Another Vessel Hijacked in Gulf of Aden

With the latest captures and releases now still at least 23 seized foreign vessels (25 sea-related hostage cases since yacht SY LYNN RIVAL was abandoned and taken by the British Navy) with a total of not less than 337crew members (incl. the British sailing couple) plus at least 9 crew of the lorries held for an exchange with imprisoned pirates, are accounted for. The cases are monitored on our actual case-list, while several other cases of ships, which were observed off the coast of Somalia and have been reported or had reportedly disappeared without trace or information, are still being followed too. Over 134 incidences (including attempted attacks, averted attacks and successful sea-jackings) had been recorded for 2008 with 49 fully documented, factual sea-jacking cases for Somalia and the mistaken sinking of one sea-jacked fishing vessel and killing of her crew by the Indian naval force. For 2009 the account closed with 228 incidences (incl. averted or abandoned attacks) with 68 vessels seized for different reasons on the Somali/Yemeni captor side as well as at least TWELVE wrongful attacks (incl. one friendly fire incident) on the side of the naval forces. 
For 2010 the recorded account stands at 51 attacks resulting in 24 sea-jackings and the sinking of one merchant vessel (MV AL ABI) by fire from the Seychelles’s coastguard boat TOPAZ.
The naval alliances had since August 2008 and until January 2010 apprehended 666 suspected pirates, detained and kept or transferred for prosecution 367,  killed 47 and wounded 22 Somalis. (New independent update see:http://bruxelles2.over-blog.com/pages/_Bilan_antipiraterie_Atalanta_CTF_Otan_Russie_Exclusif-1169128.html). 
Not fully documented cases of absconded vessels are not listed in the sea-jack count until clarification. Several other vessels with unclear fate (although not in the actual count), who were reported missing over the last ten years in this area, are still kept on our watch-list, though in some cases it is presumed that they sunk due to bad weather or being unfit to sail – like the S/Y Serenity, MV Indian Ocean Explorer.Present multi-factorial risk assessment code: GoA: RED / IO: RED  (Red = Very much likely, high season; Orange = Reduced risk, but very likely, Yellow = significantly reduced risk, but still likely, Blue = possible, Green = unlikely). Piracy incidents usually degrade during the monsoon season and rise gradually by the end of the monsoon. Starting from mid February until early April every year an increase in piracy cases can be expected. 
If you have any additional information concerning the cases, please send to office[at]ecoterra-international.org – if required we guarantee 100% confidentiality.
For further details and regional information see the Somali Marine and Coastal Monitor at www.australia.to and the map of the PIRACY COASTS OF SOMALIA.


—————- directly piracy, abduction, mariner or naval upsurge related reports ——————–

Indian Governor calls for top priority to sailors’ safety (IANS)
Expressing serious concern over the growing incidents of sea piracy, armed robbery and hostage-taking on the high seas, Maharashtra Governor K. Sankaranarayanan Wednesday said that top priority must be accorded to the safety of the seafaring community.
Inaugurating the Merchant Navy Week here, Sankaranarayanan called upon the international community to intervene and “take decisive action” to end piracy and hijacking of shipping vessels for ransom.
He said failing this, the youth would opt for alternative careers and the shipping industry would be the loser.
He expressed happiness that India produces the best of seafarers in the world and accounts for 6.5 percent of the total global sailing community, serving Indian and foreign vessels with distinction.
The governor’s statement assumed significance in the wake of Tuesday’s order of the Director-General of Shipping, Lakshmi Venkatachalam, banning the movements of mechanised sailing vessels to the south and west of Salalah in southern Oman and Male in the Maldives with immediate effect.
The order came in view of the reported hijacking of at least seven vessels with around 97 sailors on them.
Coming on the eve of the Merchant Navy Week, the hijacking of seven Indian vessels — MSV Al Kadri, MSV Al Ijaz, MSV Faize-e-Osman, MSV Sea Queen, MSV NarNarayan, MSV Vishwa Kalyan and MSV Krishna Jyot — created a consternation in the Indian shipping circles.
The Merchant Navy Week is celebrated every year to create public awareness about the shipping industry that accounts for more than 90 percent of international trade by volume.
The services of seafarers, people and organisations connected with the promotion and development of national shipping are recognised during the week.
S. Hajara, chairman and managing director of the Shipping Corporation of India, pinned a miniature Merchant Navy flag on the governor’s lapel to mark the inauguration of the week.
Besides Lakshmi Venkatachalam, present on the occasion were Joint-Director of Shipping S.B. Agnihotri, Chief Surveyor Amitava Banerjee, chairman of Maritime Association of Ship Owners, Ship Managers and Agents Captain Vinay Singh, and chairman of Foreign Shipowners & Managers Association Captain Rajesh Tondon. 

Hijacked Indian Vessels Put Focus on Illicit Maritime Trade by Steve Herman (VOA)
India has banned mechanized sailing vessels, known as dhows, from sailing into some pirate-infested waters off the East African coast. The dhows  appear to be involved in illicit trading out of a port controlled by a terrorist organization. 
India’s government is ordering small maritime traders not to sail south and west of Oman and the Maldives.  The order by the Directorate General of Shipping in Mumbai was issued after seven India-flagged vessels, with 97 sailors on board, were reported missing and presumed hijacked by pirates off the Seychelles and the East African coast. 
The vessels, all under 400 tons each, are based out of several ports in India’s Gujarat State.  Reports say the missing ships had been visiting the rebel-held port of Kismayo in Somalia. 
India’s Navy says it has repeatedly warned shipping authorities, with little effect, about the dangers of mechanized dhows venturing into the pirate-infested waters. 
Navy spokesman Commander P.V.S. Satish tells VOA ship operators are reluctant to inform authorities their crews have been hijacked. 
“I think it would probably be for fear of the fact that they would be prevented from going to these area and that would affect their livelihood.  Sometimes it has happened in the past that we come to know much later that such an incident has actually happened,” said Satish. 
The dhows are part of a centuries-old tradition of Gujaratis trading between the African east coast and the Arabian Peninsula. 
A Germany-based environmental group, Ecoterra, accuses the Indians of exporting charcoal and other contraband from the port to Dubai.  It says the Indian fleet also may be involved in other criminal activity, such as human trafficking and delivering drugs and weapons. 
Taking charcoal from Somalia to meet demand in the Gulf States is a lucrative, but illegal, trade blamed for deforestation in Somalia. 
Africa researcher Roger Middleton, at the Chatham House research organization in London, tells VOA the India directive to ban its small merchant vessels from much of the Arabian Sea probably will have little effect in stemming the illicit Somali exports. 
“Certainly if trade from India, or run by Indians, stops you would see no shortage of Somali businessmen and entrepreneurs who would probably be able to step into the gap.  So I do not think Somalia is about to become cut off,” he said. 
Kismayo harbor is held by the anti-government al-Shabab, which is linked to al-Qaida and is designated a terrorist organization by the United States and United Kingdom.

Swedish Helicopter Wing begin flying in Djibouti (SwedishArmedForces)
The Swedish Helicopter Wing has begun flying in Djibouti in preparation for the beginning of operations in mid-April. 
The two AW109s arrived in Djibouti two days and engineers have been working to prepare the aircraft for flight including bolting on rotor-blades. 
Flying for Operation Atalanta begins on 15 April, the helicopters will be operating in and around the Gulf of Aden and Red Sea as well as off the coast of Somalia and out towards the Seychelles islands. The data is to scout, identify and report. Helicopters will also be able to transport personnel between ship and deal with medical emergencies. 
The aircraft will operate from the Swedish warship HMS Carlskrona. 
The first flight of the Swedish helicopter in Djibouti was a key moment for the unit. 
The flight meant an early start for the crew. At 0600 they were on the French base for the briefing, where a French officer told the crew about the conditions of the day. The weather was good as usual, but he warned of winds at a place called the Devil’s rock. 
An enhanced check-list which, among other things was water, maps, emergency and desert road map look was reviewed one last time. 
After a few checks and little hover was it’s time to taxi out. 
Approximately one hour later the aircraft came back. Happy and satisfied, the crew climbed out of the machine. A flight that may be placed in Helicopter Wing historical album was finished. Now the crew face a period of intensive training in this climate, of heat, salt and sand.

Middle East in huge naval expansion by Andrew Wander (AlJazeera)
Concerns over maritime security in the Middle East and North Africa are fuelling a massive expansion of naval capacity in the region, bucking a worldwide trend of slowing military spending as a result of the global recession. 
Problems with piracy, long-term stability and energy security are prompting Arab governments to spend billions of dollars on naval equipment, ranging from ships to unmanned drones, experts at the Doha International Maritime Defence Exhibition told Al Jazeera. 
“In terms of percentage growth, the Middle East and North Africa actually leads the world naval market,” Bob Nugent, a maritime defence market analyst, said. 
“The focus is on capabilities that can give you the anti-piracy, anti-terrorism sorts of missions.” 
The trend for countries in the region to increase maritime spending comes as governments in Europe, Africa and Asia have slashed spending in light of constraints placed on them by the global economic slowdown. 
But in the Middle East, naval security is increasingly being viewed as a priority by governments. 
Many Middle Eastern countries rely on off-shore energy reserves that policy makers believe may require protection in the future as energy security becomes an increasing concern. 
This, coupled with worries over the impact of Somali piracy and the suspected military ambitions of nearby Iran, has prompted a boom in naval spending that experts predict will last for decades to come. 
Avoiding war 
“It’s not so much that you’re expecting to have a war with another nation,” says Michael Codner, director of the military science department at the Royal United Services Institute in London. 
“You want to remove any possibility of it coming to that situation by being perceived to be the weaker power.” 
The concerns driving the spending have also seen an increase in Middle Eastern countries producing their own naval equipment, Nugent said. 
“One of the new developments is the capability to produce indigenous shipbuilding,” he said.
“That’s an increasingly significant part of the local market.” 
The biggest growth area is in Corvette style warships. 
Known for their versatility, these relatively light craft are manoeuvrable enough to conduct patrols, yet well-armed enough to act as a serious naval deterrent. 
As a result Corvettes are expected to represent almost a third of total Middle East naval spending over the next 20 years.  
Up to a quarter of the $30bn expected to be spent on naval procurement in the region by 2030 will come from Saudi Arabia, analysts predict. 
Many Saudi oil interests lie offshore and the country’s major shipping lanes run through the lawless waters of the Gulf of Aden, where pirate attacks have been on the increase. 
This, together with the Middle East’s historic instability and the healthy oil revenues enjoyed by many countries in the region, make the naval spending spree no surprise, experts say. 
“It’s risk management in an area of the earth that for many years now has been perceived to be the area which is most prone to conflict,” Codner says. 
“If you are a nation in that area, and also dependent on the sea, then clearly maritime spending is very important.” 

Chinese Navy Build-up No Threat to ASEAN Countries: Experts by Zhang Jin (StateNewsAgency XINHUA)
Chinese military experts have told their counterparts from members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) that the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy will never be a threat to the region. 
China would not build a navy capable to strive for global hegemony, said Senior Colonel Chen Zhou, a researcher with the PLA’s Academy of Military Sciences, at the China-ASEAN Defense and Security Dialogue concluded in Beijing on Wednesday. 
Chen was responding to Mariano S. Sontillanosa, a retired Commodore and vice president of Philippine National Defense College, who asked Chinese military scholars what guarantees China could give to the ASEAN members that its growing maritime power would not be used aggressively. 
“ASEAN countries should be assured that China’s development of its navy is only to maintain the country’s own maritime interests and regional peace and stability,” Chen said. 
Chen cited Chairman Mao Zedong’s remark that “We must build up a powerful navy” since most of the foreign invasions the Chinese people had suffered came from the sea. 
“China is the only member of the U.N. Security Council which has not realized complete reunification,” Chen said. “We still face many challenges, such as maritime disputes with other countries, that the army cannot handle alone.” 
China is speeding up construction and acquisition of new modern navy weaponry, which has stirred up fears over its military and political intentions.
To safeguard merchant vessels passing through the pirate-ravaged Gulf of Aden and waters off the coast of Somalia, China has deployed new destroyers and frigates to the region since the end of 2008. 
Last year, the PLA Navy unveiled its previously secret nuclear-powered submarines and new amphibious assault ship at an international fleet review on April 23 to celebrate the navy’s 60th founding anniversary. 
Chen, a frequent participator in drafting China’s biennial national defense white paper, stressed that although the PLA Navy was improving its capabilities in transforming from coastal defense to offshore defense, it would not build a navy for global power projection and engagement like the U.S. Navy. 
The latest Chinese defense white paper issued in 2008 said the PLA Navy would cooperate with foreign counterparts to deal with non-traditional security threats. 
In recent years, the PLA has jointly conducted maritime exercises with fleets from the United Kingdom, India and Pakistan. It also held joint military training and exercises with the ASEAN members such as Singapore and Thailand to counter terrorism and other security threats.

——— ecology , ecosystems, marine environment, IUU fishing and dumping, UNCLOS, humanities ———— 

VICTORY! Madagascar Reinstates Rainforest Protections Following EI Led Global Public Outcry (*)
Madagascar’s transitional government last week reinstated a ban on rosewood logging and exports, following prolonged and growing pressure over illegal logging of its national parks spearheaded by Ecological Internet. As reported by Mongabay, the decree (no. 2010-141) prohibits all exports of rosewood and precious timber for two to five years. With the export ban in place, the fate of 10,000-15,000 metric tons of already illegally logged rosewood awaiting export remains uncertain. It is also unclear whether illegal loggers and traders will be prosecuted [1]. 
“These issues, getting this moratorium to be permanent, and working to demonstrate community development from standing primary and restored rainforests will require continued vigilance and campaigning. Yet, two important points have been made. It is again demonstrated that it is possible to end rainforest logging. And the emergence of an empowered global movement committed to protecting and restoring old forests – and other ecologically sufficient policy necessary to achieve global ecological sustainability – is again powerfully demonstrated,” says Dr. Glen Barry, EI President.
Over the past year, Ecological Internet conceived and led an international protest campaign seeking to emphasize the importance of keeping Madagascar’s dwindling primary forests standing and intact as the basis for national advancement [2]. Some 7674 EI network participants from 102 countries sent over 1/2 million protest emails. The result comes just days after EI blasted President Sarkozy of France, a country with deep historical ties to Madagascar, as being “guilty of dangerous hypocrisy” for condemning deforestation as a French company company continued to threaten Madagascar’s rainforests. 
Other groups such as Regenwald, Global Witness, ECOTERRA Intl. and the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) that have been protesting the resumption in exports of illegally logged timber cautiously welcomed the move as well. The logging crisis began in March of 2009 when destabilization following a government coup allowed loggers to enter several of Madagascar’s world-renowned parks and illegally log rosewood and other valuable trees. Tens of thousands of hectares were logged in Madagascar’s most biodiverse rainforests, which also sparked a rise in bushmeat trafficking of lemurs. Madagascar’s transitional government then sanctioned timber exports at the end of 2009 despite a long-standing ban on rosewood logging.
[1] Madagascar bans rainforest timber exports following global outcry, http://news.mongabay.com/2010/0325-madagascar_rosewood_ban.html
More Information can be found at Mongabay which has broken and continues to cover the story.
[2] Action Alert: Protest Madagascar’s Legalization of Rosewood Log Export from National Parks http://www.rainforestportal.org/shared/alerts/send.aspx?id=madagascar_landgrab
(*) >From Earth’s Newsdesk, a project of Ecological Internet (EI) http://www.ecoearth.info/newsdesk/

————————— anti-piracy measures ——————————–

PIRACY-INSURANCE (ANALYSIS)
ANALYSIS-Piracy premiums take a breather, menace remains by Myles Neligan, Lorraine Turner and Sitaraman Shankar (Reuters) 
* Marine K&R insurance market worth $100 million – brokers
* Pirate attacks up by more than a third last year – IMB
* Industry examines raising private navy
Stiff competition and moves by owners to protect ships better has taken the edge out of insurance costs after pirate attacks off Africa’s east coast created a two-year boom for specialist cover.
But analysts say the menace of piracy is far from contained, and unchecked growth in the rest of Africa, possible attacks in other key shipping channels and higher ransom demands will keep insurers interested in the long term.
While official estimates are not available, brokers reckon sales of so-called marine kidnap and ransom (K&R) insurance have soared to about $100 million a year since 2008, when the product was first developed in response to an upsurge of vessel seizures and ransom demands by Somali gangs.
But the cover now costs less than it did two years ago, reflecting mounting competitive pressure as more insurers enter the fast-growing market.
The marine K&R market is currently dominated by six players, led by Bermuda-based Hiscox and Travelers of the U.S., up from just three when the product first became available, and more are expected to join.
“There’s an increase in supply and the price is going down,” said Sean Woollerson of insurance broker Jardine Lloyd Thompson.
“The cost has peaked and there are more and more players coming into the market.”
And the cost of marine K&R could fall further still as a result of a range of initiatives, currently under discussion between shipping organisations, insurers and governments, aimed at making vessels less vulnerable to attack.
PRIVATE NAVY
These include a plan, drawn up by Jardine Lloyd Thompson, under which shipowners would divert some of their insurance expenditure towards capacity building in Somalia and funding a private navy which would patrol high-risk waters, reinforcing national naval forces already operating off the Somali coast.
Separately, shipping industry lobby Bimco is trying to negotiate lower insurance premiums for vessels with a favourable maritime risk score on its Automated Voyage Risk Assessment (AVRA) system, which grades ships according to their ability to fend off pirate attacks and other threats during their journey.
While any reduction in premiums would be warmly welcomed by the shipping industry, pirate attacks surged by more than a third last year, according to the International Maritime Bureau, and this is expected to keep demand for piracy cover strong.
Experts say piracy’s unchecked growth partly reflects copycat attacks elsewhere in Africa, while the original Somali pirates, increasingly displaced from the Gulf of Aden by naval patrols, turn their attention instead to the Indian Ocean.
“Nigeria is one of the other areas where we see a lot of piracy,” said Hiscox underwriter Guillaume Bonnissent.
“All the experts think it will also re-emerge in the South China Sea and the Malacca Straits, and there is no reason why it won’t appear in Latin America, where kidnap on land is widespread.” 
RANSOM DEMANDS
Although the precise sums handed over to secure the return of hijacked ships are a closely guarded secret, anecdotal evidence within the K&R market suggests a typical ransom is about $3 million, up from below $2 million a year ago, according to broker Richard Scurrell of Special Contingency Risks, a unit of brokerage Willis.
Pirates demanded a $3 million ransom for a North Korea-flagged ship captured last month, Reuters reported.
Industry participants say this inflationary trend, reflecting pirates’ rising ransom expectations amid vague talk of outsize payments in a handful of cases, could reverse the recent drop in marine K&R premiums as insurers seek to recoup higher average claims.
However, those with personal knowledge of pirate attacks stress that there is more than money at stake in any such incident.
Peter Spencer of mutually owned ship insurer Standard Club, who closely monitored an attack by Nigerian pirates on a vessel he was responsible for in a previous role as a ship manager, describes the episode as “a very nasty experience.”
“A load of heavily armed pirates came out and shot the ship up and came on board. They were all drugged except for the guy who was in charge an it was only by luck that they didn’t execute the chief engineer,” he said.
“It wasn’t something we ever wanted to happen again.”

Djibouti: Change Of Command At Pentagon’s Main African Base 
Losey takes command at Camp Lemonnier (Stars and Stripes)
Rear Adm. Brian L. Losey assumed command of Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa on Saturday during a change-of-command ceremony at Camp Lemonnier, Djibouti, which serves as the U.S. military’s main military hub on the African continent.
Losey replaced Rear Adm. Anthony M. Kurta, who led the command since February 2009. Kurta has been reassigned to the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations as director of the Military Personnel Plans and Policy Division.
CJTF-HOA became part of U.S. Africa Command in October 2008. The task force focuses on building the security capacity of militaries in the region and also conducts numerous civil affairs development projects.
CJTF-HOA was established in 2002.

Force alone cannot defeat Somali insurgents: PM by Abdiaziz Hassan (Reuters)
Somalia’s prime minister has said military force alone will never defeat Islamist extremists engaged in a three-year-old insurgency in the lawless Horn of Africa nation. 
Omar Abdirashid Sharmarke also said a government inquiry had found allegations in a U.N. report of corruption and the sale of arms to rebels by Somali government troops to be baseless, and said the report was of “doubtful validity.” 
“We have to understand that military capability alone will not defeat the rebels. There are also some ideological issues which must be addressed”, Sharmarke told Reuters late on Tuesday.
Somalia has lacked an effective government for nearly two decades, and Western and neighbouring countries say it is a breeding ground for militants intent on launching attacks on east Africa and beyond. It is also a base for pirates seizing foreign ships for ransom. 
Somali experts say the western-backed Transitional Federal Government is preparing for a long-awaited offensive aimed at driving al Shabaab Islamist fighters out of the capital, Mogadishu. 
But Sharmarke said Somalia’s future stability could not be ensured by a single military operation and that public trust in the government had to be improved. 
“Religious scholars have to define a direction for their people and as a government we are restoring the trust of the public in the system,” he said.
LACK OF TRUST
The al Qaeda-linked al Shabaab fighters have left President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed’s administration in control of little more than a few blocks in the mortar-pocked streets of the capital.
The group wants to impose a harsher version of Sharia, Islamic law, on Somalia’s 9 million people, of whom more than a third depend on emergency aid.
Speaking from his office in Mogadishu, Sharmarke said he expected to win public confidence by bringing new faces into the cabinet.
He said he hoped this month’s power-sharing deal with the moderate Ahlu Sunna militia would bring the government broader grassroots support and improve the security forces’ morale.
The prime minister denounced a report by the U.N. Monitoring Group on Somalia, saying it had played down the importance of the conflict that has killed 21,000 Somalis since early 2007 and uprooted 1.5 million from their homes.
The report said two U.N. aid agencies had dealings with a prominent businessman linked to Islamic extremists, accused officials of selling diplomatic visas for up to $15,000 and alleged government troops were supplying rebels with arms, Sharmarke said.
An initial government inquiry found some of the accusations to be “baseless” and there will be no further investigation into the rest of the report’s findings, he said.
“The validity of this report is doubtful,” Sharmarke told Reuters.

Importing food against all odds (IRIN)
Prolonged conflict in Somalia and rising world food prices have severely undermined food security, forcing most Somalis to rely on imports. 
However, the challenges of importing food into the war-torn country are almost insurmountable at times, say business people. 
One of the biggest hurdles is dealing with exporters without having a proper bank account. 
Liban Yusuf, who is based in the coastal city of Bosasso, the commercial capital of the self-declared autonomous region of Puntland, told IRIN that to overcome the banking challenge, “you either use money transfer companies to send the money or you open an account in a place like Dubai [United Arab Emirates] and put the money there – and neither is easy. 
“We bring stuff from Brazil, India, Thailand, Pakistan, Dubai and Oman,” he said. “I import sugar, rice, flour and cooking oil.” 
Since the 11 September 2001 attacks in the US, he said, money transfer companies are reluctant to deal with large amounts, “even when they know that it is going to buy food. They are terrified and they make our lives more difficult.” 
Cash in a bag 
A businessman in the capital, Mogadishu, who requested anonymity, said another option was simply to carry cash. 
“Just imagine someone carrying a million dollars in a bag; it is impossible, but people do what they have to, to get the food into the country,” he said. 
A Somali agronomist told IRIN that more than 50 percent of the food consumed in the country was commercially imported. 
The Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit – Somalia said in its 2009/2010 Post-Deyr report that 542,000MT of cereal was imported in 2009, of which 119,000MT was food aid while 423,000MT was commercial. 
According to Yusuf, the importing difficulties increase the cost of goods. “We have to pay every step of the way and that adds to our expenses, making our goods even more expensive.” 
He said importers also have to deal with shipping goods twice. “If I buy sugar from Brazil and the ship is bigger than 7,000T, I have to unload it in Dubai or Oman and put it on another ship that can dock in the port of Bosasso [which accommodates ships no larger than 7,000T]. 
“This of course will add to the cost of the goods,” he added. 
Extra “taxes” 
But, said Yusuf, the problems did not end with the goods’ arrival in Somalia. 
A 50kg bag of rice imported from India cost US$24 to import to Bosasso but then, he said: “I have to pay $1 per bag tax, so that makes it $25.” 
To transport the same bag to the central town of Beletweyne, some 1,100km south, will cost another $4, Yusuf said. 
“This not only includes the transport cost but also the money paid at different checkpoints manned by different militias,” he said. 
Ali Mohamed Siyad, chairman of Mogadishu’s Bakara market traders, told IRIN that 20 years of non-existent government had taken their toll on trade. 
“For the past 20 years, things have been getting progressively worse for us,” he said, adding that the continuing upsurge of violence in Mogadishu was making importing goods “next to impossible”. 
Siyad said: “A ship docks today and then fighting erupts in the city. That ship has to wait however many days it takes for the fighting to stop before it can offload its cargo.” 
He said any additional cost is passed on to the consumer. “It is unfortunate but it is a fact of life that the poor consumer usually pays in the end.” 
Caveat emptor 
The lack of government structures to regulate imports has other negative effects on the consumer, according to Salad Dini, another Mogadishu businessman. 
“Less than five months ago, unscrupulous businessmen brought in a consignment of rice that was rejected by Dubai, because it was not fit for human consumption.”
The consignment ended up in the Mogadishu markets, he said. “We have no way of knowing if people got ill or even died because of it; who is there keeping records of such things?” 
By and large, he said, Somali businessmen are honest, “but you get the odd ones who will bring in stuff that will harm their people, and we have no way of stopping them”.

————  reports, news and views from the global village with an impact on Somalia ——————- 

US concerned about recruitment of Somali refugees by Tom Maliti (AP)

[N.B.: The highly corrupt and appalling refugee camps, the often criminally misused refugee dependencies and the obvious inability, incapability and/or unwillingness on the side of UNHCR to even respond or to change this - together with all the injustices produced daily by UNHCR as well as government officials - are a sure breeding ground for radical alignments, because decades of false promises, arbitrary arrests, fraud, extortion, neglect and human suffering let even the most humble and patient human being get desperate. "Better risk death in Somalia than welter in Kenya," is what many refugees say. The only reaction by UNHCR: The "resident representative" has further restricted access for journalists to the camps.]

Kenya has denied reports for the UN that many of its citizens are fighting with Somalia’s al-Shabab militants.
“This is propaganda,” Francis Kimemia, a senior official at the internal security ministry told the BBC. 
A report to the UN Security Council said leaders of the al-Qaeda-inspired group regularly travelled to Nairobi to raise funds and recruit fighters. 
Al-Shabab controls much of southern Somalia, where it is battling the weak UN-backed government. 
Mr Kimemia told the BBC’s Network Africa programme that any al-Shabab leaders who passed through Nairobi would be arrested. 
He also said the Kenyan authorities were closely monitoring mosques in Nairobi in case clerics sympathetic to al-Shabab were using them to radicalise young Kenyans and Somali refugees. 
Kenya is home to many thousands of Somali refugees, and also has a large ethnic Somali population.

International Criminal Court (ICC) judges on Wednesday approved an investigation into postelection violence in Kenya, raising the prospect that political leaders from the East African nation could face The Hague court.
Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo asked judges last November to approve an investigation into the 2007/8 violence and said in March that Kenyan political leaders organised and financed the attacks against civilians. Under court rules, a pretrial chamber must approve investigations.
“The ICC will do its part but the Kenyans will be in the lead,” Moreno-Ocampo said in a statement on Wednesday, adding that there would be “no impunity for those most responsible”.
“The ICC will work for and with the Kenyans,” Moreno-Ocampo said.
In a court filing earlier in March, the prosecutor said that senior political and business leaders from Prime Minister Raila Odinga‘s Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) and President Mwai Kibaki’s Party of National Unity (PNU) were “guided by political objectives to retain or gain power”.
The filing included a confidential list of 20 names of those “who appear to bear the gravest responsibility” for the crimes.
Moreno-Ocampo has in the past, cited figures from Kenyan authorities that 1 220 people were killed, with hundreds of documented rapes and more than 350 000 forcibly displaced in ethnic clashes after the disputed presidential election in December 2007.
The ICC, established in 2002, is the world’s first permanent court set up to try individuals for genocide, war crimes and other major human rights violations.

The International Criminal Court has authorised a formal investigation into the violence after Kenya’s 2007 poll.
Some 1,300 people died and tens of thousands were displaced as political differences snowballed into weeks of ethnic score-settling after the poll. 
The ICC judges said that crimes against humanity may have been committed. 
ICC chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo requested the investigation last November, saying political leaders organised and financed some violence. 
The ICC authorised the investigation in a majority ruling on Wednesday. 
“The information available provides a reasonable basis to believe that crimes against humanity have been committed on Kenyan territory,” said two of the three judges. 
Aid groups and Western governments have urged Kenya to introduce electoral reform, eradicate corruption and punish those who led the killing. 
List of suspects
Many Kenyans will welcome this decision as it is widely felt that unless some people are punished for the post-election violence of two years ago, the events could all too easily be repeated, says the BBC’s Will Ross in Nairobi. 
So far nobody has been held to account for the events which took Kenya to the brink of civil war, he says 
But now cabinet ministers and other powerful Kenyans look set to appear in the dock before ICC judges, our correspondent adds.
Kenyan Justice Minister Mutula Kilonzo said he welcomed the move and would co-operate with the investigation. 
He told the BBC the ICC was better equipped to take on the investigations than the current Kenyan legal system. 
“What the government couldn’t do, was to pass a law establishing a local mechanism that would have been able to facilitate investigations locally under best international practice,” he told the BBC’s Focus on Africa programme. 
“That is what we have failed to do.” 
Following the election violence, international mediators led by former UN chief Kofi Annan were brought in to resolve the crisis. 
They brokered a power-sharing government, but repeated attempts by mediators to coax the government into setting up a tribunal to investigate the violence came to nothing. 
Last July Mr Annan handed to the ICC a list of those suspected of orchestrating the violence. 
The names on the list have not been made public, but correspondents say they are likely to be prominent politicians and businessmen. 
Some supporters of indicted politicians are likely to rally behind their leaders, raising the prospect of a new upsurge in political and ethnic tension, our correspondent says.

His background is in business, but Abdulkadir Ali thinks his future lies with stopping young Somalis in Columbus and overseas from getting into trouble or being lured into terrorism. 
That’s why the chairman of the Somali-American Chamber of Commerce in Columbus is resigning today so he can focus on a venture called New Hope Job Training and Development. 
It’s a simple concept, even if the logistics and finances are not. 
Ali wants to create summer job training and educational programs here. And he has traveled to Africa to talk with the U.S. State Department and aid agencies about building recreation centers and creating technical schools, sports centers and youth programs in war-ravaged Somalia. 
He is seeking $3 million from the U.S. government to get things started in Columbus; Bossaso, Somalia; and Nairobi, Kenya. 
Ali, 51, said he is increasingly troubled by Somali teens who take drugs and commit crimes. He said many have parents who work more than one job and live in bad neighborhoods. 
“I’m sick and tired of hearing about it meeting after meeting,” said Ali, who has two daughters at Westerville South High School and a son at Genoa Middle School. “We’re trying to win them back.” 
Like any American teens, young Somalis here are influenced by friends, television, music and popular culture. 
Abdulkadir Aden, the Somali chamber’s treasurer and Ali’s successor, said most Somali youths “have become lost between the Somali culture and the American culture.” 
Somali leaders fear that if the community doesn’t create positive alternatives, young people could be lured into gangs here and into Islamic extremist organizations such as al-Shabab overseas with promises of brotherhood and paradise. 
“You have a group of people who can mislead youths,” Aden said. 
Ali is part of the Somali working group meeting with federal and local authorities to build relationships while trying to prevent recruitment efforts by terrorists. 
So far, there’s no evidence that anyone from Columbus has been recruited, although about 20 young men disappeared from Minneapolis between December 2007 and November 2008, most of them going to Somalia to join al-Shabab, federal prosecutors said. 
Last fall, Ali traveled to Kenya, home to a large Somali population, where he said he talked to officials from the U.S. State Department, UNICEF and the U.S. Agency for International Development about financial help to build not only recreation centers but also technical institutes. 
He plans to return in April. 
In the meantime, Ali is applying for funds for summer youth programs through the Franklin County Department of Job and Family Services. 
Local Somali business people founded the chamber here in 2003. Somalis in Minnesota, Seattle and the Washington, D.C., area have contacted Ali about starting local affiliates in their communities. 
Ali said Columbus is home to about 400 Somali businesses, but only 27 are chamber members. 
“Any new organizations face some challenges,” said Abdi Farah of the city’s Community Relations Commission, “and the drive for membership is the biggest challenge they have.” 
Ali has run two grocery stores and a transportation service since arriving in Columbus from northern Virginia a decade ago. But his focus has changed. 
“I will stop anything that I know to prevent innocent people from losing their lives,” he said.

Joint Communiqué by the Republic of Uganda and the Republic of South Africa on the occasion of the State Visit to Uganda of H. E. President Jacob Zuma (DFA/ZA) – excerpt-
His Excellency Jacob Zuma, President of the Republic of South Africa paid a State Visit to Uganda from 24 to 26 March 2010 at the invitation of His Excellency Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, the President of the Republic of Uganda. President Jacob Zuma was accompanied by several Cabinet Ministers, Senior Government officials and a high level business delegation.
During the visit the two Presidents held fruitful discussions and reviewed bilateral, regional and international issues of mutual interest. They also expressed their mutual satisfaction with the strong bonds of friendship between the two countries and emphasized their determination to further strengthen and expand cooperation in the fields of agriculture, environment and water affairs, trade, investment, science and technology, social development, energy, defence and public works. 
The sector dealing with defence renewed its commitment to the existing Memorandum of Understanding on Cooperation in Defence that was signed in 2005 and also signed a Declaration of Intent to further deepen and strengthen their cooperation. They also established an implementation framework with set timelines for the administration of the Declaration and MoU.
President Museveni briefed President Zuma on political developments in the East African region, particularly with regard to regional integration and the current situations in Sudan, Somalia, Burundi and the DRC.
On Sudan both Presidents reiterated their support for the full implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in the run-up to elections in April 2010 and the Referendum on Self-Determination in January 2011. Support was also emphasized for the Darfur Peace Process under AU auspices. The two sides agreed on the need to closely cooperate in joint efforts to build capacity and institutions of governance in Southern Sudan.
In turn, President Zuma briefed President Museveni on the latest developments in Madagascar and Zimbabwe. On Zimbabwe both Presidents concurred on the need for the lifting of international sanctions.
The current situation in Somalia was also noted with concern.
On continental issues, the two Heads of State welcomed efforts by the African Union and the REC’s to establish mechanisms of peace and security, but also noted with concern the challenges the African Union encountered in maintaining and sustaining stability on the continent. Therefore the two leaders emphasized the need to strengthen the AU to enable it to play a more effective role in conflict resolution on the continent. 
The two Presidents renewed their call for the reform of the United Nations Security Council to afford the African continent a fair representation and to make it democratic, effective and accountable. In this regard, South Africa congratulated Uganda on its excellent contribution made during their tenure in the Security Council.
A call was also made for global and complete nuclear disarmament, together with a re-affirmation of the commitment to and support of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The Heads of State also re-affirmed the right of all developing countries to acquire develop and use nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.
The two Presidents, in solidarity, underscored the importance of cooperation between Uganda and South Africa in multilateral fora. In this regard, they agreed to establish a close working relationship on matters of mutual interest, especially in the consolidation of international peace and security, human rights, socio-economic development and political cooperation.

Germany to send 20 trainers for Somali forces (AP) 
Germany will contribute up to 20 soldiers to an EU mission to train Somali government forces in East Africa.
Government spokesman Christoph Steegmans said the Cabinet approved Germany’s participation Wednesday. The German soldiers will be deployed in May and remain in East Africa for a year.
The mission _ made up of around 100 European military experts _ will train around 2,000 Somali soldiers in nearby Uganda.
The training is part of a wider international effort to help stabilize Somalia’s fledgeling government, which faces a rebellion by Islamic militants.
The country has been without a functional government and army since 1991, when warlords overthrew longtime dictator Siad Barre before turning on each other.

Malta President, PM mark Freedom Day - Graffiti group holds protest (TimesOfMalta)
President George Abela and Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi this morning laid flowers on the Freedom Monument in Vittoriosa, marking the 31st anniversary of the closure of the British military base.
Dr Abela arrived at the foot of the monument shortly before 10 a.m. and inspected an AFM Guard of Honour before walking up the monument to lay the flowers at the foot of figures representing the lowering of the Union Jack for the last time by a British sailor and its replacement by a Maltese flag hoisted by a worker.
During this morning’s event some 12 activists from the Graffiti lobby group stood on benches opposite the monument holding up placards against the presence of warships in Grand Harbour. They said that the presence of such ships violated Malta’s constitutional provisions on neutrality and non-alignment. 
Some of the placards read: Malta komplici fil-qtil ta nies innocenti, Irridu Malta hielsa mill-militar barrani, and Malta komplici fil-gwerer. 
There were no incidents.

AFRICOM To Launch Year’s Largest Military Exercises 
Flintlock 10 Exercise Set to Kick Off  (U.S.AfricaCommand / AFRICOM Public Affairs)
A united vision for cooperation and stability in the Trans-Saharan region will again be on display during Flintlock 10, a military exercise designed to develop the capabilities of select African Nations, European and U.S. military units and staffs. 
The objective of Flintlock 10 is to develop military interoperability. …Centered in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, but with tactical training conducted in Senegal, Mali, Mauritania and Nigeria, Flintlock 10 will begin 2 May and end 23 May, 2010.
Flintlock 10 looks to build upon the successes and lessons learned during previous Flintlock exercises, which were conducted to establish and develop regional relationships and synchronization of efforts among the militaries of the Trans-Saharan region.
A Multi-National Coordination Center in Burkina Faso will serve as a focal point for multi-national information sharing, as well as the planning of synchronized operations. In the Coordination Center, participants from partner nations will receive academic training, culminating in a command post exercise (CPX). The CPX involves instruction, scenario development and a control group to enhance the participants’ ability to work collaboratively. … 
The tactical portion of Flintlock 10 will consist of small-unit combined training and activities involving U.S. and partner nation militaries throughout the region. During Flintlock10, medical and veterinary Programs will be conducted to provide the populations in rural areas health information and basic medical care. 
This exercise will take place in the context of the Trans-Sahara Counter Terrorism Partnership (TSCTP). Supported by the U.S. Africa Command (USAFRICOM) and the Special Operations Command (SOCAFRICA), the exercise will provide military training opportunities to foster relationships of peace, security and cooperation among all Trans-Sahara nations.

Pardon my cynicism, but does anyone else find President Obama’s weekend pep rally in Afghanistan a bit show-boat-y? Especially, coming as it did on the heels of a weeklong spree of Presidential power-lifting? — health care reform, student loan help, underwater mortgage help and recess appointments. And then, as we all know, nothing spells ‘presidential’ like parachuting into the front lines of America’s “War du Jour.” I could almost hear the Andrews Sisters singing “Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree” as back-up for Obama’s motivational moment with the troops before they start dying, in earnest, to make a point in Kandahar.

“’I know it’s not easy,’ he said. ‘If I thought for a minute that America’s vital interests were not served, were not at stake here in Afghanistan, I would order all of you home right away.’”

“The United States has made progress in the fight against al Qaeda and its allies. I know it’s not easy,” he said. “If I thought for a minute that America’s vital interests were not served, were not at stake here in Afghanistan, I would order all of you home right away.”

“The United States of America does not quit once it starts on something. … We keep at it. We persevere. And together, with our partners, we will prevail. I am absolutely confident of that.”

When I look at that be-camouflaged audience, all I can think of is “Why?” Why would anyone put a single one of those lives in harm’s way for something as dubious and irrational as a foothold in Afghanistan. These soldiers aren’t laying their lives on the line to make anyone safer – their very presence in Afghanistan makes them, and us, considerably more unsafe. 
Non-partisan experts from all corners of the earth and many diverse disciplines have told us that, in compelling terms, for years now, but it has become increasingly clear that neither reason, nor prudence, not even survival instinct will dissuade the “powers that be” from replacing the Cold War with the Long War. Al Qaeda has very effectively become the 21st century version of ‘dirty, rotten Commies.’ “Better Dead than Red” has been replaced with a fatwa on Terrorism, ensuring decades and generations of defense contracts, weapons development, arms sales, special ops, espionage and war games aimed at “making the world safe for democracy.” 
The Long War in a Nutshell 
Whenever I want to get an update on the Long War, I look to Tom Hayden who has been screaming into the wind about it for ages now (and for you old Hippies, yeah – that Tom Hayden). Just yesterday Hayden wrote an article for the LA Times that is a short, good read that will catch you up on the “Long War” concept if it has escaped your attention. 
Basically, the Long War is an undeclared, undebated, largely undisclosed 80-year (give or take) war plan cooked up by the Pentagon and its neo-con fellow travelers and think tanks. The theater for the Long War is primarily the Middle East and South Asia or wherever else our Soldiers of Fortune see fit to lead us. As taxpayers, we needn’t worry our little heads about any of this because our representatives in Congress, don’t really have a role to play, outside of approving any and all Defense budgets, supplemental, emergency and otherwise. Since that signatory function has become a political measure of patriotism, it is unlikely that outspoken constituents can have any impact. 
If you are scratching your head, at this point, and saying ‘what the hell is she going on about?’ you’re in the right place, as far as DoD is concerned. You see, the Long War is less a war and more, a state of mind that is being fed to the American psyche by slow-drip intravenous. 
Here’s Hayden’s timeline:

“The term ‘Long War’ was first applied to America’s post-9/11 conflicts in 2004 by Gen. John P. Abizaid, then head of U.S. Central Command, and by the retiring chairman of the Joint Chiefs of State, Gen. Richard B. Myers, in 2005.” 
“According to David Kilcullen, a top counterinsurgency advisor to Army Gen. David H. Petraeus and a proponent of the Long War doctrine, the concept was polished in “a series of windowless offices deep inside the Pentagon” by a small team that successfully lobbied to incorporate the term into the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review, the nation’s long-term military blueprint. President George W. Bush declared in his 2006 State of the Union message that ‘our own generation is in a long war against a determined enemy.’” 
“The concept has quietly gained credence. Washington Post reporter-turned-author Thomas E. Ricks used The Long War as the title for the epilogue of his 2009 book on Iraq, in which he predicted that the U.S. was only halfway through the combat phase there.” 
“It has crept into legal language. Federal Appeals Court Judge Janice Rogers Brown, a darling of the American right, recently ruled in favor of holding detainees permanently because otherwise, ‘each successful campaign of a long war would trigger an obligation to release Taliban fighters captured in earlier clashes.’” 
“Among defense analysts, Andrew J. Bacevich, a Vietnam veteran who teaches at Boston University, is the leading critic of the Long War doctrine, criticizing its origins among a “small, self-perpetuating, self-anointed group of specialists” who view public opinion “as something to manipulate” if they take it into consideration at all.”

Lovely! Already we see how one war can seque into another; as troops are drawn down from Iraq, troops swell in Afghanistan. Some “troops”, that we prefer not to speak of, are already at work in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and elsewhere. Avenging Angels are poised to strike Iran, if Ahmadinejad doesn’t behave. Even Turkey is currently misbehaving, not to mention Israel . . . 
An amorphous (or imaginary) “enemy” calls for untraditional tactics and boatloads of money to completely refit our own enormous military, as well as the foreign militaries that we are re-purposing and creating in our own image and likeness. Unfortunately, so far, we really suck at it . . . 
The Afghan National Police and Other Insecurities 
One of the more ludicrous goals that the US has set as a measure of success in Afghanistan is to leave the country in the hands of a well-trained National Police force that will provide the safety and security necessary for the flowering of a law-abiding Afghan society into a well-armed, fully compliant partner in US control of the Middle East. 
Never mind that currently there are neither laws nor a judicial system in place to support police activities — all things in good time. When the laws are written and the courts established, prisons have been built and judges appointed, there will be a crack police force in place to enforce those laws. All Afghans will surely rejoice when their thousand years old de-centralized system of tribal justice is replaced with a top-down well-policed system. No doubt, tribal warlords will be happy to relinquish their local power for the sake of modernization. 
The notion of the Afghan National Police program defies reason in so many well-documented ways that it boggles the mind that, eight years and $7 billion dollars later, sane people would countenance renewing contracts with Dumb and Dumber, Inc. (Xe aka Blackwater and/or DynCorp) for another $1 billion whack at this losing proposition. Unless, of course, the architects of the Long War find it expedient to create impossible goals to keep us interminably engaged in the region and supporting that military-industrial complex which is currently America’s only ‘booming business’ and major export. 
I’m no military expert but I do know a thing or two about business management and I’m certain that, without an endless flow of taxpayer dollars, this dog of a project would have been written off ages ago by any self-respecting private or publicly-owned business. A joint team of Defense and State Department Inspectors General wrote a lengthy (and fairly scathing) analysis of the situation in 2006. That investigation found that the contractors hired (DynCorp) were ill-equipped to do the job (some of the trainers police backgrounds were as campus security guards) and that the State Department was doing an epically bad job of managing the contracts. There were essentially no stated contract requirements and virtually no oversight – just blank checks and free rein. 
Unfortunately, this program is not only a fiasco it can be argued that it is actually colossally counterproductive to the US mission in Afghanistan (if there is such a thing). As Pratap Chatterjee reported on TomDispatch.com:

“The Obama administration is in a fix: it believes that, if it can’t put at least 100,000 trained police officers on Afghan streets and into the scattered hamlets that make up the bulk of the country, it won’t be able to begin a drawdown of U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan by the middle of next year.”

“’The Obama administration’s strategy for the Afghan police is to increase numbers, enlarge the ‘train and equip’ program, and engage the police in the fight against the Taliban, says Robert Perito, an expert on police training at the United States Institute of Peace and the author of a new book, The Police in War. ‘This approach has not worked in the past, and doing more of the same will not achieve success.’”

“When it comes to police training, the use of private contractors is not unusual — and neither is failure. North Carolina-based Xe has, in fact, been training the Afghan border police for more than two years, and Virginia-based DynCorp has been doing the same for the Afghan uniformed police for more than seven years now. Nonetheless, the mismanagement of the $7 billion spent on police training over the last eight years, partly attributed to lax U.S. State Department oversight, has left the country of 33 million people with a strikingly ineffective and remarkably corrupt police force. Its terrible habits and reputation have led the inhabitants of many Afghan communities to turn to the Taliban for security.”

And, later:

“’There are some parts of Afghanistan where the last thing people want to see is the police showing up,’ Brigadier General Gary O’Brien, former deputy commander of the Combined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan, told the Canadian Press news agency in March 2007. ‘They are part of the problem. They do not provide security for the people — they are the robbers of the people.’”

Seven years and $7 billion of taxpayers’ money later, at a June 2008 discussion at the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs, Congressman John Tierney summed up findings on the 433 Afghan National Police units of that moment this way:

“Zero are fully capable, three percent are capable with coalition support, four percent are only partially capable, 77 percent are not capable at all, and 68 percent are not formed or not reporting.”

That dismal result did not come flying unexpectedly out of the blue, either. As Chatterjee reports:

“DynCorp and [the] State [Department] had too few people, too few resources, and too little experience building a police force in the midst of an insurgency,” Seth Jones, a political scientist with the RAND Corporation who spent most of 2009 traveling with Army Special Forces teams in Afghanistan, told the commission. “While it may be necessary to utilize [private] contractors to help execute some security programs — including helping U.S. military or other government officials conduct some police training — contractors should not be the lead entity, as they were from 2003 to 2005.”

And:

“’A prevalent view, even among some international police, is that Afghanistan is unready for civilian policing and holds that the police must remain a military force while insecurity lasts,’ writes Tonita Murray, a former director general of the Canadian Police College, who worked as an advisor to the Afghan Ministry of Interior in 2005. ‘If such a view were to prevail, only military solutions for security sector reform would be considered, and Afghanistan would be caught in a vicious circle of using force against force without employing other approaches to secure stability and peace.’”

And this:

“Earlier this month, Lt. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, head of the NATO Training Mission in Afghanistan, admitted that police training has been a train wreck since the toppling of the Taliban almost nine years ago. ‘We weren’t doing it right. The most important thing is to recruit and then train police [before deployment]. It is still beyond my comprehension that we weren’t doing that.’”

“The realization that giving illiterate, drug-prone young men a uniform, badge, and gun (as well as very little money and no training) was a recipe for corruption and disaster is certainly a first step. But how to withdraw the 95% of the Afghan police force that is still incapable of basic policing for months of desperately needed training in a country with no prior history of such things? That turns out to be a conundrum, even for President Obama.” 
“If the Pentagon does not dramatically alter the current training scheme, it doesn’t look good for either governance or peace in Afghanistan. Yet the likelihood remains low indeed that Pentagon officials will take the advice of a chorus of police experts offering critical commentary on the mess that is the police training program there. Instead, it’s likely to be more of the same, which means more private contracting of police training and further disaster. Bizarrely enough, the Pentagon has given the Space and Missile Defense Command Contracting Office in Huntsville, Alabama, the task of deciding between DynCorp and Xe for that new billion-dollar training contract. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose, as the French say: The more things change, the more they stay the same.”

Counterinsurgency Sniff Test: Shit Happens Meanwhile, the old Afghan War continues with its new Counterinsurgency strategy which seems to involve many of the old conventional tactics – night raids, special ops, drone attacks, checkpoint shootings. etc – with the notable addition of apologies from Gen. Stanley McChrystal whenever the wrong people get killed, which appears to be frequently. 
Rumors about collateral damage are no longer solely the province of “bleeding heart liberals,” anonymous sources or anti-war politicians. ‘Straight from the horse’s mouth’ we have this incredible admission from Gen. McChrystal to no less than The New York Times (where some neocon gatekeeper was clearly out to lunch):

“’We have shot an amazing number of people, but to my knowledge, none has ever proven to be a threat,’ [my emphasis] said Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, who became the senior American and NATO commander in Afghanistan last year. His comments came during a recent videoconference to answer questions from troops in the field about civilian casualties.”

“Failure to reduce checkpoint and convoy shootings, known in the military as “escalation of force” episodes, has emerged as a major frustration for military commanders who believe that civilian casualties deeply undermine the American and NATO campaign in Afghanistan.”

Well, General, if you think that’s frustrating, imagine the “frustration” of the dying and maimed innocents and their families and loved ones. 
To make the point McChrystal-clear, Command Sgt. Maj. Michael Hall (the senior NATO enlisted man in Afghanistan and a trainer in the same session) added that:

“Many of the detainees at the military prison at Bagram Air Base joined the insurgency after the shootings of people they knew. There are stories after stories about how these people are turned into insurgents. Every time there is an escalation of force we are finding that innocents are being killed.”

And then, of course, there are the recent inconvenient revelations of one Jerome Starkey, an Afghanistan-based reporter and an eyewitness to atrocities committed by Coalition forces, followed by a fairly bungling campaign to deny and discredit Starkey’s report. 
Over the past few months, Starkey exposed two incidents where NATO initially claimed to have engaged and killed insurgents, when they’d in fact killed civilians, including school children and pregnant women. In both cases, when confronted with eye-witness accounts obtained by Starkey that clearly rebutted NATO’s initial claims, NATO resisted publicly recanting. 
In the first case, NATO officials told him they no longer believed that the raid would have been justified if they’d known what they now know, but no official would consent to direct attribution for this admission. 
In the second case, NATO went so far as to attempt to damage Starkey’s credibility by telling other Kabul-based journalists that they had proof he’d misquoted ISAF spokesman Rear Adm. Greg Smith. When Starkey demanded a copy of the recording, NATO initially ignored him and eventually admitted that no recording existed. NATO only admitted their story was false in a retraction buried several paragraphs deep in a press release that led with an attack on Starkey’s credibility. 
Get used to it, though, 80 years of Long War can’t be conducted without casualties and since the “enemy” is such a shape-shifter, well . . . mistakes happen. On the bright side, evidently, it’s now OK to shoot an “amazing number of people” who don’t pose a threat, if you’re convinced they are Taliban, or al Qaeda or something like that . . .

Australia said to be ignoring the Indian Ocean (radioaustralia)
A new report says Australia has been ignoring the Indian Ocean .. despite extensive and varied threats in a region with few mature institutions of co-operation to mediate them.
The report is from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.
And it says everything from poor fisheries management to India-China rivalry is fuelling instability .. at the same time as Australia walks a diplomatic tightrope building relations with those regional competitors.
It provides a big list of things for Australia to do about all this, on which Australia’s government says it’s already acting.
But some obververs are sceptical.
Presenter: Linda Mottram
Speakers: Australia’s Foreign minister Stephen Smith; Professor Sam Bateman, maritime specialist, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Singapore; Dr Rajat Ganguly, senior lecturer, Security, Terrorism, and Counter-Terrorism Studies, Murdoch University, Western Australia.

• Listen:
• Windows Media

MOTTRAM: Australia has ignored the Indian Ocean, says Professor Sam Bateman, co-author of the report “Our Western Front .. Australia and the Indian Ocean”. But why when it’s such a big ocean that includes forty-eight independent littoral and island states and features increasingly muscular behaviour by some of the biggest external players? Professor Bateman.
BATEMAN: Well I suppose a very basic reason is that the national capital and most of our population is in the southeast of the continent and most of our pressing international relations issues in recent years have usually been in east asia, and south east asia and out in the Pacific. So we have been forgetting that we are a three ocean country and we seem to rediscover the Indian Ocean at about 15 year intervals.
MOTTRAM: Australia’s Foreign minister Stephen Smith, who’s welcomed the report as timely and substantial, largely agrees. 
SMITH: The truth is I think the last time we shifted our strategic view to the Indian Ocean was in the mid 1980′s and we saw essentially a shift of naval assets with a two ocean policy. We now have to bring a comparable shift with our strategic view generally. And so the things I’ve that I’ve said from day one as foreign minister apply equally to the Indian Ocean rim.
MOTTRAM: What he’s said from day one as he puts it is that Australia wants to bring India to the front rank of its bilateral relationships. But that’s been a troubled path. Issues like Australia’s refusal to sell uranium to India and attacks on Indian students in Australia have been obstacles. 
Rajat Ganguly is senior lecturer in Security, Terrorism, and Counter-Terrorism Studies at Murdoch University in Western Australia. GANGULY: Well I hope the engagement with India would at some point move from what is still now purely economic and cultural ties to what is a more deeper political relationship, maybe even a strategic relationship, you know contacts between Australian military and Indian military and some calibration of military strategy between the two sides. We haven’t come to that yet and we may never get there.
MOTTRAM: But it’s also about the other big player in the region, China. The Strategic Policy Institute Report outlines a littany of contentious issues and potential threats in the region. Key among them is India-China rivalry, brewing for a decade, and fuelled not just by China’s general rise but also by the drive for energy security. Report co-author Sam Bateman again.
BATEMAN: Countries have become increasingly more concerned about their energy security, sources of oil in particular and most of that of course comes form the Middle East so countries have been increasingly trying to establish their presence in that part of the world basically up in the north west Indian Ocean.
MOTTRAM: Other issues also confront a region that lacks many of the habits of co-operation that characterise the Asia Pacific. Natural disasters and a lack of fisheries management are among them. Indeed the latter has already had major security implications in the Indian Ocean .. because its been a cause of the spike in piracy off the Horn of Africa. Professor Bateman again.
BATEMAN: To some extent it started because the fishermen Somalia were getting annoyed, upset by the extent of foreign fishing in their waters, large, much more capable fishing boats than their own and they started a little bit of their own bush justice in terms of attacking these fishing boats. And now we have the piracy situation there.
MOTTRAM: Foreign minister Stephen Smith says he’s already acting on one recommendation that Australia do more to help build regional co-operation. He also says he’ll look seriously at other recommendations. He can’t though say when Canberra will deliver a promised boost to the defence of the country’s mineral and energy rich western flank. 
SMITH: Its a logical extension of where we were a quarter of a century ago with the movement of resources to HMAS Sterling, the naval base in the west. Yes we have to move in that direction, the nature and extent of it of course, time will tell.

Millions of Britons face being snooped on by a new European agency

It is understood the agency will concentrate on anyone thought “xenophobic” or likely to commit a crime involving the environment, computers or motor vehicles.
This could include covert monitoring of people who deny the existence of climate change or speak out on controversial issues. 
Paul Nuttall, chairman of the UK Independence Party, said: “I am horrified. We thought Gordon Brown’s Big Brother state was bad enough but at least we are going to kick him out in May. These guys we cannot sack until we leave the EU.” 
James Welch, legal director of campaign group Liberty, said: “We have huge concerns that Europol appears to have been given powers to hold very sensitive information and to investigate matters that aren’t even crimes in this country. Any extension of police powers at any level needs to be properly debated and scrutinised.”
Until January 1, Europol was a police office funded by various states to help tackle international organised crime. But it has been reborn as the official criminal intelligence-gathering arm of the EU and Brussels has vastly increased its powers.
It can now target more than simply organised crime and the burden of proof required to begin monitoring an individual has been downgraded.
Europol has also been absorbed into the EU superstructure, so it will be centrally funded, sweeping away a key check on its independence.
Campaigners last night expressed concern over the vague list of “serious crimes” which the agency can help investigate, which include racism and xenophobia, environmental crime and corruption. Among personal details that can be gathered and stored are “behavioural data” including “lifestyle and routine; movements; places frequented”, tax position and profiles of DNA and voice.
Where relevant, Europol will also be able to keep data on a person’s “political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs or trade union membership and data concerning health or sex life”.
Sean Gabb, director of the Libertarian Alliance, warned that it threatened our right to free speech.
“It doesn’t surprise me that Europol has been handed these rather frightening powers,” he said. “We now live in a pan-European state so it was to be expected that it would have a federal police force with powers over us.
“There is a real danger that opposition to EU policies could make an individual liable to arrest.
“For example, if Brussels adopts a hard-line stance on climate change, it’s conceivable that someone who broadcasts their scepticism of climate change may be accused of committing an environmental crime because they have undermined the EU’s efforts to save mankind.”
Timothy Kirkhope, Conservative leader in the European Parliament, said: “Europol’s new mandate has significantly expanded its powers.
“There is a real chance that the vague mandate will enable it to gradually extend its areas of intervention even further.”
The Home Office insisted the changes were in Britain’s interests.
A spokesman said: “Europol is now in a much stronger position to better support our fight against serious and organised crime and terrorism.”

The scene outside the Huntsville unit of the Texas state penitentiary last Wednesday evening was a familiar one.
Police officers stood casually outside the imposing red-brick walls as a small group of passionate opponents of the death penalty railed against a punishment they say has no place in modern America. 
Inside, a death row inmate, Hank Skinner, was due to be executed by lethal injection. 
But with half an hour to go, word emerged that the Supreme Court in Washington had issued a last-minute stay of execution. 
Skinner, convicted of the 1993 killing of his girlfriend and her two adult sons in Pampa, has always protested his innocence. 
His French wife, Sandrine, expressed relief, but spoke of her anger at a process that could still result in her husband’s execution. 
“This system has got to stop,” she told the BBC. “We are not going to stop until it’s over.” 
The death chamber at Huntsville, which carries out all Texas death penalties, is still the busiest in the nation. Twenty-four prisoners were executed last year. 
But across Texas, there has been a steep decline in the number of new death sentences handed down. There were just nine last year. In the late 1990s, as many as 48 people a year were sent to death row. 
The statistics have led some campaigners to hope that the death penalty may itself be on death row. 
Costly
To the south of Huntsville, Harris County, which includes the sprawling metropolis of Houston, used to be known as the nation’s death penalty capital. 
But after sending about a dozen murderers to death row each year for a decade, it has been two years since it sent a single one. 
The county’s district attorney, Pat Lycos, rejects the notion that Houston has become a death penalty-free zone. 
In an office adorned with photos of Margaret Thatcher, Barry Goldwater and John Wayne, she admits that some things are different. 
“What has changed is the availability of life without parole,” she says, highlighting a law that came into effect in 2005. Before this, the system offered two options for capital crimes: the death penalty and life in prison with the possibility of parole after 40 years. 
But there are other factors at work here too. Take cost. 
In the countryside west of Houston sits quiet, rural Austin County. Its district attorney, Travis Koehn, is busy enough at the best of times. 
But Austin County saw two gruesome murders in four months last year. Mr Koehn and his small team have two hugely expensive capital murder cases to prosecute. Seeking the death penalty is the costliest option. The impact on the community could be huge.
“This is just like if a hurricane or tornado came through our community or if a 747 crashed outside our town,” he says. 
Koehn says the current economic crisis will not dictate how he pursues the two cases, but he has yet to decide whether to seek the death penalty. 
“We’re still going as best we can. We’re seeking justice and we’re going to do that with what we have.” 
As he weighs up the pros and cons, he could do worse than heed the words of one former county judge. 
“We’re all looking at things more closely than we did 40 years ago,” says Gene Terry, executive director of the Texas Association of Counties. 
Mr Terry says lawyers are better trained and juries harder to please. He puts some of this down to what he calls “the CSI effect”, by which jurors make unfavourable comparisons between what they see in the courtroom and the sort of forensics they watch on popular TV shows. 
The dramatised version may be highly unrealistic, but “it makes juries more demanding”, Mr Terry says. 
Religious opposition
Better training. Smarter juries. Life without parole. And economic difficulties. But is there perhaps one more reason why the death penalty is on the wane? 
Texas itself is changing. Its huge and growing Latino population opposes the death penalty on religious grounds. Americans of all stripes have moved here from other parts of the country too. 
In this less homogenous environment, the old certainties are being more widely questioned. 
But old habits die hard in Texas and the death penalty will not be disappearing any time soon. Back in a cafe in rural Bellville, Harley Thomason puts me straight. 
“It’s a zero-tolerance state,” he says. “They’ll just kill you in the state of Texas if you mess up.”

The Yahoo e-mail accounts of foreign journalists based in China and Taiwan have been hacked, according to a Beijing-based press association.
Rival Google has been involved in a high-profile row with the Chinese government following similar cyber-attacks against Gmail accounts. 
The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China (FCCC) has confirmed eight cases of Yahoo e-mail hacks in recent weeks. 
Yahoo said it condemned such cyber-attacks. 
But the FCCC accused Yahoo of failing to update users about the situation. 
“Yahoo has not answered the FCCC’s questions about the attacks, nor has it told individual mail users how the accounts were accessed,” a spokesman told the news agency. 
Yahoo said in a statement that it was “committed to protecting user security and privacy”. 
Clifford Coonan, a reporter for the Irish Times, told the AFP news agency that he had an error message when he logged into his Yahoo account this week. 
“I don’t know who’s doing it, what happened. They (Yahoo) haven’t given any information, but it seems to be happening to journalists and academics in China, so that’s why it’s a little suspicious,” he said. 
Great Firewall
China censorship has hit the headlines since the high profile cyber-attacks against the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists in January. 
The hacks led the search giant to redirect its traffic to an uncensored site in Hong Kong earlier this month. 
The Chinese government reacted with anger, saying it was “totally wrong” to blame the authorities for the attacks, the source code of which originated in China. 
It does operate a tight control over internet content, including pornography and sensitive political material, in what is dubbed the Great Firewall of China. 
Earlier in the week Google blamed the great firewall for blocking its search service, although it said it did not know if it was a technical glitch or a deliberate act. 
The issue is now resolved, a Google spokesman said in a statement. 
“Interestingly our search traffic in China is now back to normal – even though we have not made any changes at our end. We will continue to monitor what is going on”, he said.

After 90 years, one of Canada’s oldest magazines, The Beaver, is changing its name.
Its publishers say it was only natural that a Canadian history journal should have been named in honour of the industrious dam-building creature which is the country’s national emblem. 
But in recent times the magazine’s attempts to reach a new online audience kept falling foul of spam filters – particularly in schools – because beaver is also a slang term for female genitalia. 
The publishers of the magazine – now to be known as Canada’s History – also noticed that most of the 30,000 or so visitors to their website per month stayed for less than 10 seconds. 
Scunthorpe problem
And they suspect that learning about the trade in beaver fur which built Canada’s early economic fortunes was not what they were interested in. Deborah Morrison, publisher of the Winnipeg-based journal, told the BBC News website: “Back in 1920, The Beaver was a perfectly appropriate name. 
“And while its other meaning is nothing new, its ambiguity began to pose a whole new challenge with the advance of the internet. The name became an impediment to our growth.” 
Similar concerns in part prompted Beaver College in the US state of Pennsylvania to change its name in 2001. 
The blocking of harmless websites or e-mails by trigger-happy filters is nothing new. 
In 1996, residents in the British town of Scunthorpe were initially banned from registering with internet service provider AOL because the town’s name contained an obscenity. 
This became known as the Scunthorpe problem. 
Cyber prudery
Elsewhere in England, residents of the South Yorkshire town of Penistone and Lightwater in Surrey had the same trouble. Such ham-fisted cyber prudery might have been forgivable in the internet’s infancy. 
But why are some filters still apparently unable to distinguish between clean and dirty content? 
Are their chastity belts fastened too tight? 
The problem, technology experts say, is that with a worldwide web awash with filth, broad blocking rules often result in a false positive, meaning innocent content is binned just to be on the safe side. 
Furthermore, distinguishing the e-mail sheep from the goats can be a tricky business, especially given the intensity of the so-called “arms race” between the filters and the spammers. 
The spammers develop ever-more sophisticated techniques for slam-dunking our inboxes with ads extolling the benefits of manhood enlargements, pornography and virility pills, among other things. 
Clbuttic mistake
Then the spam filter engineers have to hit back by creating smarter deterrents, in a perpetual game of cat and mouse. 
Christian Kreibich, from the International Computer Science Institute in Berkeley, California, says: “The talent of quickly inferring message intent that humans have is very hard to automate. 
“You can try to parse the language, but you’ll find a lot of it is unfortunately deliberately misleading or broken, for example, with entirely unrelated passages from the latest Dan Brown novel.” 
The research scientist adds: “The filtering systems are – all in all – working rather well, but of course, individual users don’t realise this when a few slip through into their inboxes yet again.” 
In a farcical sequel to the Scunthorpe problem, some filters have been known to act like rogue spell checkers, replacing “rude” words with what they deem to be more acceptable variants. 
“Butt” replaces “ass”, “breast” is substituted for “tit”, and so on, even within longer words containing the banned letter combinations. 
This is known as the “clbuttic mistake”, because classic is edited as clbuttic, passport becomes pbuttport, and so on. 
Spam tsunami
In 2008, a news website run by the American Family Association censored an Associated Press article on the sprinter Tyson Gay. 
A filter decided that “gay” was an offensive word, which should be replaced with “homosexual”. 
The resulting article began with the memorable headline: “Homosexual eases into 100m final at Olympic trials”. 
Some believe correcting the glitches that see countless legitimate e-mails automatically jettisoned into the junk is not in the financial interests of spam filterers. 
Bennett Haselton, webmaster for Peace Fire, an organisation supporting free speech for young people on the internet, said: “The main problem is not that filters are dumb. 
“Lots of technology starts out dumb and improves over time. 
“The problem here is that there are no marketplace incentives for the filters to improve, because end-users often don’t even realise what e-mails they’ve missed.” 
Not so, according to Henry Stern, Cisco Systems’ senior security researcher, who says spam filters are rated by the industry on their ability not to block legitimate e-mails or websites. 
He says without the blockers, a tsunami of between 250bn and 400bn spam messages a day would deluge our inboxes, crashing computer networks around the world. 
The spam filter engineer reckons Scunthorpe-related gremlins are largely a thing of the past. 
However, at least one e-mail, mentioning the Scunthorpe problem and sent to a university for this article, was zapped by a filter. 
And if you try forwarding this piece to a friend at their workplace, don’t be too surprised if it doesn’t reach its intended recipient.

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We do not send pictures with these reports, because of the volume, but picture this emetic scene with your inner eye:
A dying Somali child in the macerated arms of her mother besides their bombed shelter with Islamic graffiti looks at a fat trader, who discusses with a local militia chief and a UN representative at a harbour while USAID provided GM food from subsidised production is off-loaded by WFP into the hands of local “distributors” and dealers – and in the background a western warship and a foreign fishing trawler ply the waters of a once sovereign, prosper and proud nation, which was a role model for honesty and development in the Horn of Africa. (If you feel that this is overdrawn – talk to people who lived in Somalia in the 70s and 80s and come with us into Somalia and see the even more cruel reality today for yourself!) 
- and if you need lively stills or video material on Somalia, please do contact us.   

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