Somalia: Hello? Pirates?

Medesh 30 Nov, 2008

'Mummy, can I phone the pirates?'
One of the biggest frustrations facing journalists is being unable to get through to people on the phone. But as Mary Harper discovered, contacting the Somali pirates on the Sirius Star turned out to be child's play.
It was a cold, dark, wet and miserable Sunday afternoon. I was in my car, driving my 12-year-old daughter and her friend back from a birthday party. I was tired and fed up from being in the car.
"Mummy, mummy," trilled a voice from the back. "I want to phone the pirates."
My daughter had heard me repeatedly trying to get through to the Somali pirates on board the Sirius Star.
They usually picked up the phone but put it down again when I said I was from the BBC. My obsession with getting through to them had reached the point that I had even saved their number on my mobile phone.
"Mummy, mummy, please can I phone the pirates for you?"
"No."
"Pleeeeez."
By this time, with rain battering my windscreen and cars jamming the road, I was at the end of my tether.
"OK", I said, tossing the phone into the back of the car.
"They are under P for pirates."
Giggling with pirates
"Hello. Please can I talk to the pirates," said my daughter in her obviously childish voice.
I could hear someone replying and a bizarre conversation ensued which eventually ended when my daughter collapsed in giggles.
This was a breakthrough. Dialogue had been established.
The next day, I went to the crowded office in Bush House in London where the BBC Somali Service is based. I told them the story.
"Let's try now," said producer Said Musa, who, dare I say it, looks a bit like a pirate himself. He has a wild look about him with flashing eyes and a swashbuckling saunter.
He dialled the number. A pirate answered. "I'm sorry," he barked in Somali, "the boss pirate is sleeping. He was very busy last night keeping watch for possible attackers, night time, you know, is the busiest time for us. Call back in two hours."
Calm hostage
A pirate, who called himself Daybad, spoke in Somali, calmly and confidently. He said Somalis were left with no choice but to take to the high seas.
"We've had no government for 18 years. We have no life. Our last resource is the sea, and foreign trawlers are plundering our fish."
The pirate said the crew was being treated well.
"They can move from place to place. They can sleep in their own beds, they even have their own keys. The only thing they're missing is their freedom to leave the ship."
Suddenly I heard a voice speaking English.
"Hello. This is the captain of the Sirius Star speaking."
The captain, a Polish man called Marek Nishky, sounded surprisingly composed for a hostage.
He said he had no reason to complain, everybody was OK, and the pirates had allowed the crew to speak to their families.
As my questions became more challenging, he became more nervous. I could almost see the pirates standing around him. He said we would have to finish our conversation, and politely thanked me for my concern.
The phone line went dead. But we had it, recordings of the pirate and the captain, and the interviews were broadcast all over the BBC.
Gun law
The Somali Service at Bush House is behind most of the stories you hear about Somalia on the BBC.
It consists of a tiny group of people, far away from home, from a country torn to shreds after nearly two decades without a functioning central government.
That means no proper hospitals, no schools and no safety. The gun means everything in Somalia.
One member of the team showed me photos of the concrete bench outside his house where his mother used to sit to make tea. It was splattered with blood.
The house had been hit by a shell the day after his family left for the relative safety of the north. Neighbours had been killed.
Who knows whether the property was targeted because of its BBC connection.
Despite their concerns about what may be happening back at home, the people in the Somali Service are the most hilarious, irreverent bunch of people in the building.
They smoke like chimneys, and laugh uproariously at the most unsuitable jokes.
They tease me mercilessly. I was worth dozens of camels when I first arrived at the BBC as a fresh-faced young woman, they say, while now I may only be worth one or two camels, or maybe just a half.
The Somali Service enjoyed a real scoop with our interviews.
But who knows if it would have happened if my daughter had not persisted and pressed P for Pirates?
Story from BBC NEWS:

Ethiopian ship hijacking foiled

Medeshi

Ethiopian ship hijacking foiled

By Groum Abate

Source: Capital
Built by Fincantieri-Cantieri Navali Italiani, in Venice, Andinet, one of the nine ships operated by Ethiopian Shipping Lines (ESL) came under attack by the notorious Somali pirates.

Photo: ESL Ethiopian Ship Shebelle
Ambachew Abreha, Managing Director of ESL, told Capital that the attack occurred on Monday, November 17, 2008, but the ship managed to safely cruise away from the hijackers.Andinet has reverted back to its initial point of departure, the Port of Djibouti, after the hijacking attempt.
Ambachew said that the attempt was diverted by the ship’s security despite claims by the German navy that stated it rescued Andinet from pirates.
German navy officials said Tuesday its frigate, Karlsruhe, had foiled attacks by heavily armed bandits on two ships. On Monday, Andinet radioed for help, saying it was under attack from two small motorboats in the Gulf of Aden. The Karlsruhe, which was 20km away, dispatched a Sea Lynx helicopter and the two motorboats “left at high speed,” a navy statement said.
The managing director on his part said the German navy was near the incident but has not intercepted the hijackers, adding that it is confidential how the ship managed to foil the attack.
Earlier in the week, the Saudi supertanker, Sirius Star, carrying 100 million dollars worth of oil, was hijacked and anchored off a notorious Somali pirate port. The biggest act of piracy yet by the marauding Somali bandits has stunned the international community.The super-tanker with its crew of 25, 19 from The Philippines, two from Britain, two from Poland, one Croatian and one Saudi, and loaded to capacity with two million barrels of oil, was seized on Saturday, November 15, 2008.

ESL Netsanet Ethiopian Ship
The Sirius Star, the size of three football pitches and three times the weight of a US aircraft carrier, is the largest ship ever seized by pirates and the hijacking was the farthest out to sea that Somali bandits have struck.
Four ships from Britain, Greece, Italy and Turkey form a NATO patrol in the waters, with two protecting United Nations (UN) food aid convoys to the strife-torn Horn of Africa country.NATO’s operation ends in mid-December when a bigger European Union (EU) mission is set to take over but NATO is considering “complementary” action to the EU mission.The International Maritime Bureau has reported that 90 vessels have been attacked since January. Of those, 38 were hijacked while pirates still hold 16 vessels with more than 250 crew as hostages.
Ethiopian Shipping Lines SC was founded in 1964 and started operation in 1966 with three newly built ships with a capital of 50,000 birr subsequently raised to 3,750,000 birr.

U.S. appears to be losing its secret war in Somalia

By Paul Salopek
Chicago Tribune
Medeshi
U.S. appears to be losing its secret war in Somalia
BERBERA, Somalia — To glimpse America's secret war in Africa, you must bang with a rock on the iron gate of the prison in this remote port in northern Somalia. A sleepy guard will yank open a rusty deadbolt. Then, you ask to speak to an inmate named Mohamed Ali Isse.
Isse, 36, is a convicted murderer and jihadist. He is known among his fellow prisoners, with grudging awe, as "The Man with the American Thing in His Leg."
That "thing" is a stainless-steel surgical pin screwed into his bullet-shattered femur, courtesy, he says, of the U.S. Navy. How it got there — or more to the point, how Isse ended up in this crumbling, stonewalled hellhole at the uttermost end of the Earth — is a story that the U.S. government probably would prefer to remain untold.
That's because Isse and his fancy surgery scars offer what little tangible evidence exists of a bare-knuckled war that has been waged silently, over the past five years, with the sole aim of preventing anarchic Somalia from becoming the world's next Afghanistan.
"Your government gets away with a lot here," said the prison warden, Hassan Mohamed Ibrahim, striding about his antique facility with a pistol tucked in the back of his pants. "In Iraq, the world is watching. In Afghanistan, the world is watching. In Somalia, nobody is watching."
It is a standoff war in which the Pentagon lobs million-dollar cruise missiles into a famine-haunted African wasteland the size of Texas, hoping to kill lone terror suspects who might be dozing in candlelit huts.
It is a covert war in which the CIA has recruited gangs of unsavory warlords to hunt down and kidnap Islamic militants and — according to Isse and civil rights activists — secretly imprison them offshore, aboard U.S. warships.
Mostly, though, it is a policy time bomb that will be inherited by the incoming Obama administration: a little-known front in the global war on terrorism that the U.S. appears to be losing, if it hasn't already been lost.
"Somalia is one of the great unrecognized U.S. policy failures since 9/11," said Ken Menkhaus, a leading Somalia scholar at Davidson College in North Carolina. "By any rational metric, what we've ended up with there today is the opposite of what we wanted."
What the Bush administration wanted, when it tacitly backed Ethiopia's invasion of Somalia in late 2006, was clear enough: to help a close African ally in the war on terror crush the Islamic Courts Union. The Taliban-like movement emerged from the ashes of more than 15 years of anarchy and lawlessness in Africa's most infamous failed state, Somalia.
At first, the invasion seemed an easy victory. By early 2007, the Courts had been routed, a pro-Western transitional government installed, and hundreds of Islamic militants in Somalia either captured or killed.
But over the past 18 months, Somalia's Islamists — now more radical than ever — have regrouped and roared back.
On a single day last month, they flexed their muscles by killing nearly 30 people in a spate of bloody car-bomb attacks that recalled the darkest days of Iraq. And their brutal militia, the Shabab, or "Youth," today controls much of the destitute nation, a shattered but strategic country that overlooks the vital oil-shipping lanes of the Gulf of Aden.
Even worse, Shabab's fighters have moved to within miles of the Somalian capital of Mogadishu, threatening to topple the weak interim government supported by the U.S. and Ethiopia.
Meanwhile, in the midst of a killing drought, more than 700,000 city dwellers have been driven out of bullet-scarred Mogadishu by the recent clashes between the Islamist rebels and the interim government.
Somalia's hapless capital has long been considered the Dodge City of Africa — a seaside metropolis sundered by clan fighting ever since the nation's central government collapsed in 1991. That feral reputation was cemented in 1993, when chanting mobs dragged the bodies of U.S. Army Rangers through the streets in a disastrous U.N. peacekeeping mission chronicled in the book and movie "Black Hawk Down."
The airport — the city's frail lifeline to the world — is regularly closed by insurgent mortar attacks despite a small and jittery contingent of African Union peacekeepers.
Foreign workers who once toiled quietly for years in Somalia have been evacuated. A U.S. missile strike in May killed the Shabab commander, Aden Hashi Ayro, enraging Islamist militants who have since vowed to kidnap and kill any outsider found in the country.
Today most of Somalia is closed to the world.
It wasn't supposed to turn out this way when the U.S. provided intelligence to the invading Ethiopians two years ago.
The homegrown Islamic radicals who controlled most of central and southern Somalia in mid-2006 certainly were no angels. They shuttered Mogadishu's cinemas, demanded that Somali men grow beards and, according to the U.S. State Department, provided refuge to some 30 local and international jihadists associated with al-Qaida.
But the Islamic Courts Union's turbaned militiamen had actually defeated Somalia's hated warlords. And their enforcement of Islamic religious laws, while unpopular among many Somalis, made Mogadishu safe to walk in for the first time in a generation.
When the Islamic movement again strengthened, Isse, the terrorist jailed in Berbera, was a pharmacy owner from the isolated town of Buro in Somaliland, a parched northern enclave that declared independence from Somalia in the early 1990s.
Radicalized by U.S. military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, he is serving a life sentence for organizing the killings of four foreign aid workers in late 2003 and early 2004. Two of his victims were elderly British teachers.
Sources say Isse was snatched in 2004 by the U.S. after fleeing to the safe house of a notorious Islamist militant in Mogadishu.
The job was done by Mohamed Afrah Qanyare, a warlord in a business suit, who said four years ago his militia helped form the kernel of a CIA-created mercenary force called the Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism in Somalia.
The unit cobbled together some of the world's most violent, wily and unreliable clan militias — including gangs that had attacked U.S. forces in the early 1990s — to confront a rising tide of Islamic militancy in Somalia's anarchic capital.
Isse was wounded in the raid, according to Qanyare, now a member of Somalia's weak transitional government who divides his days between lawless Mogadishu and luxury hotels in Nairobi. Matt Bryden, one of the world's leading scholars of the Somali insurgency who has access to intelligence regarding it, confirmed the account. They say Isse was then loaded aboard a U.S. military helicopter summoned by satellite phone and was flown, bleeding, to an offshore U.S. vessel.
Navy doctors spliced a steel rod into Isse's bullet-shattered leg, according to defense lawyer Bashir Hussein Abdi. Every day for about a month afterward, Isse's court depositions assert, plainclothes U.S. agents grilled the bedridden Somali at sea about al-Qaida's presence. The CIA never has publicly acknowledged its operations in Somalia. Agency spokesman George Little declined to comment on Isse's case.
In June, the British civil-rights group Reprieve contended that as many as 17 U.S. warships may have doubled as floating prisons since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Calling such claims "misleading," the Pentagon has insisted that U.S. ships have served only as transit stops for terror suspects being shuttled to permanent detention camps such as the one in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
In a terse statement, Lt. Nathan Christensen, a spokesman for the Bahrain-based 5th Fleet that patrols the Gulf of Aden, said only that the Navy was "not able to confirm dates" of Isse's imprisonment.
For reasons that remain unclear, he was later flown to Camp Lemonier, a U.S. military base in the African state of Djibouti, Somali intelligence sources say, and from there to a clandestine prison in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Isse and his lawyer allege he was detained there for six weeks and tortured by Ethiopian military intelligence with electric shocks.
Security officials in neighboring Somaliland confirmed that they collected Isse from the Ethiopian police at a dusty border crossing in late 2004. "The Man with the American Thing in His Leg" was interrogated again. After a local trial, he was locked in the ancient Berbera prison.
The CIA's anti-terror mercenaries in Mogadishu may have kidnapped a dozen or more wanted Islamists for the Americans, intelligence experts say. But their excesses ended up swelling the ranks of their enemy, the Islamic Courts Union militias.
"It was a stupid idea," said Bryden, the security analyst. "It actually strengthened the hand of the Islamists and helped trigger the crisis we're in today."
Somalia's 2 million-strong diaspora is of greatest concern. Angry young men, foreign passports in hand, could be lured back to the reopened Shabab training camps, where instructors occasionally use photocopied portraits of Bush as rifle targets.
Some envision no Somalia at all.
With about $8 billion in humanitarian aid fire-hosed into the smoking ruins of Somalia since the early 1990s — the U.S. will donate roughly $200 million this year alone — a growing chorus of policymakers is advocating that the failed state be allowed to fail, to break up into autonomous zones or fiefdoms, such as Isse's home of Somaliland.
But there is another possible future for Somalia. In Bosaso, a port 300 miles east of Isse's cell, thousands of people swarm through the town's scruffy waterfront seeking passage across the Gulf of Aden to the Middle East. Dressed in rags, they sleep by the hundreds in dirt alleys and empty lots. Stranded women and girls are forced into prostitution.
"You can see why we still need America's help," said Abdinur Jama, the coast-guard commander for Puntland, the semiautonomous state encompassing Bosaso.
A military think tank at West Point studying Somalia concluded last year that, in some respects, failed states were admirable places to combat al-Qaida, because the absence of local sovereignty permitted "relatively unrestricted Western counterterrorism efforts."

Copyright © 2008 The Seattle Times Company

Somalia: British guards flee hijacked tanker

Medeshi
Somalia: British guards flee hijacked tanker
Nov 29 2008 WalesOnline
Two British security guards jumped overboard as Somali pirates seized control of a chemical tanker in the Gulf of Aden.
The two guards and their Irish colleague were picked up by a NATO helicopter gunship, which arrived too late to prevent yesterday’s hijacking.
Both France and Germany, which have ships in the area as part of an international anti-piracy coalition, sent the aircraft after receiving a distress call just after dawn, French military spokesman Cmdr Christophe Prazuck said.
But in the 15 minutes it took to get to the site, the pirates had already boarded and had taken the crew of 25 Indians and two Bangladeshis hostage.
The three guards who leapt overboard were safe aboard a French warship, he said.
Anti-Piracy Maritime Security Solutions, which employs the three guards who leapt off the Biscaglia, said on its website that it was formed in July 2008 and all its staff are ex-Royal Marines. They do not carry weapons.
Germany and France have ships in the area as part of a Nato fleet which, along with warships from Denmark, India, Malaysia, Russia and the US, have started patrolling the vast maritime corridor.
They escort some merchant ships and respond to distress calls in the fight against increasingly brazen pirate attacks off Somalia’s coast, a major international shipping lane through which about 20 tankers sail daily. Yesterday’s was the 97th ship hijacking this year.
One of the hijacked ships, the Malta-flagged cargo ship Centauri, was released on Thursday with all 25 Filipino crew unharmed after more than two months in the hands of pirates, Greece announced.
The ship hijacked yesterday, the Liberian-flagged MV Biscaglia, is operated out of Singapore, said Noel Choong, head of the International Maritime Bureau’s piracy reporting centre in Malaysia.
Hugh Martin, manager of Hart Security, said 20 speedboats filled with pirates launched a simultaneous attack on two slow-moving companion vessels off the south coast of Yemen on Thursday. Hart staff on board both ships were armed, but managed to use evasive manoeuvres and non-lethal methods to prevent the pirates from boarding during the four-hour attack.
Yesterday Russia’s United Nations ambassador Vitaly Churkin said it was possible the UN might pass a new resolution with more aggressive rules of engagement.
The US Navy says it is impossible to patrol all 2.5 million square miles of dangerous waters. It has called on ship owners to hire private security contractors to protect vulnerable vessels, leading to a boom in business some contractors fear will encourage unlicensed or inexperienced companies to cash in.
Many companies prefer non-lethal methods of deterring pirates, including evasive manoeuvres, electrifying handrails and the use of sonic weapons that can blast a wave of painful sound up to half a mile away.
Cyrus Mody, head of the International Maritime Bureau, said the onus should be on international navies and not individual ship owners to ensure their vessels’ protection.
He said the governments whose navies patrolled the Gulf of Aden must strengthen their rules of engagement and put a legal framework in place to try suspected pirates.
“You don’t have to blow them out of the water, just confiscate the weapons and the ship,” he said.
Navies needed to patrol more aggressively, boarding and searching suspected “mother ships” from which pirates launched their small fast attack boats, Mr Mody said. He said navies were reluctant to search or detain suspected pirates because their legal standing was unclear.
Somalia, an impoverished Horn of Africa nation, has not had a functioning government since 1991 and it cannot police its long coastline.

Djibouti Delegation meets with Somaliland government

Medeshi Nov. 30, 2008
Djibouti Delegation meets with Somaliland government
HARGEISA, Somaliland -A delegation from Djibouti has promised to give extra consideration towards recognizing Somaliland as a nation state.
Mr. Hashi Abdilahi, special advisor to President Ismail Omar Guelleh, said: "After the terrorist attacks in Somaliland, we will think of what we can do about unstable Somalia, which we have spent time and energy on dealing with for so long, but is still suffering without a stable and committed government."
The advisor, who was part of the delegation that spent two days in Hargeisa, added: "We will definitely work closely with Somaliland no matter what other Somalis will feel, but I am not going to say things in advance; you Somalilanders must wait, bearing in mind that we,Djibouti, are considering the case for independence." The delegation was led by the finance minister of Djibouti Minister, Ali Farah Asowe. He gave an exclusive interview with the SSI and mentioned that the main aim of their trip was to discuss areas of mutual interest to both nations and a proposal for a branch of the third largest French private bank in Hargeisa, scheduled for January 2009.
He also briefly talked about how the high prices of food and oil affected their preparations for next year's budget. He said: "It slowed down the usual thinking of the preparations, but we have all the funds from the IMF, the World Bank, the AU, the EU, and so on. I think Somaliland, which is not getting such assistance, and also had the disaster of the terror attacks, should be a role model to the Djibouti government and its people who lost their will towards doing things for themselves and instead wait for international community's assistance." The Somaliland minister of finance, Mr.Hussein Ali Duale, who organized the visit, said: "We are part of Africa, specifically the horn of Africa, and we welcome all our neighbours."
A Somaliland delegation will go to Djibouti on December 7th to open trade offices in both countries and further discuss the opening of bank branches in Somaliland.
The President of Somaliland Dahir Rayaale Kahin held talks on the last day of the delegation's visit and thanked them for offering their support to Somaliland during the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on October 29th. The Sub-Saharan Informer

Ethiopia to Withdraw Troops From Somalia by Year End

Medeshi Nov 27, 2008

Ethiopia to Withdraw Troops From Somalia by Year End

By Peter Heinlein

Ethiopia has announced its intention to withdraw its troops from neighboring Somalia by the end of this year. But as correspondent Peter Heinlein reports from Addis Ababa, Ethiopian officials have assured the African Union their forces will remain on alert at the border to support the remaining AU peacekeepers if necessary.
Ethiopia has sent a letter to the United Nations and the African Union saying it will withdraw its forces from positions inside Somalia by the end of December. African and western diplomats confirmed to VOA the letter was delivered several days ago.
The pullout would come two years after Ethiopian troops invaded their lawless Horn of Africa neighbor to drive out Islamists who had imposed Sharia law on a large part of the country.
Since then, the Ethiopian contingent of between 10,000 and 15,000 troops has been the prime force propping up Somalia's fragile transitional government. They operate alongside a 3,400 strong AU peacekeeping unit known as AMISOM, made up of Ugandan and Burundian soldiers.
The letter to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon and African Union Commission Chairman Jean Ping announcing the intent to withdraw was sent after Ethiopia's Foreign Minister Seyoum Mesfin publicly warned Somalia's feuding president and prime minister to patch up their differences or be left alone to fight among themselves.
Many African diplomats have openly expressed fears that an Ethiopian pullout could lead to an immediate collapse of the TFG, as the Somali government is known. But AU Commission Chairman Ping told reporters Wednesday he has received assurances from Ethiopia that they will not completely abandon Somalia, and will remain on the border, poised to return if conditions deteriorate.
"In spite of withdrawal of the Ethiopians, they will remain committed, just in the other side of the border, and they will intervene, and the African troops will remain there. The AMISOM will remain there and we'll continue to ask strengthening of AMISOM by asking new troops and also financial assistance," he said.
Ping said he is preparing for a number of possible scenarios to protect Somalia and the remaining peacekeepers when Ethiopia pulls out. But he expressed hope the Ethiopians could be persuaded to postpone their withdrawal if Somalia's leaders settle their internal dispute.
"This depends on the behavior of the Transitional Government of Somalia," Ping said. We hope they will understand they are there to help the country to help them and they should stop quarreling… So we hope that this will be the case and then we can continue this operation in Somalia."
Ping said negotiations are on to attract more African troops to bolster the AU force so it could shoulder the entire peacekeeping burden once Ethiopia withdraws. Kenya has already said it will soon dispatch a battalion to Somalia. Ping said he is also urging the U.N. Security Council to provide help, in view of the surge of piracy that threatens vital shipping lanes of the Somali coast.
"We already have a request to the Security Council. [There is] a need for them to come as quick as possible, because the disorder we are seeing on the ocean with piracy is an extension on the sea of the disorder that is going on on the mainland," he said.
African diplomats Thursday expressed hope that the current crisis could force governments in the region and the international community to take a fresh look at ways to prevent a turn for the worse in Somalia. The country has been without a functioning government for 18 years.
A combination of lawlessness and civil war has created one of the world's worst humanitarian disasters. The United Nations estimates 3.2 million people, about 40 percent of the population, are in need of emergency assistance.
While asking for anonymity, one senior diplomat from a country considering a troop contribution to AMISOM told VOA, "Ethiopia can't leave now. It's just too dangerous."

War on Mumbai

Medeshi Nov 27, 2008
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said on Thursday the attacks in Mumbai that killed more than 100 people were well planned and probably had "external linkages."
REUTERS/Graphic


Victims of Wednesday's shootings lie in the premises of the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus or Victoria Terminus railway station in Mumbai, November 26, 2008.
REUTERS/The Times of India

Indian army soldiers patrol a street in Mumbai November 27, 2008.
REUTERS/Arko Datta

A suspected gunman in the premises of the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, or Victoria Terminus railway station, in Mumbai, November 26, 2008.
REUTERS/The Times of India

Firemen try to douse a fire at the Taj Hotel in Mumbai November 27, 2008.
REUTERS/Arko Datta

An employee (C) of the Taj Hotel (seen in the background) comforts foreign guests in Mumbai November 27, 2008.
REUTERS/Arko Datta

Smoke and fire billows out of the Taj Hotel in Mumbai, November 27, 2008.
REUTERS/Jayanta Shaw

Pigeons fly near the burning Taj Mahal hotel in Mumbai November 27, 2008.
REUTERS/Punit Paranjpe

Smoke and fire billows out of the Taj Hotel in Mumbai, November 27, 2008.
REUTERS/Peter Keep

By Charlotte Cooper
MUMBAI (Reuters) - Indian commandos fought to regain control of India's commercial capital, Mumbai, on Thursday after a highly-coordinated attack by armed militants that the prime minister blamed on a "terrorist" group outside the country.
Police said 119 people were killed and 315 were wounded when a small army of gunmen -- at least some of whom arrived by sea -- fanned out across Mumbai to attack sites popular with tourists and businessmen, including two luxury hotels.
Commandos were fighting room-to-room battles in the two hotels to rescue people trapped by the militants, police said.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh blamed militant groups based in India's neighbors, usually meaning Pakistan, raising fears of renewed tension between the nuclear-armed rivals.
"It is evident that the group which carried out these attacks, based outside the country, had come with single-minded determination to create havoc in the commercial capital of the country," he said in a televised address. "We will take the strongest possible measures to ensure that there is no repetition of such terrorist acts."
Around two dozen militants in their early 20s, armed with automatic rifles and grenades and carrying backpacks full of ammunition, had fanned out across Mumbai to attack sites across the city, which also included a Jewish center.
At least some of them had come ashore in what police said was a rubber dinghy.
They commandeered a vehicle and sprayed passersby with bullets, fired indiscriminately in a train station, hospitals and a popular tourist cafe. They also attacked two of the city's poshest hotels packed with tourists and business executives.
"The situation is still not under control and we are trying to flush out any more terrorists hiding inside the two hotels," said Vilasrao Deshmukh, chief minister of Maharashtra state which is home to Mumbai.
The death toll was only an estimate in an attack which brought the biggest chaos to the city since serial bombings in 1993 killed 260 people and injured hundreds.
India blamed crime syndicates in the "Bollywood" underworld for that attack and saw it as revenge for death of Muslims in Hindu-Muslim violence which followed the destruction of a Muslim mosque in the north of the country. It said the perpetrators had later found refuge in Pakistan.
Pakistan condemned the latest attacks on Mumbai and promised full cooperation.
OPERATIONS CONTINUE
J K. Dutt, head of the National Security Guards, told the NDTV news channel that operations were continuing at the hotels.
At the Trident-Oberoi "we have been able to engage two terrorists," he said. "At the Taj, one terrorist has been engaged. He has been injured, and we should be able to mop up the operation fairly quickly."
At least 10 Israeli nationals were also trapped in buildings or held hostage, an Israeli embassy official in New Delhi said.
Flames billowed from an upper floor of the Trident-Oberoi where 20 to 30 people were thought to have been taken hostage and more than 100 others were trapped in their rooms.
Earlier, explosions rattled the nearby Taj Hotel as the troops flushed out the last of the militants there. Fire and smoke plumed from an open window.
Dipak Dutta told NDTV news after being rescued that he had been told by troops escorting him through the corridors not to look down at any of the bodies.
"A lot of chef trainees were massacred in the kitchen."
At least six foreigners, including one Australian, a Briton, an Italian and a Japanese national were killed.
A militant holed up at a Jewish center phoned an Indian television channel to offer talks with the government for the hostages' release. He complained of abuses in Kashmir, over which India and Pakistan have fought two of their three wars.
"Ask the government to talk to us and we will release the hostages," the man, identified by the India TV channel as Imran, said, speaking in Urdu in what sounded like a Kashmiri accent.
"Are you aware how many people have been killed in Kashmir? Are you aware how your army has killed Muslims. Are you aware how many of them have been killed in Kashmir this week?"
WALKING THROUGH BLOOD
Australian actress Brooke Satchwell, who starred in the Neighbours television soap opera, said she narrowly escaped the gunmen by hiding in a hotel bathroom cupboard.
"There was people getting shot in the corridor. There was someone dead outside the bathroom," the shaken actress told Australian television. "The next thing I knew I was running down the stairs and there were a couple of dead bodies across the stairs. It was chaos."
"We threw ourselves down under the reception counter," Esperanza Aguirre, head of Madrid's regional government, said.
"I took off my shoes and we left being pushed along by the hotel staff," she said. "I didn't see any terrorists or injured people. I just saw the blood I had to walk through barefoot."
Singh said New Delhi would "take up strongly" the use of neighbors' territory to launch attacks on India.
"The well-planned and well-orchestrated attacks, probably with external linkages, were intended to create a sense of terror by choosing high-profile targets."
The use of heavily armed "fedayeen" or suicide attackers bears the hallmarks of Pakistan-based militant groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba or Jaish-e-Mohammed, blamed for a 2001 attack on India's parliament.
Both groups made their name fighting Indian rule in disputed Kashmir, and were closely linked in the past to the Pakistani military's Inter Services Intelligence agency, the ISI.
Lashkar-e-Taiba denied any role in the attacks, and said it had no links with any Indian group. Instead, the little-known Deccan Mujahideen claimed responsibility.
"Release all the mujahideens, and Muslims living in India should not be troubled," said a militant inside the Oberoi, speaking to Indian television by telephone.
The attacks were expected to spook investors in one of Asia's largest and fastest-growing economies.
Authorities closed stock, bond and foreign exchange markets, and the central bank said it would continue auctions to keep cash flowing through interbank lending markets, which seized up after the global financial crisis.
The attackers appeared to target British, Americans and Israelis as they sought hostages in the hotels and elsewhere.
Police said they had shot seven gunmen and arrested nine suspects. They said 12 policemen were killed, including Hemant Karkare, the chief of the police anti-terrorist squad in Mumbai.
(Reporting by New Delhi and Mumbai bureaux; Writing by Myra MacDonald; Editing by Richard Balmforth)

Saudi Arabia and Somali Pirates, the fight between friends

Medeshi Nov 27, 2008

Saudi Arabia and Somali Pirates, the fight between friends

Many readers will wonder the relation between Saudi Arabia and Somali Pirates, and how can they be friends. The answer is very simple; it needs close examination of Saudi relations with Somali warlords and Transitional Government of Somalia (TGS).
The history of Somali pirates goes back to 1998, after TGS President Abdullah Yusuf established the tribe-based semi-autonomous and illegitimate region of "Puntland", where human-trafficking, piracy and illegal weapons trade is most lucrative business. "Puntland" administration signed illegal contracts with Mafia to dump nuclear toxic wastes in the Somalia water.
Human-traffickers force the migrants into the sea of Gulf of Aden, only after crossing into Yemen water. The migrants pay between $50 and $100 per head to be smuggled into Yemen. Reuters says the human-traffickers carry large number of migrants in small wooden boat intended to carry lighter cargo.
Starting from 1998 until today, the illegitimate administration of "Puntland" violates international rules including human rights violation. The human-traffickers freely sail off Bossasso Port, main hub of "Puntland", with full support from the authorities because high-ranking officials of "Puntland" take loin´s share in the trafficking money. International community raised concern over the illegal activities in "Puntland".
The human-traffickers upgraded to pirates with support of "Puntland" administration and TGS President Abdullah Yusuf. Xasan Abshir, current candidate for "Puntland" President Post, is well-known spokesman for pirates who hijacked the French Ship.
The piracy business is easy money; the pirates enter the sea and hijack freely, and receive millions of dollars as ransom money. This is how the piracy in Somalia works; there is no authority to arrest them instead they get support from "Puntland" administration. Somali authorities show crocodile tear over the hijacking due to international pressure but the business remains booming.
At the end of the day, they receive $40 million in less than a month. This is dream come true because the ransom money is much more than National Budget.
TGS President Yusuf appointed sensitive and important posts in TGS government to his follow tribesmen from "Puntland", in order to keep the piracy business running and show mercy to outside world. Yusuf´s henchmen committed human rights abuses in Mogadishu including rape, indiscriminate killing and displacement.
UK Channel 4, reported story under title "Warlord, Next Door Step" and unveiled many undercover stories including the killing of the innocent in Mogadishu. The world remains silent over such organized crimes.
Saudi Arabia poured millions of dollars into the hands TGS and "Puntland" officials including Yusuf, like $32 million one shot payment in 2007. Saudi Arabia builds the muscles of these criminals, and financially encourages them to expand their illegal operations. Such support led Yusuf and his henchmen to upgrade the human-traffickers to pirates. Saudi Arabia cannot guarantee how these millions will be used.
Saudi Arabia failed to pressure the TGS to stop the genocide and displacement in Mogadishu as per international human rights reports, instead continue supporting the TGS financially and diplomatically until today without investigating the truth in Mogadishu. Today, Ethiopia discovered the true face of Yusuf and planning to drop him and henchmen out.
The current hijacked Saudi oil tanker by Somali pirates is fire-back to Saudi Arabia. News agencies reported that tanker is laden with large quantity of crude oil worth millions of dollars. Arab proverb says, "Who brings lion into his home, looses his children to the wild." Today, Saudi Arabia is loosing business to the monsters it created in Somalia.
There is high possibility of TGS and "Puntland" involvement in the hijack to get more money from Saudi Arabia, but this time by force. Now, it is time for Saudi Arabia to understand the criminals inside Somalia.
Even, Saudi Arabia helped "Puntland" administration in signing Oil Exploration Contracts with Arab Countries including Dubai based Asian companies.
Saudi Arabia and Arab countries, believe that united Somalia can only secure their interests in the horn of Africa and Gulf of Aden, but it is wrong ideology. The free people of Somaliland can fill up the vacuum left by failed "Puntland" and Southern Somalia. Because Somaliland is fully capable to chase out the pirates and clear the sea from the illegal activities like piracy and human-trafficking.
The World including Arab leaders should open their eyes widely to understand the reality in Somalia, and understand that unity comes with acceptance of all concerned parties. Today, Somaliland established entire democratic state infrastructure and nothing exists in Somalia. So the question is, should the world deal and support gang of criminals like TGS or democratically elected government like Somaliland.
By Abdulaziz Al-Mutairi

Grenades kill five in Somalia's seat of parliament

Medeshi

Grenades kill five in Somalia's seat of parliament
Thu Nov 27, 2008 10:33am EST
By Mohamed Ahmed
BAIDOA, Somalia (Reuters) - At least five people were killed and 17 injured Thursday when assailants tossed grenades into a busy market in the town where Somalia's parliament sits, witnesses said.
Islamist fighters have waged a nearly two-year campaign against Somalia's interim administration after government forces backed by Ethiopian troops ousted them from the capital.
Islamists now hold most of south Somalia while the weak, Western-backed government controls just Mogadishu and Baidoa, the seat of parliament.
"At least three civilians died and 17 others were wounded after unidentified men hurled two hand grenades at Baidoa market," Hussein Mohamed, a witness, told Reuters.
A doctor at a hospital in Baidoa said two of the injured people taken there had later died.
The violence has killed 10,000 civilians since early 2007, created more than a million internal refugees, and left more than three million Somalis in need of food aid.
Authorities in the northern enclave of Somaliland on Thursday blamed a hardline group of Islamists known as al Shabaab for simultaneous suicide attacks that killed at least 30 people at the end of October.
Al Shabaab, which is on Washington's list of foreign terrorist groups, has refused to join a coalition government and launches regular attacks on the capital from nearby strongholds.
TACKLE PIRACY ON LAND
Nearly two decades of chaos in the Horn of Africa country has created a breeding ground for kidnappings, banditry and rampant piracy in the busy shipping lanes off Somalia.
The chairman of the African Union, Jean Ping, said on Thursday efforts to resolve piracy would be futile unless a solution for the chaos onshore was found.
"Everybody in the world is mobilizing forces to fight piracy on the high seas, but the piracy in the Red Sea and Indian Ocean is an extension of the disorder inside Somalia," Ping said.
"It would not bring any result without tackling the root cause of the piracy which is the conflict inside Somalia."
In the latest kidnapping, two journalists from Britain and Spain were seized in the north-eastern Puntland region, along with two Somali men accompanying them.
An international media watchdog said it was worried about their safety.
"This abduction is a reminder that banditry, piracy and politically-motivated crime pose a constant threat to foreigners -- journalists and humanitarian workers -- who go to Somalia," Reporters Without Borders said in a statement Thursday.
In another kidnapping this month, Somali gunmen crossed over into neighboring Kenya and snatched two Italian nuns.
A Kenyan official told Reuters Thursday that talks for their release were ongoing and no ransom demand had been made.
(Additional reporting by Tsegaye Tadesse in Addis Ababa, Noor Ali in Garissa, Kenya; Writing by Helen Nyambura-Mwaura; Editing by David Clarke)
(Email: nairobi.newsroom@reuters.com,

Somaliland Blames Oct Suicide Attacks On Shebab Group

Medeshi
Somaliland Blames Oct Suicide Attacks On Shebab Group
Thursday November 27th, 2008
(Updates with Shebab leaders named)
HARGEYSA, Somalia (AFP)--Multiple suicide attacks that killed 20 victims in Somaliland last month were masterminded by the Somalian Islamist group Shebab, according to the findings of an inquiry released Thursday.
"The terrorist attacks in Hargeysa were masterminded by Shebab radical leaders," Abdullahi Ismail Ali, the northern breakaway state's interior minister, told reporters as he unveiled the report by the government.
Six bombers were also killed in the three simultaneous car bombings on October 29 in Somaliland's capital Hargeysa.
The Shebab are an armed Islamist organization which was initially the military and youth branch of the Islamic Courts Union that briefly controlled most of Somalia in 2006 before being ousted by Ethiopian troops.
While the ICU's political leadership fled into exile, the Shebab reverted to guerrilla warfare. They have since achieved major military gains and now control much of the country.
"The Shebab planned and funded the attacks and sent agents to carry out the attacks," added Ali. "Six of the suicide bombers were killed in the three locations attacked. Five are from neighboring lawless Somalia and one from Somaliland."
The bombs targeted the local office of the U.N. Development Program, Ethiopia's representation in Somaliland and the presidential palace.
Twin suicide car bombings simultaneously targeted the offices of an anti-terrorism agency in two different locations in Bosasso, the economic capital of the neighboring breakaway state of Puntland.
The interior minister named some of the Shebab movement's top figures, including top spokesman Mukhtar Robow (also known as Abu Mansur) and overall leader Ahmed Abdi Godane (also known as Abu Zubayr).
"Senior leadership members Ahmed Abdi Godane and Mukhtar Robow were in charge of the operation but the Hargeysa attacks were conducted by Abdulfatah Abdullahi Gutale," Ali said. He added Gutale, who was not among the bombers, may have a U.S. green card and has lived in the U.S. in the Minneapolis area. The minister named Gutale's lieutenant as Nur Sheikh Mohamud. The minister also said 13 people suspected of taking part in the attacks are currently detained in Somaliland.

The Ogaden and the Ethiopian Government

Medeshi Nov 27, 2008

The Ogaden and the Ethiopian Government
Collective Punishment
(Full report : Collective Punishment: War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity in the Ogaden area of Ethiopia’s Somali Region.”
Collective Punishment

Summary
Tens of thousands of ethnic Somali civilians living in eastern Ethiopia's Somali RegionalState are experiencing serious abuses and a looming humanitarian crisis in the context of a little-known conflict between the Ethiopian government and an Ethiopian Somali rebel movement. The situation is critical. Since mid-2007, thousands of people have fled, seeking refuge in neighboring Somalia and Kenya from widespread Ethiopian military attacks on civilians and villages that amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.
For those who remain in the war-affected area, continuing abuses by both rebels and Ethiopian troops pose a direct threat to their survival and create a pervasive culture of fear. The Ethiopian military campaign of forced relocations and destruction of villages reduced in early 2008 compared to its peak in mid-2007, but other abuses-including arbitrary detentions, torture, and mistreatment in detention-are continuing. These are combining with severe restrictions on movement and commercial trade, minimal access to independent relief assistance, a worsening drought, and rising food prices to create a highly vulnerable population at risk of humanitarian disaster.
Although the conflict has been simmering for years with intermittent allegations of abuses, it took on dramatic new momentum after the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) attacked a Chinese-run oil installation in Somali Region in April 2007, killing more than 70 Chinese and Ethiopian civilians. The Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) government, led by Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, responded by launching a brutal counter-insurgency campaign in the five zones of Somali Region primarily affected by the conflict: Fiiq, Korahe, Gode, Wardheer, and Dhagahbur. In these zones the Ethiopian National Defense Forces (ENDF) have deliberately and repeatedly attacked civilian populations in an effort to root out the insurgency.
Ethiopian troops have forcibly displaced entire rural communities, ordering villagers to leave their homes within a few days or witness their houses being burnt down and their possessions destroyed-and risk death. Over the past year, Human Rights Watch has documented the execution of more than 150 individuals, many of them in demonstration killings, with Ethiopian soldiers singling out relatives of suspected ONLF members, or making apparently arbitrary judgments that individuals complaining to soldiers or resisting their orders are ONLF supporters. These executions have sometimes involved strangulation, after which their bodies are left lying in the open as a warning, for villagers to bury. The information confirmed by Human Rights Watch is only a glimpse of what is taking place-real figures are likely to be higher.
Mass detentions without any judicial oversight are routine. Hundreds-and possibly thousands-of individuals have been arrested and held in military barracks, sometimes multiple times, where they have been tortured, raped, and assaulted. Confiscation of livestock (the main asset among the largely pastoralist population), restrictions on access to water, food, and other essential commodities, and obstruction of commercial traffic and humanitarian assistance have been used as weapons in an economic war aimed at cutting off ONLF supplies and collectively punishing communities that are suspected of supporting the rebels.
These crimes are being committed with total impunity, on the thinnest of pretexts. They are generating a perception in the area that simply being an ethnic Somali-and particularly a member of the Ogaadeeni clan which constitutes the backbone of the ONLF-is enough to render a person suspect in the eyes of the national government. As one young man told Human Rights Watch, "Anyone with a bowl of water is suspected of supplying the ONLF."
Ethiopian military personnel who ordered or participated in attacks on civilians should be held responsible for war crimes. Senior military and civilian officials who knew or should have known of such crimes but took no action may be criminally liable as a matter of command responsibility. The widespread and apparently systematic nature of the attacks on villages throughout Somali Region is strong evidence that the killings, torture, rape, and forced displacement are also crimes against humanity for which the Ethiopian government bears ultimate responsibility.
The ONLF has also been responsible for serious violations of international humanitarian law (the laws of war). These include the summary execution of dozens of Chinese and Ethiopian civilians in the context of its April 2007 attack on the oil installation, the ONLF practice of killing suspected government collaborators, and the indiscriminate mining of roads used by government convoys. Those who ordered or carried out such acts are responsible for war crimes. Many civilians feel trapped with no refuge from ONLF pressure or the abuses by Ethiopian troops.
The Ethiopian government has repeatedly dismissed or minimized concerns about the human rights and humanitarian situation in Somali Region. It often claims, particularly to the international audience, that insecurity in the region is the work of Eritrean-backed "terrorists" seeking to destabilize Ethiopia. There is no question that the political dynamics in Somali Region intertwine with regional dynamics and are influenced by the continuing hostility between Eritrea and Ethiopia as well as events in neighboring Somalia. The application of terrorist rhetoric to the internal conflict with the ONLF, however, appears designed mainly to attract support from the United States as part of the "war on terror." It does not justify violations of international human rights and humanitarian law.
The government faces complex challenges in Somali Region. The ONLF, which claims to be seeking self-determination for the region, represents only a segment of the divided Ethiopian Somali community. There are legitimate fears that the escalating conflict across the border in Somalia could spill into Ethiopia. The authorities face difficult questions on how to best establish the rule of law in a remote, poverty-stricken region largely inhabited by pastoralists who have little knowledge of or confidence in state institutions that have long neglected them. Instead of addressing these challenges in good faith with efforts to build institutions and accountability to support the rule of law and reduce the appeal of armed groups, the government has implemented violent repression, echoing the response to the region of previous Ethiopian administrations.
The Ethiopian government's reaction to reports of abuses in 2007 has been to deny the allegations, disparage the sources, and actively restrict or control access to the region by journalists, human rights groups, and aid organizations (including by expelling the International Committee of the Red Cross in July 2007).
Due to increasing alarm over humanitarian conditions, particularly malnutrition rates among children, the UN and some nongovernmental organizations were permitted to expand humanitarian programs in parts of the region in late 2007, a small positive step. However these operations have been limited to certain geographic areas, are vulnerable to constant government threats and harassment, are sometimes unable to operate with sufficient independence from government control, and have no protection mandate or capacity to respond to the attacks on civilians which remain the biggest priority for many affected communities.
The Ethiopian government's politicized manipulation of humanitarian operations, particularly food distribution, plus the continued restrictions on commercial traffic and trade are creating a situation that-in combination with the drought produced by failed rains-could quickly slip into catastrophe. The Ethiopian government should take urgent action to ensure that the needs of vulnerable civilians in Somali Region are prioritized, including in emergency appeals. Yet due to government obstruction and restrictions on access to conflict-affected zones, humanitarian agencies cannot even conduct the independent nutritional assessments needed to fully assess the scale and formulate a proper response to the potential crisis.
The international response to the situation ranges from insipid to disingenuous. Western governments, including the US, UK, and European Union, which cumulatively provide almost US$2 billion of aid to Ethiopia every year and rely on the Ethiopian government as a key ally in a volatile region, have sent a number of delegations to the region but have refrained from even mild public concern, much less criticism. The US government, which is a staunch Ethiopian ally-particularly in counter-terrorism efforts-and has probably the greatest leverage of any of the donor governments, has minimized and possibly actively ignored internal concerns and reporting on the situation.
Instead of maintaining the complicity of silence, donor governments should start using their leverage to insist on three sets of immediate actions in Somali Region. Full recommendations are given below.
First, both the Ethiopian government and the ONLF should support full, unhindered and immediate access to the region for independent aid organizations, the media, and human rights groups, and the government should lift restrictions on commercial trade and civilian and livestock movement, including across the border with Somaliland. Implementing this recommendation would have an immediate positive effect on civilian access to water and grazing for their livestock, food, and local markets and could mitigate the impending food crisis. Humanitarian organizations should also have immediate, unimpeded access to conduct independent nutritional surveys in all affected areas and properly monitor food distribution to ensure it is not diverted.
Second, the Ethiopian government should immediately issue clear public orders to the armed forces and all other security agencies in Somali Region to cease abuses of civilians, including the military's forced relocations, extrajudicial executions, mass detentions, and mistreatment of detainees. The ONLF should also cease killings of civilians, including government officials, desist from the indiscriminate use of mines along key roads in Somali Region and publicly commit to abide by international humanitarian law.
Third, Ethiopian authorities should establish an independent commission of inquiry to investigate the allegations of abuses by all parties to the conflict and begin short and long-term efforts to ensure accountability for abuses by government security forces in Somali Region and elsewhere, including judicial and security sector reforms.
Rapid implementation of these recommendations could help to avert catastrophe in Somali Region. If the abuses continue, denied by the Ethiopian government and ignored by international donors, the outcome is all too clear: yet another cycle of human rights devastation, famine, and impoverishment in a region which already knows these trends all too well, and thousandsof new victims, embittered by the repeated denial of their rights as human beings and Ethiopians.

Journalists kidnapped in Somalia

Medeshi 26 Nov, 2008
Journalists kidnapped in Somalia
A British and Spanish journalist in Somalia have been kidnapped from the north-eastern Puntland region, local authorities say.
Government officials said the pair were taken from their hotel in the port city of Bossasso.
The BBC's Ahmed Ali says the journalists were in Bossasso to cover the story of piracy hijackings off Puntland's coast.
He says the foreigners were abducted by gunmen along with two local reporters.
"The two foreigners are British and Spanish," Abdulkebir Musa, Puntland's assistant minister for seaports, told news agency AFP.
The office of Puntland's president confirmed this information to the BBC.
Somalia has been wracked by civil conflict since 1991 and Islamist insurgents control of much of the country which has no functioning government.
Two other foreign journalists, who were abducted near the Somali capital, Mogadishu, in August, have still not been released.
Pirate attacks against fishing boats, cargo ships and yachts off Somalia's coast have surged this year.
Foreigners, who can be exchanged for large ransoms, are frequent targets.
Story from BBC NEWS:

Somaliland Navy: The Only Way to stop Somali Piracy

Medesh Nov 26, 2008

Somaliland Navy: The Only Way to stop Somali Piracy

Piracy is most lucrative business in many parts of Somalia including "Puntland" and Central Regions. Piracy attracted many jobless and poor Somalis, because piracy is very big and easy money. Millions of dollars were paid to the Somali pirates from "Puntland", which is much more than national budget.
In general, Somali Pirates focus on lawless areas of Somali water including busy shipping lanes near the "Puntland" and Indian Ocean including Gulf of Aden, where dozens of boats and ships been hijacked this year. According to the International Maritime Bureau, 69 ships have been attacked off Somalia since January; 27 were hijacked and 11 are still being held for ransom including recent Saudi Oil Tanker with ransom money of 25 billion dollars.
Somali pirates are holding more than 200 crew members of different hijacked ships and boats. USA and EU have agreed to joint anti-piracy operations off the Indian Ocean and Somali Water amid growing demands for action against the violent Somali pirates. The question is, how do you think Somali piracy should be tackled?
Majority of the pirates off "Puntland" Coast are former Police Officers turned Pirates, after "Puntland" administration failed to pay handsome salaries. Also, the high-ranking officials of both "Puntland" and Transitional Government of Somalia (TGS) in Mogadishu take loin´s share in the ransom money. "Puntland" President Adde Moose and TGS President Abdullah Yusuf are major players and architect of piracy business in Somalia. Yusuf served as "Puntland" leader at the beginning of piracy.
In other hand, Republic of Somaliland established well-trained Navy to protect its water from the piracy. Berbera Marine College is famous producer of highly-qualified Navy Officers, who follow International Maritime Bureau standards and regulations including those against piracy. Moreover, Somaliland formed Military, Police, Jails Authority, and carried out elections. Somaliland achieved all these accomplishments by its own.
Somaliland Navy has technology and military capabilities to eliminate the piracies and to blow up their bases inside Somalia including "Puntland". But unfortunately, the international community is wasting their precious time searching the solution of the piracy at the wrong place. The Solution is recognizing Somaliland, than Somaliland will establish as regional economic power and caretaker of world interest in the region. Somaliland has elected president and parliament, and furthermore, there is biometric voter registration taking place. This is the first time in African history.
Berbera Marine College is functioning almost in last five years with more than 100 Officers graduating from the college each year. Somaliland Government established the colleges after the need of Navy arise in the region, due to illegal fishing and human trafficking.
Today, neither human trafficking nor piracy persists within Somaliland water after the creation of Somaliland Navy Forces. Somaliland Navy Forces cooperate with International counterparts stationed in nearby Djibouti in tackling the pirates, and even Somaliland arrested many pirates, who later claimed to be "Puntland" former Police Officers.
The International community should support Somaliland diplomatically in order to end the piracy and violence inside Somalia, because Somaliland has all possible mechanisms to fight terrorists and pirates inside Somalia. Somaliland will play active role in war on terror and fight against piracy, in which Somaliland will be leading factor.
Somaliland is registering citizens using biometric technology. The national budget increased 27% in 2008 compare to 2007. All these progress was result of Somaliland´s commitment towards developing country and people. Also, Somaliland is managing steady increase in revenue and which is leading the rise in the national domestic production
In 1991 Somaliland reclaimed its lost independence from Somalia, and ever since it's peaceful and without piracy. Why? Because of there is real functioning institutions and elected government unlike Somalia with no central government and warlords are committing crimes against humanity. AU and IGAD isolated Somaliland enough, and it is time that AU and IGAD accept the reality inside Somaliland.
Illegal Activities in Somali Water:
Somalia remained without central government for decades, leading the country to be an example of failed state and center of lawlessness, which attracted many criminals and terrorists to use as hidey-hole.
Al-Qaeda fugitives from Iraq and Afghanistan settled in southern Somalia and formed religious fundamentalist groups like Al-Itahad Al-Islamiya and Al-Shabab armed groups. Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden visited Somalia in mid 1996 along with number of his children. Large number of Arab and Somali fighters in Afghanistan against the Russian occupation entered Somalia after collapse of Somali government 1991.
These terrorists created terror network across the region, and carried out bombing of US Embassies in Nairobi and Darussalam, in addition to recent suicide bombing in Hargiesa, Capital of Somaliland. These groups conducted explosives training to their colleagues. Many intelligence sources believe that Al-Qaeda used Somalia as center of carrying out operations against neighboring countries.
Furthermore, Mafia signed off many business deals to dump toxic nuclear waste in the Somali water, from Italia, German and many European Countries. In 1992, a contract to secure the dumping of toxic waste was made by Swiss and Italian shipping firms a chair Partners and Progresso, with Nur Elmi Osman, a former official appointed to the government of Ali Mahdi Mohamed, one of many militia leaders involved in the ousting of Mohamed Siad Barre, Somalia's former president.
UNEP Executive Director, told Al-Jazeera TV Channel, that he unveiled firms was set up as fictitious companies by larger industrial firms to dispose of hazardous waste. These companies with Mafia signed contracts with firms, using Somali Warlords in Mogadishu. Even Somali fishermen reported large containers at the Mogadishu coast washed out by the Tsunami.
"At the time, it felt like we were dealing with the Mafia, or some sort of organized crime group, possibly working with these industrial firms," he said.
The International Community organized 14 Peace Conferences between the fighting Somali groups to settle their difference but all failed, which means these groups are not willing to live in peace. Hence, the International Community, AU and IGAD should review their policy towards Somaliland and not consider the old version of respecting the unity of Somalia: Somaliland is free and constructive nation and should be accepted by the regional and international communities. By Abdulaziz Al-Mutairi

The Second American Revolution

Medeshi Nov 26, 2008

The Second American Revolution

Alemayehu G. Mariam

Best Hope of Earth
In the first American Revolution, Thomas Jefferson declared to a “candid world” that “when in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another…, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.” That revolution was against King George III.
In the Second American Revolution, Barack Obama surveyed the devastation wreaked upon American society and America’s role in the world in the last eight years and declared that in the course of global human events it becomes necessary for America to reunite with the “opinions of mankind”, re-establish its position of global leadership and remain the “best hope of Earth.” Of course, that was not Barack’s original idea; it was an idea put to him by people around the world:
On a trip to the Middle East, I met Israelis and Palestinians who told me that peace remains a distant hope without the promise of American leadership. At a camp along the border of Chad and Darfur, refugees begged for America to step in and help stop the genocide that has taken their mothers and fathers, sons and daughters. And along the crowded streets of Kenya, I met throngs of children who asked if they'd ever get the chance to visit that magical place called America. I still believe that America is the last, best hope of Earth. We just have to show the world why this is so. This President may occupy the White House, but for the last six years the position of leader of the free world has remained open. And it's time to fill that role once more.

The Second American Revolution is against the calamitous legacy of President George W.

The Second American Revolution: Saving the Best Hope of Earth

It is the Second American Revolution, and it’s being televised. It is a Movement of the American People (The MAP). But Barack calls it “change”. He talked about “changing America” at every campaign stop. After his Iowa primary victory, he told South Carolinians that “our time for change has come.” In his final victory speech he said, “It's been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this date in this election at this defining moment change has come to America… But above all, I will never forget who this victory truly belongs to - it belongs to you. This is your victory.”
For the faint of heart, perhaps the word “change” would do. But if one carefully considers the totality of Barack’s message and campaign strategy, it is plain to discern that he is really talking about a Second American Revolution in the form of a new MAP. As Barack said, in charge of the new MAP are ordinary Americans who had long felt marginalized, disenfranchised and victimized by years of deception, corruption and the hypocrisy of the Bush Administration. Bush and his arrogant “neoconservative” con men plunged America into a disastrous war in Iraq on bogus justifications. Bush made sure the proverbial image of the “ugly American” was seared into the consciences of people around the world with the ghastly photographs of torture victims in Abu Ghraib prison, and zombied terrorism suspects caged in Gitmo detention camp for years without due process of law. Bush made it possible for Wall Street sharks to squander billions of dollars in investments of the American people, and swiftly rewarded these brazen crooks with a taxpayer bailout. (They were not unlike the defendant who killed his parents and then asked the court for mercy because he was an orphan.)
Bush and his cronies stoked up the “culture wars” polarizing American society on the “hot-button” issues of abortion, gun politics, separation of church and state, affirmative action, the death penalty, privacy, sexual orientation, censorship and so on. When these issues waned, they toiled to create an Amerika that was divided by race, ethnicity, social class and political affiliation under the wicked GOP (Republican Party) political tactician and Ubermeister Karl Rove. When all failed, they scrambled to invent a Palin-esque “real America” where Americans who hold “patriotic values” can hide in the “pro-America areas of this great nation”. For eight years under George Bush, America struggled to be a polity without policy, and Americans put up with an administration bereft of governance. America sleepwalked for eight years without a national policy on health care, energy, immigration, the environment, the economy or foreign policy. To add insult to injury, George Bush thought he had gotten away with it all. This past May, he sighed contentedly: "I'll be long gone before some smart person ever figures out what happened inside this Oval Office."Healing these and other virtual atrocities committed on the American body politics could not be achieved by mere “change” or “reform”. “Change” suggests making alterations, modifications and substitutions. The damage done to America over the past eight years is so total and devastating, only a Second American Revolution with a MAP can repair America from within and without and make her whole once again. Much to the surprise of George W., there will soon be a really “smart person in the Oval office to figure it out.” The Man with the Plan, with the MAP to lead the Revolution from the Oval Office is Barack Obama. Like any revolution, it is not going to be easy. Barack understands the revolution will be long and hard fought, and formidable challenges lie ahead. That is why he said, “The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even in one term. But, America, I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. I promise you, we as a people will get there.”
America is Back, on Track, with Barack Who is Sharp as a Tack!
But what is Barack promising the American people in the Second Revolution, in the MAP? His promise is that it will take some time to repair the damage done by Bush’s unrestrained unilateralism and militarism, but in time America can regain its global leadership acting in concert with its allies in the spirit of multilateralism and collective action. He is saying that the damage done to the American body politics by racial, ethnic and class divisions will take time to heal, but they will be healed as Americans of all backgrounds come together in the spirit of E Pluribus Unum (out of many one) and deal with the enormous challenges facing them. He is promising the American people that the damage done to the American psyche by those who use religion as a weapon of mass spiritual warfare and deception in the culture wars; the violence done to party politics by creating red and blue states; the ideological cleavage that separates liberals and conservatives; the sexism and racism that puts asunder Americans by gender, race and ethnicity will be overcome, but it will take time. He is saying that millions of Americans have now opened their minds, their eyes, and hearts, and keenly understand that they share the same destiny; and though they may have come to America in different ships from all corners of the world, they are now in the same boat. Barack is promising that the American people united can never be defeated. That’s right. America is back, on track, with Barack who is sharp as a tack!
America Will No Longer Be a Welfare Department for Dictators
There is an important postscript to the Second American Revolution. It is no longer going to be business as usual in Washington, D.C. Barack did not mince his words when he slammed the creepy lobbyists and influence peddlers who shuffle stealthily in the halls of government. He said lobbyists, “will not run my White House. You [the people] will help me run my White House, when I'm president. I don't take money from lobbyists. I don't take money from PACs. They have not funded my campaign. I don’t take money from federal registered lobbyists, because I want to answer to you when I’m in the White House. I don’t want to answer to all these fat-cat lobbyists!” Such sublime words, beauteous poetry to our ears as we continue our grassroots advocacy to get H.R. 2003 before President Obama for his signature. (Oh! Pity for those poor “fat-cat lobbyists” at D.L. A. Piper! Excommunicated from the White House, the U.S. Congress and the State Department! How the tables have turned!) Now is the time for the people — for us — to help Barack “run the white House”, and the Democrats run Congress; and give a helping hand to whomever Barack appoints to lead the State Department.

Months ago, we cautioned the panhandling tin-pot dictators of the world begging alms from the American taxpayer[1]:

Watch out, petty dictators! A fierce wind of change is blowing across America. A new sheriff is coming to town. His name is Barack Obama. He does not carry a six-shooter. But he carries a law book. And he’s laying down the law for all the tin-pot dictators of the world: Y’all better shape up, or Barack’s Posse will be right on your tail. That goes for the outlaw Meles Zenawi and his gang of murderers and bank robbers, too… Tin-pot dictators and thugs, listen carefully. Read the writing on the wall. Barack will stand against you as long as you keep slaughtering your people, jail your innocent citizens by the hundreds of thousands and starve the rest by the millions. Barack will turn you back when you come to America’s doorsteps panhandling for military aid so that you can declare war on your people, and destroy your neighbors. Barack will not listen to your BS about democracy while you mercilessly crush legitimate democratic opposition, destroy press freedoms, disregard the rule of law and flout international law. Barack will not be scammed by your foolish threats of imaginary terrorists just so you can trap America in a regional war. No brownie points for offering to fight a needless destructive war in the name of America.
Well, there ain’t no doubt about it. Barack is in the saddle now, law book and lasso in hand. Right-wing haters and tin-pot dictators: GAME OVER!

Toxic scandal in Somalia

Medeshi 26 Nov , 2008

Toxic scandal in Somalia gave birth to new piracy
The escapades of Somali pirates made headlines last week. But the media has ignored the injustice behind the phenomenon, writes Simon Assaf
When the Asian tsunami of Christmas 2005 washed ashore on the east coast of Africa, it uncovered a great scandal.
Tonnes of radioactive waste and toxic chemicals drifted onto the beaches after the giant wave dislodged them from the sea bed off Somalia.
Tens of thousands of Somalis fell ill after coming into contact with this cocktail. They complained to the United Nations (UN), which began an investigation.
“There are reports from villagers of a wide range of medical problems such as mouth bleeds, abdominal haemorrhages, unusual skin disorders and breathing difficulties,” the UN noted.
Some 300 people are believed to have died from the poisonous chemicals.
Many European, US and Asian shipping firms – notably Switzerland’s Achair Partners and Italy’s Progresso – signed dumping deals in the early 1990s with Somalia’s politicians and militia leaders.
This meant they could use the coast as a toxic dumping ground. This practice became widespread as the country descended into civil war.
Nick Nuttall of the UN Environment Programme said, “European companies found it was very cheap to get rid of the waste.
“It cost as little as £1.70 a tonne, whereas waste disposal costs in Europe was something like £670 a tonne.
“And the waste is of many different kinds. There is uranium radioactive waste. There is lead, and heavy metals such as cadmium and mercury. There is also industrial waste, hospital wastes, chemical wastes – you name it.”
But despite the evidence uncovered by the tsunami, an investigation into the practice of toxic dumping was dropped. There was no compensation and no clean up.
In 2006 Somali fishermen complained to the UN that foreign fishing fleets were using the breakdown of the state to plunder their fish stocks. These foreign fleets often recruited Somali militias to intimidate local fishermen.
Despite repeated requests, the UN refused to act. Meanwhile the warships of global powers that patrol the strategically important Gulf of Aden did not sink or seize any vessels dumping toxic chemicals off the coast.
So angry Somalis, whose waters were being poisoned and whose livelihoods were threatened, took matters into their own hands. Fishermen began to arm themselves and attempted to act as unofficial coastguards.
They began to seize ships in late 2005. These were released after a ransom was paid. Among them were cargo vessels, luxury cruise liners and tuna fishing boats.
Januna Ali Jama, a Somali pirate leader, explained that their actions were motivated by attempts to stop the toxic dumping.
He said that the £5.4 million ransom they demanded for the return of a Ukrainian ship would go towards cleaning up the mess.
Ali Jama said the pirates were “reacting to the toxic waste that has been continually dumped on the shores of our country for nearly 20 years.
“The Somali coastline has been destroyed. We believe this money is nothing compared to the devastation that we have seen on the seas.”
But the nature of this piracy soon began to change. Members of the Somali government, who were part of the then Western-backed Transitional Federal Government (TFG), started to get involved.
They transformed the piracy operation into a multi-million dollar industry that funded their lavish lifestyles.
The TFG was ousted during a popular rebellion in July 2006 led by the Union of Islamic Courts. Later that year the US backed Ethiopia’s invasion of Somalia to drive the Islamic Courts out.
This provoked an insurgency labelled by some as the “third front” of the “war on terror”.
The US became embarrassed when it emerged that its allies in the TFG were deeply involved in piracy. As concerns grew for the safety of ships heading towards the Suez Canal, global powers began to take notice.
Indian and US warships began to sink Somali fishing boats if they sailed too close to cargo vessels or trawlers. These warships transformed Somalia’s coastal waters into a “free fire zone”. When a giant Saudi oil tanker was seized, these powers declared all-out war on the pirates.
British foreign minister David Miliband recently boasted that Britain would be taking the lead in cracking down on the pirates.
The Royal Navy will take command of a European fleet of warships as part of “Operation Atalanta”, he said.
The target will be the Somalis – not the vessels dumping waste or the illegal foreign fishing fleets.
As global powers dispatch their warships to the Somali coast, the problems that caused this outbreak of piracy remain unresolved.
European, US and Asian ships will continue to dump hazardous waste and plunder coastal fishing stocks – leading to continuing misery for Somalis.