American mainstream media never makes its readers aware of the following (so I do so repeatedly): The United States is to the Cuban government like al-Qaeda is to the government in Washington, only much more powerful and much closer. Since the Cuban revolution, the United States and anti-Castro Cuban exiles in the US have inflicted upon Cuba greater damage and greater loss of life than what happened in New York and Washington on September 11, 2001.
Cuban dissidents typically have had very close, indeed intimate, political and financial connections to American government agents. Would the US government ignore a group of Americans receiving funds or communication equipment from al-Qaeda and/or engaging in repeated meetings with known leaders of that organization? In the past few years, the American government has arrested a great many people in the US and abroad solely on the basis of alleged ties to al-Qaeda, with a lot less evidence to go by than Cuba has had with its dissidents' ties to the United States, evidence usually gathered by Cuban double agents. Virtually all of Cuba's "political prisoners" are such dissidents.
The Washington Post story continued:
"The Cuban government granted ordinary citizens the right to buy cellphones just last year." Period.
What does one make of such a statement without further information? How could the Cuban government have been so insensitive to people's needs for so many years? Well, that must be just the way a "totalitarian" state behaves. But the fact is that because of the disintegration of the Soviet bloc, with a major loss to Cuba of its foreign trade, combined with the relentless US economic aggression, the Caribbean island was hit by a great energy shortage beginning in the 1990s, which caused repeated blackouts. Cuban authorities had no choice but to limit the sale of energy-hogging electrical devices such as cell phones; but once the country returned to energy sufficiency the restrictions were revoked.
"Cubans who want to log on [to the Internet] often have to give their names to the government."
What does that mean? Americans, thank God, can log onto the Internet without giving their names to the government. Their Internet Service Provider does it for them, furnishing their names to the government, along with their emails, when requested.
"Access to some Web sites is restricted."
Which ones? Why? More importantly, what information might a Cuban discover on the Internet that the government would not want him to know about? I can't imagine. Cubans are in constant touch with relatives in the US, by mail and in person. They get US television programs from Miami. International conferences on all manner of political, economic and social subjects are held regularly in Cuba. What does the American media think is the great secret being kept from the Cuban people by the nasty commie government?
"Cuba has a nascent blogging community, led by the popular commentator Yoani Sánchez, who often writes about how she and her husband are followed and harassed by government agents because of her Web posts. Sánchez has repeatedly applied for permission to leave the country to accept journalism awards, so far unsuccessfully. "
According to a well-documented account7, Sánchez's tale of government abuse appears rather exaggerated. Moreover, she moved to Switzerland in 2002, lived there for two years, and then voluntarily returned to Cuba. On the other hand, in January 2006 I was invited to attend a book fair in Cuba, where one of my books, newly translated into Spanish, was being presented.
However, the government of the United States would not give me permission to go. My application to travel to Cuba had also been rejected in 1998 by the Clinton administration.
"'Counterrevolution ary activities', which include mild protests and critical writings, carry the risk of censure or arrest. Anti-government graffiti and speech are considered serious crimes."
Raise your hand if you or someone you know of was ever arrested in the United States for taking part in a protest. And substitute "pro al-Qaeda" for "counterrevolutiona ry" and for "anti-government" and think of the thousands imprisoned the past eight years by the United States all over the world for ... for what? In most cases there's no clear answer. Or the answer is clear: (a) being in the wrong place at the wrong time, or (b) being turned in to collect a bounty offered by the United States, or (c) thought crimes. And whatever the reason for the imprisonment, they were likely tortured. Even the most fanatical anti-Castroites don't accuse Cuba of that. In the period of the Cuban revolution, since 1959, Cuba has had one of the very best records on human rights in the hemisphere. See my essay: "The United States, Cuba and this thing called Democracy".8
There's no case of anyone arrested in Cuba that compares in injustice and cruelty to the arrest in 1998 by the United States government of those who came to be known as the "Cuban Five", sentenced in Florida to exceedingly long prison terms for trying to stem terrorist acts against Cuba emanating from the US.9 It would be lovely if the Cuban government could trade their DAI prisoner for the five. Cuba, on several occasions, has proposed to Washington the exchange of a number of what the US regards as "political prisoners" in Cuba for the five Cubans held in the United States. So far the United States has not agreed to do so.
Notes
Michael Beschloss, Taking Charge: The Johnson White House Tapes 1963-1964 (New York, 1997), p.306.
All other sources for this section on Gordon can be found in:
Washington Post, December 22, 2009, obituary;
The Guardian (London), August 31, 2007; William Blum, "Killing Hope", chapter 27
ABC News, December 17, 2009;
Washington Post, December 19, 2009 ↩
Washington Post, December 25, 2009 ↩
Stop NATO, "2010: U.S. To Wage War Throughout The World", December 30, 2009. To get on the StopNATO mailing list write to r_rozoff@yahoo. com. To see back issues: http://groups. yahoo.com/ group/stopnato/↩
Reuters, December 25, 2009 ↩
For more details on DAI, see Eva Golinger, "The Chávez Code: Cracking US Intervention in Venezuela" (2006) and her website, posting for December 31, 2009
Salim Lamrani, professor at Paris Descartes University, "The Contradictions of Cuban Blogger Yoani Sanchez", Monthly Review magazine, November 12, 2009
http://killinghope. org/bblum6/ democ.htm ↩
http://killinghope. org/bblum6/ polpris.htm ↩
"Obama Has Kept the Machine Set on Kill"
By Journalist and Activist Allan Nairn Reviews Obama´s First Year in Office
In an extended interview, award-winning journalist and activist Allan Nairn looks back over the Obama administration´s foreign policy and national security decisions over the last twelve months.
"I think Obama should be remembered as a great man because of the blow he struck against white racism," Nairn says. "But once he became president… Obama became a murderer and a terrorist, because the US has a machine that spans the globe, that has the capacity to kill, and Obama has kept it set on kill. He could have flipped the switch and turned it off…but he chose not to do so." He continues, "In fact, as far as one can tell, Obama seems to have killed more civilians during his first year than Bush did in his first year, and maybe even than Bush killed in his final year." [includes rush transcript]
Guest: Allan Nairn, award-winning journalist and activist.
Rush Transcript
Anjali Kamat: On Tuesday, President Obama made another statement on the failure of intelligence agencies to intercept the Christmas Day plot to blow up a Northwest Airlines flight. He said the US government had the necessary information to stop the twenty-three-year-old Nigerian suspect from boarding the Detroit-bound flight, but he excoriated the intelligence community for failing to connect the dots in time.
President Barrack Obama: I will accept that intelligence, by its nature, is imperfect. But it is increasingly clear that intelligence was not fully analyzed or fully leveraged. That´s not acceptable, and I will not tolerate it.
Anjali Kamat: Obama said intelligence agencies knew that the suspect, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, had, quote, "traveled to Yemen and joined up with extremists there." The President also addressed concerns over repatriating the ninety-odd Yemeni men who are still detained in Guantanamo.
President Barrack Obama: Given the unsettled situation, I´ve spoken to the attorney general, and we´ve agreed that we will not be transferring additional detainees back to Yemen at this time. But make no mistake. We will close Guantanamo prison, which has damaged our national security interests and become a tremendous recruiting tool for al-Qaeda. In fact, that was an explicit rationale for the formation of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. And as I´ve always said, we will do so—we will close the prison in a manner that keeps the American people safe and secure.
Amy Goodman: Well, it´s almost been a year since President Obama´s inauguration and his promise to close the prison at Guantanamo.
For a critical look back over the Obama administration´s foreign policy and national security decisions in the last twelve months, we´re joined here in New York by award-winning investigative journalist and activist Allan Nairn.
In 1991, we were both in East Timor and witnessed and survived the Santa Cruz massacre, in which Indonesian forces killed more than 270 Timorese. The soldiers fractured Allan´s skull.
Over the past three decades, he has exposed how the US government has backed paramilitary death squads in El Salvador, in Guatemala, in Haiti. He also uncovered US support for the Indonesian military´s assassinations and torture of civilians.
He´s joining us now for the rest of the hour.
Welcome to Democracy Now!, Allan Nairn.
Allan Nairn: Thanks.
Amy Goodman: Well, why don´t you start off with a broad overview, as we move into this first anniversary of President Obama´s inauguration, of his term in office?
Allan Nairn: Well, I think Obama should be remembered as a great man because of the blow he struck against white racism, the cultural blow. And he accomplished that on Election Day. That was huge. This is one of the most destructive forces in world history, and by simply—by virtue of becoming president, Obama did it major damage.
But once he became president, by virtue of his actions, just like every US president before him, just like those who ran other great powers, Obama became a murderer and a terrorist, because the US has a machine that spans the globe, that has the capacity to kill, and Obama has kept it set on kill. He could have flipped the switch and turned it off. The President has—turned it off.
The President has that power, but he chose not to do so.
Amy Goodman: What do you mean? Explain more fully.
Allan Nairn: Well, the machine. The US spends about half of all—almost half of all the military spending in the entire world, equal to virtually all the other countries combined. More than half of the weapons sold in the world are sold by the United States. The US has more than 700 military bases scattered across dozens of countries. The US is the world´s leading trainer of paramilitaries. The US has a series of courses, from interrogators to generals, that have graduated military people guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity in dozens upon dozens of countries. The US has a series of covert paramilitary forces of its own that get almost no attention. For example, right now in Iran, there are covert US paramilitaries attacking Iran from within, authorized by secret executive order. This was briefly reported, but it dropped from notice. In addition to that, there are the open attacks, the open bombings and invasions. Just in the recent period, the US has done this to Iran—to, I´m sorry, to Iraq, to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Kenya. Currently in the Philippines, there are US troops in action in the south. And you could go on. This is the machine.
And then, in addition, there´s the support for a series of what the RAND Corporation itself—you know, RAND is an extension of the Pentagon—called US support for repressive non-democratic governments and for governments that commit aggression. There are about forty of them that the US backs. And I could run through the list. And the point is, Obama has not cut a single—cut off a single one of these repressive regimes. He has not cut off a single one of the terror forces. He has increased the size of the US Army, increased the size of US Special Forces. He has increased the level of overseas arms sales. In fact, the Pentagon, his Pentagon, was recently bragging about it. The same thing happened under the Clinton administration with then-Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown. He has tuned it up. But you could just run down the list of countries where civilians are being killed and tortured with US weapons, with US money, with US intelligence, with US political green lights.
Anjali Kamat: So, Allan, what would you say is the difference between the preceding eight years under the Bush administration and this past year, as we move forward under Obama?
Allan Nairn: Well, in this respect, on matters I was just talking about, there´s no substantive difference. In fact, as far as one can tell, Obama seems to have killed more civilians during his first year than Bush did in his first year, and maybe even than Bush killed in his final year, because not only has Obama kept the machine set on kill, but he had his special project, which is Pakistan and Afghanistan. He used this to get elected. He had to prove himself. He had to go through what the New York Times once called the "presidential initiation rite," under which each president must, in their words, demonstrate his willingness to shed blood. Obama did that by saying, "I´m going to attack more vigorously Afghanistan and Pakistan." And he´s brought chaos.
I mean, you just saw the report from Afghanistan and Pakistan. He has squeezed the Pakistani military to attack their own tribal and border areas with extensive civilian death and retaliation from the residents of those areas through a series of bombings across the major cities of Pakistan.
Likewise in Somalia, Bush backed Ethiopia in an invasion of Somalia, basically an Ethiopian-US invasion of Somalia. Now Obama is pumping in new arms, new weapons, into the midst of the killing and chaos there. Somalis are streaming into Yemen as refugees. The already disastrous level of hunger and starvation is increasing. His body count probably exceeds that of Bush.
Amy Goodman: Talk about what we´ve been seeing over the last few days, I mean, what happened with the jetliner, now President Obama coming out yesterday talking about other attempts that were thwarted, like even on Inauguration Day, and that was actually Somali. And what are the approaches you think that President Obama should take?
Allan Nairn: Right. Well, you know, the issue is not the safety of Americans. The issue is the safety of people. All people. You have to count not just the American deaths and potential American deaths, but the deaths everywhere, since—you know, since everyone counts. And the best solution is the one that protects the maximum number of people. And if you happen to be the party that is committing the largest number of killings in the world, as the US is now, then the solution is easy: stop committing the killings.
In this case, in the present moment in history, that would have the added side benefit of most likely making Americans safer, as well, because you would take away the main provocation. Tom Brokaw, on TV this weekend, made a very interesting comment. He described what the US was engaged in as the "war against Islamic rage." That´s actually the most telling definition I´ve seen. I mean, think about it. In Afghanistan, Karzai, the US/UN-installed president, basically the man thought of as a US puppet, the man previously lionized by the US press before he started speaking out against the US aerial killings of civilians, Karzai started to get enraged after a series of bombings of wedding parties by the US and NATO forces. Think about it. Somebody bombs your wedding, a foreign air force bombs your wedding. How are you supposed to react? Are you supposed to be delighted? Rage is the normal human response. If you stop that, you lower the rage, and you probably get fewer attacks on Americans.
You know, there´s a man named Kilcullen, who´s Australian by origin, who´s now one of the main intellects behind the US counterinsurgency policy. He advises Secretary Gates, who of course was Bush´s Defense Secretary, as well. He said that if he were a Muslim today in a Middle Eastern country, he would probably be a jihadist. Robert Pape, the leading academic specialist on suicide bombings who studied the entire database of all the suicide bombers in recent years, said it´s a consequence primarily of occupation. So, you stop committing mass murder overseas, and you immediately, immediately, just by that action, achieve the main goal, which is minimizing the overall deaths of people, and you most likely get the side benefit of also minimizing the deaths of Americans—
Amy Goodman: Professor Pape—
Allan Nairn: —because you´re prodding fewer people.
Amy Goodman: Professor Pape is a conservative academic?
Allan Nairn: Yes. In fact, he went on TV recently saying he was a big fan of aerial bombing. I mean, he is no peacenik. But he honestly studied the data on suicide bombings, and that was his conclusion.
And by the way, the tactic of, you know, bombs in civilian places, like outside mosques, it was not originated by the current jihadists. You know, the current jihadists, of course, as is well known, grew out of the US and Saudi Arabian operation in Afghanistan to repel the Soviet invasion, and bin Laden and the others were backed by the US. But that actual tactic dates back to times like when the CIA used it in Lebanon to try to kill a cleric, and they blew up people as they were leaving the mosque. They used a car—the US used a car bomb to do that.
Even aerial bombings, even bombings of airplanes, three of the biggest incidents before 9/11 were actually incidents of US culpability. In ´76, a Cuban airliner was brought down with—I believe the death toll was—what was it? Seventy-three, I think, something on that order—by Luis Posada Carriles, a longtime CIA operative, who was later indicted for terrorism. And the US refused to extradite him. They´re harboring—they´re harboring him. Later, in—let´s see, what year was it? The Indian Airlines bombing in ´85, I believe, an Indian jetliner was blown up, almost—about 300 killed. The bombers were later found to have received training at a US camp in Alabama, US paramilitary camp that had also, with Reagan backing, had done operations against Central America. The Iranian jetliner shot down by a US ship, the Vincennes, also with roughly 300 killed, in ´88, the captain of the ship who did that, he got a medal from Bush Senior for exceptionally meritorious service.
So these tactics, you know, bombing civilian places, even blowing up jetliners specifically, are not new. And the US itself has used them.
And, you know, they talk about how the jihadists target civilians. Well, it´s certainly true. But when bin Laden attacked the World Trade Center, he was basically using—the attack on 9/11, he was basically using US targeting principles. He attacked the Pentagon, a military target, and he attacked the World Trade Center, which had a CIA—in fact, did have a CIA office in it. Now, on this end, especially here in New York, we can see that those targeting standards are absolutely insane. I mean, we could see the cooks and the firemen dying. You know, we could breathe the dust. We could see, no, even if you are going after a CIA office, you do not do this. We can see that that´s wrong on this end. It´s also wrong on the other end, when the US does it.
When the US opened—so it´s not just a matter of targeting, and it´s not just a matter of targeting civilians. The Goldstone report found that Israel targeted civilians specifically, when they invaded Gaza, and the US has often done it. For example, in Iraq, the US adopted what they called the El Salvador option, which is a reference back to the El Salvadoran death squads of the 1960s and ´70s, which is something I investigated extensively. And these were launched under the Kennedy administration and basically sponsored and run by the US for decades. And similar operations were done in Iraq by the US, under the direction, by the way, of General McChrystal, who now runs Afghanistan. The technical term the Pentagon used for it—uses for it is "manhunting." So they do target civilians.
But even when they´re not targeting civilians, which is probably most of the time, they end up killing massive numbers of civilians. The Pentagon has a word for that, too. They call it "bugsplat."
In the opening days of the invasion of Iraq, they ran computer programs, and they called the program the Bugsplat program, estimating how many civilians they would kill with a given bombing raid. On the opening day, the printouts presented to General Tommy Franks indicated that twenty-two of the projected bombing attacks on Iraq would produce what they defined as heavy bugsplat—that is, more than thirty civilian deaths per raid. Franks said, "Go ahead. We´re doing all twenty-two." So that adds up to, you know, about 660 anticipated, essentially planned, what in domestic terms would be called criminally negligent homicide, at the least, probably second-degree murder. You might even be able to get it up to first, first-degree. And that, just if—if that was the actual toll, the bugsplat estimate of the toll on the first day, that right there would give you a third of the World Trade Center death toll, just on the first day of the Iraq operation. And, of course, the Iraq operation has gone on. And that´s essentially what´s happening in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
They claim—or they claim—or let´s give them the benefit of the doubt, and they say, OK, they have an al-Qaeda target, or whatever target, some armed man in some compound somewhere, and they bomb it, and they also kill the person´s wife and the kids and their extended family and the friends who were there for dinner. Imagine. Imagine if that happened here. Let´s say al-Qaeda occupied New York. They set up checkpoints on Seventh Avenue. And if a car tried to run the checkpoints, they´d machine-gun the car, as the US does in Iraq. Or they ran drones over Washington, DC, and they were taking out US officials in their backyards as they did barbecues in suburban Virginia or as they were going for coffee in Dupont Circle. How would Americans react to that? In fact, how would Americans react if some young American went out and killed some of those al-Qaeda occupiers? The question answers itself.
I mean, when you do things like this, when you make humans into bugsplat, you invite response. So, stop the killing, and you get a benefit. You´ll probably make yourself safer, as well.
Amy Goodman: We´re talking to award-winning journalist and activist Allan Nairn. We´re going to go to break, then come back. Want to get your reaction to President Obama´s Nobel address, also to his condemning torture just about a year ago. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. We´ll be back in a minute.
break]
Amy Goodman: Our guest for this hour is Allan Nairn, award-winning journalist and activist.
Allan, I want to get your response to President Obama´s invocation of the concept of a just war, this in his speech accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo in December.
President Barrack Obama: We must begin by acknowledging a hard truth: we will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes. There will be times when nations, acting individually or in concert, will find the use of force not only necessary, but morally justified.
I make this statement mindful of what Martin Luther King, Jr. said in this same ceremony years ago: "Violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem: it merely creates new and more complicated ones." As someone who stands here as a direct consequence of Dr. King´s life work, I am living testimony to the moral force of nonviolence. I know there is nothing weak, nothing passive, nothing naïve, in the creed and lives of Gandhi and King.
But as a head of state sworn to protect and defend my nation, I cannot be guided by their examples alone. I face the world as it is and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people, for, make no mistake, evil does exist in the world. A nonviolent movement could not have halted Hitler´s armies. Negotiations cannot convince al-Qaeda´s leaders to lay down their arms.
Amy Goodman: An excerpt of President Obama´s Nobel acceptance speech in Oslo just about a month ago. Allan Nairn, your response?
Allan Nairn: Well, he´s right. There is evil in the world. And Obama should stop committing it. He should stop bombing, doing bombing raids that kill civilians. He should stop backing forces that kill civilians.
You know, it´s probably true that nonviolence couldn´t have stopped Hitler. There are just resorts to violence. If you´re standing there with your mother, someone comes in with a machine gun, you step in front. And if you´ve got a gun, you try to kill the machine gunner before they blow away you and your mother. Sure, there are lots of situations like that in life.
But that´s not in the situation of the US in foreign policy. As Obama was making that speech, he was saying, when we resort to violence, we will abide by the rules. This was exactly at the moment when the US was blocking the UN from doing precisely that. The Goldstone report had recommended, in just one example, that Israel be brought to the International Criminal Court for their assault on Gaza and that—as well as Hamas—and that let the chips fall where they may. Do an objective investigation and see if rules of law were violated, see if crimes against humanity were committed, as he said they were. And Obama blocked it.
The US itself, in its operations in dozens upon dozens of countries, is violating not just international law, but US law. People have forgotten about them, because they´re not enforced. Here are four US laws currently on the books. There can be no US weapons used for aggression. That´s the old Harkin amendment. There can be no US aid for foreign internal security forces of any kind. That´s Section 660 of the 1974 Foreign Assistance Act. There can be no US military aid for any regime that engages in a pattern of gross human rights violations. That´s 22 US Code 2304(a). There can be no US aid for any military unit that commits atrocities. That´s the Leahy amendment. Now, these are not radical political demands; these are existing US law. And the US systematically violates its own laws, not to mention the murder laws of local countries.
Amy Goodman: Where? Name the countries.
Allan Nairn: Well, just—you know, we mentioned before some of the places where the US is bombing and attacking. Less known, these are some examples of the machine being set on kill, repressive—what in RAND´s words—RAND Corporation´s words, repressive regimes being backed by the US: Algeria, where they annulled an election, they stole an election, they do systematic torture; Ethiopia, where there´s mass hunger among the population, but where the US is building up the Ethiopian army and using them against Somalia; Saudi Arabia, the most religious extremist, anti-woman dictatorship in the world; Jordan, a torture center—the Jordanian intelligence outfit was, in the words of George Tenet, owned by the CIA, and both the CIA and Israel use it for torture; Rwanda, whose army and paramilitaries have been pillaging and raping and massively killing in the eastern Congo; Congo itself, Secretary of State Clinton went there and made a good denunciation of rape by the Congolese army, and as that was happening, the US was delivering weapons and training to that same Congolese army; Indonesia, where the army now de factoGuardian just reported, the security forces are doing systematic torture of Hamas people and other dissidents under CIA sponsorship. And that´s only a partial list. We´d need another twenty-minute segment to complete the list.
But in not one of these cases has Obama decided to comply with US law, comply with international law, and cut off the killer forces. In fact, in a number of them he has stepped it up. In Indonesia, for example, he´s made a push to renew aid to the Kopassus, the Red Berets, the most deadly of the killer forces, hated by the people, long trained by the US Green Berets.
Amy Goodman: You made a provocative statement at the beginning of this broadcast, comparing an Obama presidency with a possible Palin presidency, and whether you would see a difference when it comes to foreign policy.
Allan Nairn: Right. Well, in terms of killing civilians overseas, no difference. Every single action I´ve laid out could easily be adopted by Palin. In fact, Obama is carrying them out using Bush´s Secretary of Defense, Gates, using Bush´s old counterterrorism man, Brennan, using Admiral Blair, Admiral Dennis Blair, who personally—this is something that we discussed on an earlier show and which I personally reported on—who green-lighted church massacres, massacres of Catholic churches by General Wiranto in occupied East Timor in 1999 to punish the Timorese for voting for independence. So Palin could do all those things.
Amy Goodman: Dennis Blair´s position at the time?
Allan Nairn: He was head of the US Pacific forces, and he´s now Obama´s Director of National Intelligence. And he´s now getting some political heat over the Detroit underwear bomber incident, which I actually think is unfair. You know, you can reinforce the—I mean, Blair should have been indicted for crimes against humanity and put on trial. Blair should be in prison now for what he did with General Wiranto. But this is unfair criticism of him on the bomber. I mean, you can´t prevent someone from, you know, trying to sneak in. If you want real security, you stop it on the other end. You stop the provocations and turn down the heat.
Anjali Kamat: And Allan Nairn, one of the things that Obama promised—one of the ways he promised he would be different from the Republicans, different from previous presidents, and different from the enemy he´s fighting, is that he would adhere to the rule of law. There would be standards. He´s banning torture. He´s going to close Guantanamo. These were promises he made last year. Can you talk about where—you mentioned the Goldstone report and US efforts to block the Goldstone report at the UN. But can you give us an assessment of where Obama stands in terms of international law? You told us a little bit about domestic law.
Allan Nairn: Well, the violations—and this is not—you know, we´re talking about Obama, but this is the whole US system. I mean, Bush did the same. Clinton did the same. Bush´s father, Reagan, Carter. It´s institutional policy. He´s violating not just law, but especially international law, which defines aggression as the supreme crime. And when you go in and bomb countries because you say there´s a—you know, there´s a militant there you want to kill, that is easily defined as aggression.
When you back forces that are systematically killing civilians, as many are in that list of countries I ran through, you are a party to crimes against humanity and maybe even, arguably, in some cases, genocide. That was certainly the case in Central America in the ´80s, where—actually, now a Spanish court has indicted and is trying various Guatemalan generals for those crimes, charging them with an array of crimes against humanity. And they did it with US backing, with US weapons.
Obama issued a torture ban, a supposed torture ban, which was actually a sham.
Amy Goodman: Let me play a clip of President Obama. It was just about a year ago, this executive order banning torture. On January 22nd of last year, this is what Obama promised to do. occupies and terrorizes Papua and has recently resumed assassinations in Aceh, the other end of the archipelago; Colombia, where army and army-backed militaries are the world´s number-one killer of labor activists; Uzbekistan, massive torture backed simultaneously by the US and Russia; Thailand, where officers who—US officers who I spoke to use their US training in what they call "target selection" to assassinate and disappear Muslim rebels in the south; Nepal, where US Green Berets for years created old Guatemala-style civil patrols that carried out lynchings against pro-Maoist forces and civilians in the countryside; India, where the police do daily torture and where their own officers talk about using terror against villages in the Naxalite rebel areas; Egypt, one of the world´s leading torture states and Israel´s accomplice in the blockade and hungering of Gaza; Honduras, where the army recently staged a coup when the oligarchy´s president, Zelaya, turned against his fellow oligarchs; Israel, which committed aggression against Gaza using US white phosphorus and cluster bombs as the US was—the US was shipping in new materiel as this, you know, attack was underway; and the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, where, as the British.
President Barrack Obama: This morning, I signed three executive orders. First, I can say, without exception or equivocation, that the United States will not torture. Second, we will close the Guantanamo Bay detention camp and determine how to deal with those who have been held there. And third, we will immediately undertake a comprehensive review to determine how to hold and try terrorism suspects to best protect our nation and the rule of law.
Amy Goodman: That was President Obama just about a year ago. Allan Nairn?
Allan Nairn: Well, his torture ban is empty. Ninety-eight, 99 percent of the US-backed torture is not done by Americans; it´s done by foreigners acting under US sponsorship. And that continues. His ban does not affect that. And even when it comes to Americans doing hands-on torture, his ban only says they are prohibited from doing so in situations of armed conflict, like in the middle of a war. That means that even an American could today go into Venezuela, go into Cuba, going into Egypt, go into Jordan, go into most of the countries of the world and commit hands-on torture, and it would be perfectly permissible under the so-called Obama torture ban. So it´s fake.
Amy Goodman: And what do you mean that others can do it?
Allan Nairn: An American can do it if it´s in a country that´s not in a state of armed conflict. But the vast majority of the torture is carried out by proxies. That´s the way they did it in El Salvador. That´s the way they did it in Guatemala. There´s an intelligence officer, an Army man, a policeman of the local country, and they are trained by the US, they are paid by the US, but they´re not an American citizen. And they´re the one who wields the razor blade. They´re the one who puts the hood on.
Amy Goodman: Allan, you spend your time traveling the world. Talk about wealth and poverty.
Allan Nairn: Well, the biggest issue is there are more than a billion people hungry in the world. It recently increased by a hundred million or so because of the Wall Street-induced financial collapse, but it was at about 900 million during the days of top prosperity, as defined by our current economic system. That´s completely intolerable. Until everybody eats, no one should live in luxury.
You know how much it would cost to feed those billion people? Less, much less, than was spent on just the bailout of Citibank. No one in the US, no one in any party leadership, talks about shifting those resources to do that. In fact, the President could do that with his own executive authority. For a deeper, longer-term solution, you´d have to change trade rules, you would have to change the IMF and the World Bank, so that farmers in currently hungry areas would have the same opportunities and protections that US yeoman farmers once had back in the age of Jefferson, when the US protected its farmers. But a president or even a rich person like a Gates or a Carlos Slim or a Buffett could instantly feed half the world. The World Food Programme, every few months, comes out with a desperate bulletin, saying we´ve got to cut back the calorie rations because we´re not getting enough for this or that program.
You know, in US politics, people face a bitter choice. You can´t vote for the—with a two-party system, you can´t vote against murder, you can´t vote for ending starvation. So they say, "My god, I guess I´ll go for the Democrats, because if I don´t, they´re going to move my Social Security to Wall Street, they´ll end gun control, they´ll end women´s choice." So you end up backing these direct mass murders and the allowing of babies to have their brains deformed due to lack of food. That´s not tolerable.
I agree with those lunatic tea party people: we need a revolution. We need—now, they´re talking about a revolution to put a white person in charge. I´m talking about a revolution for change. Nothing radical, really. Just enforce the laws, those US laws, the murder laws, and shift a few dollars from people who merely want it, people like us who—you know, we live in luxury; we have all the food we could possibly eat in many lifetimes—and shifting it to people who need it to keep from being stunted, who need it to keep breathing, people—we can do that. You know, Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan—
Amy Goodman: We have fifteen seconds.
Allan Nairn: —horrible regimes. Today, they´re peaceful and productive. They were crushed by violence. That´s how they transformed their societies. I hope we don´t have to be crushed in that way. We can transform ourselves, but people have to stand up and do it. Surround Congress. Occupy the military bases. The US can become peaceful also, but only if we decide to do so. And we do have that choice. We have freedoms here.
Amy Goodman: Allan Nairn, I want to thank you for being with us. Allan Nairn is an award-winning journalist and activist.
All travellers must be treated equally
By Joseph A. Kechichian (GulfNews)
Rather than resort to racial profiling, Western authorities should reconsider their military tactics
On August 28, 2009, Abdullah Asiri tried to kill the head of Saudi Arabia's counter terrorism operations, Prince Mohammad Bin Nayef. His rare feat was to smuggle a pound of high explosives and a detonator inserted in his rectum into a relatively secure facility. Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab concealed in his underpants a package containing nearly three ounces of the chemical powder PETN, along with a syringe containing some kind of accelerator, to detonate the mixture. His aim was to bring down a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas Day 2009. In response to this audacious act, several civil aviation authorities now plan to rely on high-tech scanners for airline passengers bound for the United States. Will these new measures make air travel any safer?
For some officials, including former US Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff, who is now a consultant to a company that manufactures body-scanners, these devices are the ideal solution. According to scientists working on the machines, however, liquids, chemicals or low-density plastics often go undetected. In fact, while scanners can pick up shrapnel and heavy wax, plastic, chemicals and liquids are nearly impossible to identify. It is worth repeating that these devices are only useful to detect high-density equipment or thick plastics like Semtex explosives. Light PETN, which was used in Abdul Mutallab's underwear, would not have been spotted.
Equally problematic, these latest technological gadgets raise several privacy questions, because they can reveal near-naked images of a person. Although improvements will surely be introduced, perhaps to scan the interior of a body, one wonders whether lawsuits will follow. Such close inspections, along with "enhanced pat-downs", may also not be tolerated, even if they allow Transportation Security Administration (TSA) employees today to search breast and groin areas albeit with the back of their hands after metal detectors single out a security risk.
Not surprisingly, overwhelmed security personnel will devise restructured procedures, though few passengers will tolerate their private parts being frisked by airport screeners. Nevertheless, it is critical to note that the "enhanced pat-down" is often ineffective, partly because it is done with timidity as well as its rapid mechanical motions given the sheer volume of passengers that must be inspected.
Technological innovations
To address privacy issues, and along with scanners, fresh technological innovations will now pullulate. There will, for example, be a rationalised and much reduced "no-fly" list, along with extra scrutiny at airports for selected individuals (chiefly identified through profiling). Most civil-liberty apprehensions will be explained away on the grounds of national security. Profiling, in practice with a vengeance after 9/11, will be exponentially accelerated with hardly a peep.
Indeed, and until further notice, citizens of, and visitors to, Afghanistan, Algeria, Cuba, Lebanon, Libya, Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen will be subjected to intensive scrutiny. US passport holders, especially non-natives, will also endure additional inspections if they happen to visit any of the countries on TSA's magical list. Of course, British citizens, or visitors to the United Kingdom, will not be subjected to the same degradation even though Richard Colvin Reid, the so-called "shoe bomber", was a native-born British citizen who boarded an American Airlines plane on December 22, 2001, in London.
Airline travel must be safe but racial profiling will do very little to solve the terrorism problem that plagues the entire planet. Rather, it will only exacerbate the frustration of millions of innocent passengers, as many of its rules have racial undertones. Others will add to the plethora of disgust that many will perceive as being politically motivated. Naturally, Al Qaida recruiters will enlist and train potential terrorists born and raised in non-profiled countries, most of whom will board planes unnoticed. Even if such individuals are prevented from carrying destructive materials on board, it is difficult, perhaps even impossible, to keep dangerous items off planes.
TSA inspectors were not laughing a few days ago when a traveller in Phoenix, Arizona, packed a belt adorned with a rhinestone-encrusted hand grenade in his checked luggage. Of course, metal detectors can uncover grenades, guns and many other objects, but airports are not hermetically sealed entities. Thousands of people work on or near aircraft, while unscrupulous employees can be bought off. Before long, we might even see hermetically sealed fortress terminals, which will be created at major hubs to group all flights to and from the US.
Under the circumstances, what can realistically be done to prevent future terrorism attacks? Inasmuch as there are short and long-term solutions, these ought to be divided into two categories, if we wish to have effective ones. First, it is important to screen everyone well and equally, to avoid double, triple or quadruple standards. This will be time consuming but fair. Second, and perhaps more important if we do not want to suffer perpetual wars, the time is right to stop pretending that attacks and retaliations will not engender fresh responses. If we plan to dominate the planet, and we certainly do, then we have to come to terms with the idea that such activities carry certain risks. Our choice, really.
(*) Dr Joseph A. Kechichian is a commentator and author of several books on Gulf affairs.
adding injury to insult –
Mohammed caricatures reprinted
By Rolleiv Solholm (NRK)
The Oslo newspaper Aftenposten is in its Friday issue printing a facsimile of the Mohammed caricatures which were first printed by the Danish paper Jyllandsposten more than four years ago.
The Danish artist Kurt Westergaard, who created one of the drawings, was a week ago attacked in his own home, and has since been living at a secret address.
Aftenposten Chief Editor Hilde Haugsgjerd says this makes it relevant to publish the drawings.
In her opinion, in a liberal Norwegian media setting and in a culturlly tolerant society, the caricatures are not gross.
the falcons are whining:
Beating the Dead Terrorist Horse
By Victor Davis Hanson (*) (NRO)
September 11 taught us many lessons. To our peril, we have forgotten them.
Most of the current acrimony over counterterrorism is stale. The debate is simply a rehash of issues that were discussed and, in fact, resolved early last decade.
Let us review them one more time.
Most Terrorists are not poor and downtrodden
September 11 taught us that a Mohammed Atta or a Khalid Sheikh Mohammed does not commit mass murder out of hunger, want, illiteracy, or Western oppression.
No doubt Middle Eastern poverty contributes to religious violence. But the poor in Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Yemen are no more impoverished than those in the slums of São Paulo, Mexico City, Ho Chi Minh City, or Johannesburg. And the latter, despite their frequent claims against the West, do not feel a need to murder in mass in the name of their particular religion.
A Major Nidal Hasan or an Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab wishes to kill Westerners not because he is poor or even on behalf of the poor, but rather out of a warped sense of pride, hurt, and anger.
Such passions derive from a radical religious creed that insists that comparative failure in the modern Middle East is not self-induced — much less a product of fundamentalism, anti-Enlightenment thinking, autocracy, gender apartheid, tribalism, corruption, and statism. Instead the fact that there is no longer an intercontinental caliphate of rich and powerful believers is due to some sort of contemporary Jewish or Western oppression.
The wealthier, better educated, and more Westernized the radical Muslim, often the greater the sense of shame, alienation, and anger that he and his religion are not shown proper deference. We knew all that in 2001, but have apparently forgotten it during eight years of relative calm.
Hasan hated American soldiers not because our system had discriminated against him, much less because of "secondary post-traumatic-stress syndrome," or any of the other wacky excuses that followed his crime. Instead, in part he sensed that the American military had bent over backwards for him and accommodated his extremism — and was therefore, in his own distorted worldview, weak, decadent, and deserving of what he would dish out.
Therapy is no Answer
Radical Islam´s anger is irrational. It is not predicated on the degree of outreach shown by the United States. A contrite and compliant Jimmy Carter, after all, prompted the creation of the slur "The Great Satan." The year 2009 saw the greatest number of foiled terrorist plots against America since 9/11. Indeed, one-third of all such attempts in the last eight years happened last year — the time of the Obama Al Arabiya interview, the Cairo speech, the bowing to Saudi royals, the promises to close Guantanamo Bay, and the ritual trashing of the Bush anti-terrorism policies.
We need not be gratuitously rude. There surely is a role for sober diplomacy and soft speech. But the degree to which radical Islam will be aggressive toward the West hinges a lot on what it imagines will be our reaction — in terms both of military responses, and of the sense of confidence we project about our own civilization.
Islamists, after all, ignore past American help to, and support for, Islamic peoples in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Chechnya, Indonesia, Iraq, Kosovo, Kuwait, and Somalia — only to pay far more deference to the Chinese and Russians, who have systematically oppressed and often butchered fellow Muslims. Apparently, Dr. Zawahiri and Osama bin Laden would rather recommend reading by Noam Chomsky and Jimmy Carter than offend Vladimir Putin and earn another Grozny.
The popularity of bin Laden and the tactic of suicide bombing itself plummeted throughout the Middle East between 2001 and 2009. And that was not because of the mellifluousness of George Bush´s Texas twang or a sudden love for our policy in Iraq.
Rather, the change of heart developed because bin Laden and his epigones were considered to be losing in Afghanistan and Iraq. They were endangering those who supported them, and murderously turning on their own — even as the United States was projecting both an image of confidence and readiness to extend support for consensual government and personal freedom.
In contrast, the current policy of apology and kowtow — coupled with a cynical realism (albeit cloaked in nonjudgmental, multicultural relativism) and presented abroad with a sense of hesitation and self-doubt — is, in fact, a prescription for reviving radical Islam.
That lesson likewise was apparent after 9/11.
A Projection of Weakness is Dangerous
Much of radical Islam´s posture is predicated on our expected response. When we did nothing during the Iranian hostage crisis, more or less whined after the Marine-barracks bombing, sent a few cruise missiles after the East African embassy attacks, litigated the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and forgot the USS Cole, bin Laden concluded that the West was the "weak horse" and pressed on.
To some degree, Afghanistan and Iraq changed that impression, especially the devastating defeat of al-Qaeda in al-Anbar province in 2006–2008. But that costly progress was accompanied by more recrimination against the Bush administration than anger directed at radical Islam.
Equally important, the Western world said very little about the Danish-cartoon threats, the killing of Theo Van Gogh, and various premodern Muslim actions like rioting after the Pope´s Byzantine exegesis and the false stories of Koran burning in Guantanamo. Had Europe and the United States shown a united front on behalf of freedom of expression, rather than a fear of Islamic reaction, such incidents would have been written off as the lunacy they were.
Instead of reacting to perceived Muslim grievances, we should be continually directing questions to Islam: Why are there numerous mosques in the West, but few churches in Islamic countries? Why are Korans freely disseminated in the West, but Bibles not so under Islamic rule? Why do Muslims enjoy more freedom and rights under Western secular law than in their own countries? The aim of such interrogatories is not to score points, but to suggest to radical Muslims that we hold them to the same standards as we hold ourselves.
Israel is not the Problem
Just because radical Muslims and the Arab Street claim that a Jewish presence on the West Bank is the catalyst for terrorist outrage does not make it so — any more than Hitler´s insistence that Versailles drove him to the invasion of Poland in 1939, or Argentinians´ claims that their problems in the early 1980s originated with the British "occupation" of the Malvinas.
No Germans today are blowing up Poles for the loss of Danzig and East Prussia. Greek Cypriots are not planting IEDs at Turkish embassies to force the return of ancestral homelands. And the world is not concerned about the divided city of Nicosia or Russian occupation of the Kuriles.
No, what privileges the Palestinian question is largely three factors that have nothing to do with disputed ground: the presence of huge amounts of oil on Arab lands, endemic anti-Semitism in the West and at the U.N., and fear of radical Islamic terrorism.
Take those considerations out of the equation, and the West Bank is about as important to the world as a disputed South Ossetia. We forget that there were three Middle Eastern wars well before the so-called occupation of Palestine. Gaza did not become a calm place once the Israelis left.
Should Palestinians cease the violence, welcome investment from elsewhere in the Arab world, and establish a consensual government, one transparent and free of corruption, the West Bank could become like Dubai — and deal with Israel as a responsible neighbor adjudicating a common border. And yet radical Islamic terrorism in general would nevertheless continue with fresh and always mutating grievances.
All that was clear around 2001 — but apparently now ignored.
The so-called War on Terror was Working
We constantly argue and bicker about what we should be doing rather than showing some appreciation for our past successes. Our country has not experienced another terrorist attack on the scale of 9/11. For all the tragedy of Iraq, what was unthinkable in 2006 has now become accepted — a continuing constitutional government and a month of "war" without a single American fatality. The U.S. military is not broken; in fact it has fought brilliantly in both Iraq and Afghanistan. General Petraeus´s surge, unfairly caricatured at the time and now largely forgotten, was a remarkable military and political victory.
There are now proven protocols for dealing with terrorism that work and are not at odds with the Constitution. For all the talk of al-Qaeda´s resilience, it has lost thousands of its top echelon. The regime in Iran is shaky — and shakier still for the continuance of a constitutional system in neighboring Iraq. Europe is shedding its politically correct appeasement of Islam, and several countries have already enacted statutes about Islamic dress and mosques unthinkable in the United States.
"Bush did it" is becoming ironic, and having the unintended consequence of reminding us how well we once defended ourselves — and how risky it is not to appreciate why and how.
Will We Never Learn?
In short, soon after September 11 the United States correctly sized up radical Islam, its nature, its aims, and its pseudo-grievances. We may have made mistakes in implementation, and at times in tactics and strategy, but in large part we had contained the threat, and radical Islam was losing its currency.
Apparently we´ve forgotten why that was so, and thus continue to beat the old dead horse in our own self-recrimination.
(*) NRO contributor Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the editor of the forthcoming Makers of Ancient Strategy: From the Persian Wars to the Fall of Rome.
U.S. believes 1 in 5 ex-detainees joining militants
By Adam Entous and Phil Stewart (Reuters)
A classified Pentagon assessment shows about one in five detainees released from the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay has joined or is suspected of joining militant groups like al Qaeda, U.S. officials said on Wednesday.
The disclosure comes amid revelations that former Guantanamo detainees had joined al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula -- a Yemen-based group believed to be behind a failed plot to blow up a U.S. passenger jet on Christmas Day.
Under pressure to increase safeguards, President Barack Obama announced on Tuesday that he had suspended the transfer of additional Guantanamo detainees to Yemen, citing the deteriorating security situation in the country.
But Obama said the suspension would not prevent him from closing the prison, which was opened in early 2002 by the Bush administration to house terrorism suspects.
More than 560 detainees from Guantanamo have been released, the vast majority of them by the Bush administration.
An Obama administration official said the White House had received "no information that suggests that any of the detainees transferred by this administration have returned to the fight."
Six Yemeni detainees were sent home days before the December 25 attempted bombing. There are 198 detainees left at Guantanamo, which once held 750, Pentagon officials said. Among those still being held there, roughly 91 are Yemeni.
The Guantanamo facility has been condemned internationally because detainees were denied due process for years and for harsh interrogations conducted there.
A previous Pentagon assessment last April showed that 14 percent of former detainees had joined or were suspected of joining militant groups, up from 11 percent in December 2008.
The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the revised Pentagon assessment showed that percentage had grown to about 20 percent.
Inexact Science'
Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell declined to comment on the latest figures, saying they remained classified, but told reporters, "The trend hasn't reversed itself."
Morrell said the vetting process for releasing detainees was an "inexact science," adding: "You know, we are making subjective calls based upon judgment, intelligence. And so there is no foolproof answer in this realm. That's what makes this so difficult."
The Obama administration official said steps had been taken to improve detainee reviews.
A special Guantanamo task force was created by Obama "to conduct the thorough work that had not been done before: to review the relevant information about each detainee, including the threat they pose, to determine whether they should be prosecuted, detained, or transferred," the official said.
Critics have long accused the Pentagon of exaggerating the threat posed by detainees.
"This is more scaremongering," Clive Stafford-Smith, director of the UK-based legal charity Reprieve, which represents several detainees at the facility.
"If the Pentagon was honest about its numbers, it would publish the names of those who have 'gone back to the fight' and the allegations against them. ... Let's have this discussion in the open and stop deceiving people," he added.
Obama has encountered various complications in trying to close the Guantanamo facility and has acknowledged he will not be able to meet a self-imposed one-year deadline to close it that he promised when he took office last January.
Just last month, Obama's aides announced the U.S. government would proceed with buying an Illinois prison and is bolstering security there so a limited number of Guantanamo detainees can be transferred to it.
But Congress has yet to provide the military the authority or funding to transfer inmates to Illinois and Republicans have argued moving them there posed an unnecessary security risk.
London breeding Islamic terrorists
By Robert Leiken (*) - Special to CNN
Story Highlights
Robert Leiken: Would-be Christmas Day suicide bomber was radicalized in London
Leiken says London is haven for foreign jihadi preachers, organizers, agitators
He says British security said AbdulMutallab communicated with extremists in London
Leiken says British turn blind eye; "once-glorious culture of tolerance lost its bearings"
In assessing blame for the Christmas Day terror scare, we point fingers at Yemen, at the Amsterdam airport, even at corruption in African airports. But no one mentions where the would-be suicide bomber was radicalized: London, the capital of the ally we take for granted.
Last weekend, British security agency MI5 revealed that Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab had "multiple communications" with Islamic extremists in London, that the Nigerian reached out from London to a worldwide network of jihadi contacts and that he was "on the periphery of a past incident."
Why was this 3-year-old information apparently not shared with U.S. authorities until more than a week after the near-fatal flight?
Probably the reason is that UK security agencies are overwhelmed by the dimensions of the terrorist threat in Britain. Two years ago, MI5's director revealed that there were 4,000 people known to be "involved in terrorist-related activity in the UK" in more than 200 terrorist networks. A year later, authorities said the threat was growing "increasingly complex" and the numbers "even higher."
Since the mid-90s, London has been a haven for foreign jihadi preachers, organizers, agitators and propagandists, many of them recipients of generous welfare benefits.
"Londonistan" attracted second-generation British Muslims who spurned the folk Islam and customs of their immigrant parents but were repelled by a British culture they regarded as decadent and racist.
London has become a fertile field in the jihadi playground, along with Yemen, Pakistan and Somalia.
Robert Leiken, national security director at Nixon Center
With the exception of the 2005 London bombings, the terrorist plots they organized were disrupted. However, permissive British judges and juries failed to convict many of the plotters, including those who scouted the London bombing.
Anwar al-Awlaki, who inspired the Fort Hood massacre and conspired with AbdulMutallab in Yemen, reportedly has also inspired several terrorist cells in Britain. He is heard on British-based Web sites and via video links at conferences hosted by university Islamic Societies such as the one AbdulMutallab led at University College London.
The Nigerian is the fourth president of a London Islamic Society to face terrorist charges in three years. One of them is awaiting retrial, having escaped conviction for involvement in the 2006 liquid bomb plot to blow up airliners bound for the U.S., a precursor to the Christmas plot.
In November, the University College Islamic Society canceled, at the last minute, an appearance by a firebrand imam who preached at other London universities that women are mentally deficient and that critics of Islam and homosexuals should be assassinated.
After the Christmas scare, videos of UCL Islamic Society gatherings were removed from YouTube, and its Web site was taken down. An Islamic Society video allowed to remain online, presumably regarded by UCL authorities as not so embarrassing, boasted of "the collapse of evolution in the very building dedicated to Charles Darwin. In the spot he once lived."
What was hidden in the other videos? Why can't scholars view them? Malcolm Grant, UCL's provost, professes to being "completely shocked" by the Christmas news.
He says AbdulMutallab's tutors "found it impossible to tell the difference between him and any other student." Are we supposed to be reassured? According to The Observer newspaper, Britain's official "Joint Terrorism Analysis Center is believed to have cited UCL in 2008 as one of up to 12 universities that might have a problem with 'extremism.' "
About 100,000 British university students are Muslims. About a quarter of them belong to Islamic Societies, and half of those are active members.
With the ascendancy of identity politics in Britain, Islamic Societies, rather like African-American student associations of yore, have become the hub of students professing to seek "social justice." But their idea of justice is to indict as the world's real terrorists the U.S. and Israel, as in "The War on Terror Week" that AbdulMutallab hosted at UCL's Islamic Society.
Islamic Society members vary widely. They may be moderate Sufis, apolitical pietists, democratic Islamists, windy radicals or extremists like AbdulMutallab. Many of them believe that violence is acceptable if their religion is under attack, which is little comfort, because the central plank of radical Islam is that their religion is under attack worldwide.
Terror experts believe AbdulMutallab, 23, was targeted by al Qaeda as a suicide bomber because he had previously flown to the United States, had a valid visa and had lived in the UK. More than a dozen British radicals reportedly are being trained in Yemen today, not to mention scores training in Pakistan.
But if we begin to point fingers at Britain, we will need two hands. The danger from Britain has its source in nearly every institution in British society: a Parliament that cannot pass counterterrorism legislation, police that do not arrest because evidence is not strong enough to convince a British court, security agencies that do not disclose to the media information about suspects, Islamic organizations that tell Muslims that such silence proves that the suspects have been falsely accused, a press that allows the public to believe such claims, jurors who then hold prosecutors to impossible standards and a once-glorious culture of tolerance that has lost its bearings.
London has become a fertile field in the jihadi playground, along with Yemen, Pakistan and Somalia.
Our great friend has allowed herself to become a strategic resource to our common enemies and a liability in the struggle against terrorism.
(*) Robert S. Leiken in the director of National Security and Immigration Programs at The Nixon Center and writes for The National Interest. He is the author of the forthcoming "Europe's Angry Muslims: The Revolt of the Second Generation" (Oxford University Press).
We do not send pictures with these reports, because of the volume, but picture this emetic scene with your inner eye:
A dying Somali child in the macerated arms of her mother besides their bombed shelter with Islamic graffiti looks at a fat trader, who discusses with a local militia chief and a UN representative at a harbour while USAID provided GM food from subsidised production is off-loaded by WFP into the hands of local "distributors" and dealers - and in the background a western warship and a foreign fishing trawler ply the waters of a once sovereign, prosper and proud nation, which was a role model for honesty and development in the Horn of Africa. (If you feel that this is overdrawn - come with us into Somalia and see the even more cruel reality yourself!) - and if you need lively stills or video material on Somalia, please do contact us.
There is no limit to what a person can do or how far one can go to help
if one doesn't mind who gets the credit !
ECOTERRA Intl. maintains a register for persons missing or abducted in the Somali seas (Foreign seafarers as well as Somalis). Inquiries by family member can be sent by e-mail to office[at]ecoterra-international.org
For families of presently captive seafarers - in order to advise and console their worries - ECOTERRA Intl. can establish contacts with professional seafarers, who had been abducted in Somalia, and their wives as well as of a Captain of a sea-jacked and released ship, who agreed to be addressed "with questions, and we will answer truthfully".
ECOTERRA - ALERTS and pending issues:
PIRATE ATTACK GULF OF ADEN: Advice on Who to Contact and What to Dohttp://www.noonsite.com/Members/sue/R2008-09-08-2
Best Managment Practice for the Gulf of Aden and off Somalia.
In an effort to counter Piracy in the Gulf of Aden and off the east coast of Somalia industry bodies including the International Maritime Bureau have published the Best Managment Practice (BMP) guidelines. Please click here to download a copy of the BMP as pdf.
NATURAL RESOURCES & ARMED FISH POACHERS: Foreign navies entering the 200nm EEZ of Somalia and foreign helicopters and troops must respect the fact that especially all wildlife is protected by Somali national as well as by international laws and that the protection of the marine resources of Somalia from illegally fishing foreign vessels should be an integral part of the anti-piracy operations. Likewise the navies must adhere to international standards and not pollute the coastal waters with oil, ballast water or waste from their own ships but help Somalia to fight against any dumping of any waste (incl. diluted, toxic or nuclear waste). So far and though the AU as well as the UN has called since long on other nations to respect the 200 nm EEZ, only now the two countries (Spain and France) to which the most notorious vessels and fleets are linked have come up with a declaration that they will respect the 200 nm EEZ of Somalia but so far not any of the navies operating in the area pledged to stand against illegal fishing. So far not a single illegal fishing vessel has been detained by the naval forces, though they had been even informed about several actual cases, where an intervention would have been possible. Illegally operating Tuna fishing vessels (many from South Korea, some from Greece and China) carry now armed personnel and force their way into the Somali fishing grounds - uncontrolled or even protected by the naval forces mandated to guard the Somali waters against any criminal activity, which included arms carried by foreign fishing vessels in Somali waters.
LLWs / NLWs: According to recently leaked information the anti-piracy operations in the Gulf of Aden are also used as a cover-up for the live testing of recently developed arsenals of so called non-lethal as well as sub-lethal weapons systems. (Pls request details) Neither the Navies nor the UN has come up with any code of conduct in this respect, while the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Program (JNLWP) is sponsoring several service-led acquisition programs, including the VLAD, Joint Integration Program, and Improved Flash Bang Grenade. Alredy in use in Somalia are so called Non-lethal optical distractors, which are visible laser devices that have reversible optical effects. These types of non-blinding laser devices use highly directional optical energy. Somalia is also a testing ground for the further developments of the Active Denial System (ADS) Advanced Concept Technology Demonstration (ACTD). If new developments using millimeter wave sources that will help minimize the size, weight, and system cost of an effective Active Denial System which provides "ADS-ACTD-like" repel effects, are used has not yet been revealed. Obviously not only the US is developing and using these kind of weapons as the case of MV MARATHON showed, where a Spanish naval vessel was using optical lasers - the stand-off was then broken by the killing of one of the hostage seafarers. Local observers also claim that HEMI devices, producing Human Electro-Muscular Incapacitation (HEMI) Bioeffects, have been used in the Gulf of Aden against Somalis. Exposure to HEMI devices, which can be understood as a stun-gun shot at an individual over a larger distance, causes muscle contractions that temporarily disable an individual. Research efforts are under way to develop a longer-duration of this effect than is currently available. The live tests are apparently done without that science understands yet the effects of HEMI electrical waveforms on a human body.
WARBOTS, UAVs etc.: Peter Singer says: "By cutting the already tenuous link between the public and its nation´s foreign policy, pain-free war would pervert the whole idea of the democratic process and citizenship as they relate to war. When a citizenry has no sense of sacrifice or even the prospect of sacrifice, the decision to go to war becomes just like any other policy decision, weighed by the same calculus used to determine whether to raise bridge tolls. Instead of widespread engagement and debate over the most important decision a government can make, you get popular indifference. When technology turns war into something merely to be watched, and not weighed with great seriousness, the checks and balances that undergird democracy go by the wayside. This could well mean the end of any idea of democratic peace that supposedly sets our foreign-policy decision making apart. Such wars without costs could even undermine the morality of "good" wars. When a nation decides to go to war, it is not just deciding to break stuff in some foreign land. As one philosopher put it, the very decision is "a reflection of the moral character of the community who decides." Without public debate and support and without risking troops, the decision to go to war becomes the act of a nation that doesn´t give a damn."
ECOTERRA Intl., whose work does focus on nature- and human-rights-protection and - as the last international environmental organization still working in Somalia - had alerted ship-owners since 1992, many of whom were fishing illegally in the since 1972 established 200 nm territorial waters of Somalia and today's 200nm Exclusive Economic Zone (UNCLOS) of Somalia, to stay away from Somali waters. The non-governmental organization had requested the international community many times for help to protect the coastal waters of the war-torn state from all exploiters, but now lawlessness has seriously increased and gone out of hand - even with the navies.
ECOTERRA members with marine and maritime expertise, joined by it's ECOP-marine group, are closely and continuously monitoring and advising on the Somali situation. (for previous information concerning the topics please google keywords ECOTERRA (and) SOMALIA)
The network of the SEAFARERS ASSISTANCE PROGRAMME and ECOTERRA Intl. helped significantly in most sea-jack cases. Basically the East African Seafarers Assistance Programme tackles all issues of seafarers welfare and ECOTERRA Intl. is working in Somalia since 1986 on human-rights and nature protection, while ECOP-marine concentrates on illegal fishing and the protection of the marine ecosystems. Your support counts too.
Getting what you want is not nearly as important as giving what you have. -- Tom Krause
We give all - and You? Please consider to contribute to the work of SAP, ECOP-marine and ECOTERRA Intl. Please donate to the defence fund. Contact us for details concerning project-sponsorship or donations via e-mail: ecotrust[at]ecoterra.net
Kindly note that all the information above is distributed under and is subject to a license under the Creative Commons Attribution. ECOTERRA, however, reserves the right to editorial changes. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/uk/. The opinion of individual authors, whose writings are provided here for strictly educational and informational purposes, does not necessarily reflect the views held by ECOTERRA Intl. unless endorsed. With each issue of the SMCM ECOTERRA Intl. tries to paint a timely picture containing the actual facts and often differing opinions of people from all walks of live concerning issues, which do have an impact on the Somali people, Somalia as a nation, the region and in many cases even the world.
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Press Contacts:
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SAP / ECOTERRA Intl.
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For more information see this article in The Nation or this article in Wired News.
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