Somalia Targeted – From Piracy to NATO Foray and Western Powers’ Prey

Things will not end with the forthcoming major NATO operation in the Horn of Africa region; they will only start. The project for NATO’s expansion in the Indian Ocean is a major step to global predominance.

And the inane Somalis, who believe that today’s ransoms, tomorrow’s bribery, and yesterday’s national multi-division are acceptable options, will pay with their own lives when unexpected surprises will force them to either flee or die.

Yet, all the recent developments, correctly assessed, speak by themselves; one does not need to be the prophet of an Oracle to see the future. The same criminal colonial powers that targeted and exterminated the Ottoman Empire (the project took more than 120 years!) in order to spread war and pestilence throughout its territories, while pilfering its resources, are currently manipulating persons and triggering events around the Horn of Africa.

No possibly good result will come out of their deeds and conspiracies and no possibly good policy of a Somali government would involved dealings with any of them. In forthcoming articles, I will expand on the issue, unveiling the use of Somalia the colonial powers want to make in the years ahead.

In this article, I republish integrally the latest Ecoterra press release that makes available the latest news and a wide array of comments, analyses and republications.

Ecoterra Intl. – SMCM (Somali Marine & Coastal Monitor). Part XXVI

Ecoterra International – Updates & Statements, Review & Clearing-house

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 overseas, 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 nor the humanitarian assistance to abducted seafarers and their families is receiving the required adequate attention, care and funding.

"During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act". George Orwell

2009-05-02 - 20h05:17 UTC

EA Illegal Fishing and Dumping Hotline: +254-714-747090 (confidentiality guaranteed) - email: somalia@ecoterra.net

EA Seafarers Assistance Programme Emergency Helpline: SMS to +254-738-497979 or call +254-733-633-733

"The pirates must not be allowed to destroy our dream!"

Capt. Florent Lemaçon - F/Y Tanit - killed by attack of French commandos - 10. April 2009

Non A La Guerre - Yes To Peace

(Inscription on the sail of F/Y TANIT shot down on day one of the French assault)

None of the various, local or foreign pirate outfits we like to add -

Clearing-house

NATO Warning – 02. 05. 2009

02:30 UTC: POSN: 07:19S – 052:11E, off Southern Somalia. A bulk carrier was attacked and hijacked. Awaiting for further information. All vessels are advised to remain vigilant. Pirate mother vessels and pirate skiffs are believed to be actively operating in the above areas. All vessels not making scheduled calls to ports in Somalia, Kenya or Tanzania keep as far from the Somali coast as possible. All vessels are advised to maintain a distance of more than 600 nautical miles from the coastline and when routing North / South, consider keeping East of 60E longitude until east of Seychelles. All vessels transiting the area and not able to keep 600 NM off the Somali coast are advised not to approach closer than 100 NM from the position given in this report and maintain maximum CPA with any ship acting suspiciously. While navigating in the region, vessels are urged to operate at a heightened state of readiness, maintaining strict 24 hours anti-piracy visual and radar watches, actively implement anti-piracy measures. Early assessment / detection will allow ships to take evasive measures to prevent boarding and request for assistance. Vessels to regularly report their position / course / speed to UKMTO. Vessels to report attempted and actual attacks and suspicious sightings to the IMB PRC and UKMTO.

News from sea-jackings, abductions or newly attacked ships

Finally the Iraqi captain, three Pakistani as well as one Filipino sailor of the crew of MV JAIKUR I have been brought to safety after they were flown out from Mogadishu today, Saturday. The vessel remains at an outside anchorage and still is engulfed in a dispute concerning its damaged cargo between the owner of the vessel, the cargo handler and the cargo consignees. The office of the Somali Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister, a humanitarian organization as well as the respective embassies all co-operated to secure the release of the crew, while AU forces safeguarded their short journey from the embattled harbour to the airport. The release of 14 Indian crew members had been achieved in a similar way already two weeks ago, but the owner of the vessel had refused to place his ship at an outside anchorage, which made it necessary that the mechanics, the ship-engineer and captain remained. The vessel with its all-Somali crew was today moved out of the harbour and all foreign nationals of the crew of JAIKUR I are now safe and on their way home. "They have arrived in Nairobi this evening", an Ecoterra spokesperson confirmed while "thanking all involved in securing the lives of these seafarers".

Pirate "Labour-Day"

A NATO spokesman said Somali pirates had hijacked a British-owned cargo ship crewed by Ukrainians. Lt-Cmdr. Alexandre Santos Fernandes said to AP the Maltese-flagged MV ARIANA was hijacked on the Indian Ocean northwest of the Seychelles islands about 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) from NATO's operating area. He said the crew members are all Ukrainian, but ship-owner Seven Seas Maritime Ltd. has not given the exact number of people onboard. Fernandes said Saturday that the ARIANA was taken in a rare overnight attack. In reality the MV ARIANA was sea-jacked already Friday evening and is a Malta-flagged bulk carrier with a gross tonnage of 37,955, which is managed by the British company SEVEN SEAS MARITIME Ltd. from London, while the ISM manager is ALLOCEANS SHIPPING CO LTD from Athens / Greece and registered ship-owner is CANDELA SHIPPING of Malta in order to evade tax and regulations by flying this flag of convenience. The vessel has no ITF approved CBA (collective bargaining agreement for the crew). The ship reportedly was on her way from Brazil to the Middle East with a load of soy. Insured by the London P&I Club this case seems to be another feast for London lawyers and their buddies. The crew could consist of as many as 24 Ukrainians.
The MV ARIANA, carrying Soya, was taken about 250 miles (400 kilometers) southwest of the Seychelles islands, North Atlantic Treaty Organization spokesman Commander Chris Davies said in a telephone interview. The vessel is flagged in Malta and has a Ukrainian crew, Davies, based in Northwood, England, said. Seven Seas Maritime Ltd., who call themselves the ship's agent, confirmed the sea-jacking and said the ship, with a Ukrainian crew and carrying 35,000 tonnes of Soya, was seized around 250 miles south-west of the Seychelles, thereby contradicting NATO.

Not yet officially confirmed reports speak of a second sea-jacking, a Ukrainian vessel, which allegedly was seized by the same group to which the pirates of MV ARIANA belong. This vessel is said to have armoured vehicles marked with UN logos on board. "The consular service department of the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry has instructed the Ukrainian embassy in Kenya to check the information and get all the details", a press spokesperson said. The pirates said they were taking the Ukrainian ship, hijacked in the Indian Ocean with a cargo including United Nations' vehicles, to the Somali coastal town of Haradheere. "We have hijacked a ship carrying industrial equipment including white cars with the U.N. logo, our friends are on board it", a pirate who said his name was Hussein told Reuters by telephone from Haradheere.

Nineteen Somali pirates had been captured and were briefly detained in a NATO led operation in the Gulf of Aden. The group was detained an hour after allegedly attempting to attack a crude-oil tanker, the Bahamas-flagged MV KITION, which was formerly operated by a Norwegian agent. The master radioed for help as the pirates approached.

The allied commander on board the Portuguese warship CORTE-REAL answered the call and intercepted the pirates mother-ship. We were the nearest warship, so we immediately scrambled our helicopter`, said NATO Lieutenant Commander from on-board the Corte-Real, which was about 20 nautical miles (37 km) north of the MV KITION when the distress call went out. The helicopter spotted the skiff and began tracking the pirates who fled to their mother-ship, a dhow carrying 19 heavily-armed pirates, which was later intercepted after a high-speed chase by the Portuguese escort frigate. Eight marines then managed to board the vessel and also recovered a small but significant cache of arms including rocket-propelled grenades. "They surrendered immediately", said Fernandes, who added no injuries were reported and the pirates did not shoot at the merchant vessel, the helicopter or the marines. Fernandes said the pirates captured by the Corte-Real, which was last week recalled from other duties to fight piracy in the Gulf, were released after consultations with Portuguese authorities. Each warship on NATO's anti-piracy mission Operation Allied Protector must comply with its national regulations on dealing with captured pirates. Fernandes said the special forces had found the pirates were armed with four sticks of the high-explosive P4A, four AK-47s and a rocket propelled grenade launcher with nine grenades. "It was almost a kilogramme of high explosives. If used correctly it can open a hole in the hull of a ship and sink her", Fernandes said, adding that he did not think the explosives signaled an escalation in violence. "It is the first time we have spotted high explosives on board a pirate ship, normally they just stick to AK-47s and RPGs".

The four sticks of P4A dynamite — which could be used in demolition, blasting through walls or potentially breaching a the hull of a ship — were destroyed along with four automatic rifles and nine rocket-propelled grenades also confiscated. It was unclear how the pirates planned to use the dynamite, Fernandes said. P4A dynamite is commonly used along the East-African coast for illegal dynamite fishing. The use of dynamite for fishing is also illegal in Somalia and officials wonder why the Portugese did not hand over the culprits to the Somali authorities for prosecution. They would have been prosecuted, even if the alleged piracy attempt could not be proven. Since the incident happened about 100 miles north from the Somali coast it might have been in the EEZ of Yemen and therefore also Yemeni authorities are embarrassed that they have not even been informed. Navies regularly invoke the provisions of e.g. the UN SC resolution 1851, when it fits to their deeds, but when it comes to the duties (like reporting, co-operation or also curbing other high-seas crime like illegal fishing) which this resolution also provides for, the navies sailing under its mandate often forget or ignore it. Fernandez stated to the media: "The 19 pirate suspects were released after consultation with Portuguese authorities because they had not attacked Portuguese property or citizens. Decisions on detaining piracy suspects fall under national law; Fernandes said Portugal was working on updating its laws to allow for pirate suspects to be detained in such situations". But such is just a lame excuse, since each of the NATO, EUNAVFOR Atalanta, or CTF 150/151 carries at least one Somali on board to help as interpreter.

Unless that Somali would have given up officially his Somali nationality, he could also legally perform a citizen-arrest with the help of the naval forces and then hand the culprits over to Somali Authorities. "These catch-and-release games have to stop - Somali seafarers are not there to be harassed by navies in their own waters or on the international seas while true sea-bandits committing crimes on the high sea must be brought to book and all cases thoroughly and independently investigated", Ecoterra spokesman H.-J. Duwe stated.

Turkish-flagged MV CHRISTINA A reportedly was attacked 1,150 nm east of Mombasa /Kenya on 30th April by two white speed boats with 4 suspected pirates each. Shots were fired but the vessel increased to a speed of 20 kts and the attack was abandoned. Vessel is reported safe and proceeds with maximum speed.

A Spanish warship had intercepted a skiff carrying nine suspected Somali pirates believed to have attacked an Italian cruise ship last weekend, the defense ministry said Monday. The frigate Numancia "intercepted a skiff with nine occupants who could be connected to the hijacking attempt of the Italian cruise ship which was eventually repelled by the boat", was said in a statement. The cruise liner Melody, carrying more than 1,500 people, was attacked on Saturday but Israeli security guards on board the ship responded to the pirates' gunfire and were able to repel them. After the hijacking attempt The Numancia, along with patrol planes from France and the Seychelles and an Indian navy ship, launched a high-seas hunt for the assailants. During the search, the naval mission found "two small boats with nine suspects on board very close to the scene of the attack against the cruise", the Spanish defense ministry said.

The suspects abandoned one the boats and were later caught in the skiff. The Spanish navy handed over the suspects to a Seychelles ship since they were captured in the island nation's waters in the Indian Ocean. Other sources from Somalia, however, stated that "none of our boats or boys is missing", and people wondered, who these "Somalis" are. MSC Cruises chief executive Pier Francesco Vago told Radio New Zealand today the ship's radar didn't pick up the speed boat used by the pirates and it had arrived unexpectedly. Mr. Vago played down reports of security staff on the ship having had a shoot-out with the pirates. Mr. Vago said the pirates "wanted to become stars". "In a world of reality shows, it seems to me that's the next level of reality shows". He said his company had since decided to stop sailing via the Suez Canal and east Africa. "It is a no-go area, full stop. They are now in detention in a prison cell of the Seychelles police force and are expected to be charged and tried in the islands", Seychellois President James Michel's office said in a statement on Tuesday, reported AFP news agency. The Indian Navy later claimed that they had captured the pirates. However, the Seychelles said it had arrested the nine suspected pirates and that the men were intercepted by a Spanish frigate near the Indian Ocean archipelago on Monday. They are accused of firing on Saturday at the Italian cruise ship the Melody - which had more than 1,500 passengers - in an attack said to have been repelled by Israeli security guards, while many passengers actually had defended the vessel and criticized the captain, crew and guards for inaction, according to interviews conducted by the renowned magazine Der Spiegel.

Twenty-three Filipino sailors held hostage by Somali pirates for over five months returned today, Saturday, to the Philippines in a tearful reunion with their families. The crew of the Philippine-registered MT STOLT STRENGTH arrived from Oman at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport in Manila via Amsterdam amid cheers from their relatives who anxiously waited for their return. The sailors were seized on November 10, 2008 off the waters of Somalia and were released on April 20, 2009 after its operators finally came to terms with the pirates closing the often failing negotiations and after a ransom was paid. "I never felt so helpless in my life. It was the most negative feeling one could experience", said ship captain 62-year-old Abelardo Pacheco, as reported by DPA the German Press Agency, while in reality he was observed often in the company of at least one of the main culprits behind this case on land. The captain certainly will have and Second Mate Carlo Deseo might have some explanation to do at home. Shortly after the MT STOLT STRENGTH was released by the pirates and due to shoddy release planning since the vessel's shortage of fuel was known, it run out of fuel and floated first helpless in the dangerous waters off Somalia. German, U.S. and Chinese naval vessels eventually came to the aid of the crew, providing first food and medicine, while a US ship provided it with bunker fuel and it was escorted by a Chinese frigate, which allowed the crew to sail to Oman where they stayed for two days before the crew - well briefed by SAGANA SHIPPING's Captain Custodio what stories to tell to the media - was flying home to Manila. Foreign Affairs undersecretary Esteban Conejos says Filipino ships will no longer sail in the pirate-infested waters around Somalia. "The office of the president has decided to impose a ban on the deployment of Filipino seafarers to the Gulf of Aden and along the coast of Somalia and Yemen", he said. But shortly after the ban was imposed it already was defied by meanwhile sea-jacked MV POMPEI, a Belgian owned stone-carrier with 3 Filipinos among the 10-men crew.

U.S. of America forces hand over bodies of 3 Somali men shot during captain's rescue - but only spare two coffins. Puntland marine forces transported two white coffins from a US naval vessel containing the remains of three slain Somali pirates to the mainland at the northern port town of Bossasso on Thursday. The U.S. Navy handed over the three dead bodies of the pirates, which U.S. Navy SEALS shot and killed during the April 12 rescue of Richard Phillips, local officials said. Lt.-Col. Mohamed Abdulle Mohamed, the chief of security in the country's northern Bossasso port, said regional authorities sent a small boat to collect the wooden coffins containing the bodies from a U.S. warship stationed about 6.5 kilometers off the coast. Mohamed said earlier: "I hoped they would hand the bodies over to their relatives", but noted that none of the people at the port on Thursday when the bodies arrived back in Somalia had identified themselves as family members of the dead men. Mohamed himself did not know if any family members of the men were at the port to collect the bodies. "Maybe they will join the funeral procession", he said to AP. Mohamed said the Americans had been doing DNA tests on the bodies. Lt. Stephanie Murdock, a spokeswoman for the Bahrain-based U.S. Fifth Fleet, declined to comment on possible DNA testing, but confirmed the bodies were transferred to Somali police.

The Italian-owned 33,000 dwt ro-ro Jolly Smeraldo has fended off two separate pirate attacks some 250 km off the east coast of Somalia. The vessel, en route from Mombassa to Jeddah, was approached during the afternoon of 30th April by a small craft carry men armed with assault rifles and rocket propelled grenades, but managed to escape after taking evasive action while being raked with gunfire. A second attack, more sustained, this morning reportedly involved the use of RPGs, but was again thwarted. The ship's owner, Ignazio Messina, reports that none of the 24 crew on board were harmed.

Germany moved more than 200 elite commandoes into the vicinity of a ship held by Somali pirates several days ago before deciding to call off the armed rescue attempt, two news magazines said Saturday. Der Spiegel and Focus said the operation, the second planned against the pirates, had been intended to recapture the container ship MV HANSA STAVANGER on Wednesday. Senior Berlin officials ordered a halt after deciding the risks to the hostages and troops were too great, the magazines said. They said the GSG 9 paramilitary unit of the German federal police and Navy combat frogmen were to have attempted to seize the German freighter, but found the pirates had doubled their watch on the captured ship, where 24 crew are being held. The Defense and Interior Ministries in Berlin declined to confirm the account to the German Press Agency DPA. "We don't discuss operational matters", an interior spokesman said. The HANSA STAVANGER was seized 400 nautical miles from Somalia on April 4. According to news reports, the crack police prepared to recapture the hijacked German vessel on the high seas from the pirates, but were thwarted when the pirates took the HANSA STAVANGER back to their lair on the Bay of Harardhere at high speed. Spiegel said the German recapture team was moved into the cargo ship's vicinity Wednesday on board the US Navy helicopter carrier USS Boxer.

It said Berlin had requested US assistance, but US national security adviser James Jones declined to back the operation itself. Focus said the unit would return to Germany in the new week. GSG 9 is Germany's main anti-terrorist unit, trained to use surprise and lethal force to end hostage-takings. Meanwhile the 5 Germans were again taken off the vessel and are said to be held on land. Confusion among their Somali captors first led to their believe that the German nationals were actually French, because for at least one of the Germans the language is not his mother-tongue. Efforts by elders and a humanitarian organization to also allow these sailors back on board are ongoing. Earlier they had succeeded to push the pirates to allow the majority of the crew back onto the vessel after they had been abducted inland in fear of an imminent attack by naval forces. Rear Admiral Michelle Howard, the black woman in command of Combined Task Force 151 since April 5, 2009, so far has not given in to ill-advised demands by several of her own rather blood-thirty country-fellow men to send the Marines on the USS Boxer ashore to capture the pirate bases in the "fine" United States Marine Corps Tradition of "to the shores of Tripoli (and Somalia)". Did she rather want the Germans to take that first step?

Why did France resort to violence off the coast of Somalia?, asks Olivier Laurent and elaborates: The use of force April 10 to recover five French hostages held off the Somali coast, on the yacht, the Tanit, demonstrates the contempt of the Nicolas Sarkozy government for the lives of the French hostages and the Somali pirates, as well as for French and Somali public opinion.

The French government used the episode to bring its policy into line with that of the Obama administration, which used deadly force in response to the seizing of the Maersk Alabama, an American ship, and the taking hostage by Somali pirates of its captain, Richard Phillips. On April 7, US Navy snipers shot to death three of the pirates holding Phillips.

Somali pirates seized the Tanit, a 12.5 meter-long yacht, on April 4 in the Gulf of Aden. The vessel was re-taken six days later, after an assault by French commandos that resulted in the death of two Somali pirates and the skipper of the Tanit, Florent Lemaçon, after an exchange of fire.

The three pirates, aged between 23 and 27, captured during the French operation, were arrested and imprisoned. They join 12 other pirates currently held in French prisons for the hostage taking in 2008 of two other yachts off the Somali coast, the Ponant and the Carré d’As. They were charged with "ship hijacking" and "arbitrary kidnapping and detention in an organized group".

On April 17, the public prosecutor in Rennes, Hervé Pavy, announced that Lemaçon’s autopsy makes it impossible to determine the origin of the bullet that killed him. Pavy, however, stated that the answer could be obtained after the "absolutely necessary inspection of the boat" and the examining "of the weapons used by the pirates, which were recovered".

Minister of Defense Hervé Morin stated after the recapture of the yacht that it "cannot be excluded" that the death of Lemaçon was due to fire from the French forces. He emphasized that the operation carried out by the French military was "the most feasible solution". Morin added that Paris had offered a ransom to the pirates, without specifying the amount.

These facts underline French responsibility for the three deaths on the Tanit. Whatever the origin of the bullet that killed Lemaçon, the decision to launch the assault, and therefore put his life in danger, rests entirely with the French authorities. Nothing indicates that the pirates were about to execute their hostages. In fact, it was absolutely against their interests to do so, since they had no chance of escaping without them.

The obvious contempt of the French authorities for the lives of the Somalis will only increase the hatred for French imperialism among the ordinary masses on the Horn of Africa, where France has been and continues to act as a colonial power.

Djibouti, which borders Somalia on the northwest, was France’s last African colony and for many years critical to its ability to monitor the sea lanes between Suez and French colonies in Indochina. Djibouti only obtained its independence in 1977, but France still maintains one of its largest foreign military bases there, with 2,900 troops and an air base. Since 2002 the French have faced a rival in the US, which maintains 1,800 military personnel in Djibouti, as well as a radio station broadcasting in Arabic. France reinforced its detachment in June 2008 with additional aircraft and a naval flotilla.

Until now the Somali pirates, who have been active for several years, have killed no one, but it is very possible that this will change after the "strong-arm" operations recently carried out by French, American and Dutch units. The French assault will only endanger the lives of future hostages taken off the Horn of Africa.

An interview published in Lloyd’s List, the maritime insurers’ trade magazine, summed up the pessimism and opposition of the seafaring community in regard to such bloody maneuvers. Jim Murphy, an expert on the Gulf of Aden region for the Lloyd’s Register-Fairplay information service, argues that the solutions proposed—exclusion zones, military convoys, guards or armed crews—are doomed to failure, in the absence of a political resolution to the conflicts in Somalia.

Despite the unprecedented deployment of warships, the incidence of piracy and similar activities increased by nearly 200 percent between 2007 and 2008, according to the International Maritime Bureau.

Most of the media describe the Somali ports from which the pirates allegedly operate, such as Haradheere or Eyl, as "pirate dens"—thus opening up the possibility of foreign military intervention. In fact, these ports have a combined population of 32,000, only a fraction of whom is implicated in acts of piracy. An attempt to resolve the problem by military force could involve another bloodbath.

For the inhabitants of the Somali coast, the policy of the great powers has had disastrous effects. Foreign companies have dumped tons of toxic waste there and European and Asian countries exploit the fishing resources, all the while posing as defenders of the environment by reducing fishing quotas in their own waters.

More generally, the social devastation of Somalia derives from the shifting geo-politics of the major powers and the cynicism of Stalinist policy in the region. Famine has raged since the war conducted by Somalia in the Ogaden (1977-78), an ethnic Somali region but forming part of Ethiopia. During that conflict, the USSR first supported Somalia, then changed sides and supported Ethiopia. This brought about the defeat of Somalia and, in 1980, the turn toward NATO by the Somali military government of Mohammed Siad Barre and the economic intervention of the International Monetary Fund.

A series of famines in the region in the 1980s, the abandonment by Barre of Somali aims in the Ogaden, and his adoption of austerity policies imposed by the IMF undermined internal support for his regime. Barre subsequently faced a civil war against his government, led by various nationalist and ethnic groups. After Gorbachev stopped Soviet financial support for its allies in Africa, the US ended its financial support of Barre, whose regime then collapsed.

In 1992-93, the French Foreign Legion collaborated with the US invasion of Somalia, in a supposed effort to secure the country’s supply of food aid, then suffering from famine. That operation ended with the withdrawal of foreign troops confronted by the resistance of the Somali people, notably in the battle around an American helicopter brought down in Mogadishu.

The current French minister of foreign affairs, Bernard Kouchner, became famous at the time through a campaign in favour of the "right to humanitarian intervention". Images of Kouchner unloading sacks of rice were broadcast around the world. He claimed to have organized the re-supply of food for the whole of Somalia "for two months". What was brought in, it was later revealed, amounted to three days’ consumption for the population of Mogadishu. [… and in the TANIT case he did nothing to stop the deadly assault].

The right to humanitarian intervention proclaimed in 1992 merely served to justify renewed imperialist operations in the region, evoking the various justifications offered in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by the European powers to impose their will and carve up the remnants of the Ottoman Empire.

The Somali population has long lived in a state of insecurity and misery, a victim of endless imperialist machinations and conflicts between local or clan militias. Over the last ten years, the strength of Islamicist forces has grown, provoking the invasion of the country by Ethiopia in 2006, which was encouraged by the US and aided by American and allied naval forces. The international media, predictably, presented that attack as a "peace-keeping" operation.

The withdrawal of Ethiopian troops from Somalia last year, far from finally bringing peace to the Somali people, has only re-opened the question of how imperialist influence will be exercised in the country.

Powerful economic and strategic interests are at work. The Gulf of Aden is critical for international commerce, a maritime passage for most of the oil trade between Europe and the Persian Gulf and for goods traded between Asia and Europe. The Defense White Paper published in 2008 under President Nicolas Sarkozy’s authority identifies this zone as representing a special strategic interest for France.

Every great power thus seizes the opportunity of a hostage-taking episode off the coast of Somalia to flex its military and political muscle. Each power also demonstrates its indifference to the fate of civilians, Somali and European, in the hope of increasing its stature in the competition among the imperialist countries.

The Italian-owned 33,000 dwt ro-ro Jolly Smeraldo has fended off two separate pirate attacks some 250km off the east coast of Somalia. The vessel, en route from Mombassa to Jeddah, was approached in the afternoon on 29th March by a small craft carry men armed with assault rifles and rocket propelled grenades, but managed to escape after taking evasive action while being raked with gunfire. A second attack, more sustained, this morning reportedly involved the use of RPGs, but was again thwarted. The ship's owner, Ignazio Messina, reports that none of the 24 crew on board were harmed and he is now reviewing the options for its regular liner service to the region. Among those options is the possibility of using a private security firm, according to Stefano Messina. "We have tried in the past but the authorities have told us it is not possible". Mr. Messina also called on the military forces offering protection to commercial shipping in the area to work more flexibly in addressing the threat. "They are concentrated around Aden and northern Somalia. But that was the danger area two to three months ago. The pirate organization, with the mother ships as a logistics base serving small, fast boats, has now moved south".

The crew of the box ship BOULARBANK found a novel way to repel Somali pirates, the vessel’s owner said: tossing large planks of wood at them. "The skiffs came up alongside the vessel, which then zigzagged and turned its fire hoses on the pirates, finally launching large blocks of wood used to hold the cargo over the side of the vessel", John Wickham, spokesman for owner Andrew Weir, told Fairplay. "The skiffs veered off in the opposite direction. It was an original form of deterrent", he observed. The pirates in two skiffs had fired shots at the ship in the Gulf of Aden before the quick-thinking lumber operation. The 22,000dwt BOU;ARBANK, which had set off from Port Klang, Malaysia, continued its voyage to Hull in the UK.

Navies have apparently still not stopped Murder Ship

MT AGIA BARBARA: still at large!

Crew Wanted for Murder

The position and route of the vessel with a crew of 6 Syrians and 6 Indians - wanted for murder in Mogadishu harbour - as well as at least one Somali business-agent on board are now roughly known. The small tanker with the IMO number 7616004 and call sign HO4050 flies a Panama flag (possibly now changed). Registered ship owner and manager is MEADOWLARK SHIPPING & TRADING CO. of Piraeus in Greece and the tanker is operated from an office in the UAE. Please report any sighting.

Meanwhile MEADOWLARK SHIPPING & TRADING CO. claims that it is no longer the owner of the vessel. In an unspecified e-mail an unidentified sender claimed that MEADOWLARK SHIPPING & TRADING CO. is incorrectly registered as owner in the shipping register and that the MT AGIA BARBARA was sold to new owners and would be managed by new managers since September 2008. The sender further stated that the current owners are WORLD CHAMPION MARINE (the Buyer) not MEADOWLARK SHIPPING & TRADING CO. (the Seller).

WORLD CHAMPION MARINE, however, could so far not be traced. Unconfirmed reports warn that the vessel if not stopped immediately could reach Eritrea or Sudan and the crew disappear from there. The Somali Government has officially requested all navies and coastal authorities to immediately impound the vessel and to arrest the crew. Vessel picture: http://www.shipspotting.com/modules/myalbum/photo.php?lid=70209

With the latest captures and releases now still at least 17 foreign vessels (18 with an unnamed sole Barge which drifted ashore, 19 with the Ukrainian armored vehicle carrier) with a total of not less than 297 crew members accounted for (of which 84 are confirmed to be Filipinos (plus maybe 16 of newly captured MV PATRIOT) are held in Somali waters and 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. Over 134 incidences (including attempted attacks, averted attacks and successful sea-jackings) have been recorded for 2008 with 49 fully documented, factual sea-jacking cases (for Somalia, incl. presently held ones) and the mistaken sinking of one vessel by a naval force. For 2009 the account stands at 72 averted or abandoned attacks with 34 sea-jackings on the Somali/Yemeni pirate side as well as at least two wrongful attacks (incl. friendly fire) on the side of the naval forces. Mystery pirate mother-vessels Athena/Arena and Burum Ocean as well as not fully documented cases of absconded vessels are not listed in the sea-jack count until clarification. Several other vessels with unclear fate (also 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. In the last four years, 22 missing ships have been traced back with different names, flags and superstructures.

Directly piracy related reports

About Life in Somalia’s pirate army reported Mustafa Haji Abdinur for Agence France-Presse

A mobile tribunal, a system of fines and a code of conduct: the success of Somali pirates' sea-jacking business relies on a structure that makes them one of the country's best-organized armed forces.

A far cry from the image conveyed in films and novels of pirates as unruly swashbucklers, Somalia's modern-day buccaneers form a paramilitary brotherhood in which a strict and complex system of rules and punishments is enforced.

They are organized in a multitude of small cells dotting the Indian Ocean and Gulf of Aden coastline. The two main land bases are the towns of Eyl, in the breakaway state of Puntland, and Harardhere, further south in Somalia.

"There are hundreds of small cells, linked to each other", Hasan Shukri, a pirate based in Haradhere, told AFP in a phone interview.

"We talk every morning, exchange information on what is happening at sea and if there has been a hijacking, we make onshore preparations to send out reinforcement and escort the captured ship closer to the coast", he explained.

Somali piracy started off two decades ago with a more noble goal of deterring illegal fishing, protecting the people's resources and the nation's sovereignty at a time when the state was collapsing.

While today's pirates have morphed into a sophisticated criminal ring with international ramifications, they have been careful to retain as much popular prestige as possible and refrain from the violent methods of the warlords who made Somalia a by-word for lawlessness in the 1990s.

"I have never seen gangs that have rules like these. They avoid many of the things that are all too common with other militias", said Mohamed Sheikh Issa, an elder in the Eyl region.

"They don't rape, and they don't rob the hostages and they don't kill them. They just wait for the ransom and always try to do it peacefully", he said.

Somalia's complex system of clan justice is often rendered obsolete by the armed chaos that has prevailed in the country for two decades, but the pirates have adapted it effectively.

Abdi Garad, an Eyl-based commander who was involved in recent attacks on U.S. ships, explained that the pirates have a mountain hide-out where leaders can confer and where internal differences can be solved.

"We have an impregnable stronghold and when there is a disagreement among us, all the pirate bosses gather there", he told AFP.

The secretive pirate retreat is a place called Bedey, a few miles from Eyl.

"We have a kind of mobile court that is based in Bedey. Any pirate who commits a crime is charged and punished quickly because we have no jails to detain them", Mr. Garad said.

Some groups representing different clans farther south in the villages of Hobyo and Haradhere would disagree with Mr. Garad's claim that Somalia's pirates all answer to a single authority.

But while differences remain among various groups, the pirates' first set of rules is precisely aimed at neutralizing rivalries, Mohamed Hidig Dhegey, a pirate from Puntland, explained.

"If any one of us shoots and kills another, he will automatically be executed and his body thrown to the sharks", he said from the town of Garowe.

"If a pirate injures another, he is immediately discharged and the network is instructed to isolate him. If one aims a gun at another, he loses 5% of his share of the ransom", Mr. Dhegey said.

Perhaps the most striking disciplinary feature of Somali "pirate-hood" is the alleged code of conduct pertaining to the treatment of captured crews.

"Anybody who is caught engaging in robbery on the ship will be punished and banished for weeks. Anyone shooting a hostage will immediately be shot", said Ahmed Ilkacase.

"I was once caught taking a wallet from a hostage. I had to give it back and then 25,000 dollars were removed from my share of the ransom", he said.

Following the release of the French yacht Le Ponant in April 2008, investigators found a copy of a "good conduct guide" on the deck which forbade sexual assault on women hostages.

As Ilkacase found out for himself, pirates breaking internal rules are punished. Conversely, those displaying the most bravery are rewarded with a bigger share of the ransom, called "saami sare" in Somali.

"The first pirate to board a hijacked ship is entitled to a luxurious car, or a house or a wife. He can also decide to take his bonus share in cash", he explained.

Foreign military commanders leading the growing fleet of anti-piracy naval missions plying the region in a bid to protect one of the world's busiest trade routes acknowledge that pirates are very organized.

"They are very well organized, have good communication systems and rules of engagement", said Vice Admiral Gerard Valin, commander of the French joint forces in the Indian Ocean.

So far, nothing suggests that pirates are motivated by anything other than money and it is unclear whether the only hostage to have died during a hijacking was killed by pirates or the French commandos who freed his ship.

Some acts of mistreatment have been reported during the more than 60 hijackings recorded since the start of 2008, but pirates have generally spared their hostages to focus on speedy ransom negotiations.

With the Robin Hood element of piracy already largely obsolete, observers say the "gentleman kidnapper" spirit could also fast taper off as pirates start to prioritize riskier, high-value targets and face increasingly robust action from navies with enhanced legal elbow room.

They have warned that the much-bandied heroics of a U.S. crew who wrested back control of their ship and had their captain rescued by navy snipers who picked off three pirates could go down as the day pirates decided to leave their manners at home.

Anti-piracy measures

Belgium spills the beans. Belgium finally has also been coerced into acting on Somali piracy because of the capture of a Belgian dredger and its 10-man crew. The vessel is moored off Somalia and Belgium is making efforts to get it released. Belgium's military will now provide onboard protection to commercial ships in pirate-infested waters off Somalia, the government said Thursday. Teams of eight soldiers will be available to Belgian ships upon request if the EU anti-piracy mission — called Atalanta — can't guarantee protection, Defense Minister Pieter De Crem said. The costs, $150,000 for the week-long mission, would be assumed by ship owners. The government said the program could begin as soon as this weekend. What has long been speculated in ant-piracy circles has now come into the open: Governmental navies and armies charge for their "services". Observers had since long wondered why certain vessels get protection from the navies while others are obviously left out. "These childish "pirate-and-mariner"-games - all at the cost of the taxpayer - have to finally stop - be it private or governmental lead" one military analyst remarked.

The crew of Russia’s Frigate Admiral Panteleyev does not know what to do with 29 Somali pirates that were seized near Somali coast on April 28. The situation is legally and diplomatically hopeless, reports Pravda. It is quite possible that the pirates will have to be judged in Russia, news agencies say. Russia does not have an agreement with the countries of the African region about the delivery of piracy suspects. Britain and the USA, for example, have such a document with Kenya. It is impossible to deliver the captured pirates – most of them the Somalis - even to the government of Somali since Russia does not have its embassy in the country, The Vremya Novostei newspaper wrote. "One has to acknowledge that many legal and practical issues remain unsolved here", Andrei Nesterenko, an official spokesman for Russia’s Foreign Ministry said. If the frigate is unable to fix the problem with its "trophy" in one of the African states, the vessel will have to deliver the pirates to Russia. Russia is entitled to judge them in conformity with its laws. If it happens, the Somalis may face from 5 to 15 years in prison.

Russia's Admiral Panteleyev anti-submarine ship seized the vessel 15 miles off the coast of Somalia at 1212 GMT on Tuesday, the Interfax and RIA Novosti news agencies reported, while Somali sources report the vessel had been even closer to shore and inside the 12-miles-zone. It certainly must have been very far away from the incident location of the alleged piracy attack. The NS Commander tanker, partly owned by Russia's Novoship company and sailing under the Liberian flag, was apparently attacked by three pirate boats on Monday about 120 miles east of the Yemeni island of Sokotra, was reported by Sovfracht. "Using evasive maneuvers and water from fire hoses, the tanker repelled the attack. Pirates fired at the ship with small arms but failed to cause any significant damage. The ship is on its way to the destination port in Singapore", the journal said. "Seven Kalashnikov rifles, various pistols and an aluminum ladder were discovered during a search of the ship", RIA Novosti quoted the source as saying. Satellite navigation equipment and a large amount of ammunition was also seized. "This allows us to assume that this group of pirates undertook two unsuccessful attempts to seize the tanker TF COMMANDER with a Russian crew that was traveling through this region yesterday", RIA quoted the source as saying.

There were seven Kalashnikov assault rifles, guns, aluminum ladders, navigation equipment, back-up fuel tanks and many empty cartridge cases found in the boat. The crew of the Russian vessel concluded that the pirates had made a number of attempts to seize the naval ship that was allegedly transporting crude to Singapore. However, there is not enough evidence to prove that the pirates attacked the tanker NS Commander. All of them can therefore be released, the press release concluded. But Somali sources now claim that the arrested Somalis were fishermen and that the international navies should abstain from arresting all Somalis traveling on their seas and are just armed like many merchant and cruise ships are armed nowadays too - though not so heavy as the Admiral Panteleyev itself, which is a Udaloy-class missile destroyer armed with anti-ship missiles, 30-mm and 100-mm guns, and Ka-27 Helix helicopters.

Somali vigilantes have captured 12 armed pirates in two boats, as coastal communities begin to fight back against the sea raiders, the BBC reported. Regional leaders at Alula and Bargaal in Somalia's northern Puntland region told the BBC they have put together a militia of fishermen to catch pirates. They decided to act as they were fed up with their fishing vessels being seized at gunpoint by the ocean-going bandits. One of them, Faarah Mohammed, told the BBC: "There is a security committee set up by the communities who live in Bargaal and Alula. And they decided to confront whatever was creating problems in their areas and particularly, the problems of the sea piracy. "And eventually their effort led to the capture of three boats and 12 men with their weapons. One boat got away". Other local reports actually only confirmed that local boat owners got angry because their profit from the pirates, who regularly take their boats, was to small and took their boat back by force.

Countering the escalating threat of piracy in the Gulf of Aden will be the focus of an emergency international summit scheduled to take place in Cairo. The organizer, a newly created security company called Phoenix Intelligence Support Services Inc. says officials from seven countries in the Middle East, the Horn of Africa region and elsewhere along with international and private sector agencies are expected to take part in the summit. Officials say participants in the summit will discuss ways to address the spike in piracy off the coast of Somalia in the short term and begin developing plans for a long-term solution to the problem. The conference is seen as one of a series of ant-piracy conferences only helping the conference organizers to earn some cash. Egyptian diplomatic sources stated that the Egyptian government, which had hosted earlier inter-governmental meetings on the issue, is not the host of this event.

Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero Tuesday announced that Spain and France will propose an international conference on lawless Somalia, where pirates continue to hold ships to ransom. "We have agreed to propose the holding of an international conference on Somalia", he told a joint news conference with French President Nicolas Sarkozy. The conference would offer a "wide response, not only on a security and military level, to piracy, which is afflicting both our countries and others", he added. It would be a "complete" response to the problem on a "political, security and civil level for the future of this country". An EU naval mission proposed by France and Spain, Atalante, began operations off the coast of Somalia last December in an effort to stop attacks in the Gulf of Aden, one of the world's busiest trade routes, but both countries also stand accused of having done nothing against the illegal fishing of vessels linked to France and Spain in Somali waters.

Illegal fishing and dumping

Somalia: Pirate, Who?
by Moign Khawaja in foreignpolicyjournal.com

Somalia is in the news, once again, for all the wrong reasons. And thanks to the ‘Pirates of the Horn of Africa’ there is a flurry of activity everywhere. Take international maritime powers for instance. They are busy drawing plans to beef up security in the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean to ward off further attempts of commercial ships getting hijacked despite their heavy presence. Or let’s talk about security analysts or marine experts who are coming up with ideas ranging from invading Somalia to surgical strikes on pirate hideouts to effective blockade of Somali waters. Will these measures work?

Genius Brains, Dim Solutions

I see where these solutions are coming from. The brightest minds are busy pondering the solutions on how to resolve the situation and make the international waterways safe once again for the trade. Everyone is thinking according to their trade and expertise. But let’s, for an instance, consider ourselves as an ordinary Somali and try to understand the problems they are facing during the last two decades. Then only we will be in a position to suggest the solution to the problems faced by them.

Imagine you are living in either Mogadishu or any other far flung village of Somalia. You’ll discover yourself surrounded by lawlessness, poverty, unemployment, lack of basic necessities of life and absence of any governmental structure. The last time an administration ever functioned in the country was in 1991. Since then the country is in limbo and any decent effort to return to normalcy has been blocked by internal and external powers.

Bouts of Foreign Interference

After gaining its independence from Britain and Italy in 1960, Somali leadership very soon drifted towards the Communist bloc as General Siad Barre seized control after a coup d’état. Staying relatively stable during his 22 years in power, the country plunged into chaos after a foreign engineered military coup ousted General Barre. As a result, the whole country destabilized and a civil war broke out.

Many Somalis, despite decades of mismanagement, give credit to General Barre for trying to forge unity among Somali people and uproot the centuries old clan system. The deep divisions resurfaced within no time as soon as the tribal warlords drove him out of power. Backed by Somalia’s arch rival, Ethiopia, General Farah Aidid, Abdirahman Toor and Ali Mahdi Muhammad combined to remove President General Siad Barre though later turning guns on each other.
The worsening situation got completely out of control when foreign troops under the mandate of United Nations stepped on Somali soil. American forces launched Operation Restore Hope in order to maintain the law and order situation in Somalia and coordinate UN humanitarian aid distribution program. But things did not go according to the plan. Instead of being welcomed as saviors, American troops along with other coalition forces were seen as invaders prompting clashes with vying Somali factions.

In a bloody clash with Somali insurgents, 19 US servicemen lost their lives, along with several other casualties suffered by UN forces. As a result, American troops were immediately withdrawn from the country, severely affecting the aid supply and renewing the civil war that paused when UN-backed forces arrived in Somalia. On 12 July 1993, US forces attacked a safe house in Mogadishu that killed 73 tribal elders taking part in a meeting became the turning point of the conflict. According to critics of the UN mission, Somalis since that day lost their faith in UN troops and unified under a single banner to oust them.

No Chance for Peace

Amidst decades of utter chaos, Somalia had its chances of peace and did see glimmer of hopes for stability. But thanks to foreign intervention the forces that tried to end factional warfare and curb warlordism were attacked and their attempts sabotaged.

The Union of Islamic Courts, despite allegations that they sought to impose their form of Sharia in the country, defeated and neutralized the warring militias in Mogadishu. As a result, peace returned to the streets of Mogadishu for the first time since 1991. Shops reopened, people began returning to their homes and the port began functioning thanks to the security provided under the UIC controlled areas.

However, peace was never given a chance to establish itself. The United States of America, along with other western and regional powers intervened in Somali affairs only to push the country into further chaos. Citing ‘fears’ that the group is aligned to Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda, warlords opposed to the UIC were heavily armed and encouraged to overthrow the Islamist administration in Mogadishu. When the warlords couldn’t deliver a breakthrough on their own, Ethiopia was asked to invade the country to overthrow the UIC regime. As a result, heavy fighting and bloodshed erupted on the streets of Mogadishu as chaos made a strong comeback.

Accused of using heavy-handed tactics and killing ordinary civilians, the extremely unpopular Ethiopian occupation forces left Somalia by the end of 2008.

Birth of the Pirates

So, what in your opinion a catalogue of intervention and chaos invites to a society? Somalia got civil war, famine, poverty, corruption and - on top of it - piracy as a result of two decades of conflict.

Virtually non-existent till 1991, piracy became one of the major problems posed by Somalia. Pirates carried out low profile attacks on shipping vessels and sought ransom. Their activities came to an immediate halt when UIC militia captured Mogadishu and clamped down on their activities. The pirates made a powerful comeback soon after the overthrow of UIC militia by Ethiopia-backed Somali groups in 2007. According to UNOSAT, more and other shipping agencies, than 300 hijackings have taken place since 2007.

Why ?

Taking into consideration the UN estimate that more than 80% of the population earning less than $2 a day, let us consider the options Somalis are left with to earn their living.

Agriculture - More than 2/3 of Somali workforce is employed in the agricultural sector. Continuous droughts and famines during the last two decades have wiped out agricultural lands. Low rainfall during 2008 compounded the misery of the people. It led to acute shortages of food and pasture, forcing thousands of people to migrate internally in search of water.

Fishing - Given the 3,000 km long coastline with a 200 nautical mile of territorial sea boundary, fishing seems to be the best natural option for Somalis, especially when majority of the population lives in the towns located on the coast. But it comes with its own cost.

Somali territorial waters have been invaded by foreign fishing trawlers. As a result, thousands of Somali fishermen have been deprived of their vital livelihood. According to High Seas Task Force report, the value of illegally, unregulated and unreported fishing catches fetches from $4 to $9 billion, most of it coming from Sub-Saharan Africa, particularly Somalia.

The root of this problem too originates from the 1991 civil war that led to the disintegration of Somali police and coast guard forces. Cashing in on the chaos in the mainland, illegal fishing trawlers trespass and fish in Somali territory, including the 12-mile inshore artisanal fishing waters. The invading foreign vessels are armed and intimidate Somali fishermen by pouring boiling water on them, cutting their nets, crushing smaller boats and killing all the occupants, and many other abuses in a bid to steal their national fishing turf.

The fishing vessels take due advantage of the absence of a Somali navy force that can monitor its territorial waters. Pirates have targeted hundreds of fishing vessels to date.

Most of the illegal foreign fishing trawlers that have being fishing in Somalia since 1991 are owned by EU and Asian fishing companies - Italy, France, Spain, Greece, Russia, Britain, Ukraine, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, India, Yemen and many others.

According to the High Seas Task Force, these illegal foreign vessels take out more than $450 million in fish value out of Somalia annually. They do not compensate the local fishermen, pay tax, royalties, or respect any conservation and environmental regulations - norms associated with regulated fishing. It is believed that IUUs from the EU alone deprive the country more than five times the value of its aid to Somalia every year.

Another serious issue of alarming proportions that Somalis face is the industrial, toxic and nuclear waste dumping in both off-shore and on-shore areas. Local fishermen, civil society organizations and international organizations have reported and warned of the dangerous consequences of these criminal actions and environmental crimes. There have been several incidents of oil spills, toxic and nuclear waste dumping in the Somali coast though no action was taken by international authorities.

The problem does not stop here. The world body, supposed to be unbiased and impartial in its approach, fails to live up to its mandate. The resolutions passed by the United Nations condemned hijackings in the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean and gave wide ranging powers to European Union, US, Russia, Japan, India, Korea and many other regional powers to patrol Somali waters under the pretext of containing piracy while they carry out illegal fishing activity unabated.

Naval powers of the world, including US, EU, Russia, Canada and Australia patrol the waters adjacent to Somali coast in a bid to check piracy. It is interesting to note that not a single African naval vessel is included in the international patrols.

Due to the absence of a strong Somali representative in the United Nations, UN Resolutions 1816 and 1838 were passed and enforced. Both the resolutions unilaterally condemn Somali piracy in the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean and give the right to foreign naval vessels to patrol Somali waters to keep pirates at bay. These resolutions, however, ignore the objections of the Somali civil society and fail to address their concerns.

Somali lack of authority and unfair and biased treatment meted out by the international community has shoved this rich fishing zone into the mouth of exploitation and subsequent depletion. Whose fault is it? Is it still fair to suggest a military or diplomatic solution of a problem that exists due to the absence of a viable government and civil society? The world may be tempted to apply the ‘might is right’ logic to tackle piracy but is it ready to let the pirates transform into terrorists? The answer will be a definite ‘no’ but the solution lies in delivering justice not just meting out punishment.

Nuclear Waste and Somali Pirates

When the Somali government collapsed in 1991, no one took over, leaving the country without a government and making it easy for other countries to take advantage of its resources. According to Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the UN envoy to Somalia, European ships started appearing off the coast of Somalia soon after its government disappeared. They dumped nuclear material, lead, and heavy metals such as cadmium and mercury, which has been traced back to European hospitals and factories. They are allegedly passing it to the mafia or other organizations to dispose of, since it is cheaper than doing so in their own countries. The coastal population in Somalia has seen strange rashes, nausea and malformed babies. In addition, the tsunami that hit in 2005 caused hundreds of the dumped and leaking barrels to hit the shore, causing around 300 deaths due to radiation. Many Somali pirates do not consider themselves pirates; they call themselves the Volunteer Coastguard of Somalia, and much of the population agrees with them. They are actually fishermen who have been adversely affected by nuclear waste dumping and unauthorized over-fishing of Somali waters. Johann Hari, a columnist for The Independent of London, wrote on January 5, 2009 [see earlier SMCM update], "You are being lied to about pirates" - some are clearly just gangsters. But others are trying to stop illegal dumping or trawling.

Somali pirates: Foreign fishing drove us to raids

Held in a Somali jail, a pirate leader says he was forced to take to the high seas in search of fortune after foreign trawlers wiped out the livelihood of local fishermen.

By Shashank Bengali

Their exploits have turned the inky-blue waters of the Indian Ocean into a perilous gantlet for ships and an unlikely security challenge for world leaders. But behind the bare brick walls of a desolate former British colonial prison, five jailed Somali pirates didn't seem very fearsome at all.

One looked to be in his late 40s, his brambly hair stained a deep henna orange, his milky eyes staring into the distance. A slightly younger man clutched a faded sarong to his matchstick waist and spoke in barely a whisper.

The leader of the pirate crew, 38-year-old Farah Ismail Eid, wore such a hungry look that a visiting government official, unsolicited, folded a pale $10 bill into his sandpaper palm.

That a few hundred men like these have wreaked so much havoc in the seas off of East Africa is a testament to the sheer power of guts and greed. It's also a stark illustration of the all-consuming anarchy ashore in Somalia, where, after 18 years of conflict, jobs are scarce, guns are plentiful, men will risk everything for a payday -- and their government is too weak and corrupt to stop them.
The men behind bars, however, offered another explanation for piracy.

In a long interview with McClatchy at the jailhouse in Mandhera [Mandhera/Somaliland - NOT Mandera-Kenya/Somalia], Eid related what amounts to the pirates' creation myth, in which over-fishing by European and Asian trawlers drove Somalia's coastal communities to ruin and forced local fishermen to fight for their livelihoods.

In 1991, Eid was scavenging for lobsters along the craggy shores of central Somalia, when the government and its security forces were swallowed up in a coup. The country's endless coastline -- at almost 2,000 miles, it's longer than the U.S. West Coast -- suddenly became an unguarded supermarket of tuna, mackerel and other fish.

When huge foreign trawlers began appearing, the local fishermen who plied their trade with simple nets and small fiberglass boats were wiped out, Eid said.

''They fished everything -- sharks, lobsters, eggs'', he recalled. "They collided with our boats. They came with giant nets and swept everything out of the sea".

At the outset, fishermen in the ramshackle ports of Puntland, Somaliland's rowdy neighbor, re-branded themselves as ''coast guards.'' The first hijackings that Eid remembered came in 1997, when pirates seized a Chinese fishing vessel and then held a Kenyan ship for a $500,000 ransom.

''When I heard about this'', Eid said, "I was happy".

In 2005, with catches all too rare and a wife and two children to support, he traded his fishing equipment for a couple of Kalashnikov rifles and rocket launchers in a market in the wild-west port of Bossasso.

He and five other fishermen, swathed in camouflage, piled into a motorized skiff and set off from the village of Garacad. But their motor was too feeble to catch up to any of the ships they spotted.

The next year Eid tried with a stronger engine, a German one imported from Dubai. This time, the novice pirates caught up to a cargo ship and came face to face with its European crew. But Eid's men couldn't prop their heavy metal ladder up against the freighter's hull quickly enough to board the ship.

Global Witness, a London-based group that investigates natural resource exploitation, agrees that vessels from countries such as France, Spain, Indonesia and South Korea gobbled up hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of fish from Somali waters without licenses.

However, experts say that the foreign fishing was not necessarily illegal because the Somali government did not delineate its territorial waters, as international maritime laws require.

''In the early to mid-1990s there was some fishing in those waters that, if Somalia had a government that was performing its job, would have demanded licensing fees for'', said J. Peter Pham, a piracy expert at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Va.

Somali officials do not argue with the pirates' version of events -- only with their tactics.

''We know they have their grievances',' said Abdillahi Mohamed Duale, the foreign minister of Somaliland. ``But the problem of over-fishing has always been there. It doesn't mean that you take the law into your own hand.

Somalian Pirates: A Strange Type of PR for Africa
by Madison J. Gray

Something about the smile on the face of accused pirate suspect Abduwali Abdukadir Muse, a teenager suddenly catapulted into infamy, struck me as peculiar.

It was hard to figure out why a person facing life imprisonment after being extradited from his Somalian home would be smiling at all. He's now a world away from his family because of his role in capturing a merchant ship in the Indian Ocean and holding its captain hostage for several days before his accomplices were killed by Navy SEALs.

But after studying his face, I realized something. Muse successfully communicated to the world something that Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda have failed to: what is behind crimes like those he's been accused of.

Somalia's recent history is one typical of African nations. It's a land split up and redistributed by colonizers, which became subject to conflicts between ethnic groups and clans before a full-scale civil war broke out, rendering it largely unable to form a centralized government for years. Finally, a lawless region, controlled by who had the most muscle, prevailed. There is some semblance of law struggling to take shape, but in large part, much of the country is a political and military free-for-all.

Until recently, most Westerners had only known of Somalia through the 'Black Hawk Down' film, in which 18 U.S. soldiers were killed in what was supposed to have been a humanitarian mission. That tragedy should have been a warning sign at the outset. Now, thanks to Muse and his cohorts, Africa is making the world listen.

Anarchy and violence persist and flourish in environments where poverty is prevalent. Life expectancy in Somalia is about 49 years, and the yearly per capita income is about $600, one of the lowest in the world. Agriculture is the dominant industry.

Fishing was a major contributor to the country's economy until the last nationalized government collapsed in 1991, leaving foreign seamen to ransack the coast and the neighboring Indian Ocean. Somali fisherman, often in raggedy boats, gleaned what they could from the sea to sustain themselves and their villages, but as much as $300 million a year in seafood is taken by vessels from other countries, leaving the fishermen with little but their boats and hungry stomachs.

A few years ago, Somali fishermen begged for help to keep foreigners from plundering their waters, but the appeal fell on deaf ears. Instead, merchant seamen from all over the world picked away at what little the indigenous population had, and others dumped toxic waste in those same waterways. With little in the way of resources, and realizing that foreign aid would only do so much, they turned to criminal activity.

There are also arguments that suggest over-fishing in other parts of the world drive ships to African waters that are still fertile with a variety of marine life, thus bringing interest in the Somali waters and targets for fishermen, who have now adopted piracy out of desperation.

When the piracy started, it was relatively easy to get ransom from a few pirated ships because many were there illegally in the first place, but over time, the business mushroomed into the only real growth industry in the country. And the seafaring gangsters are reaping a profit.

This all culminated into the incident in which the Maersk ALABAMA was pirated, and Capt. Richard Phillips was captured and held for several days. Now, I'm certainly glad that Phillips returned home to his wife and family, but the media has yet to present a balanced picture of the Somali pirate phenomenon, preferring instead to focus on the sound byte or the sexy edit.

But that won't put the focus on why Somalia is poor and why piracy really exists there, but to me it's simple: Without an economy that allows people to utilize their resources to lift themselves out of poverty, Somalis are just taking back what's being taken from them.

Muse's smile, while probably hiding fear and despair, for now represents Somalia's only way of communicating to the world. His face is now the face of rebellion against exploitation, criminal or not.

Comment to: Who are the real pirates?: (It's) interesting how so many of those who are writing hateful comments rooted in a prejudiced and racist view of Somalis nonetheless say that they don't hate all Somalis. Just the pirates and terrorists, they say. And yet they are against policies that would benefit the vast majority of Somalis...who are neither pirates nor terrorists. "We do understand that many "journalists" across our world-village gloss over and suppress the open secret spilled by the German newspaper "Die Zeit" last November 27, 2008, number 49, to the effect that Europeans and Asians have been plundering Somali for many years. The title of that article is: "Who is really the pirate?" (see earlier SMCM update). Hmmm... Never mind being resource rich or not. I wonder what would happen if Somalia were not a nation of black people who were also predominantly Muslim. I somehow think it would be harder to throw around words like "terrorist". I also find those people who tell us immigrants that we should go back to where we came from somewhat amusing. (By the way, this is a statement that is usually reserved for those of us who are more obviously foreign--that is, black or brown.) Wasn't it white people who came into our lands first? Didn't we scream and fight for them to go back to where they came from? Get AFRICOM out of Africa and then you can tell us to go back to where we came from.

While you're at it, please be so kind as to take your US puppet institutions--IMF, World Bank--with you. You can also forget about getting your coltan from the Congo or cocoa from Sierra Leone or tea from Kenya. Also, good luck lasting on those oil reserves that Palin and her party put so much stock in. Oh, and kindly keep your garbage barges and nuclear waste out of our back yards. You can be as made in the USA as you like. I think the majority of the world would prefer it that way. The funny thing about isolationism is that it can go both ways. Since it was the western powers that came into our countries and exploited our people and raped our lands...and who have contributed the most to the current global warming crisis, I think we should really explore the question, "Who is really the pirate?" (by Artsy Annie )

No real peace yet

Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys , the leader of the Somali opposition said Saturday - after rumours had been spread Friday night that he had passed away - that the world does not want a Somali Islamic state. Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys said that the world separated Somalia into many different parts adding that there had been an Islamic government of Somalia which was collapsed before hundred years ago.

"The world does not allow for Somalia to have an Islamic government at the current and there was no body who achieved that. Even if Somalia forms Islamic administration, it is collapsed and divided into different parts because there was an Islamic government of Somalia that was collapsed before 100 years ago", Sheikh Aweys said.

Sheikh Aweys said that the United Islamic Courts were controlling parts of the country for six months and achieved to restore relative peace in the south and central Somali saying that they had reopened Mogadishu seaport and the international airport of Somalia adding that they were conducted a military steps and separated where they were expecting support. The statement of the Islamist leader Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys comes as the Somali transitional parliamentarians recently approved the Sharia law to be ruled in the country.

Somalia's president said on Saturday he would welcome negotiations with hard-line opposition leader Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, which may lead to Aweys joining the Horn of Africa nation's government, according to Reuters. Aweys, who is on the U.S. terrorism list for alleged links to al Qaeda, returned to Somalia last week from Eritrea on his first known trip home in two years. Analysts say he is an influential figure for many of the Islamist rebels fighting the new government of President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed.

"Hassan Dahir Aweys is a Somali citizen, and we struggled together for a long time. I welcome him if he wants to negotiate", Ahmed told a news conference in the capital Mogadishu. No specific time was given. Ahmed said he was willing to give Aweys -- his partner in the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) which ruled the capital and most of southern Somalia until Ethiopian troops ousted them in 2007 -- a chance to suggest ways of improving the government. "If he is not (willing), he must wait until the two-year term of this government ends, then he should stand in the coming election and try his luck", he told reporters at the presidential palace.

Aweys and Ahmed later split, with Aweys taking over the Eritrea-based Alliance for the Re-Liberation of Somalia from Ahmed, who was elected president early this year at U.N.-led talks in Djibouti. Ahmed said his administration, the 15th attempt at a central government since 1999, would prioritize security, rebuilding, reconciliation and good governance. "The root cause of the Somali problem is lack of good governance", he said. "In terms of security we want to form the national Somali forces including marine forces to tackle instability and piracy", he said. Last week, donors agreed to give at least $213 million to help Somalia strengthen its security forces and also fund a small African Union mission over the next year. Ahmed said the Arab League was planning a meeting to collect funds to assist in rebuilding Somalia, but did not say when it would be.

Transcript of FT interview with Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, president of Somalia

There have been 15 attempts to create a functioning government in Somalia since the overthrow of dictator Siad Barre in 1991. None of them have come close to working. Overrun by warlords and Islamist insurgents, the country is in the grips of another potential famine.

Proliferating acts of piracy on one of the world’s busiest trading routes off the Somali coast have forced up shipping insurance costs and are affecting global commodity markets. But they are also focusing international attention on the need for stability on land as well as sea.

Before Ethiopia invaded in 2006 Sheikh Ahmed was the leader of the Islamic Courts Union, an alliance of Islamic militias that during a six month period came closer than any other body to re-establishing order. In January he returned to Somalia from exile, and was elected by a UN-backed transitional parliament to lead the country out of chaos.

Last week at an international donors conference in Brussels, he won $213m of backing for African peacekeepers and for his plans to build a national security force, raising hopes that finally a concerted effort to put Somalia back together again is under way.

William Wallis, Financial Times Africa editor, interviewed Sheikh Ahmed at his hotel in Brussels after the conference.

Financial Times: What is the significance of today’s events for Somalia?

Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed: What happened today is very important for two reasons. Firstly, there has always been this issue of the international community not being forthcoming enough and not being forthcoming at the right time. Secondly there has been a lack of leadership on the Somali side to seize the opportunity and establish a partnership with the international community. Today we believe these two things have come together.

FT: How do you plan to go about using the goodwill that has been generated at an international level, and the cash that is now coming with it?

SSSA: The funds and the political support need to be translated into actions on the ground first and foremost with regards to security. Security has to be established. Then it is important to translate this security and political will into actions that affect the needs of the public and to help reconstruction, education, and all the elements that give normality to life. The public must feel the change and see the change.

FT: But how will you be able to expand the writ of your government from what appears to be the very small part of Somalia you control?

SSSA: There are already many provinces … where government support and structures are present. Where our administration and reach exists, the delivery of services and justice should be strengthened and reinforced. Where it does not exist yet, these areas we must stretch our reach to.

FT: Will this necessarily involve force?

SSSA: Preparations in terms of the readiness of the public for peace are gathering pace by the day, and are already substantially established. In parallel, if we are also able to get the security forces on the ground and operational and these two forces are able to come together we believe it will be almost a natural process for the rule of law and the administration to reach those parts where they don’t already exist.

FT: How formidable do you consider the forces your government are up against?

SSSA: We believe that in essence there is no logic and no sustainable basis for armed forces opposing the government. The only options open for these opposing forces will be to either come into the reconciliation process either as the government or as opposition. Or, to return to civilian life, into their homes and into normal livelihoods.

FT: They seem pretty determined from the outside and at least a minority of them have backing from another pretty determined bunch [of people] headquartered out of the tribal areas of Pakistan [al-Qaeda].

SSSA: Once the government is strong enough and is fully on the ground there will come a time when those who act illegally either have to leave or will have to give themselves up. That moment will come.

FT: How far are you prepared to accommodate these forces in order to absorb them into the reconciliation process?

SSSA: We are prepared in a major way to accommodate and negotiate but the essential factor is there must be dialogue; there must be negotiation for that to happen.

FT: Are you already talking for example to [radical Islamic cleric] Hassan Dahir Aweys, or some of the leaders of the al Shabab militia?

SSSA: Not directly but many well-intentioned and well meaning Somalis are busy and engaged explaining to them the need for dialogue and peace. >From our side they know and we have stated that we are ready for dialogue and negotiation.

FT: What do you make of the arrival in Mogadishu today [after more than two years in exile] of Mr. Aweys?

SSSA: I think his return today will remind him that he left at a time when there was conflict and war and show him that today we are rebuilding peace. We believe he will choose to take part and support the peace process and re-establishment of security in the country.

FT: Do you consider him someone who is important in that process?

SSSA: There is no one who is not needed for this process of reconciliation and peace. Everyone is needed.

FT: How significant is the recent passage in parliament of Sharia law in re-establishing state authority?

SSSA: It is very important for several reasons. One Sharia is a normal part of Muslim life and Muslim culture and tradition. Secondly there were people for whom this was a major factor, necessity, and in passing the bill and putting it through cabinet and parliament this enables us to show goodwill and to take that element out of the conflict and ensure it does not become an obstacle. It is part of the reconciliation process but also bringing people on board for the reconstruction of the state. Both psychologically and practically it is very important.

FT: How quickly can you bring back the court system? Is it something you can do very quickly given your experience at the head of the Islamic Courts Union in 2006?

SSSA: The government is actually very busy with that issue. It will need to absorb and take on experienced and knowledgeable people in that field.

FT: In 2006 the administration you were involved in was very effective in fighting piracy. Is that something you can reproduce now and what was the secret before?

SSSA: This is part and parcel of the security infrastructure and policies that we have. We believe that this will also be effective in tackling that issue successfully.

FT: Some of the countries [US, Ethiopia] that seemed very happy to see the back of you in 2006 when the Ethiopia invaded Somalia are now applauding you. Are these countries you can trust?

SSSA: Without a shadow of doubt we have to look forward and not back.

Two European aid workers freed. Two employees of Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) have been freed by gunmen in south western Somalia, witnesses and elders said on Tuesday. The two men, who work for MSF, a Belgian and a Dutch were taken in their car with their Somali bodyguards in Hudur, Bakol region ten days ago. Clan elders in Rabdhure town confirmed that the two aid workers were released with out paying any ransom. The area is run by the Islamist al-Shabab insurgent group. Four European ACF staff and their two Kenyan pilots as well as a Canadian together with an Australian journalist abducted in Somalia are still held.

Somali government security forces aboard four armed trucks escaped from the Villa Somalia presidential compound on Friday with the goal of selling their weaponry to Islamist hardliners, Radio Garowe reports. A security official at Villa Somalia who spoke on the condition of anonymity confirmed the report that the soldiers belonged to the Villa Somalia security force, guarding the palace where President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed calls home alongside African Union peacekeepers. "The soldiers made a secret deal with Al Shabaab to sell four trucks and the big guns on top", said the security source, as Radio Garowe reported. A businessman at Mogadishu's Bakara Market said armed trucks with government insignia were seen around the market, which has been a stronghold of Islamist rebels since the Ethiopian intervention. A government spokesman could not be reached for comment, Radio Garowe stated. However, Somali Government official contacted by other sources stated clearly that this report by Radio Garowe is seen as simple Puntland anti-government propaganda.

Impacting news from the global village

A Somali MP has denied that money accrued from piracy off the East African coast is being used to buy property in Kenya. Mr. Ashad Awad Ashareh said, instead, the money that has seen value of property in places like Nairobi’s Eastleigh and Mombassa rise was from Somalis in the Diaspora. The MP told the Nation that Somalis in the Diaspora remit home more than Sh70 billion annually, part of which find its way to Kenya.

"It is not true that money accrued from piracy is being used to acquire property in Kenya", Mr. Ashareh said. According to a research by United Nations Development Programme in Somalia, there are at least one million Somalis in the Diaspora who remit more than US$1 billion annually.

The money, the UNDP says, contributes a lot to the Somali economy, livelihoods, humanitarian assistance and recovery and reconstruction efforts.

The UNDP says about one million Somalis or 14 per cent of the population are in the Diaspora including Horn of Africa and Yemen, Gulf States, Western Europe, US and Canada. It is, however, the UK that has largest number of Somalis while Malaysia and Australia are new growth areas.

Kenya hosts about 220,000 registered Somali refugees, Ethiopia (17,000), Djibouti (7,000) and South Africa (8,000). According to a US State Department report last year, about $100 million (about Sh8 billion) is laundered through Kenya every year from Somalia. Last month, the Saturday Nation reported that the North Eastern provincial administration had launched investigations into the possibility that the $150 million (about Sh12 billion) Somali pirates reaped in the high seas last year may have found its way into the area, pushing up property values. Property values in places like Eastleigh in Nairobi and Mombassa have also gone up tremendously causing fears that the pirates’ money could be finding its way into the country. Mr. Ashareh accused some foreign countries of illegally fishing in Somali waters and dumping toxic waste there. It is a move by some Somalis to try and defend their territory from illegal fishing and dumping that resulted to piracy, he said. The MP said piracy could only end if international community helped Somalia return to peace and stability so that it can establish a strong law enforcement agency. "We need a strong navy to man our waters", he said.

An Iranian Press TV poll suggests that the continuous activity of Somali pirates has given the US an opportunity to expand its naval presence in the Gulf of Aden. According to the opinion poll conducted by Press TV website, some 32 percent of 617 voters believed the piracy has helped the White House to justify its military presence outside its borders. Some 26 percent, meanwhile, believed that pirate attacks off the waters of the Horn of Africa region would not end unless a powerful and influential government took power in Somalia. After a dramatic increase of pirate attacks in late 2008, some countries including the US deployed their naval vessels in the Indian Ocean and the Gulf of Aden. Another 19 percent of the respondents said both of the factors contributed to the problem, while some 26 percent said there were "other reasons" for the increase of pirate attacks.

Are We Creating a Global Death Culture? asks sociology professor David Weiner and analyses: In the May, 2009 issue of Scientific American appears the article, "Could Food Shortages Bring Down Civilization", by Lester R. Brown. He describes the causes and likely consequences of these shortages given current political trends.

"In the 20th century the main threat to international security was superpower conflict; today it is failing states....[Notably at risk, in descending order, Brown listed Somalia, Sudan, Zimbabwe, Chad, Iraq, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Afghanistan, ivory Coast, Pakistan, Central African Republic, Afghanistan, Ivory Coast, Pakistan, Central African Republic, Guinea, Bangladesh, Burma / Myanmar, Haiti, North Korea, Ethiopia, Uganda, Lebanon, Nigeria, Sri Lanka]. States fail when national governments can no longer provide personal security, food security and basic social services ... Failing states are of international concern because they are a source of terrorists, drugs, weapons and refugees threatening political stability everywhere...- And most importantly, it seems to me, Our global civilization depends on a functioning network of politically healthy nation-states to control the spread of infectious disease...".

Can unmanned drones, robot soldiers, and all the instruments of repression at the command of our imperial-power-that-is protect us from this consequence?

Some will argue that population control is essential, and if this means allowing massive die-offs in depressed parts of the world, so be it. Forget the inhumanity of this argument for a moment. It is also entirely irrational. Population expansion occurs when cultures transition from more or less communal to more or less industrial. Left alone to accomplish this transition normally, it happens fairly quickly with little population explosion. Under the pressure of first-world efforts to control third-world development, it occurs much more slowly, and painfully. Population control takes longer to kick in. This description of reality is not conjectural. The S shaped curve of Demographic Transition has been well established by demographers.

What does this mean? It means that imperial oppression (Neo-liberalism / Neo-conservatism) creates the conditions it strives to control in a manner precisely like throwing gasoline upon a fire. Unless citizens can quickly grasp how incompetently our leaders address global issues the future looks bleak indeed. These leaders, still very much in control notwithstanding finally a rational, competent, and apparently enlightened occupant of the white house, are seen by many in the world as admirals of a powerful pirate-fleet-of-state on which U.S. citizens are passive passengers. Increasing evidence suggests that unless the president receives massive public support for removing them from command, they are unlikely to keep it afloat for long, but in the process of trying will create massive destruction. They as well as we shall drown, more surely than those these crazed admirals target.

What is needed now is more awareness not only of the inhumanity of our foreign policies, but of the high level of improbability that they can sustain our society. The cognitive part of our brains must perceive the need for change before we can truly feel it. We will not become more compassionate until we know that we must in order to survive.

These fundamental elements of mass education, it seems to me, need more focus on the Left than they have received. It is all very well for Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky to describe the horrors of ruthless imperialism and to insist that to be a moral nation We-the-People must refuse to allow it. Unfortunately, morality is too often defined as what works for one's own group, whether or not it devastates others. What is needed is more attention paid to the feasibility of these immoral practices. It is necessary for people to understand that they will not serve to keep us secure at terrible cost. They will not keep us secure at all.

*Addendum: And most remarkably Lester Brown in his article to which Prof. Weiner here referred to [http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=civilization-food-shortages] Prof. Brown concludes: "We desperately need a new way of thinking, a new mind-set. The thinking that got us into this bind will not get us out. When Elizabeth Kolbert, a writer for the New Yorker, asked energy guru Amory Lovins about thinking outside the box, Lovins responded: "There is no box". There is no box. That is the mind-set we need if civilization is to survive. Leaving anti-piracy-conferences and present governmental policies against piracy likewise in limbo - especially if one takes into consideration that the Somali piracy-war actually is also a war concerning the rich marine resources of Somalia - living and fossil alike.

A U.S. terrorism report which was published in the newspaper the Kenya Daily Nation on Saturday, said al Qaida allies are active in Kenya. The annual report published by the U.S. State Department warned al Qaida agents responsible for the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam remain at large and currently pose "the most serious threat to Kenya". The report contained an overview of the expanding security ties between the United States and Kenya, aimed at preventing terrorists from staging attacks inside Kenya and apprehending suspected terrorists. It said a group of al Qaida supporters is active at the Kenyan coast and in parts of Nairobi. In the past year, Washington said it helped the Kenyan army develop a Ranger Strike Force, an elite counter-terrorism unit capable of conducting operations against infiltrators and armed groups. The United States also gave training and unspecified equipment to the Kenyan navy for maritime interdiction operations in Kenyan waters. U.S. State Department's Anti-terrorism Assistance program also provided training and equipment to the country's Maritime Police Unit.

The report said the U.S. military's Djibouti-based Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa is currently installing a Maritime Security and Safety Information System in key positions along the Kenyan coast. The measures were largely in response to threats posed by two al Qaida operatives, who allegedly carried out the 1998 attacks on U.S. embassies. U.S. intelligence analysts said the operatives, the Comoros-born Fazul Abdullah Mohammed and Kenyan national Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, have eluded capture through the help of al Qaida's support network in the coastal region of Kenya and in parts of the capital Nairobi. It said that "the escalating conflict in Somalia provides a permissive environment for terrorist groups such as al Qaida operatives and al-Shabaab". While Kenya's border with Somalia remains officially closed, "some Kenyan officials characterized the closure as irrelevant, given the ease of crossing in both directions", the report noted. These high-level expressions of concerns about terrorist activity in East Africa represent the latest one in a series of recent warnings by U.S. officials concerning growing threats to Kenya.

However, the Kenyan authorities dismissed threats, saying the east African nation was very far from any threats. "Kenya as a country is very safe. We will study the report and take the necessary action", police spokesman Eric Kiraithe said. The State Department report also makes critical observations about Kenya’s own efforts to enhance its security. "Kenya lacked the counter-terrorism legislation necessary to comply with the UN conventions it has signed", the report says, noting that Bills of this sort "remained highly controversial in Kenya". Muslim leaders have criticized counter-terrorism proposals as "anti-Muslim" and have joined other elements of the Kenyan society in arguing that the proposals would heighten the danger of government violations of human rights, the report observes. Kenya has also not adopted legislation to combat money laundering and other forms of terrorism financing, the State Department adds. It points out that Kenya is one of only two countries in the Eastern and Southern Africa Anti-Money Laundering Group without an anti-money laundering law. And Kenya currently serves as the head of that group, the report notes. The State Department’s annual global terrorism survey outlines extensive military cooperation between Nairobi and Washington. Kenya’s Air Force procured additional F-5 fighter jets last year to improve maritime and counter-terrorism surveillance operations.

Spain’s top investigative judge, Baltasar Garzón, has launched a new criminal investigation into allegations of torture at Guantánamo Bay and other US prison camps that will target the "possible material authors, enablers and accomplices" of the illegal abuse of detainees, Paul Mitchell and Chris Marsden report.

In a strongly worded court order issued Wednesday, Garzón indicated that he would investigate the role of high-level Bush administration officials in what he called an "authorized and systematic plan for torture and harsh treatment of people deprived of their freedom without any charges and without the most basic elemental rights for detainees, set forth and demanded by international treaties".

Guantánamo Bay, he wrote, could be seen as "a true ‘limbo’ in the legal sense which is defined by a multitude of treaties and conventions signed by the International Community".

Garzón clearly implied that he would consider bringing charges against Bush officials who authored, directed or sanctioned the use of torture, not simply the CIA agents who carried it out or the Justice Department lawyers who provided pseudo-legal justifications.

He wrote that previously classified Bush Justice Department memos released last month by the Obama administration indicated the existence of a torture program at the US prison at Bagram air base in Afghanistan as well as at Guantánamo that had been sanctioned at "almost an official level". There was, therefore, "penal responsibility in the different structures of execution—command, design and authorization of this systematic plan for torture".

He added that the memos, drafted by Justice Department lawyers in 2002 and 2005, provided evidence "of what previously could only be insinuated".

In a ten-page writ, Garzon wrote that abuses at Guantanamo and other US prisons for terror suspects suggest "the existence of a concerted plan to carry out a multiplicity of crimes of torture". He said he would request copies of the memos from the Obama administration and also ask Spanish judge Ismael Moreno for the information he has gathered in the course of an investigation into CIA rendition flights that landed in Spain.

Although Garzón did not name potential targets of his probe, the language of his writ raises the possibility of his issuing arrest warrants for top Bush officials such as Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, National Security Adviser and later Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and Bush himself.

In 1998, Garzón issued an arrest warrant for Augusto Pinochet while the former Chilean dictator was visiting Britain and demanded his extradition to stand trial in Spain. This set off a legal dispute that forced Pinochet to remain under house arrest in Britain for 17 months. Top Bush administration officials, including the former president, now have good reason to avoid leaving the US for fear of a similar fate, or worse.

Garzón cited Spain’s "universal jurisdiction" statutes and provisions in the Geneva Conventions and international laws banning torture that obligate signatories to prosecute officials of any government who violate the proscriptions against torture. He said he would review the testimony of four former Guantánamo Bay detainees. All four were tried for being Al Qaeda members several years ago, but Hamed Abderrahman Ahmed and Lahcen Ikassrien were acquitted by Spain’s High Court, and Abdul Latif al Banna and Omar Deghayes had their warrants for arrest in the UK cancelled.

The detainees allege that they "had suffered from the practice of various acts of physical and psychological aggression against their persons during their detention in different countries, under the authority of US Army personnel". The list of abuses includes beatings, sexual assault, exposure to extreme heat and cold and continuous loud music, long periods of interrogation and sleep deprivation.

Garzón’s announcement compounds the political crisis that has enveloped the Obama administration over the US’ use of torture and other violations of domestic and international law. Obama has sought to give the impression that his administration represents a break from these practices, while defending some of the most egregious crimes, such as the abduction and "disappearance" of individuals and their "rendition" to face imprisonment and torture at the hands of other governments.

Obama decided on April 16 to release the Bush-era memos approving methods such as water-boarding, which his administration has acknowledged constitute torture. He did so only under the pressure of a court-imposed deadline for their release.

At the same time, he ruled out any investigation or prosecution of CIA agents who carried out torture. He evidently hoped thereby to put an end to the simmering controversy over torture, placating his liberal supporters and world opinion while reassuring the intelligence and military establishment and Bush officials that they would not be held accountable.

The move had the opposite effect, sparking public denunciations of the administration by Bush officials, including Cheney and former CIA Director Michael Hayden, who have sought to mobilize disaffected sections of the intelligence and military apparatus and right-wing forces more generally by defending the torture of alleged terrorists and charging Obama with undermining US national security.

In the face of a mounting conflict within the state, administration officials have declared their opposition to any pubic investigation of Bush’s torture program. This places Obama in the position of acknowledging state crimes while defending the perpetrators.

The Democratic leadership in Congress has followed Obama’s lead, opposing any criminal investigation of Bush administration officials and rallying instead behind a Senate Intelligence Committee probe that is being conducted behind closed doors, based on assurances that it will be "bipartisan" and "non-political" and that most, if not all, of the findings will remain classified.

Garzón’s announcement on Wednesday follows his attempt to bring torture charges against six Bush administration officials involved in the drafting of the torture memos. Spain’s attorney general, Candido Conde-Pumpido, has publicly opposed this investigation and sought to quash it. The move to block the investigation came after high-level discussions between Washington and Madrid, including direct talks between Obama and Socialist Party (PSOE) Prime Minister José Luis Zapatero.

Garzón’s new investigation is an act of defiance that ups the political ante, targeting the high-level Bush officials who authored the torture program.

At a press conference Wednesday, Obama reiterated his belief that the waterboarding authorised by Bush was torture. Yet top former representatives of the Bush administration continue to defend such practices and their sanctioning of them.

One of those named in Garzón’s original case, Jay Bybee, who as deputy assistant attorney general signed some of the torture memos, was appointed by Bush to a federal appeals court judgeship. He faces growing demands for his impeachment. On Wednesday, he broke his silence and defended his role in approving the torture of detainees. He told the New York Times, "I believed at the time, and continue to believe today, that the conclusions were legally correct".

If anything, Condoleezza Rice’s defense of her actions is more brazen than that of Bybee. On Thursday, the Huffington Post web site posted an account of a recent exchange between Rice and students during a speaking appearance at Stanford University. When students asked her whether water-boarding was torture, she replied, "[B]y definition, if it was authorized by the president, it did not violate our obligations under the Convention Against Torture".

Rice’s position is that Bush personally sanctioned water-boarding and that presidential authority overrides the rule of law. In seeking to defend herself, she has effectively placed Bush himself directly in the line of fire.

Obama’s attorney general, Eric Holder, refused to say whether the US would cooperate with Garzón’s investigation. In reply to a question, he merely said, "Obviously, we would look at any request that would come from a court in any country and see how and whether we should comply with it".

Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), which represents many of the Guantánamo Bay detainees, said of Garzón’s new investigation, "The torture conspirators are in deep trouble. Even if the US fails in its obligation to criminally investigate, Spain will. The conspirators can run, but they can’t hide. It is conceivable that arrest warrants have already been issued or will be soon. Indictments will almost surely follow. The torture team’s travel options are narrowing".

The attitude of the American political and media establishment to Garzón’s investigation is indicated by the virtual silence with which the media has greeted it. It has barely been reported on the television news channels and been given only the most perfunctory coverage in the print media. An article was published in the electronic edition of the New York Times Wednesday, but not in the next day’s print edition.

This response demonstrates once again the complicity of the media, both in the criminal actions perpetrated by the Bush administration and the efforts by Obama to prevent those guilty of state crimes from being held accountable.

Non-Lethal Weapons Wash Out concludes strategypage.com and elaborates:
In the 1990s, the U.S. government urged the Department of Defense to more energetically investigate and develop non-lethal weapons. Since then, nearly $400 million has been spent on this effort. The results are, overall, disappointing.

The problem is that, non-lethal weapons are not one hundred percent non-lethal, and not nearly as effective as proponents would like. But people love to call them non-lethal, because such devices are intended to deal with violent individuals by using less lethal force. A classic example of how this works is the Taser. A gun like device that fires two small barbs into an individual, and then zaps the victim with a non-lethal jolt of electricity, the Taser has been popular with police, who can more easily subdue violent, and often armed, individuals. Before Taser, the cops had a choice between dangerous (for everyone) hand-to-hand combat, or just using their firearms and killing the guy. While the Taser has been a major success for non-lethal weapons, for every thousand or so times you use it, the victim will die (either from a fall, another medical condition, use of drugs or whatever). This has been fodder for the media, and put Taser users, and non-lethal-weapons developers, on the defensive. Naturally, the manufacturers of these devices want zero deaths, and the users want a device that will bring down the target every time, at a price (for the device) they can afford to pay. There's no way of satisfying all these demands, but it makes great press, insisting that someone should make it so.

Another popular, and somewhat effective, type of non-lethal weapon is the "rubber bullet". This is, literally, a low velocity, rubber coated bullet (or beanbag fired from a shotgun) that will hurt the victim, but rarely injure or kill. American developers came up with what they believed to be a better version. The FN 303 fires a 17mm plastic round at about 300 feet per second (pistol and rifle bullets travel at speeds of 1,000-3,000 feet per second). The FN 303 is only accurate to about a hundred meters, and the bullet can contain pepper concentrate (that makes the victims skin feel like it's burning), or paint (to mark the guy as someone of note). The FN 303 can be mounted under an M-16 (like the 40mm grenade launcher), or handled as a separate weapon.

About a thousand FN 303s were shipped to Iraq three years ago, mainly for use by military police.

Commanders also wanted the infantry to use the FN 303, because more operations are taking place in Shia Arab areas controlled by radical militias (who want the Americans to leave so Sunni Arabs can be driven out of the country, or a coup can be attempted). The Shia civilians threw rocks at American troops and staged rowdy demonstrations to block the movement of U.S. soldiers. The Shia Arabs knew that American ROE (Rules of Engagement) prohibited troops from firing into crowds, unless someone in the crowd was holding weapons. So it was believed that the FN 303 would allow troops to have some control over these Shia mobs. Two soldiers in each nine man squad was given an FN 303. The Shia quickly figured out what the FN 303 is (a souped up paint-ball gun), and were not very intimidated by it. Many troops wanted shot guns, which can also fire a non (or much less) lethal round, as well as stuff that will kill or maim, and are more intimidating. In the end, the FN 303 failed in Iraq, although it is still used with some success by civilian police.

The U.S. Department of Defense also tried to apply high tech when developing non-lethal weapons. This resulted in two notable devices, the LRAD (sonic cannon) and the microwave ADS (Active Defense system). The ADS began development in the 1990s, and was scheduled for use in Iraq many times, but never made it. This was mostly because of bad image ("death ray"), and fear of the bad press they would get if the ADS were used, whether people died or not. There were also persistent reliability problems.

The ADS is a non-lethal weapon that looks like a radar dish. The ADS "radar dish" projects a "burn ray" that is about four feet in diameter. It is effective in fog, smoke and rain. When pointed at people and turned on, it creates a burning sensation on the skin of its victims, causing them to want to leave the area, or at least greatly distracts them. The microwave weapon has a range of about 500 meters. ADS is carried on a hummer or Stryker, along with a machine-gun and other non-lethal weapons. The proposed ROE (Rules of Engagement) for ADS are that anyone who keeps coming after getting hit with microwave is assumed to have evil intent, and will be killed. The microwave is believed to be particularly useful for terrorists who hide in crowds of women and children, using the human shields to get close enough to make an attack. This has been encountered in Somalia and Iraq.

Meanwhile, a new, smaller, version, called Silent Guardian, with a range of about 250 meters, has been offered for use in defending vital targets (like nuclear power plants) against terrorists. The manufacturer is also pitching the Silent Guardian to the navy (for ship protection), the State Department (for embassy protection) and organizations like the border patrol, or anyone looking for a non-lethal way to quickly disperse crowds.

Deployment of ADS has been delayed for years because of concerns about how non-lethal it really is. ADS has been fired, in tests, over 3,000 times. Many of these firings were against human volunteers, and the device performed as predicted, without any permanent damage. But generations of exposure to lurid science fiction descriptions of "death rays" has made the defense bureaucrats anxious over the negative public relations potential if something like ADS was actually used. From a publicity perspective, using more lethal "non-lethal-weapons" is preferable to deploying something safer, but that could be described, however incorrectly, as a "death ray". Currently, ADS is undergoing yet another evaluation prior to being sent into action.

Somewhat more successful, sort of, has been LRAD (Long Range Acoustic Device). This is basically a focused beam of sound. Originally, it was designed to emit a very loud sound. Anyone whose head was touched by this beam, heard a painfully loud sound. Anyone standing next to them heard nothing. But those hit by the beam promptly fled, or fell to the ground in pain.

Permanent hearing loss is possible if the beam is kept on a person for several seconds, but given the effect the sound usually has on people (they move, quickly), it is unlikely to happen. LRAD works. Some U.S. Navy ships also carry it, but not just to repel attacking suicide bombers, or whatever. No, the system was sold to the navy for a much gentler application. LRAD can also broadcast speech for up to 300 meters. The navy planned to use LRAD to warn ships to get out of the way. This was needed in places like the crowded coastal waters of the northern Persian Gulf, where the navy patrols. Many small fishing and cargo boats ply these waters, and it's often hard to get the attention of the crews. With LRAD, you just aim it at a member of the crew, and have an interpreter "speak" to the sailor. It was noted that the guy on the receiving end was sometimes terrified, even after he realized it was that large American destroyer that was talking to him. This apparently gave the army guys some ideas, for there were soon rumors in Iraq of a devilish American weapon that makes people believe they are hearing voices in their heads. But last year, off Somalia, LRAD was used by a tanker crew to try and defeat a pirate attack. But the pirates simply took the pain, kept on coming, and got aboard the chemical tanker.

Over a decade of effort, and all that money, has sobered up many of those who believed that non-lethal weapons were the next big thing. But in five or ten years memories will have faded, and the cycle of expensive, but doomed, optimism can begin again.

Press Contacts:

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ECOTERRA Intl.
Nairobi Node
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+254-733-633-733

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+254-722-613858
+254-733-385868
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Note
Picture: This map shows very well what use of Somalia the colonialists of London, Paris and Washington want to make.