Somalia Piracy Attack Warning

09. Mar.2010 – 05h29 UTC Suspect Vessel in the Somali Basin (07 18S,048 06E)
At position 07 18S – 048 06E on course 160 at 6kts a group of 3 skiffs has been spotted. 
One logistical skiff is towing two smaller skiffs.
There are indications that these skiffs are used for piracy.
All vessels navigating in the Indian Ocean are advised to consider keeping East of 60E when routing North/South and to consider routing East of 60E and South of 10S when proceeding to and from ports in South Africa, Tanzania and Kenya. 
Vessels are advised to exercise extreme caution when navigating within 100 nautical miles of the position given in this report and maintain maximum CPA with any ship acting suspiciously.
While navigating in the region vessels are urged to operate at a heightened state of readiness, maintaining strict 24 hour anti-piracy visual and radar watches, actively implement recommended anti-piracy measures and regularly report their position/course/speed to UKMTO.

Somali president working for release of Britons held by pirates (dpa)
Progress is being made in efforts to secure the release of a British yachting couple captured by Somali pirates last October, Somali President Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed said in London Monday. Paul and Rachel Chandler, who were seized sailing from the Seychelles to Tanzania, have been temporarily reunited after a long period of being held separately, a doctor who had access to them said Monday. The Somali president, who is in London for a conference, but who discussed the Chandler case with Prime Minister Gordon Brown Monday, said Brown had urged him to “redouble efforts” to gain their release. “Our efforts are geared towards winning their release at the earliest possible date but discussing this in the media is not going to help the case,” said the Somali president Tuesday. He regretted the situation the Chandlers were in but said, when asked about their health: ”We understand there is no danger. They are not in danger.”
[N.B.: The Somali president might have lost his sense for reality and capability to assess danger since he is persistently coming under mortar fire whenever he comes or goes through Mogadishu airport, travelling in a top-protected convoy of armoured vehicles provided by the African Union, but for all normal people in this world a hostage situation in Somalia is all but being "safe" or "no problem". People working pro-actively on the release of the Chandlers and analysts see the high-profiling of the case as rather detrimental to a quick and safe resolution.]

‘Prospects good’ for kidnap couple release by Channel 4 News 

Somali President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed tells Channel 4 News prospects are good for the release of Paul and Rachel Chandler, kidnapped by pirates last October, but warns against paying a ransom. 
Sheikh Sharif sheikh Ahmed, president of Somalia’s transitional federal government, told Channel 4 News Foreign Affairs Correspondent Jonathan Rugman he was sorry that the Chandlers were being held captive. It was indicative, he said, of the problems Somalia faced. 
He continued: “I assure you that over 99 per cent of the Somali public, both inside the country and outside the country, oppose these heinous activities.” 
“We have done a great deal in this area,” he said, “and we have very good prospects for their release. But we don’t believe it is something that should be discussed in the media.” 
He confirmed that the Somali authorities were speaking to the local clans and were trying to “negotiate a way out of their predicament instead of just relying on force”. 
But he cautioned against the payment of any ransom to the hostage takers “because that increases the problem”.

Asked earlier in the interview for an estimate of how many foreign fighters there are in Somalia at the moment, he said, “It is hard to give exact numbers. We understand that there are between 800 and 1200 foreign fighters in Somalia.” 
But Sheikh Ahmed could not say how many of those were British fighters – although he knew that some of them were indeed from the UK. 
He went on to thank the United Kingdom “for hosting many hundreds of thousands of Somalis, giving them an opportunity to have a good life”. 
He said he was convinced the overwhelming majority of Somalis living in the UK were grateful and were “good citizens of their new country. But I cannot rule out that a small group of these people may be dangerous and can cause harm.” 
Pressed by Jonathan Rugman, the Somali president confirmed that the British government was right to ban the al-Shabaab militant Islamic organisation last week.

Somali President Pushing for Release of UK Couple Held by Pirates (TransWorldNews)  
Somali President Sharif Sheikh Ahmed has said progress was being made in the efforts to free a British couple that has been held by pirates for four months. 
The couple, Paul and Rachel Chandler, were sailing in the Indian Ocean last October when their boat was commandeered by Somali pirates. A ransom demand for the couple was made but the British government has said they will not negotiate with pirates.   
Media reports had indicated that the fate of the Chandlers was slipping as they had been separated from each other since January and their morale was low. On Monday a doctor was allowed to visit with the two and reported them to be reunited and in much better health.  
Ahmed has felt pressure to advance efforts to secure the Chandlers release and the president has said “Our efforts are geared towards winning their release at the earliest possible date but discussing this in the media is not going to help the case.”

Somali president raises hopes of release for Paul and Rachel Chandler (KENTNEWSonline)
The president of Somalia has said he is hopeful about the release of a Kent couple seized by pirates. 
It comes soon after news that Paul and Rachel Chandler, of Tunbridge Wells, were temporarily reunited. 
A doctor who examined them last month said the Somali pirates had told him they’d seen each other. 
The couple were captured while sailing from the Seychelles towards Tanzania in October last year. 
They are both elderly people.The group holding the Chandlers wants a ransom to secure their safe return. 
The government has repeatedly said it does not negotiate with hostage takers and is refusing to discuss ransom demands. 
The Foreign Office has refused to comment on the latest claims.

—-  news from sea-jackings, abductions, newly attacked ships as well as seafarers and vessels in distress  —-    

The Plight of FV SAKOBA in Somalia
Fact is that the 32 metres long Kenya-flagged fishing vessel FV SAKOBA (aka “Xakoba”) is in the moment under the control of Somalis at the central Somali coast.
Questions have arisen if that is a vessel which is entirely linked only to its flag-state Kenya or if it has other connections, because in 2007 it was reportedly registered in Spain and belonged to the Spanish census. The Sakoba was last registered in Spain three years ago but the Spanish  Ministry of Environment, Rural and Marine Affairs, which handles maritime affairs, said the vessel is now Kenyan-owned.
The Spanish Fisheries Confederation (CEPESCA) clarified that FV SAKOBA is not a member of the organisation.
However, the Spanish company SAKALD PESCA S.L., a Limited Liability Company (LLC) registered in Spain, is marketing in Spain the catch of the meanwhile Kenya-flagged FV SAKOBA exclusively and is rendering logistical support to the shipping company EAST AFRICA DEEP FISHING Ltd., according to the owner, while  FV Sakoba is listed under the shipping company East Africa Deep Fishing Ltd. and is said to have her primary port in Mombasa, Kenya now.
The owner of East Africa Deep Fishing Ltd., however, is with 99.9% of the shares, the Spanish owner of Sakald Pesca LLC himself.
With the Spanish beneficial owner and the construct of company ownership as well as the management of the vessel under a Spanish captain and the marketing of the catch in Spain, the whole operation is a Spanish venture and business. However, and this is also the demand by the families of the Kenyan seafarers as well as the Seafarers Assistance Programme, the Kenya government is tasked to do its level best to secure the safe and quick release of vessel and crew from Somalia.
The owner claims to have all the authorizations required to export the fish catches to the European Union and that the vessel is equipped with VMS (vessel monitoring system/AIS) that reports their location to the authorities of Kenya with the demanded frequency.
The Kenyan authority tasked to monitor such ships, however, seem to have at all only limited monitoring records.
The last sign from the crew so far obtained was on or around the 8th or 9th of December 2009, when a Kenyan crew member called his family in Kenya from a mobile phone, while he apparently had network access, which is also possible outside Kenya from areas close to the shores of Tanzania as well as Somalia. 
The owner of the vessel maintains that FV SAKOBA had been sea-jacked while in Tanzania waters, whereby he states that it is not entirely clear when the ship was taken.
EU NAVFOR’s Cmdr. John Harbour said Tuesday the Sakoba was taken last week, but many details remain unclear. The owner had not been in touch with ATALANTA and the ship was not registered with maritime authorities. It is very unusual for a ship owner not to immediately report a hijacked vessel to naval authorities. Naval authorities say there has been no communication with the crew. However, Harbour said that armed pirates have been sighted on board and: “In fact, that ship might have been used by pirates as a mother ship.”
The FV SAKOBA has no fishing licence for Somalia, is said to have no actual and valid fishing licence for Tanzania and it is stated – but not yet proven – that it had been issued a fishing licence by the Kenya government, where coastal trawling is forbidden, which is why the Spanish owner stated that his long-liner is fishing for the already endangered Swordfish, Marlin and Sharks.in the high seas. The agent of the vessel in Mombasa, a company called EXPRESS SHIPPING Ltd., reportedly headed by Sylvester Kututa, who is said to also be a director with the board of the Kenya Maritime Authority, maintains “we know nothing”.
The sister ship, Zanzibar-flagged FV ALDABRA, which at present is in her home port Mombasa harbour waiting for dry-dock, is said to have sometimes one seasonal licence from Tanzania and reportedly also has a Kenyan fisheries registration.
Another sister-ship FV FRANCERA, which also had been many times observed in Somali waters is now on the scrapyard while her former crew-members stated that the vessel was sometimes going very far to catch the highly endangered and pricey Patagonian toothfish, channelling it via Kenya into the EU.
The late Kenyan seafarer Juma Kumbu, who mysteriously died in a Tanzania prison just weeks ago in connection with the case of FV TAWARIQ 1, which since last year is on the chain in Dar es Salaam – being arrested for illegal fishing in Tanzania, was one of the first crew-members on FV SAKOBA, when the vessel started operating from East Africa. His body is still at the Tanzania mortuary, because the family was not assisted to bring him back for burial – neither by the Kenya Government nor the shipowner.
Today the crew of the FV SAKOBA is composed of 16 seamen of which one, the Portuguese-born captain, has Spanish nationality and lives in Vigo, Spain.
Also a Polish seaman, the chief engineer, is among the crew. Piotr Paszkowski from the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Wednesday morning that they are in contact with both family members of the Polish crew member, as well as the Spanish company in Madrid, which has sent an envoy to Kenya to negotiate the ship’s release. That envoy, however, is said to not have arrived yet.
Otherwise the crew comprises of 10 Kenyans, two Senegalese, a Namibian and one person from the Cape Verde islands.
In a statement the owner said he has no knowledge of the state of the crew.
The vessel is now held off the coast near Harardheere at a similar location where Spanish vessel FV ALAKRANA was held and it is said by local observers that those holding the vessel and crew are from the same group.
Regional analysts fear the Spanish government will be in a dilemma, if demands for the release the two Somalis will be made, who are still held in a Spanish jail without that the trial had come up, while the Spanish ambassador to Kenya had reportedly given his word and promise to the group releasing the ALAKRANA that the two Somalis would be returned in no time, if they would allow the whole Spanish crew to be released – that happened, while the two Somalis have not returned. 
The Spanish government has so far not declared if it would help also in freeing the FV SAKOBA. The payment of a ransom to the captors of FV ALAKRANA had triggered criticism in the Spanish parliament and an official investigation was launched, which has not yet concluded.

Somalis suspected in attack  (Fairplay)
An attempt to hijack a Greek bulker off India has the hallmarks of a Somali pirate attack, despite its location, a Kenyan maritime official told Fairplay today. 

Maltese-flagged Melina 1 radioed for help after coming under attack by armed men in skiffs at the weekend, about 200 n-miles west of India’s Lakshwadeep islands, said Andrew Mwangura of the East African Seafarers’ Assistance Programme. 
India’s navy dispatched a coastguard ship and helicopter to the area, and the attackers fled. 
“The modus operandi of the attackers shows that they must be Somali gunmen,” Mwangura told Fairplay today. 
Mwangura earlier told Reuters: “The location seems way outside Somali pirate territory, but the unsuccessful attack seems to bear all the hallmarks of Somali pirates: three mother ships, two skiffs.” 
Indian navy commander Roy Francis told Reuters that Melina 1 had been escorted away from the area and was now safe. 
The ship was transporting coal from the Ukraine to India when attacked. Its 23-man crew consisted of Ukrainians and Filipinos, Mwangura said.

Lankan crew: Families to get wages (Sri Lanka Guardian)
The Saudi company that owns the vessel currently being held by pirates off the Somali coast with a 13-member Sri Lankan crew has decided to release two month wages to the affected families, the local shipping agent said today.
Captain S. H. R. Kumar said the monies will be channeled to the families in Sri Lanka through the Foreign Office in Colombo. “This was aimed at bringing immediate relief to the affected families”, Kumar said.
The crew had boarded the Saudi flagged tanker from a port in Japan on February 14.
Meanwhile negotiations are continuing in the Saudi port city of Jeddah between the relevant insurance companies on the ransom demand made by the pirates in return for release of the vessel and crew, Captain Kumar said.
The MT Al Nisr Al Saudi was grabbed by pirates off the Gulf of Aden early last week and taken to the pirate strong hold of Garad on the Somalian coast.

With the latest captures and releases now still at least 9 seized foreign vessels (11 sea-related hostage cases since yacht SY LYNN RIVAL was abandoned and taken by the British Navy) with a total of not less than 148 crew 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 25 attacks resulting in 7 sea-jackings. 
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: ORANGE / 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. 
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 ——————–

Clipper: ‘Hit where it hurts’ (Fairplay)
Denmark’s Clipper told Fairplay today that “targeting” out pirate mother ships was the most effective way to address piracy. 
Security forces are shifting enforcement from skiffs to mother ships in the Gulf of Aden, and are thus “moving in the right direction”, said Per Gullestrup, CEO of Clipper Ferries & Ro-Ros. 
International co-operation is the key to catching and imprisoning more pirates, according to Gullestrup. 
“We all need to chip in,” he said, because the fight against piracy is a “long haul”. 
Motherships are financed and equipped by Somali investors, and as such are valuable assets for pirates, he pointed out, adding: “Hit them where it hurts!” 
Clipper’s comments followed the sentencing by a Kenyan court of seven Somalis to 20 years in prison for piracy, as reported by Reuters yesterday. 
“An excellent decision,” said Gullestrup, because the sentencing underscored the consequences of piracy and showed that the international community can “put these people away”. 
Clipper recently pressed charges, through Denmark, against Somali pirates who hijacked vessel CEC Future 7 in November 2008 in the Gulf of Aden.

EU NAVFOR Disrupts 5 Pirate Action Groups (Atalanta Press Release)
Over the weekend of 5 – 7 March 2010, EU NAVFOR units have been involved in concerted operations to interdict and disrupt pirate action groups before they had the opportunity to pirate vessels in the Indian Ocean. 
Six pirate action groups have been intercepted, mother ships and skiffs have been destroyed and over 40 pirates have been taken into custody. 
As reported by EU NAVFOR on 5 March, the Force Commander of Operation ATALANTA, RAdm Giovanni GUMIERO, onboard the ITS ETNA, tasked the French EU NAVFOR Warship FS NIVOSE to intercept and disrupt the pirate attack group, which had previously been repelled by the Vessel Protection Detachment embarked onboard a French vessel. The Nivose intercepted the group of 1 mother ship and 2 skiffs and found pirate paraphernalia in the skiffs including a rocket launcher, grappling hooks and several fuel barrels. The pirates were arrested and the mother ship destroyed. 
This was the start of a weekend where the Command ship ITS ETNA, FS NIVOSE and their helicopters and the Maritime Patrol Aircraft from Luxemburg, Spain and Sweden were involved in the disruption of 5 pirate action groups, including the destruction of mother ships and skiffs, and the arrest of over 40 pirates. 
During an attack on a French fishing vessel, TORRE GIULIA, two other fishing vessels, TREVIGNON and TALENDUIC came to her rescue. During close contact, the mother ship collided with one of the fishing vessels and sank, and the Fishing vessel immediately stopped to help those in the water to save their lives. Only four pirates were found initially but a search and rescue effort including, an EU NAVFOR Spanish Maritime Patrol Aircraft, ensured that the remaining two pirates were found and taken onboard the TORRE GIULIA. 
The efforts of all units and aircraft in this operation show the determination of EU NAVFOR to fight piracy in the Indian Ocean as well as the Gulf of Aden. Attacks will still happen and hijackings may still take place but this recent success ensures that there were 6 less ships hijacked over the weekend.

Chinese Navy does not want to be ‘world police’ (ChinaEconomicReview)
Zhang Deshun, former deputy chief of staff of the PLA navy, stated that the country harbors no ambitions to build military bases overseas, state media reported. Although the retired officer indicated that a Chinese naval force would take a greater role in UN-led anti-terrorism and anti-piracy missions, he also stated, “We have no agenda to set up military establishments, or threaten establishments of other nations overseas.” Other officials have stated that the Chinese navy is capable of operating overseas missions without the need to establish foreign military bases. The statements came after speculation that China would establish foreign military bases to help defend its international shipping lines from pirates off the Somali coast. China has engaged in overseas operations since December 2008, escorting 1,677 Chinese and foreign merchant ships.

Having faced numerous pirate attacks in the recent past, seafarers from India and other Asian countries have warned that they would not sail to the Gulf of Aden and Somalia, unless the threat of piracy was contained soon.
The National Union of Seafarers of India (NUSI) has taken the lead in this regard and has interacted with its counterparts in Malaysia, Bangladesh, the Philippines and other Asian countries in the interest of sailing crew.
“Discussions with the unions (of other countries) are already on. If the situation does not improve, then seafarers from labour-supplying countries will not sail to these pirate-infested places,” NUSI’s General Secretary-cum-Treasurer, Abdulgani Y Serang, told PTI here.
NUSI has refrained from setting a deadline for this but “if things do not improve soon, then we will be forced to resort to this action,” Serang said.
Seafarer associations from across the globe will meet next week in Berlin to take a final decision on the issue, he said.
“Our Union is spearheading and co-coordinating an international agitation on the issue with the support of unions from India, the Philippines, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Ukraine, Malaysia, Sri Lanka and other labour-supplying countries,” he said.
Indian crew are unsatisfied with the steps taken so far by the world authorities such as the International Maritime Organisation (IMO), the Indian Government and others, he said.
There are still 11 vessels with more than 200 crew-members of different nationalities held by pirates in the region, he added.

Somali Pirates Attack Further South because of Shifting Traffic (novinite)
Somali pirates have started to attack further to the south and east off the Somalia coast as the commercial traffic is trying to evade them, Seychelles Minister Joel Morgan told theSofia News Agency.

Somali Pirates Damage Both Maritime Trade and Regional Stability

EU NAVFOR hosts a visit by the President of Somalia (Atalanta Press Release)
On the evening of 9 March the President of the TFG of Somalia Sharif Sheikh Ahmed and his delegation were greeted by Rear Admiral Peter Hudson CBE, Operational Commander of EU NAVFOR – Operation ATALANTA. 
The delegation was given a tour of the new offices occupied by the Operational Headquarters within the purpose built Multi National Headquarters. In addition to receiving a briefing on the operation the delegation visited the Joint Operations Centre (JOC) which houses the Maritime Security Centre Horn of Africa (MSCHOA). 
President Sharif Sheikh Ahmed had the opportunity to meet several of the international staff from EU member states and Merchant Navy representatives. 
Following the briefings a reception was held where Rear Admiral Peter Hudson presented the President with a gift of a framed photo of the Spanish warship ESPS NAVARRA escorting a World Food Program (WFP) Ship to Somalia. 
The President appeared impressed with the Operational Headquarters and the professionalism of the European multinational anti piracy team and recognised the “extensive efforts” of the international community off the coast of Somalia.  He went on to say that a “permanent solution must be found” to resolve the issue of piracy.
(N.B.: The many atrocities committed by both sides in the Somali waters, however, were apparently not discussed, sources said. Most recent reports from the Somali coasts state that commando units from EU NAVFOR as well as non-EU country Norway have started to systematically destroy the fishing vessels, which can be used for acts of piracy, but which mostly belong to local fishermen.]

Bunker poser for hijacked ships by Liz McCarthy (LloydsList)
Ships hijacked and held off the Somali coast are facing increasing difficulties receiving bunker fuel needed for them to leave the endangered waters once they are released.
As pirates capture ships further afield, sail them to the Somali coast and then hold vessels and crew hostage for lengthening periods of time, many are running out of fuel.

In Somali waters and with Somalis as “target” such incident would not even be reported !!!
Australian Navy warship zapped by friendly fire by Cameron Stewart (TheAustralian)

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

In those first moments when the fishermen spot the unmistakable signs of a tuna shoal, everything changes. The inky entity that is the Indian Ocean suddenly reveals the life beneath its surface. Yellowfin tuna, the third largest in the tuna family after bluefin and big eye, are usually accompanied by dolphins. We see their dark backs curving in and out of the water about 100 yards away, and the boat turns towards them. Birds are also circling the area, another sure indication that there are tuna below. 
On the 90ft dhoni (fishing boat) manned by 17 fishermen, led by skipper or ‘keyolhu’ Adam Mohammed, there is a rush of activity. Live bait – trigger fish, sprats and mackerel, plus some unfamiliar fish local to the Maldives – are scooped out from a large tank beneath the boat, hooked on each fisherman’s line and dropped over the side. There are no rods or reels. The fishermen don gloves and rubber socks. If a fish is caught, it will be pulled in by hand and killed when rolled on to the boat. But this morning there’s no need. The yellowfin are not biting.
We had left Hanimadhoo harbour at 6am searching for both yellowfin and the smaller species, skipjack. Hanimadhoo Island is in the undeveloped far north, an hour’s flight from the capital, Male, and nearby coral islands with their paradise hotels and incumbent honeymoon couples. But it shares an extreme beauty – the astonishing turquoise of the shallow lagoons, white sand and green coconut palms. Many islands in this area are uninhabited, devoted to boat-building or fish-processing. 
Tuna itself is revered by the Maldivian people. Skipjack is eaten with every meal, either salted and dried (known as ‘Maldives fish’) or curried. It is the islands’ only plentiful source of animal protein, and along with coconut one of the few foods the country produces. The 1,192 islands of the Maldives amount to only about 180 square miles of land, little of which can be cultivated. Most of the islands’ food is imported. 
There are two Maldivian fishery bosses on board the dhoni: Nashid Rafeeu of Big Fish, and Yasir Waheed from Cyprea Marine Foods. ‘The yellowfin and skipjack tuna fisheries are integral to the Maldives,’ Waheed says. ‘It is a tradition passed down through families; we have never changed the way we fish: on lines with live bait.’ There is much to protect; fishing represents 30 per cent of industry here. Hi-tech methods, which damage fish stocks, have never been permitted within the 200-mile exclusion zone around the island, protecting its resources. 
I had travelled to the Maldives with the British seafood importer Fred Stroyan and Paul Willgoss, the technical director of Marks & Spencer. Stroyan supplies the chain’s food halls with fresh yellowfin tuna, and M&S also sources canned Maldivian skipjack tuna. Willgoss oversees 68 of the 100 M&S ‘Plan A’ initiatives for sustainability, which include recycling waste, ethical trading and animal welfare, plus a sustainable sourcing policy for fish. In 2009 M&S was the first British company to sign up to the World Wildlife Fund’s seafood charter, committing to source all seafood sustainably by 2012 – so far the chain has a good record, sourcing white fish, organic tiger prawns, gurnard and MSC-certified wild Alaskan salmon. Plan A’s objective is a very tall order, watched with much interest by other chains, environment experts and the fishing industry. 
The involvement with Fred Stroyan’s company, New England Seafood International (Nesi), is a wise one. Stroyan, a keen fisherman himself, has 10 years’ experience working with sustainable fisheries and importing to Britain, notably fresh tuna (since 2003) and MSC-certified wild Alaskan salmon. ‘I had seen what happened with UK and European fish stocks,’ says Stroyan, who spends more than five months a year visiting fisheries that supply Nesi. ‘Being a fisherman myself I was passionate about this and we have always worked in tuna fishing areas that are artisanal. It is always better-quality fish as a result.’ 
Tuna made headlines last year with the release of the film The End of the Line. Its focus was on the safety of the bluefin, the favourite sashimi and sushi fish of the Japanese. Bluefin is classed as endangered. At the time some press reports implied that all tuna were bluefin, canned, in sushi, in sandwiches. But this tuna is almost always skipjack or yellowfin, both available from sustainable sources. 
Yellowfin is the viable alternative to fresh bluefin. Reaching weights of up to 440lb, yellowfin are found in all tropical and subtropical waters, but not in the Mediterranean. The appetite for fresh tuna in Western countries has encouraged fishermen to hunt using hi-tech methods that are not permitted in the Maldives. Most notorious are the purse seine nets, up to three miles long, used to encircle and ‘bag up’ huge numbers of fish. 
‘It can take up to three hours to draw in a purse seine net,’ says Cesar Basalo, who audits the quality of fish for Nesi. ‘The fishing boats pull the net tighter and tighter, crowding the fish, which will be fighting on top of each other. Some die as they fight; the surface water will be red with blood and full of floating body parts.’ 
‘It is pretty horrific when hundreds of tons are caught, and these boats are capable of doing this three or four times in a day,’ Stroyan says. This method is also indiscriminate, killing more than one species. Such fishing results in tuna of a much lower grade. ‘Tuna must be killed quickly or they produce lactic acid in the muscle,’ Basalo says. ‘The meat turns brown with a rainbow sheen and cooked appearance.’ In the international waters outside the protected fishing grounds, a bizarre protection from the purse seiners has sprung up in the form of Somali pirates, renowned kidnappers and boat thieves. 
Yasir Waheed and Nashid Rafeeu run separate fishing companies but work together and are also good friends. They share processing facilities in the Maldives and operate boats. The dhoni are low and wide, built from fibreglass, with a vast tank underneath to carry the live bait. The water inside the dhoni gives the vessel an uncomfortable gait and it rocks like a moving hula-hoop on the Indian Ocean. We are 15 miles offshore, not an atoll in sight. We had breakfast shortly after leaving; a dish made by the fishermen containing grated coconut, cooked skipjack, lime and chilli, served with roti (flatbreads) and hard-boiled eggs. It was one of the most delicious tuna dishes, and breakfasts, I have had. 
There is a shoal of skipjack ahead and two boats have already arrived on the scene. In the Maldives, the smaller skipjack are caught by a different method to the large yellowfin: pole and line. As the boat slows the fishermen gather at the back of the boat and turn two water sprays on the water’s surface. Two of the crew begin to throw bucketfuls of live sprats over a wide area. ‘They are creating a feeding frenzy,’ Stroyan says, picking up a 12ft bamboo pole with a small barb-less hook and a feather attractor. When the fish, confused by all the activity in the water, bite, the fishermen yank the poles over their shoulders and the fish, not more than 12-20in long, slip off the hooks and are flicked on to the boat. Each time the poles are lowered back into the water, more fish bite. ‘They could fish here for hours, catch several tons of fish and still make an impact on only 10 per cent of the shoal,’ Stroyan says. 
Our day ends without the sight of a fisherman playing a yellowfin on his hand line, testament to the minimal impact of fisheries on the tuna population. There are mutterings about women bringing bad luck to boats, but forgiveness when the crew settles down on the journey back to sing, drumming water bottles. ‘They are singing about their wives, who are unfaithful when they are away,’ Rafeeu says. 
On the landing stage of another island with a processing plant, a skipper waits in suspense as 20 yellowfin are taken from his boat’s ice boxes, then weighed, temperature-tested and graded. Basalo inserts a sashibo, a slim tool that takes a sample of flesh. ‘Clarity and good colour earn the fish an A or B grade; a fish that has not been landed quickly, which has lactic acid in the flesh, is a C. The flesh will be like this one, opaque and pale,’ he says. Fishermen are paid less for low-grade fish – one third of the full price. C-grade fish are rejected for the British market. 
‘In the Maldives the methods are sustainable but more care is needed when landing the fish on the boats. It needs to be done quickly, yet not change the tradition of hand-lining.’ Stroyan is keen to see the introduction of electronic reels to the Maldives, to boost the number of fish they can export. ‘This is very important, it means they can bring in a fish without a struggle and it will be on ice in no time.’ 
The quality fish are divided into loins inside a state-of-the-art, well-scrubbed plant. Vacuum-packed, they are dispatched to Britain via BA passenger planes – returning honeymooners sit above next week’s tuna niçoise. ‘Fish that is caught on a Wednesday will be in M&S stores within four days,’ Stroyan says, ‘and all is traceable back to the boat.’ He estimates he is now bringing 700 tons of yellowfin from the Maldives each year. 
The British market has become essential to the Maldivian economy. This is the cottage industry that grew up. ‘The Maldives have an opportunity to become iconic in the way they manage their fishing,’ Paul Willgoss says. ‘It is up to us to help them increase their returns and take the earnings back to the people of these islands.’
(*) ECOTERRA Intl. accepts as the only sustainable fishing method for yellow fin tuna and other highly migratory fish species the ecologically sustainable and socially advantageous method of pole and line, monitored and licensed only to local fishing communities. The over-exploitation of the yellow fin tuna by the industrial robber barons from Europe and the Far East with their purse-seiners and long-liners MUST STOP.
(**) Fresh yellowfin tuna is available from Marks & Spencer; all M&S canned skipjack tuna is pole-and-line-caught from the Maldives

N.B.: Meanwhile French clandestine research activities are said to continue in Somali waters and inside the Somali EEZ by the hydro-oceanographic vessel Beautemps Beaupré A758, working for Service Hydrographique et Océanographique de la Marine (SHOM), which has close links with TOTAL, the French oil company. The French research vessel violating the souvreignty of Somalia is protected by French warship NIVOSE.

Indian Ocean commission improves shark protection measures (Ecoterra/FIS/WWF)
Steps were taken by the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission (IOTC) at its 14th annual meeting last week for the protection of the fish stocks in the Indian Ocean, such as tropical tunas and sharks. Many conservation groups. however, believe the IOTC fell drastically short of taking the actions necessary to affect concrete change.
The parties at the meeting agreed on an upgraded system for control and compliance, on introducing a time/area closure and on forbidding sharks of the thresher family from being taken or kept on board. According to the European Commission (EU), these measures are probably the most far reaching undertaken by IOTC since its creation, and the few members still opposing the ban on sharks were outvoted.
The measures all came from the European Union’s (EU) proposal.
The IOTC established a time/area closure in the region outside the Somalia Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) to 60 degrees E and between 0 and 10 degrees North throughout February for the longline fleet and throughout November for the purse fleet. This approach targeting longline and purse seine fisheries on equal footing is the first management measure ever adopted by the IOTC, it said.
But marine protection organizartions had higher expectations.
The Indian Ocean Tuna Commission (IOTC) has come in for criticism for failing to introduce catch limits for the commercial fish species under its control.
IOTC’s scientific community had warned contracting country parties that bigeye tuna catches should be limited to 110,000 tonnes and yellowfin tuna should be limited to 300,000 tonnes. 
But although the meeting accepted these recommendations, action to institute catch restrictions is to wait on a process of setting specific country allocations.
Bycatch has become a focus lately for conservationists, with studies showing that several endangered albatross and petrels are highly vulnerable to longline fishing in the Indian Ocean during their critical juvenile phase.
The IOTC has hardened seabird catch mitigation requirements for longline boats operating south of 25 degrees south, a measure which should go towards reducing the levels of bycatch in the area. 
Boats will now need to use two out of five recognised mitigation measures which include minimum light night operation, bird scaring lines, weighted branch lines and blue-dyed bait.
Another key measure that was not adopted was a Seychelles proposal for a ban on discards of Skipjack, Yellowfin and Big eye tuna from purse seine vessels. 
Under current laws, many fish are caught and then later discarded if better catches of higher value fish are found in a practice known as ‘trading up’. The proposed measure would outlaw this practice and reduce the hugely damaging effect it has on the population of tuna.
The one area that generated real optimism was the growing assertiveness of Indian Ocean developing states in taking responsibility for their fish stocks, both in improving management of their own fishing industries and in seeking better practice from foreign industrial fleets in their waters. 
It is these countries that are often less prepared to make compromises to conservation efforts as they are more focussed on attempting to stay competitive within global markets. Their increased presence in meetings such as the IOTC demonstrates a possible change in attitude where conservation is becoming a focus rather than an afterthought for many industries.

Somali Tourism and Wildlife Ministry due to revive its activities by Mohammed Omar Hussein (Somaliweyn)
The Ministry of Tourism and Wildlife of the Somalia transitional federal government is planning to revive its Tourism and Wildlife activities soon as the Minister for Tourism and Wildlife honorable Mohammed Hussein Sacid has said today in a press conference in the Somali capital Mogadishu.
“We have reliable pledges from several Arab countries that they will support the Ministry of Tourism and Wildlife of the Somali transitional federal government and to mention some of these countries are Syria and Lebanon, I myself had a very crucial discussion with the Minster for Tourism of Syria not only the revival of the Somali Tourism and Wildlife sector, but as well as strong bilateral relation between the two countries and our discussion has ended up in triumph” said Mohammed Hussein Sacid the Minister for Tourism and Wildlife of the Somali transitional federal government.
The Minister has told the press that his Syrian counterpart has pledged that his country will offer projects to revive the Tourism and Wildlife sector of the Somali transitional government.
Likewise the Minister has said that there are tangible efforts which his Ministry is taking to assure that the Somali Tourism and Wildlife can be revived in the soonest possible.
“The only setbacks which the government is currently facing is that its rivals control most of the regions in the country, and I am sure with the will of Almighty God the government of Somalia will sooner or later overcome its rivals” added the Minster.
The press conference of the Minister for Tourism and Wildlife coincides at a time when there is immense devastation at the former Somali Tourism and Wildlife sectors countrywide.
[N.B.: Entities interested to support the Somali Wildlife & Tourism Sector as well as Nature Protection please contact via e-mail: somalia[at]ecoterra.net ]

According to local lore, Portuguese travelers as far back as the late 19th century suspected oil might lie beneath parts of East Africa after noticing a thick, greasy sediment wash up on the shores of Mozambique. More interested in finding cheap labor, though, the explorers had little use for oil. 
A century on, it turns out the Portuguese were right. Seismic tests over the past 50 years have shown countries up the coast of East Africa have natural gas in abundance. Early data compiled by industry consultants also suggest the presence of massive offshore oil deposits. Those finds have spurred oil explorers to start dropping more wells in East Africa, a region they say is an oil and gas bonanza just waiting to be tapped, one of the last great frontiers in the hunt for hydrocarbons. “I and a lot of other people in oil companies working in East Africa have long been convinced that it’s the last real high-potential area in the world that hasn’t been fully explored,” says Richard Schmitt, chief executive of Black Marlin Energy, a Dubai-based East Africa oil prospector. “It seems for a variety of geopolitical reasons more than anything else it’s been neglected over the last several decades. Most of those barriers are currently being lowered or [have] disappeared altogether.” (See pictures of oil in Africa.) 
Few have wanted to pay the cost of searching for oil or gas in the region, or risk drilling wells in volatile countries such as Uganda, Mozambique or Somalia. But better technology, lower risk in some of the countries and higher oil prices in recent years have changed the equation. Wildcatters and majors such as Italy’s Eni, Petronas of Malaysia and China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) have all moved on East Africa in the past few years. 
They’re hoping to mimic London-based Tullow Oil, which discovered some 2 billion barrels of oil in landlocked Uganda over the past four years. Last month, Texas-based oil company Anadarko Petroleum Corp. announced it had just tapped a giant reservoir of natural gas off the coast of Mozambique. “Anadarko’s find went off like a bomb here in Houston,” said Robert Bertagne, a Texas-based oil wildcatter. “It was, ‘Wow, we are finding large quantities of gas and that means we have hydrocarbons in the area.’ Once you have a discovery, more people are going to go in there.” (See pictures of oil fires.) 
Much of East Africa’s hopes are focused on a fault line running from Somalia to Madagascar known as the Davie Fracture Zone. It’s there that Bertagne’s analysis — using Cold War–era sea-floor mapping originally intended for use by Soviet submarines — has prompted speculation about oil deposits rivaling those of the North Sea or the Middle East. There’s still a lot that’s just unknown: North Africa has seen 20,000 wells sunk over the past few decades, while drillers have sunk 14,000 wells in and off West Africa. In East Africa the total is about 500 wells. 
That’s changing. Kenya issued six exploration licenses between 2000 and 2002 and two more to CNOOC in the next four years. In 2008 and 2009, it issued 18 new licenses. “Despite a long history of unsuccessful exploration, the oil companies are investing in Kenya,” says Mwendia Nyaga, managing director of the National Oil Corporation of Kenya. “The question is not if any hydrocarbon deposits exist, but where they are.” (Read “Borders of Sudan’s Oil-Rich Region Shrink.”) 
It doesn’t help that the region is so geologically complex — with lots of fractures, and offshore oil deposits likely deep underground. Or that many of the countries likely to have deposits have seen wars and unrest. Somalia remains a no-go zone and Ethiopia’s eastern Ogaden region is beset by a violent rebel insurgency, While Mozambique’s own civil war may have ended in 1992, the country has taken years to fully recover. (See pictures of Somalia’s pirates.) 
Explorers salivate in particular at the prospect of peace in Somalia. Oil reserves in the blocks licensed to two small oil companies, Africa Oil and Range Resources, could contain as much as 10 billion barrels. Nobody is talking about producing oil in Somalia any time soon, but analysts say oil companies are also less likely to be intimidated by political risk than they were in the past. They point to oil production in south Sudan, where a 20-year civil war that ended in 2005 threatens to reignite. “Definitely, there is a sense that there are discoveries to be had,” says Aly-Khan Satchu, a financial adviser who runs Rich Management in Nairobi. “The reality and the perception of risk are narrowing.”
 

East Africa has become a promising new frontier for oil exploration and major multinationals are jostling for the rights to search for black gold, industry experts said.
“There are still large areas which are essentially unexploited and major efforts are needed in East Africa,” Tiziana Luzzi-Arbouille, an African specialist with IHS Global Insight said at the CeraWeek energy conference in Houston, Texas.
While the Atlantic coast of Africa — most notably Nigeria and Angola — has long been exploited by western oil companies, it took decades for the industry to turn its sights to the east.
Things changed in 2006 with the first significant discovery in Uganda, in the Lake Albert basin. Since then another 15 sites have been confirmed, said Luzzi-Arbouille, who estimated Uganda’s petroleum reserves at around 700 million barrels.
“What happened in Uganda made it easier for smaller companies to raise funding,” said Tewodoros Ashenafi, head of Southwest Energy, an Ethiopian company exploring in that country’s Ogaden basin.
“Many people were saying: there is nothing in Uganda. Many people are saying, there is nothing in Ethiopia,” he told the conference. “In about a year and a half, I’m looking forward to saying I told you so.”
Significant natural gas reserves have been discovered in Tanzania and Mozambique. Ethiopia and Somalia are also sites of intense exploration. And Madagascar holds “enormous reserves,” Luzzi-Arbouille told AFP in an interview on the sidelines of the conference.
“The question is what we’ll be able to extract,” given the difficulty in accessing the resources, she said.
“Ten percent would be pretty good.”
Major oil companies have thrown themselves into the race: French group Maurel & Pom is drilling in Tanzania, while US group Anadarko and Norway’s Statoil are drilling in Mozambique’s Rovuma basin.
“At the beginning, smaller companies were taking the risks. Now all of a sudden we see the big fish arriving,” Luzzi-Arbouille said.
Britain’s Tullow is battling with Italy’s Eni for control of the Ugandan deposits in Lake Albert, after its Canadian partner, Heritage Oil, sought to sell its 50-percent stake in two oil fields.
Tullow prevailed last month and bought the stake for 1.5 billion dollars, gaining total control of the Ugandan side of the lake, which is partially controlled by the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Tullow has said it will seek a partnership with a large exploration company in order to offset the colossal investments needed to exploit the oil fields and develop the infrastructure needed to transport the crude.
Comments by high-ranking Ugandan officials indicate the short list includes China’s state-controlled CNOOC, France’s Total and US giant Exxon Mobil.
The region is particularly attractive to the Chinese, who are already very active on the African continent, because of easier and shorter transport routes to Asia.

East Africa is next hot oil zone (UPI)
East Africa is emerging as the next oil boom following a big strike in Uganda’s Lake Albert Basin. Other oil and natural gas reserves have been found in Tanzania and Mozambique and exploration is under way in Ethiopia and even war-torn Somalia. 
The region, until recently largely ignored by the energy industry, is “the last real high-potential area in the world that hasn’t been fully explored,” says Richard Schmitt, chief executive officer of Dubai’s Black Marlin Energy, which is prospecting in East Africa. 
The discovery at Lake Albert, in the center of Africa between Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, is estimated to contain the equivalent of several billion barrels of oil. It is likely to be the biggest onshore field found south of the Sahara Desert in two decades. 
Tullow Oil, the British exploration company backed by a $1.4 billion loan from the Royal Bank of Scotland, says its Ngassa field in Uganda may be the biggest find in the Lake Albert Basin to date with up to 600 million barrels. 
Tullow has discovered reserves equivalent to around 2 billion barrels of oil in Uganda in the last four years. Most of the initial finds in East Africa were made by independent wildcatters like Tullow and another British firm, Heritage Oil, run by former mercenary Tony Buckingham. 
Now the majors are moving in. Heritage recently sold its 50 percent share in two Lake Albert Basin fields to Eni of Italy for $1.5 billion. 
Eni said the two blocks have the potential to produce 1 billion barrels and is fighting it out with Tullow for control of the reserves on the Ugandan side of Lake Albert. 
The Italian company is busy expanding in sub-Saharan Africa and has interests in Angola, Nigeria, Gabon, Mozambique and the Republic of Congo. 
The Ugandan government is negotiating with several majors with the financial clout to handle the enormous investment required to develop these emerging fields. 
Front-runners reportedly include China’s state-run CNOOC, Total of France and Exxon Mobil of the United States. 
Andarko Petroleum Corp. of Texas says it has hit a giant natural gas field off the coast of Mozambique, a former Portuguese colony that became independent in 1975. Norway’s Statoil is drilling in Mozambique’s Rovuma Basin. 
Since the 2006 find at Lake Albert, one of the Great Lakes of Africa strung out along the Great Rift Valley, there have been at least 15 confirmed major strikes in the region. 
The Indian Ocean island of Madagascar contains “enormous reserves,” according to Tiziana Luzzi-Arbouille of IHS Global Insight consultancy of London.
“What happened in Uganda made it easier for smaller companies to raise funding,” said Tewodros Ashenafi, head of Southwest Energy, an Ethiopian company exploring in the Ogaden Basin in the east of the country. 
This is a vast 135,000-square-mile territory in landlocked Ethiopia that is believed to contain sizable reserves of oil. It is estimated to hold 4 trillion cubic feet of natural gas as well. 
Malaysia’s Petronas, which recently acquired major blocks in Iraq, signed an exploration agreement with Addis Ababa in August 2007.
The main problem for the oil industry is that the Ogaden, like many parts of Africa, is a conflict zone, as it has been pretty much since the Cold War in the 1970s. This is one reason why exploration has been so tardy. 
Separatist rebels of the Ogaden National Liberation Front have warned oil companies to keep away and in April 2007 attacked a Chinese exploration group, killing 74 people. 
Petronas is also exploring in the Gambella Basin of western Ethiopia. 
Somalia has been torn by wars between feuding militias and clans since dictator Siad Barre was toppled in 1991 but it is also considered to hold considerable oil reserves. 
A 1993 study by Petroconsultants of Geneva concluded that Somalia has two of the most potentially interesting hydrocarbon-yielding basins in the entire region — one in the central Mudugh region, the other in the Gulf of Aden. 
That was one of 10 such basins across Somalia, southeast Ethiopia and northeast Kenya. 
More recent analyses indicate that Somalia could have reserves of up to 10 billion barrels. 
But exploration remains an extremely hazardous undertaking. And it’s likely to become more so as the country becomes a major focus for U.S. counter-terrorism operations against al-Qaida and its affiliates who are dug in there.

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

Saudis sign anti-piracy code (Fairplay)
Saudi Arabia today signed the Djibouti anti-piracy code, becoming the 13th country to do so. 
Saudi transport minister Jubarah Bin Eid Alsuraisry signed the code at the IMO headquarters in London. It is a regional accord among African and Arab countries to oppose piracy. 
However, Zakaria Abdi, chairman of Somalian party Alliance for the Reliberation of Somalia, told Fairplay that such collaboration is a waste of time, adding that Somali problems need to be resolved by politicians with international backing, within Somalia. 
Meanwhile, Andrew Mwangura, head of the Seafarers Assistance Program, said today he had information that Al-Qaeda is interested in sea attacks off Yemen. 
He cited “Western navy documents”, which he would not further describe to Fairplay. 
“Although it is unclear how attacks would proceed, it may be similar in nature to the attacks against the M/V Limburg in October 2002, where a small to mid-size boat laden with explosives was detonated,” he added. 
Mwangura also stressed the significance of last week’s Singaporean navy alert that terrorists were feared to be planning an attack on tankers in the Malacca Strait.

Swedish Coast Guard’s first mission for EU NAVFOR (PR ATALANTA)
On Monday 8th March, the Swedish Coast guard Maritime Patrol Aircraft (MPA) conducted its first formal mission for EU NAVFOR’s anti piracy operation – Atalanta.
During the next four months one of the Swedish Coast Guard aircraft, a DASH 8, will monitor the waters off the coast of Somalia providing the Force Commander with essential information on the movements of ships in the area.
The Swedish Project Manager of the MPA in Seychelles stated “We have just completed our first flight within the EU NAVFOR and we were in the air for around 6 hours. The flight was diverted because of suspicious activity in a particular area and It turned out to be suspect pirates who were remaining close to a fishing vessel. We were able to alert the Force Commander and document the incident.”
This is the first time a MPA from the Swedish Coast Guard has participated in an international operation of this type. The MPA is a DASH-8 Q-300 equipped with several advanced surveillance systems that makes it one of the worlds’s most advanced sea surveillance aircraft. The MPA is manned by a civilian crew.

International Community’s Help Needed to Eliminate Pirates- Puntland Presidential Aide by Khaled Mahmoud (Asharq Al-Awsat)
Muhammad Abdirahman, media adviser to the president of the Puntland region in northeast Somalia, which has enjoyed self-rule since 1998, has called on the pirates seizing the Saudi oil tanker, Al-Nisr al-Saudi, to immediately release it along with its 14-crew members, stressing that his government is opposed to all acts of piracy off the Somali coasts. 
In a telephone interview with Asharq Al-Awsat, Abdirahman said: “We condemn any act of piracy or the hijacking of ships. We oppose paying ransom to pirates because this will only encourage them to perpetrate more of these criminal activities.” He added: “We are sorry for the hijacking of the Saudi oil tanker and tell the pirates that this tanker belongs to an important Muslim and Arab country that has often extended generous aid to the Somali people. The tanker and its crew must be released immediately and unconditionally, we are part of our Arab and Muslim nation and we must not offend or do any harm to our brethren.” 
Abdirrahman added that: “As the Puntland government, we are opposed to payment of ransom to pirates or entering into negotiations with them. While we do not call for the use of military force to release the hijacked tanker because of the danger involved to the tanker and its crew, we ask all parties not to easily meet the pirates’ demands.”
Abdirahman accused the international community of being too slow in offering the necessary financial, logistic, and military assistance to the Puntland government to enable it to strengthen the currently limited resources of its coast guard. He said that once the required aid is given to his government, it will be able to play a better role in combating pirates and stopping their horrific activities than the NATO forces and the various military fleets amassed off the Somalia coasts. Abdirahman added: “It is important that the Arab and Muslim countries, particularly those close to the Somali coast, to offer aid to his government to combat the pirates on land. He added: The pirates go to sea from inside, and so we must confront them on land, which would be better than the massing of all these foreign fleets off our coasts. These fleets will not be of much help in eliminating the pirates’ criminal activities, terrorizing navigation in the Indian Ocean and in the Gulf of Aden.
Abdirahman denied reports that senior officials of the Puntland government are involved in acts of piracy, saying: “these are groundless allegations. As government, we are committed to combating and eliminating this phenomenon.” He noted that, notwithstanding its poor resources, his government has succeeded in ending pirate activities in several towns in the Puntland Region.
In a related development, the US State Department’s Arabic website said that the Somali coast and the Gulf of Aden have been plagued by piracy. The obstruction of trade and of the distribution of humanitarian aid associated with this scourge represents a challenge to the international community.
It is to be recalled that the Somali pirates continue to hold seven ships and 160 crew members. They lately released a Taiwanese fishing boat which they seized in April last year. According to the latest figures, the pirates succeeded in 50 out of 198 attacks on ships last year. In 2008, 42 out of 122 attacks on ships were successful. US navy has lately deployed three Orion B reconnaissance planes in the Seychelles islands to carry out anti-piracy missions. In addition, an international fleet of US, EU, Russian, Chinese, NATO, and other countries guards the Gulf of Aden to deter Somali pirates in the region. On average, 17 ships provide security in the maritime route through which 30,000 commercial ships cross annually. The ships assigned the mission of guarding the route cooperates in this mission although there is no official military force with a commander to supervene their activities.

Twenty-year jail sentences for Somali pirates (Sapa-AFP)
A Kenyan court on Wednesday sentenced eight Somalis to 20 years in jail for piracy.
The Somalis were arrested in November 2008 by the British navy while attempting to hijack a Danish vessel, the MV Powerful, in the Gulf of Aden.
“The offence of piracy is serious and carries a life imprisonment but because they are young and family men, I sentence each of them to 20 years’ imprisonment,” said Senior Principal Magistrate Lilian Mutende.
Defence lawyer Jared Magolo said he would appeal against the ruling.
“I will file an appeal against the judgement and I am confident that the high court will correct the errors,” said Magolo, arguing that the magistrate had no jurisdiction over the cases.
“They have been in custody for a period of two years in very difficult circumstances in a foreign country. Having them in custody would be a burden to the taxpayers,” Magolo added.
More than 100 Somali piracy suspects have been brought to Kenya for trial under agreements with the United States, the European Union, Britain and other countries.

Kenya imprisons seven Somalis for piracy by Celestine Achieng (Reuters)
A Kenyan court sentenced seven Somalis to 20 years in prison for piracy on Wednesday after they tried to attack a Danish cargo vessel. 

While Sheikh Sharif and His Cronies Dine in London:
Death toll hits 54 from fighting in Somali capital by Ibrahim Mohamed and Abdi Sheikh (Reuters)

The government urged residents to vacate the areas where fighting had taken place as it planned to take on the rebels again, but said it had not yet started a long-awaited offensive to dislodge the insurgents from Mogadishu once and for all.
“The government was just counter-attacking the rebels. We are going to fight the rebels as planned, let civilians around those areas vacate,” Abdirisaq Mohamed Nur, Mogadishu’s mayor, told reporters.
Insurgents have fought the government since the start of 2007 and the Western-backed administration has been hemmed into a few blocks of the capital since a rebel offensive last May.
“We have carried 54 dead people and 140 others injured yesterday and today,” Ali Muse, coordinator of ambulance services, told Reuters.
Earlier in the day the Elman human rights group had put the death toll at 38 and 104 wounded.
“The death toll may rise because the shelling was terrible. Hundreds of families have been displaced from at least four districts of Mogadishu,” Ali Yasin Gedi, vice chairman of the group, told Reuters.
RESIDENTS SPOT HELICOPTER, PLANE
Somalia has lacked an effective central government for 19 years and Western nations and neighboring countries say the anarchic country provides sanctuary for militants intent on launching attacks in east Africa and further afield.
Both sides claimed victory after the fierce battles in the capital that had died down by late Thursday.
“We drove away al Shabaab and captured most of their strongholds in the north of Mogadishu,” Sheikh Yusuf Mohamed Siad, Somalia’s state minister for defense, told Reuters.
Al Shabaab’s spokesman said his fighters had set ablaze an armored vehicle belonging to African Union troops.
There was no immediate comment from the AU Amisom force of more than 5,000 troops based in the capital.
Outside the capital, much of southern and central Somalia is controlled by al Shabaab — an al Qaeda-linked militia that wants to impose its own harsh version of sharia law in the country — and another insurgent group, Hizbul Islam. Somali-based pirates have extracted huge ransoms by hijacking international shipping.
Residents of the southern port town of Kismayu and Dhobley near the border with Kenya — which are both controlled by al Shabaab — reported having seen a helicopter and a larger plane overhead several times over the past few days.
“Al Shabaab fired guns at them but they were beyond reach,” Sugaal Kusow, a Kismayu resident, told Reuters. “They were not bombing us, so we assumed they are monitoring planes.”

For Somalia, it was just another long weekend of mayhem. Shortly after midnight on Friday, Nov. 7, pirates seized a Danish cargo ship in the Gulf of Aden; on Saturday night an aid worker was shot and killed as he walked home from evening prayers in a village 270 miles (435 km) from Mogadishu; on Sunday, fighting between insurgents and African Union peacekeepers left at least seven dead in the capital, and a senior government official was killed in the south of the country; and in the early hours of Monday, bandits crossed the border into Kenya, where they kidnapped two Italian nuns. Somalia is not so much a failed state as a didn’t-even-try one. It hasn’t had a government since 1991, when warlords took over and embarked on a series of intractable clan wars that have produced one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises: hundreds of thousands dead and 3 million people desperately in need of aid. 
But aid is almost impossible to deliver in a place as remote, dangerous and complicated as Somalia. Those who try to help too often come to grief: according to the United Nations, eight of its staffers and 24 aid workers have been killed this year. As a result, “the humanitarian space is effectively closed,” says Ken Menkhaus, the U.S.’s leading expert on Somalia and a professor of political science at Davidson College in North Carolina. The 3,000 African Union peacekeepers don’t stray far beyond their base in Mogadishu for fear of being slaughtered by insurgents–remember Black Hawk Down? (See pictures of Somalia’s Pirates.) 
Offshore, a growing flotilla of warships from the U.S., Russia, the European Union and India has been trying to keep Somali pirates from taking their pick of the 16,000 mainly cargo ships that pass through the Suez Canal annually. There are several gangs of pirates; armed with Kalashnikov rifles and traveling on small fishing boats and skiffs, they have attacked more than 80 ships and hijacked at least 30, collecting anywhere from $18 million to $30 million in ransom, according to the British strategic think tank Chatham House. Big paydays have made them progressively bolder: one gang is still holding on to the MV Faina, the Ukrainian freighter carrying a consignment of Russian tanks that was hijacked on Sept. 25. 
As the navies of the world are rediscovering, catching pirates on the high seas is next to impossible. So far, the warships have warded off some pirate attacks but not enough to scare the gangs. “We hijack ships every opportunity we get,” says pirate commander Sugule Ali, speaking by satellite phone from the bridge of the MV Faina. 
Somalia’s problems have spilled beyond its borders, with a constant flow of refugees being smuggled in by leaky boats to Yemen and even more walking south to Kenya. There are more than 200,000 people crowded into the world’s biggest refugee camp, at Dadaab, 62 miles (100 km) south of the frontier; some 5,000 new refugees arrive every month. 
But Somalia’s most dangerous export is terrorism. Before the Bush Administration’s Iraq digression, Somalia was target No. 2 in the war on terrorism, behind Afghanistan. After all, it was a Somalia-based al-Qaeda group that killed 224 people in the twin bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in August 1998. But it wasn’t until the end of 2006, when Somalia was invaded by the U.S.-allied Ethiopia, that American covert missions targeted the embassy bombers. One of the masterminds, explosives expert Abu Taha al-Sudani, is now dead, as is Aden Hashi Farah Ayro, an Afghanistan-trained former leader of al-Shabaab, Somalia’s homegrown Islamist militia. 
But as in Afghanistan, such successes are undermined by resentment of U.S. military activity and civilian casualties–and the blowback empowers the extremists. Al-Shabaab (Arabic for Youth) now controls much of the south of the country, in the manner of the Taliban: on Oct. 27, 1,000 spectators gathered at a sports stadium in the port of Kismayo to watch al-Shabaab stone to death a 13-year-old girl, Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow. Amnesty International says al-Shabaab arrested her and convicted her of adultery after she complained she had been gang-raped. 
Al-Shabaab is taking its brand of terrorism to new territories. On Oct. 29, members detonated five car and suicide bombs outside U.N., Ethiopian government and local administration buildings in the autonomous northern regions of Puntland and Somaliland, killing more than 30 people. “They are willing to expand their war,” says Menkhaus. “And Ethiopia, Kenya or Djibouti are next.” 
The one encouraging development in Somalia is the emergence of Iraq-style Awakening militias made up of moderate Somalis, who have taken on al-Shabaab in street battles in recent weeks. If Ethiopian and African Union troops withdraw as expected in the next few months and Somalis increasingly have to fend for themselves, the chances are that this will grow into a full-scale conflict. Still, an Awakening would also offer Somalia’s best hope of keeping its extremists in check. Perhaps only in Somalia could the prospect of more war be a sign of hope.

Death toll rises as bloody fighting rocks Mogadishu (Mareeg)
Fierce battles have left at least 26 people dead and about 80 wounded as Somali government forces backed by African Union peacekeepers clashed with al Shabaab militants in Mogadishu, witnesses and officials say. 
The fighting started early on Wednesday in the north part of Mogadishu when al Shabaab launched attack on bases of the Somali government soldiers there.
Residents say mortars killed most civilians in Jungal and Suq Ba’ad markets in Mogadishu where 18 civilians died after successive mortars landed in those areas. 
AMISOM tanks have reportedly took part the fighting and shelled areas under the control of the Islamist rebels. 
Officials from the Somali government claimed victory over the fighting saying that they have regained three areas in capital from the rebels. 
Al Shabaab spokesman have also claimed victory over the fighting, but civilians have borne the brunt of Wednesday’s fighting. 

Intense gunbattles erupt in Mogadishu (AFP)
Heavy fighting broke out between Somali government forces and Islamist insurgents in Mogadishu early Wednesday, officials and witnesses said. 
The government side, which has been planning a large offensive against its foes, said the radical Shebab fighters attacked their position in the north of the capital at dawn, sparking the fierce gunbattles. 
No casualties were reported in the clashes, which witnesses reported involved the use of heavy machine-guns, anti-aircraft weapons and artillery fire. 
“The Shebab militants attacked our forces at the northern frontline of Abdulaziz this morning with heavy artillery and machine guns,” Somali government security official Abdi Mohamed told AFP. 
“The fighting is still going on and we have no information about the casualty so far,” he added. 
“The fighting started sporadically with artillery early morning but later intensified with both sides reinforcing their positions,” said Maryan Ali, a resident in north Mogadishu. 
“It is very heavy fighting and I have seen many Shebab fighters taking positions. There are very few families left around Abdulaziz neighborhood now and it looks they will start fleeing once they get chance to leave…” 
Belligerent factions in Mogadishu have been locked in a tense stand-off for weeks, amid expectations of an imminent offensive by the government and its African Union backers to wrest the country back from the insurgency.

40 Somali civilians killed in heavy fighting (RadioNetherlands)
There has been heavy fighting in the Somali capital Mogadishu for the second day in a row. 
Medics report more than 40 civilians have been killed. 
Government troops supported by African Union units have come into armed combat with fighters of the radical Islamic al-Shabaab movement. 
The movement is believed to be linked to the al-Qaeda movement. 
In early January, the government announced it wanted to drive all Islamic rebels out of the capital for good.
Civilians fled the city in anticipation of serious fighting. However, many of them had returned as the situation remained calm.

Somali rebels behead two, fighting kills 17 by Abdi Sheikh and Abdi Guled (Reuters)
Fighting between Somali government forces and al Shabaab rebels in the north of Mogadishu Wednesday killed 17 people and wounded 65, a Somali human rights group and rescue services said.
Residents said al Shabaab also beheaded two employees of a telecommunications company in the capital who had been accused by the al Qaeda-linked insurgents of spying for the government.
Somali insurgents have fought the government since the start of 2007 and the Western-backed administration has been hemmed into a few blocks of the capital since a rebel offensive last May.
The government has said for several months it will launch a major offensive but has yet to carry out the plan. Rebels have stepped up attacks in various parts of the city in recent weeks and government forces have responded with shelling.
“We have collected 17 dead civilians and 65 others wounded- we took them to various hospitals,” Ali Muse, the coordinator of ambulance services, told Reuters.
“Most of the casualties took place this afternoon when fighting became more fierce. The death toll may rise for most people were seriously wounded by shells. Some are likely to die in hospitals.”
Somalia’s state minister for defence said it was a victory to overpower al Shabaab fighters.
“We have surrounded al Shabaab and driven them away. It was a victory for us and we shall disclose the details tomorrow,” Sheikh Yusuf Mohamed Siyad ‘Indha Ade’, told reporters.
Siyad said some al Shabaab fighters had surrendered while they had captured others.
The beheaded telecoms company staff had been accused by al Shabaab of helping to direct government shells towards rebel positions in Mogadishu, residents said.
“We could see the two beheaded bodies lying on the street but we were afraid to carry them away,” said resident Abdullahi Karshe.
Somalia has had no effective government for 19 years and Western nations and neighbours say the anarchic country is used as a shelter by militants intent on launching attacks in east Africa and further afield.
The chaos onshore has allowed pirate gangs to flourish and make millions of dollars from hijacking ships in the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean.
Residents said the fighting escalated in the afternoon after African Union tanks joined in. Government officials would not comment that AU forces were fighting alongside them.
“AU tanks joined later, forcing al Shabaab to pull back carrying dead bodies and injured ones in their cars,” resident Ali Samatar told Reuters.
Residents said government troops dragged away the corpse of an al Shabaab fighter believed to be that of a foreigner.
“I could see a government’s battle wagon pulling a dead body. I cannot exactly say the nationality of the dead al Shabaab, but he looked like an Arab – the body was white,” resident Bare Farah told Reuters. 

Reports continue to come in since the weekend that US surveillance drones have been flying overhead in the Somali capital city of Mogadishu, providing intelligence to the self-proclaimed government that soon hopes to launch a major attack across the city. 
The “Transitional Federal Government,” which got its start as the “Transitional National Government” has been in Somalia since late 2005, trying unsuccessfully to consolidate its power on the back of massive US aid and a failed US-backed Ethiopian invasion on its behalf. At this point it survives in only a few scant city blocks around Mogadishu’s presidential palace, and there only to the extent that the African Union troops are willing to prop them up. 
Before coming to Somalia the group declared itself a government-in-exile and set up shop in a fancy hotel in Kenya. After being booted from the hotel in 2005, the government attempted to take over southern Somalia, and insists it will eventually take over the entire nation. 
The US has been there at every turn, providing training, money and literally “tons” of small arms and other weaponry, but the government’s lack of legitimacy is still palpable. Still, it hopes that a US-backed offensive to conquer Mogadishu outright could grant it at least a shred of, if not legitimacy, relevance. 
The US hasn’t had an official presence in Somalia since withdrawing from the nation in 1993. They have, however, launch several deadly air strikes against the nation and briefly invaded a southern village in September, killing a Kenyan that was “wanted for questioning.” 

I could view the situation with icier detachment if I had not served as the last U.S. ambassador and special envoy to Somalia in 1994 and 1995. This role allowed me to get to know some Somalis and to gain a certain understanding of the country, so it is difficult for me to view it coolly, from afar. 
The Somalis have made an awful mess of their country. There has been no government with national authority since 1991, moving its population of 9 million toward two decades of chaos. (I, for one, refuse to take seriously the appeal that an absence of government might have for America’s own tea party movement.) 
No government in a place like Somalia means no health care, no education, no infrastructure maintenance and the absence of law and order that comes when everyone is armed to the teeth and perhaps high on drugs. 
Somalia has suffered an amazing amount of foreign intervention from 1991 to the present. The United Nations and then the United States intervened in the early 1990s to prevent Somali militias from interfering with humanitarian efforts to meet famine and other disasters in Somalia in the wake of the collapse of government and subsequent clan fighting. 
The problem came when the United Nations and the Clinton administration turned from the humanitarian mission to nation re-building. It would have been difficult to keep the humanitarian program going without foreign troops unless a viable government were in place to assure law and order. But it was a question of how to get from a state of almost total disorder to the re-creation of viable government. 
When the world tried to take on that chore, the Somalis began to concentrate their efforts on making the foreigners’ presence unbearable. Worse, the foreigners had their own view of which Somalis should be running the show. 
The Somali leader who had led the forces that had overthrown the previous dictator was Gen. Mohamed Farrah Aideed, who was not only unacceptable to many Somalis but also had a personality and sense of entitlement to the job of president that made him unacceptable to most of the foreigners, including the Americans. 
By the time I got there in 1994, the “Blackhawk Down” killing of 18 American troops and the subsequent withdrawal of almost all of the rest had taken place and the United Nations was reduced to paying the Somalis just to meet with each other, a sad state of affairs. Soon, the U.S. government decided, against my recommendation, that it was too dangerous to maintain an embassy and special envoy there and we were withdrawn. U.N. forces were taken out months later. 
Since then, there have been two streams of effort on the part of the world to try to reestablish government in Somalia. One cobbled together a government after months of talk in Kenya. This produced the one that now holds a few blocks of Mogadishu with the help of African Union forces. The other has been up-and-down efforts of an Islamic group called the Shabab to establish rule in Somalia. 
The American government has decided that the Shabab is too infected with Islamic extremism, including perhaps influence by al-Qaida, to be permitted to take power, even though it probably would if the African Union withdrew. In the name of keeping the Shabab out, the United States provided air and intelligence support for an invasion of Somalia by Ethiopia in 2006. The Ethiopians eventually found trying to keep the provisional government in power such a miserable business that they withdrew last year. 
Now, apparently, U.S. forces are providing arms, advisers and other military support to the African Union and newly trained forces of the provisional government to try to enable them to enlarge the small area of Mogadishu they currently control. 
There is reason to believe this effort will fail, partly because the Shabab are determined and their forces large, partly because the African Union forces are not highly motivated to die in Somalia and partly because the provisional government forces are likely to fragment into clans, be ineffectual and eventually loot the American arms, perhaps diverting them to the Shabab and other militias. 
So why, apart from the only lightly documented charge of Islamic extremism among the Shabab, is the United States reengaging in Somalia at this time? 
Part of the reason is because the United States has its only base in Africa up the coast from Mogadishu, in Djibouti, the former French Somaliland. The U.S. Africa Command was established there in 2008, and, absent the willingness of other African countries to host it, the base in Djibouti became the headquarters for U.S. troops and fighter bombers in Africa. 
Flush with money, in spite of the expensive wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Department of Defense obviously feels itself in a position to undertake military action in Africa, in Somalia. Whether it makes sense to do so, or whether the Somalis would be more likely to set up and consolidate a working government in Mogadishu in the absence of foreign intervention, is another question altogether. 
When I left the issue in 1995 I was persuaded that the best thing for Somalia — and therefore for America and the rest of the world — was to leave the Somalis to sort out their problems. Given what has happened since, and what is likely to happen now with the new U.S. military effort, I still think so. Why not let the Shabab take the place and then do business with them?

Boqore Says Parliament Knows Nothing About the Trip of About Ten MPs to Puntland (Shabelle)
Osman Elmi Boqore, the deputy speaker of the transitional parliamentarians of Somalia has said on Tuesday that they knew nothing about the trip of 10 Somali MPs who reached in Puntland. 
Speaking to Shabelle radio, Mr. Boqore said that about 10 MPs had reached at Garowe town, the centre of the semi-autonomous region of Puntland administration

The official said that those MPs were member of those who were in Kenya and descended from the same region adding that the transitional parliamentarians were not aware of their travel pointing out that they also held talks with the officials of Puntland on tackling differences between both TFG and Puntland. 
It was on Monday when some of the transitional lawmakers of Somalia met with the president of Puntland and ministers who discussed more about normalizing the relation between the two sides.

SOMALIA: In the International Limelight For All The Wrong Reasons by Liban Obsiye (Somalilandpress) 
Somalia is a country that has been at war since the fall of the last government under General Siad Barre in 1991. It a country that has been crippled by civil war, bloodshed and general mindless violence for nearly 20 years. The analysts at the Economist magazines Intelligence Unit, a sister company of the international award winning magazine, The Economist, identified Somalia as the worst country in the world. According to the Intelligence Unit, Somalia was at the bottom or near the bottom of the international league table in every category. 
The categories by which the international Countries were judged were many but among the most important were security and safety, poverty and human development. clearly, coming at the bottom or near the bottom of any of the listed categories should not only cause serious reason for concern but also an immediate change of direction by the responsible authorities within each nation. 
However, rather than taking heed and calling an end to all the violence and destruction that has severely hampered the Somali civilians living in the war zone’s ability to lead their daily lives, those involved in the Somali political process appear to have taken this as an opportunity to go around the globe asking for financial support to tackle the very problems which they have created and are the centre of. 
The Somali President Sheikh Sharif landed in the UK for his first official State visit on Monday 8th March and as part of his three day visit he has already met the Prime Minister Gordon Brown and the Foreign Secretary, David Miliband and he is expected to meet the Somali Community members in both UK cities of London and Birmingham where a large number of Somali British citizens reside. 
During his meeting with the British Prime Minister Gordon Brown in London, Sheikh Ahmed Sharif and the Prime Minster discussed issues related to the current Somali crisis and how Britain could further offer support to assist President Sharif’s Transitional Federal Government (TFG) to tackle the key issues that are proving to be an obstacle to the achievement of long term peace in Somalia such as Al-Shabaab and the fear of Al-Qaeda making Somalia its new international Headquarters. Mr. Brown also personally requested that Sheikh Sharif and his government work hard on the release of the British couple that are still held hostage by Somali Pirates somewhere in Somalia. 
According to the UK TV Channel 4’s Foreign affairs news correspondent, Jonathan Rugman, the UK is about to announce its first aid package for Somalia’s transitional government amid mounting concern that without more international support the war-torn country could become a safe haven for Al-Qaida and this aid package is due to be unveiled during Sheikh Sharif’s visit to the UK this week. According to Mr. Rugman the UK government is widely understood to be offering around £5.5 million towards improving Somalia’s security. However, the exact amount and the other purposes of the financial support have not been made public. It is certain that, as a result of the UK having the largest Somali diaspora population numbers in Europe, the UK government will ask Sheikh Sharif to directly communicate with them, especially the impressionable youths, and to ask for their support in tackling terrorism both in Somali and here in the UK. This coincides with the British Home Secretary, Mr. Alan Johnson, making any membership of Al-Shabaab a criminal offence under UK law. 
In his Monday night address to the Foreign Policy think tank Chatham House, Sheikh Sharif complained that there was not enough international support for him to tackle Al-shabaab. He went on to suggest that all that can be done by him and the TFG is been done but this is not enough. He warned the international community by stating that the danger of terrorism is not confined to Somalia and that it can reach anybody. He went on to conclude by saying that, “The only way to get past this difficulty is to strengthen the government.” 
Whilst Sheikh Sharif is right in his above statement, what is quite clear is that neither he nor his crowned TFG are the government that Somalia needs and wants. Nor could they or would they strengthen anything other than their own tribal positions and financial bank balances. The simple fact is that Mr. Sharif, and his foreign crowned TFG which is made up of all the warlords that have collectively destroyed Somalia do not have the knowledge, expertise, skill and the support of the people needed to make any changes. Mr. Sharif and his undemocratic government, who have enjoyed the support of both the UK and the USA in the form of financial aid and weapons, have made no grounds in capturing the capital city from which they supposedly govern Somalia. In fact, it would be reasonable to suggest that the TFG’s control of Mogadishu ends at the so called gates of the Presidential palace which Mr. Sharif occupies as the so called leader of the Republic of Somalia. 
The idea that Mr. Sharif can help the UK government convince members of the Diaspora to not support Al-Shabaab and not engage in terrorist activities is a joke of epic proportions as the majority of these would prefer Al-Shabaab to his unelected, warlord infested regime any day. As for the Pirates releasing the British couple? 
Well the Sheikh would need to leave Mogadishu to be able to do this wouldn’t he? So, arguably the chances of this happening at worst are farcical and at best, nil.Sheikh Sharif in his speech at Chatham House tries to come across as a desperate reformer who is truly misunderstood by the world but the fact is that he is not misunderstood as the world sees him for what he really is: A weak unelected leader without any real political authority or control.
Since coming to power, Mr. Sharif has increased the popularity of Islamist groups such as Al-Shabaab and Hizbul Islam as well as isolated some of his key advisers and academic supporters through his dithering and inconsistencies. His policies are nonexistent and his future strategy for governing the Somali nation is limited to going around the globe with a begging bowl for every little problem he confronts. The sad fact is (and the Western world must understand this) that it is as a result of the incompetence of the TFG and its leadership that Islamist groups are enjoying the high level of support from the Somali public and to further support them with aid would be about as good as pouring aid money down a deep well with an intention of never seeing it again.
The key obstacles to Somalia’s peace and stability are far too complex for any individual Somali leader to address, let alone an unelected leader who most of his citizens despise. Sheikh Sharif’s poor leadership should not be encouraged by any welcome or invitation by any government anywhere in the world. He and his TFG are far too insignificant to make any real changes in Somalia. 
The foundations of the instability and violence Somalia faces today are as a result of ignorance, poor leadership and blind loyalty to individual tribes. The will to create change and rebuild the Somali nation is not visible anywhere in Somalia as the politicians and businessmen divide the large aid cake between themselves whilst pretending to their financial backers that all that could possibly be done to better the situation on the ground, is been done. Sadly, it is reasonable to suggest that neither Sheikh Sharif nor his warlord cronies in government care about the plight of those caught in the middle as if they did the situation might have been a bit better now. The AU troops and the neighbouring countries such as Ethiopia and Kenya are also in no rush to bring about peace as their nation profits from the misery of the Somali people through aid money been distributed through their countries to the Somali people. 
The Somali people are sick of fighting and all they yearn for is a chance at peace and a normal existence free from violence. To achieve this they need strong leadership with a long term strategy to rebuild the nation. However, instead they get a crowned government made up of all those who contributed to their misery and plight. If Prime Minister Brown was to carry out a referendum on Sheikh Sharif’s leadership in Somalia, most would properly vote to lynch him for his incompetence and the part he has played in escalating the violence in Mogadishu. The only real long term solution to peace in Somalia is to send in well armed and equipped western troops to tackle the Islamist insurgents and then help the people of Somalia to democratically elect a leader that they agree on to lead them to a better future. 
In addition, this elected leadership should be assisted by members of the educated Somali diaspora who truly are interested in playing a role in the reconstruction of their country. In the short term though, it is important for the Western governments to attach stringent conditions to any aid money given to Mr. Sharif and Co. in the hope that they will deliver what they promise to deliver when they come to their countries with a begging bowl.

Puntland Explains Operations Conducted in Galkayo Town (shabelle)
The regional administration of Puntland has explained operations carried out by the police forces of the region and captured more people in north of Galkayo town in Mudug region, officials said on Tuesday.
Muse Ahmed Abdirahman known as (Hasasi), the police chief of Puntland administration said in an interview with Shabelle radio that their forces had captured more people during operations conducted at several neighbourhoods in the north of Galkayo town which is controlled by Puntland.

The commander said that they had been continuing operations to tighten the security and stability of the town adding that they seized more people whom he said were behind more insecurity situations happened whole parts under the control of Puntland. 
“Our aim was to keep and restore the stability of the region. Now, we are perusing the culprits who were burying landmines under the ground recently to bring them before a court,” said Mr. Hasasi 
The statement of puntland administration comes as the police forces were conducting operations to assure the security of the region recently.

Medical scarcity in Hospital in central town (Mareeg)
The doctors and managers of Eeldheer hospital in Galgaduud region in central Somalia said Thursday the worst shortage of medicine and health equipment faced the hospital in Eeldheer district.
Dr: Abdinur Sheikh, the manager of the hospital said the hospital has been working the healthcare care of people in the district and some other people of other districts.
He added that the worst shortage of medicine faced the hospital and there were many challenges facing the people in the area.
He called on the Aid agencies and the Somali community living abroad to send medicine to the hospital to save sick patients in the hospital.
Dr. Abdinur has also talked about severe drought that hit in the region and added that people were starving. Eeldheer hospital was opened in 1993 and was financed by UNICEF and other UN organizations.

Half of Food Aid to Somalia Is Diverted, Report Says by Jeffrey Gettleman and Neil MacFarquhar 
As much as half the food aid sent to Somalia is diverted from needy people to a web of corrupt contractors, radical Islamist militants and local United Nations staff, according to a new Security Council report. 
The report, which has not yet been made public but was shown to The New York Times, outlines a host of problems so grave that it recommends Secretary General Ban Ki-moon open an independent investigation into the World Food Program there. It suggests that the program rebuild the food distribution system — which serves at least 2.5 million people — from scratch to break what it describes as a corrupt cartel of Somali distributors. 
In addition to the diversion of food aid, regional Somali authorities are collaborating with pirates who hijack ships along the lawless coast, the report says, and Somali government ministers have auctioned off diplomatic visas for trips to Europe to the highest bidder, some of whom may have been pirates or insurgents. 
Somali officials denied the visa problem was widespread, and officials for the World Food Program said they had not yet seen the report but would investigate its conclusions once it was presented to the Security Council on March 16. 
The report comes as Somalia’s transitional government is preparing for a military major offensive to retake the capital, Mogadishu, and combat an Islamist insurgency with connections to Al Qaeda. The United States is providing military aid, as the United Nations tries to roll back two decades of anarchy in the country. 
But it may be an uphill battle. According to the report, Somalia’s security forces “remain ineffective, disorganized and corrupt — a composite of independent militias loyal to senior government officials and military officers who profit from the business of war.” 
One American official recently conceded that Somalia’s “best hope” was the government’s new military chief, a 60-year-old former artillery officer who, until a few months ago, was assistant manager at a McDonald’s in suburban Germany. 
The report’s investigators were originally asked to track violations of the United Nations arms embargo on Somalia, but the mandate was expanded. 
Several of the reports’ authors have received specific death threats, and the United Nations recently relocated them from Kenya to New York for safety reasons. 
Possible aid obstructions have been a nettlesome topic for Somalia over the past year and have contributed to the American government holding up aid shipments and United Nations officials recently suspending food programs in some areas. 
It singles out the World Food Program, the single largest aid agency in the crisis-wracked country, as particularly flawed. 
“Some humanitarian resources, notably food aid, have been diverted to military uses,” the report said. “A handful of Somali contractors for aid agencies have formed a cartel and become important power brokers — some of whom channel their profits — or the aid itself — directly to armed opposition groups.” 
These allegations of food aid diversions first surfaced last year, and the World Food Program has consistently denied finding any proof of malfeasance and said that its own recent internal audit found no widespread abuse. 
“We have not yet seen the U.N. Somalia Monitoring Group report,” the World Food Program’s Deputy Executive Director, Amir Abdulla, said Tuesday. “But we will investigate all of the allegations as we have always done in the past if questions have been raised about our operations.” 
The current report’s investigators question how independent that past audit was, and called for an new outside investigation of the United Nations agency. 
“We have to tell these folks that you cannot go on like this, we know what you are doing, you can’t fool us anymore, so you better stop,” said President Ali Bongo Ondimba of Gabon, who was at the United Nations, where his country holds the reins of the Security Council this month. 
The report also charges that Somali officials are selling spots on trips to Europe and that many of the people who are presented as part of an official government entourage are actually pirates or members of militant groups. 
The report says that Somali officials use their connections to foreign governments to get visas and travel documents for people who would not otherwise be able to travel abroad and that many of these people then disappear into Europe and do not come back. 
“Somali ministers, members of parliament, diplomats and ‘freelance brokers’ have transformed access to foreign visas into a growth industry, matched possibly only by piracy, selling visas for $10-15,000 each,” the report said. 
The reports’ authors estimate that dozens, if not hundreds, of Somalis have gained access to Europe or beyond through this under-the-table visa business.
“Maybe there’s been one or two cases that have happened over the years,” said Mohamed Osman Aden, a Somali diplomat in Kenya. “But these are just rumors. These allegations have been going around for years.” 
The report also takes aim at some of Somalia’s richest, most influential businessmen, Somalia’s so-called money lords. One, Abdulkadir M. Nur, known as Eno, is married to a woman who plays a prominent role in a local aid agency that is supposed to verify whether food aid is actually delivered. 
That “potential loophole” that could “offer considerable potential of large-scale diversion,” the report said. It also accuses Mr. Nur of staging the hijacking of his own trucks and then later selling the food. 
In an email to The Times, Mr. Nur said he had sent the investigators many documents that “showed very clearly that the gossip and rumors they are investigating are untrue,” including the alleged hijacking or any link to insurgents. 
He said his wife merely sits on the board of the local aid agency and that only “a tiny fraction” of the food he transported was designated for that aid agency. 
In September Somalia’s president, Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed, wrote a letter to Mr. Ban, the Secretary General, defending Mr. Nur as a “very conscientious, diligent, and hardworking person” and saying that if it was not for the contractors, “many Somalis would have perished.” 
The report questions why the World Food Program would steer 80 percent of its transportation contracts for Somalia, worth about $200 million, to three Somali businessmen, especially when they are suspected of connections to Islamist insurgents. 
The report says that fraud is pervasive, with approximately 30 percent of aid skimmed by local partners and local World Food Program personnel, 10 percent by the ground transporters and 5 to 10 percent by the armed group in control of the area. That means as much as half of food never makes it to the people who desperately need it. 
In January, the American government halted tens of millions of dollars of aid shipments to southern Somalia because of fears of such diversions, and American officials believe that some of the aid may have fallen into the hands of the Shabab, the most militant of Somalia’s insurgent groups. 
The report also said that the president of Puntland, a semi-autonomous region in northern Somalia, has extensive ties to pirates in the area, who then funnel some of the money they make from hijacking ships to authorities. 
Puntland authorities were unable to be reached on Tuesday, but Mr. Mohamed, the Somali diplomat, dismissed the allegations, saying that the Puntland government has jailed more than 150 pirates and hasn’t “received a penny from them.” 
“It’s unfortunate that this monitoring group thinks they can stick everything on the Somalis,” he said.

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

While his people and country are dying Sheik Sharif sodaes and dines at 220,000.- US reception, paid by the diaspora.
LITTLE BRED – SMALL TRUE AID – BUT MUCH FOR WEAPONS !!!!! – and no mercy for the Chandlers!
Gordon Brown pledges £5m for Somali fighting fund by Damien McElroy (Telegraph)
Gordon Brown pledged British support for the transitional government of Somalia yesterday as its Western-backed president prepared to launch an offensive to seize control of Mogadishu from al-Qaeda linked fighters.

Britain has offered £5.7 million to fund the build-up of an official Somalian security force and has dramatically increased British aid to Somalia tenfold to £30 million since Sheikh Sharif Ahmed was installed as president last year. 
President Ahmed said he welcomed foreign support as he targets al-Shabaab, the fundamentalist movement that has appealed for British Somalis to train as suicide bombers.
Gen Mohammad Gelle Kahiye. the commander of the Somali forces, revealed last week that the Americans are “helping us” with drone operations and air strikes in a Mogadishu offensive to be launched this month. A US official told the New York Times that special forces would be “moving in, hitting and getting out.” 
President Ahmed said yesterday his forces needed help to conduct operations on the ground. “If the US government provides us with the air support, it will help the situation,” he said. 
The struggling forces are heavily dependent on foreign assistance to carry out the assault. Kenya is widely reported to have trained 2,500 men selected from refugee camps at the Manyani Kenya Wildlife camp on its northern coast. In addition to cash for African Union forces, Britain has provided advisers to commanders establishing the new Somali army. 
The writ of the Transitional Federal Government barely extends beyond the boundaries of the presidential compound, Villa Somalia and bases maintained by United Nations and African peacekeepers. Al Shabaab control most of the capital and central and south Somalia. 
President Ahmed has told Western officials that his government plans to push back his enemy “block by block.” 
Key targets of the offensive are the University and Bakara market, which are dominated by al-Shabaab, the key al-Qaeda ally in Somalia. 
Western intelligence reports estimate that as many as 70 British residents travelled to Somalia for jihadist training in the last year. 
British officials opposed the election of President Ahmed over suspicions of his background as a leader of the Islamic Courts, a militia that was ousted by the US-backed Ethiopian army in 2006. 
But President Ahmed used his religious credentials to appeal to British Somalis reject the fundamentalists. “”I want to prevent people from using religion for their own purposes,” he told Chatham House, the London think tank. “We do not have this concept of suicide in the holy books. I urge my people to look, it is not there.”

Somali President visits Tooting Islamic Centre by Paul Cahalan

The Somali President visited Tooting during an official UK visit to discuss Somali politics and piracy. 
Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed met Tooting MP Sadiq Khan and members of Tooting Islamic Centre on Tuesday. 
Farouk Valimahomed, chairman of Tooting Islamic Centre, said: “Many of the children who attend our madrassa, mosque and schools are of Somalian heritage, and it is important for us to maintain their links in a two-way relationship with Somalia.

UK announces additional aid for Somalia (United Kingdom Department for International Development (DFID)
The UK will provide humanitarian aid to help Somalia provide emergency food, clean water and medicine for 3.2 million people, International Development Secretary, Douglas Alexander announced today. 
Mr Alexander made the announcement as he met Somali President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed in London to discuss Britain’s aid programme in Somalia. 
£7.5 million in UKaid will be channelled through the UN Humanitarian Response Fund, UNICEF and the International Committee of the Red Cross [N.B.: From where usually less than 30% really materializes in the country] to help deliver emergency food for hundreds of thousands of malnourished children and provide lifesaving water supplies. 
The UK also announced £5.8 million for a new programme to help promote peace and stability in the region by supporting reconciliation and local peace building initiatives between clans and communities. 
Local authorities in Somalia will work with communities to identify what services they need most urgently. This could include constructing new water wells, roads, markets, health centres or toilets. 
The funding will also support civil society groups to ensure that the government is held to account and delivers on its pledges to its people. 
The Transitional Federal Government (TFG) of Somalia will have a crucial role to play in managing the move towards a new and more stable form of government. The UK will assist the TFG to help them deliver a political transition by August 2011, including building the expertise of the civil service and drafting key laws. 
International Development Secretary Douglas Alexander said: 
“Instability and poverty in Somalia are a threat to the well-being of the Somali people and to international peace and security. 
“That is why we are providing vital emergency aid in the form of food and water, as well as taking steps to create a safer and more stable Somalia. 
“Somalia remains one of the most difficult and a dangerous place in the world to deliver aid. With 40 per cent of the population in need of emergency aid and over 1.5 million people forced to leave their homes, we need other donors to come forward and support the aid effort in Somalia” 
UKaid has already reached over 1.2m people in Somalia this year. This includes providing a basic package of immunisations and vitamin A to 144,000 children under-five. It has also helped treat 120,000 children for acute malnutrition, and provided safe drinking water for 300,000 people. 
The United Nations is reporting more than 1.5 million people have had to flee their homes due to the security situation. Over 3 million people, or 40 per cent of the population, need emergency aid – the largest proportion of any country in the world.

Disengaging >From Somalia
Interview with Bronwyn E. Bruton by Deborah Jerome (CFR)

Decade Of The Drone: America’s Aerial Assassins by Rick Rozoff 
2010 is the last year of the new century and millennium and is the tenth consecutive year of the United States’ war in Afghanistan and in the 15-nation area of responsibility subsumed under Operation Enduring Freedom. In early March American military deaths in the Greater Afghan War theater -Afghanistan, Cuba (Guantanamo Bay), Djibouti, Eritrea, Jordan, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, the Philippines, Seychelles, Sudan, Tajikistan, Turkey, Uzbekistan and Yemen – surpassed the 1,000 mark. 
This year is also the tenth year of the first ground and the first Asian war fought by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which wages wars from and not to protect the nations of the northern Atlantic Ocean. 
2010 is the tenth and deadliest year in Washington’s use of unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) for targeted assassinations and untargeted “collateral damage.” 
Originally designed for battlefield surveillance and reconnaissance, albeit often to call in lethal military strikes, drones have been employed by the U.S. since 2001 to identify and kill human targets. 
The first “hunter-killer” unmanned combat air vehicle, the Predator, was used by the Pentagon in Bosnia in 1995 and later in the 78-day air war against Yugoslavia in 1999. 
In 2001 Predators were equipped with Hellfire missiles and were deployed from Pakistan and Uzbekistan to launch attacks inside Afghanistan. The following year they were flown from the U.S. military base at Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti for the same purpose in Yemen. 
The Predator and its successor, the Reaper, capable of carrying fifteen times more weaponry and flying at three times the speed, have been used for deadly attacks in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia and with particularly murderous effect in Pakistan since the autumn of 2008. They are equipped with cameras connected by satellite links to bases in the United States. 
In October Vice Admiral Robert Moeller, deputy commander of U.S. Africa Command, announced that Reapers, “capable of carrying a dozen guided bombs and missiles,” [1] were deployed to Seychelles off the eastern coast of the African continent to patrol the Indian Ocean. 
Radio Australia ran a story on March 8 that stated “US President Barack Obama may have taken his time to decide on his Afghanistan policy, but he’s also now become more of an enthusiast for drone missile strikes than his predecessor.” [2] In both Afghanistan and Pakistan as well as in Yemen. 
Discussing a report by the New America Foundation, the station documented that deadly U.S. drone missile strikes on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border have been increased by 50 per cent since the Obama administration took over the White House a year ago January 20. 
Citing the above-mentioned think tank, the Radio Australia report said there have been 64 drone strikes in South Asia in the past fourteen months compared to 45 under the George W. Bush administration between the invasion of Afghanistan in October of 2001 and January of 2009. 
Bill Roggio, editor of the Long War Journal, was interviewed and said “there is an average five to seven strikes a month although in January there were 11.” 
He was further quoted describing the qualitative as well as the quantitative escalation of American drone warfare in Afghanistan and Pakistan: “The main drone is the ‘Predator’ which carries the ‘Hellfire’ anti-tank missile. 
“The ‘Reaper,’ the older brother of the Predator, they made that so it could carry larger Hellfire missiles as well as it can carry, again, the 500 pound GPS (global position system)-guided bombs. So they’re very, you know, this is sort of a revolution in air warfare.” [3] 
The Reaper carries a thousand pounds of munitions and is also equipped for the Sidewinder heat-seeking air-to-air missile. Plans for adding Stinger air-to-air missiles are underway. 
In terms of the human cost of Obama’s 2008 Afghan war campaign pledge – “If we have actionable intelligence about high-level al Qaeda targets in Pakistan’s border region, we must act if Pakistan will not or cannot” – at the beginning of this year Pakistan’s influential Dawn News published an account of what that policy has meant to Pakistanis. In an article titled “Over 700 killed in 44 drone strikes in 2009,” the source, quoting Pakistani government statistics, wrote: 
“Of the 44 predator strikes carried out by US drones in the tribal areas of Pakistan over the past 12 months, only five were able to hit their actual targets, killing five key Al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders, but at the cost of over 700 innocent civilians.” 
For each alleged al-Qaeda or Taliban member killed by missiles fired from U.S. drones “140 innocent Pakistanis also had to die. Over 90 per cent of those killed in the deadly missile strikes were civilians, claim authorities….On average, 58 civilians were killed in these attacks every month, 12 persons every week and almost two people every day.” [4] 
The dead may have been armed or unarmed, males or females, adults or children. What they have in common is that they were targeted based on “actionable intelligence” provided by someone on the ground, not necessarily a disinterested party. 
Last October, as the killing had begun in earnest, UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial Executions Philip Alston warned: 
“My concern is that these drones, these Predators, are being operated in a framework which may well violate international humanitarian law and international human rights law. 
“The onus is really on the government of the United States to reveal more about the ways in which it makes sure that arbitrary executions, extrajudicial executions, are not in fact being carried out through the use of these weapons.” [5] 
Undaunted, the U.S. substantially intensified the attacks. 
This January China’s Xinhua News Agency interviewed Pakistani political analyst Farrukh Saleem, who said that American drone missile attacks in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas had increased from 17 in 2008 to 43 in 2009 with more than 70 expected to be delivered this year. 
Saleem was quoted warning that “Such attacks always trigger violence, suicide attacks and casualties in Pakistan. So more drone attacks mean more violence in Pakistan.” [6] 
On the same day Senator John McCain was in the Pakistani capital of Islamabad and praised the drone attacks as “an effective part of the U.S. strategy.” [7] 
It was reported last December 17 that a U.S. drone strike had killed at least 20 people in Pakistan’s North Waziristan Agency and on the 27th that 13 more were killed in the same region. 
Since the New Year began the lethal attacks have only intensified. The following is not an attempt at a comprehensive account, but is gathered from assorted press reports. 
On January 1 it was reported that five people were killed and several more injured by two American drone attacks east of the North Waziristan capital. As to the identities of the slain, Reuters quoted a local security official as saying, “The bodies were burned beyond recognition. We are trying to determine their identity.” [8] The previous night two more were killed and several injured in another strike. 
Reports continued to detail missile strikes and deaths in the nation’s tribal areas. 
January 3: Five more people were killed in North Waziristan in a drone attack. 
January 6: At least thirteen were killed and eight wounded by two back-to-back missile strikes. “According to Pakistan’s Geo News, a suspected drone fired two missiles at a house in the Datta Khel region in the first attack, killing seven people. 
“Another strike occurred as local people began retrieving bodies from the rubble of the house, killing five people. The identities of those killed in the attacks were unknown.” [9] 
January 8: Five were killed in a village in North Waziristan. 
January 9: An American drone fired two missiles into a village, Ismail Khan, in North Waziristan which killed four people. 
January 13: Thirteen people were killed in the village of Tappi in the same agency. “A senior security official confirmed the death toll, and said four missiles were fired from unmanned planes in the remote area.” [10] 
January 15: Fifteen were killed in the village of Zannini in North Waziristan. Six were killed in the village of Bichi. 
January 17: At least twenty were killed in the Shaktoi area of South Waziristan. 
January 19: Six people were killed in the village of Booya in North Waziristan according to Pakistani intelligence officials. 
January 24: Pakistani insurgents claimed to have shot down a U.S. drone in North Waziristan, one of eight drones seen flying over the area. 
January 29: Between six and fifteen people were killed in the North Waziristan town of Muhammad Khel in a reported attack on the Haqquani Network by three American missiles. 
February 2: The U.S. fired as many as eight missiles into four villages in North Waziristan, killing twenty nine people. 
February 14: Five people were killed in a drone attack in the same agency. At least three others were wounded. 
February 15: A drone strike allegedly killed a Chinese Uighur separatist leader in the same district. 
February 17: A U.S. missile strike killed three and injured two victims in North Waziristan. 
February 18: Four people were killed in a missile strike on a vehicle in the same agency. 
February 24: At least thirteen alleged militants were killed in a U.S. drone attack in the Dargah Mandi area of North Waziristan. 
March 8: An American drone fired five missiles into a house near Miranshah, the capital of North Waziristan, killing at least five people and wounding four. 
Approximately 160 people have been killed in drone missile strikes in Pakistan in slightly over two months this year. If that pace continues, 2010 will be far deadlier than the year before: 960 to 700. If, as seems more likely, the amount of the attacks increases, the death toll will be even higher than the nearly 140 per cent increase the above extrapolation threatens. 
Drone missile attacks are increasingly becoming the weapon of choice of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (as in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq), the Joint Special Operations Command (Yemen) and the Air Force, which as of last year had 195 Predators and 28 Reapers. 
All indications are that they will soon have more. 
This year the Obama administration has sought from Congress $33 billion more for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq “on top of a record request for $708 billion for the Defense Department next year.” [11] 
With the new Quadrennial Defense Review, “The pilotless drones used for
surveillance and attack missions in Afghanistan and Pakistan are a priority, with a goal of speeding up the purchase of new Reaper drones and expansion of Predator and Reaper drone flights through 2013.” [12] 
A February 1 article called “China, Iran Prompt U.S. Air-Sea Battle Plan in Strategy Review,” revealed that in line with the new Quadrennial Defense Review a “joint Air Force-Navy plan would combine the strengths of each service to conduct long-range strikes that could utilize a new generation of bombers, a new cruise missile and drones launched from aircraft carriers.” [13] 
As the U.S. is massively expanding its military buildup on the Pacific island of Guam, “The Army is building a missile defense system on the island and the Air Force is adding more drones.” [14] 
In mid-January prominent U.S. senator Carl Levin called for “using drones to launch airstrikes” in Yemen, adding the demand for “everything from physical actions that could be accomplished in terms of use of drones or air attacks” to “clandestine actions.” [15] 
Regarding the strengthening of military ties between the U.S. and Yemen, a Russian news source disclosed that “Under a new classified cooperation agreement, the U.S. would be able to fly cruise missiles, fighter jets or unmanned armed drones against targets in the country, but would remain publicly silent on its role in the airstrikes.” [16] 
In late January the Wall Street Journal reported: 
“The U.S. military’s involvement in Yemen has already begun to grow….[T]he U.S. has increased the number of surveillance drones flying over Yemen, as well as the number of unmanned aircraft outfitted with missiles capable of striking targets on the ground, according to a senior U.S. official with direct knowledge of the deployments. 
“Most drones operating outside of Iraq and Afghanistan are controlled by the Central Intelligence Agency, but the official said the drones operating over Yemen belong to the military’s secretive Joint Special Operations Command.” [17] 
The commander of Joint Special Operations Command until 2008 was now General Stanley McChrystal, military chief of what will soon be 150,000 U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan. 
Drone missile assassinations and the indiscriminate slaughter of civilians that often accompany them are an integral component of his counterinsurgency strategy in South Asia. The qualitative escalation of drone attacks in Pakistan and Afghanistan began when McChrystal replaced David McKiernan as top U.S. and NATO-led International Security Assistance Force commander in Afghanistan last June. 
In other parts of the world, the Pentagon is to contribute military drones for the Northern Coasts manoeuvres in Finland this September, the “largest naval military exercise that has ever been seen in Finnish territorial waters.” [18] 
A resolution issued by the Finnish Peacefighters in Lapland last month mentioned “a program on Finnish TV about Unmanned Aerial Vehicles being tested in Lapland at the Kemijarvi Airfield. This actual training area stretches to the Russian border and follows the border for tens of kilometers. 
“The strategy for Star Wars, which the US is developing, means that the pilotless plane is directed from a command center in Nevada, and follows the terrain and movements on a data screen thousands of kilometers away and maneuvers the drones. These drones have been used in Afghanistan and they have killed a lot of civilians.” [19] 
While Stanley McChrystal was commander of the Joint Special Operations Command the U.S. conducted eleven deadly predator attacks in Iraq in April of 2008. At the time “Defense Secretary Robert Gates prodded the Air Force to do more to rush drones to the war zone.” 
An American newspaper reported at the time that “Commanders are expected to rely more on unmanned systems as 30,000 U.S. troops sent last year are withdrawn. The military has dozens of Predators in Iraq and Afghanistan. In all it operates 5,000 drones, 25 times more than it had in 2001.” [20] 
Last December the government of Venezuela called on the world community to condemn incursions into its airspace by U.S. military drones operating from Aruba and from Curacao in the Netherlands Antilles. The type of drones that flew for several days over Venezuelan territory wasn’t specified, but under both bilateral and NATO military obligations the Netherlands would not refuse the U.S. the right to station Predator and Reaper drones on bases in their Caribbean island colonies. 
The United States has not only increased its arsenal of unmanned aerial vehicles by twenty five times over the past decade, it has massively increased the range and lethality of its hunter-killer drones. A recent report disclosed that beginning in 2008 the Air Force Research Laboratory started to “build the ultimate assassination robot,” described as “a tiny, armed drone for U.S. special forces to employ in terminating ‘high-value targets.’” [21] 
Formerly special forces teams were deployed or cruise missiles were fired to assassinate intended victims. In the case of the second and frequently the first the risk was that they couldn’t be used twice. 
Predator and Reaper drones return after missions and their supply of Hellfire missiles is replenished for further deadly attacks. 
They have become Washington’s preferred 21st century weapons for perpetrating international assassinations.
Notes:
1) Associated Press, October 25, 2009
2) Radio Australia, March 8, 2010
3) Ibid
4) Dawn News, January 2, 2010
5) BBC News, October 28, 2009
6) Xinhua News Agency, January 8, 2010
7) Ibid
8) Reuters, January 1, 2010
9) ADN Kronos International, January 6, 2010
10) Agence France-Presse, January 14, 2010
11) Associated Press, January 12, 2010
12) Ibid
13) Bloomberg News, February 1, 2010
14) Voice of America News, January 19, 2010
15) Press TV, January 13, 2010
16) Russian Information Agency Novosti, December 30, 2009
17) Wall Street Journal, January 27, 2010
18) Helsingin Sanomat, January 28, 2010
19) http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato/message/44296
20) USA Today, April 29, 2008
21) Wired, January 5, 2010

War On Terror

THE GUANTANAMO PROBLEM
“History… should not be forgotten. History itself, whether bad or good, should not be forgotten.” - Chen Zhiyong 
“The detention facilities at Guantanamo for individuals covered under this order shall be closed as soon as practicable, and no later than 1 year from the date of this order.” - President Obama by Executive Order, January 22, 2009.  Time’s up.
I remember the years after 9/11 when the government announced they were stowing away “enemy combatants” at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. CUBA? I remember thinking. Why Cuba? Aren’t they communist and not exactly on cordial relations with the USA? I never pursued my curiosity further than this for many years until I moved abroad to communist China and completely changed my views on the War of Terror. 
The origins of Guantanamo’s long, strange trip under US control began when the U.S.S. Maine exploded on February 15, 1898 in Havana’s harbor while Cuba was revolting against the Spanish empire. While the Maine was certainly not attacked by the Spanish navy, to this day it is uncertain whether stored ammunition exploded or the ship hit a mine. At any rate, the battleship was an unwelcome military presence.  (Photo shown entering Havana harbor three weeks prior to explosion.)

William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal published fictional drawings of Spanish saboteurs attacking the vessel after famously cabling his journalist, “You furnish the pictures, I’ll furnish the war.” As a result, Congress declared war against Spain in April 1898. The war cry was “Remember the Maine! To hell with Spain!“ 
Led by future President Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders, the motley army won several quick battles before malaria and dysentery could overwhelm them. While Cuba was technically made independent by the Treaty of Paris in 1898, the US government forced Cuba to add the infamous Platt Amendment to its constitution, stripping away completely its sovereignty and enabling the US to intervene in domestic affairs, making it a de facto satellite of the United States from 1901 until 1934. Marines were sent to quell insurrections in 1906, 1912, 1917, and 1920. (1) 
Guantanamo Bay, consisting of 45 square miles, was part of the Platt Amendment, and the US Navy established a refueling station to project power around the Caribbean and Panama Canal. Cuba’s independence had no effect on the base besides changing it’s rental agreement. When former lawyer Fidel Castro took over as dictator of a communist police state in 1959 following the Cuban Revolution, he attempted to remove the naval base and, after cashing the first rental check, has not cashed any additional checks sent by the government through the present day. 
A Cuban minefield still borders the base on land – the US removed its minefield under Clinton – and the Cuban government still treats the base as hostile. Perhaps from an American perspective, an equivalent situation would exist if China were to take over part of the coast of Oregon, plunk down a base for its navy complete with Starbucks, Pizza Hut, KFC, and McDonald’s, imprison and torture their criminals, terrorists, and prisoners of war there, and then send checks for a rent that we never cash. 
It should be plainly obvious that the proper action to take is to not only close down the prison camp, but also to eventually close down the entire military base and return the property to Cuba. This would go a long way towards restoring peace, commerce, and friendship with the impoverished and isolated country. While the harsh socialist economic policies of the Castro regime certainly has not done Cubans much good, neither have American trade embargoes or the attempted CIA invasion in 1961 helped Americans. 
It’s time to let bygones be bygones and simply return the property to Cuba. Now, what to do about the prisoners? Well, I will get to that. Let’s first take a look at the incumbent’s claim that closing Guantanamo Bay would weaken national security in part two.
My thoughts on how to deal with the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, and how my opinion differs from Congressman Charlie Dent
Dent:  “I can assure you firsthand that closing the facility is impractical at this time, and, if accomplished, would further weaken the security of our homeland.” 
Dent is referring to only closing the prison, and while it is obvious that closing overnight is not practical, he fails to outline specifically WHY it is impractical, and WHY it would weaken security. During World War II, we kept German prisoners of war on our soil, and the ability of our military police to keep all prisoners secured in secluded location should be unquestioned.  He does refer to the $200 million price tag from the Obama administration for a new prison, but placing this into perspective, this is about the same cost as the oil burned in a single day by the Pentagon (395,000 in 2008) multiplied by the “fully-burdened” price of delivering it to Afghanistan ($400 a gallon). 
Dent then wrote, “The government has already spent millions of dollars in state-of-the-art infrastructure and the guards are exceptionally professional. This is no Abu Ghraib and any attempt to characterize it as such is a blatant lie. The facility provides more freedom of movement than US-based maximum-security prisons and while Pennsylvanians struggle to feed their families, detainees get a daily 6,500-calorie diet and most have access to classes, sports, TV, and even video games.“ 
Many of the prisoners are charged with assisting the Al-Qaeda terrorists who attacked our country on 9/11. While I can understand providing the Koran for their religion and some freedom of movement, why are we providing them with video games and TV? While I find it hard to believe that Guantanamo is a vacation spot compared to Pennsylvania, does Dent not get the supreme irony of freely spending millions upon billions of dollars while some residents in our district struggling to feed their families?  Most of the prisoners left have been detained for over 6 years with no trial whatsoever. If they are guilty of crimes connected with 9/11, they should be tried on the evidence, not left indefinitely to rot in prison. 
Dent also neatly tries to avoid mentioning that Guantanamo prisoners have been tortured in the past, and the reasons for holding “enemy combatants” off-shore in Guantanamo and the extraordinary rendition to other CIA bases was mainly so that torture could be used, such as the well-known waterboarding of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and the British national Binyam Mohamed who was released and determined to be innocent of any crime after being extradited to a secret CIA prison in Morocco where his jailers mutilated his genitalia among many other forms of torture. 
Dent: “We still find our military men and women capturing terrorists on the fields of battle. However, these fields are no longer limited to Iraq and Afghanistan. They include the coastlines of Yemen and Somalia, neighborhoods in Texas and Colorado, and the skies above Michigan. The administration may not want to call it a war on terror, but that’s what it is. Where, then, shall we hold these prisoners of war – these enemy combatants?” 
Dent’s blurring of the terms “terrorists” and “prisoners of war” is highly misleading. The truth is that the current wars are being fought against mostly insurgent tribal Muslim rebels, and the United States is allied with their opposing Muslim tribe.  Terrorism is simply a tactic of war.  The United States – or any other nation – cannot ever win a war against a tactic, we can only win wars against defined enemies. For instance, civilians in Pakistan where homes and innocent lives have been mistakenly destroyed by Predator drones could also argue that this is also a form of terrorism instead of America’s unique, inhuman term “collateral damage.” 
If the Canadians or Russians ever invaded our country and we fought back, would any resistance on our part still be construed as “terrorism”? Were the French actions of sabotage during WWII against the Nazis or the original Boston Tea Party with its tar-and-feathering also “acts of terrorism”? In many ways, the actions of the minutemen at Lexington and Concord when the American Revolution first started against the British could be seen as cowardly acts as we shot at them from the forest rather than formally lining up on a field of battle. 
Americans must place ourselves in the shoes of those we are attacking. Many that have joined the Taliban or Al-Qaeda have done so not because of a call to jihad by Bin Laden, but because their family members and friends have been killed.  Many are at war against the United States solely because we are over there, occupying their lands. It is highly unlikely that Osama Bin Laden would have been able to convince the 19 hijackers who killed nearly 3,000 Americans on 9/11 to commit suicide if American troops had not been stationed in the Holy Land of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, and many more countries – and presently the US military has over 761 bases in 150 of the world’s 194 countries if you want to be exact. 
As Congress has never declared war against any nation, including Afghanistan, Iraq, or Pakistan, as required by the Constitution (Article 1, Section 8), this does place our country into an awkward position.  My personal beliefs are:

• All Al-Qaeda charged with acts related to the 9/11 attacks or acts against American civilians not located in the war zones of Afghanistan, Iraq, or Pakistan, should be given a trial by jury.
• All tribal insurgents, Taliban, Al-Qaeda, etc. who attack American troops on foreign soil in whatever manner should be treated as prisoners of war and humanely detained by the military until the end of the wars’ hostilities. They should never be subjected to torture.
• The Bushian term Dent uses – “enemy combatants” – is childish conniving to thwart the rule of law by inventing new terms in order to torture and unlawfully detain individuals. The creation of kangaroo military courts as evidenced by the Military Commissions Act of 2006 is to be condemned.

WHAT TO DO WITH GUANTANAMO’S PRISONERS???

1. I believe that the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, if charged with an act of aggression, including terrorism, against American civilians in connection with 9/11 or otherwise, should be given a trial by jury, though depending on the exact circumstances may be under maritime law. These are criminal acts and should be treated as such. If there is no evidence to place them on trial, they should be released in accordance with our law – we will already have detained most of them for the better part of a decade. There is nothing to fear by giving these individuals constitutional protections since if abiding by the Constitution is good enough for me, it will have to be good enough for an alleged criminal and terrorist, no matter how much I myself hold terrorist acts in utter disdain.
2. I believe all prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, if charged with an act of aggression, including terrorism, against the American military or military contractors following 9/11 on foreign soil should be held as prisoners of war until the end of hostilities. If there is a case where an act of aggression may NOT have been committed against the military, a hearing can be held by the military to determine if there is enough evidence to continue holding the prisoner of war, but sentencing, capital punishment, or additional punishment should NOT be the subject of any such hearings. They should be treated humanely and not subjected to torture under ANY circumstances.
3. As outlined in Part 1, for historical reasons Guantanamo Bay clearly belongs to Cuba so once again, my stance is to support the closure of the entire military base, including the prison.
4. Those detained under #1 can be moved to a secluded location in the United States where they can be imprisoned and given their trial by jury. (Obviously, I do recognize that finding an impartial jury may be difficult, so details surrounding jury selection are a valid point for debate.)
5. Those detained under #2 above can be either be imprisoned by the military police in the United States or moved back into prisons in the occupied countries. Again, the United States is responsible to never torture and safely detain these prisoners of war.
6. To further elucidate the position of the United States’s “war on terror,” Congress should hold an up or down vote on the wars and also clearly specify the enemy and how victory is to be achieved. This is owed to the American people.  While I would vote against either war, I would support issuing letters of marque and reprisal, as outlined in my Afghanistan War plank, to address Al-Qaeda specifically.

America used to believe that individuals were innocent until proven guilty by jury in a court of law, no matter how heinous the crime. 
America used to believe that torture is to be condemned as the actions of uncivilized brutes, and is unbecoming the most highly advanced society on earth. 
America used to believe that without a warrant and probable cause, the government has no right or ability to search you as stated in the Fourth Amendment. As seen by the recent backdoor re-authorization of the PATRIOT Act, Congress and the President are out of touch with protecting individual rights. 
If America does not return to our roots in the rule of law, history teaches dark days are ahead. We must reject the actions of so-called representatives in Congress and replace them with those who believe in the rule of law and will abide by their oaths to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. 
For reference, here are links to my Iraq War and Afghanistan War planks. 
For the Republic and the Constitution, 
Jake Towne 
** The Fourth Amendment: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” 
_______________________________ 
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. 
Veritas numquam perit. Veritas odit moras. Veritas vincit. Truth never perishes. Truth hates delay. Truth conquers. 
Tu ne cede malis sed contra audentior ito. Do not give in to evil but proceed ever more boldly against it.
(1) Note:  The Philippines, Guam, and Puerto Rico were also transferred to US sovereignty following the Treaty of Paris. The Filipinos were not granted self-rule and were consistently patronized as our “little brown brothers” by the President and many others. The Filipinos constantly rebelled against the American occupation, costing over 4,000 US soldiers’ lives and likely several hundred thousand Filipino dead from reprisals. Many Filipinos cooperated with the Japanese when they invaded the day of Pearl Harbor.  Although several details are incorrect, please see also Chalmers Johnson’s The Sorrows of Empire, pages 39-45.
(*) Libertarian Jake Towne, the Champion of the Constitution, is running for U.S. Congress in Pennsylvania’s 15th District in the 2010 election as a citizen unaffiliated with any political parties.
 

We would have to ask the question when is someone going to address this problem and do something about it. We have inquiry after inquiry that appears on face value as being constructive when in actual fact it has the opposite effect. We currently have the War Crimes Tribunals established in Kuala Lumpur and the Russell Tribunal in the United Kingdom and the Iraq Inquiry also in the UK. No one is bringing forward the case of  the Genocide that is being caused by current weapons used or having been used in the Balkans – Kuwait – Iraq – Afghanistan – Pakistan – Lebanon – Gaza and now possible Somalia and Yemen. 
No one would dare to admit that these weapons are intentionally wiping out those people who live in predominant Islamic countries who also happen to have vast reserves of natural resources such as oil or gas. No one would understand that areas of conflict are intentionally created so as to divide and conquer a particular country such as Georgia in order to allow the West to install their massive pipelines for the transit of Caspian oil and gas to the European Market in competition with Russia. 
Whilst talking about inquiries let’s recall the Goldstone Report which came about as a direct result of a UN inquiry into war crimes in Gaza. We can see loose reference to White Phosphorus (WP) but very little attention is given to the much bigger war crimes carried out by the IDF in the use of WMD’s. We have the Israel Government and the Pro Israel Lobby Groups protesting that this report was too one sided when in actual fact it did not go far enough. 
It is my opinion that all of these inquiries and reports are decoys to make it look as if someone is doing the right thing when in actual fact they are deceiving us from the real truth which is  that all of the above countries military forces are using WMD’s (Nuclear) weapons on a daily basis. 
These weapons are not only contaminating the target countries but also all the adjacent countries and the greater world. When will we all see through this false façade and understand that this is genocide on a huge scale. These weapons have the combined effect of reducing the world’s population on a massive scale and that is “Genocide”. 
Let’s just take Iraq as an example. We have gross contamination in the regions of Fallujah, Baghdad and Basra but the contamination does not stop at that. If we take Depleted Uranium as an example…it half life is 4.5 billion years and when it becomes a nano particle aerosol it becomes not only extremely lethal but also totally indiscriminate. These weapons that are used on a daily basis directly affect the DNA in humans and therefore have the potential to kill the genetics of any country. 
The contamination never goes away. It’s in the air, in the soil/sand and in the water table. It becomes airborne again every time there is a strong wind or is picked up in a sand storm. It is blown around by aircraft taxiing out and taking off from airfields and by the down wash from helicopters. The only time it is not in the immediate vicinity of the air we breathe is when it is rained out. The problem still remains because it doesn’t go away…..the rain moves it from above to below where it contaminates the soil and ground water, lakes and rivers etc. Then the dry air mass that happens to be somewhere else brings the nano particles back into your patch for the whole cycle to start again. This is called secondary contamination. 
This type of contamination can be enhanced by the daily ongoing construction programmes associated with the rebuilding of war torn regions. Gaza is a typical example whereby this small densely populated strip was blasted by the IDF with WMD’s that not only contaminated Gaza but also crossed the border into Israel (the country that used it) to contaminate it own people. Because it is totally indiscriminate these nano particles also drifted on the wind into adjacent countries, the entire Middle East and the World. 
The UN authorized the contaminated rubble in the Gaza Strip to be removed and pulverized and then re distributed to surface roads and streets in Gaza. The decision was in violation of their own protocol, especially when radioactive contamination is suspected (as in the case of Gaza). This ill conceived operation will continue for around a year and one can only imagine the results from the secondary contamination. 
We are listening to the terrible stories coming out of Falluja, Iraq as an example where women are now being asked not to have babies. Those that do have babies are now having still births or giving birth to grossly disfigured babies. Can we see how hypocritical this world has become when the US have built a brand new hospital in Falluja to take care of the problem that they themselves created. We can now see how slow genocide can take place. 
First you have the masses of people who have already died or who are dying from all forms of cancers and other related medical conditions associated with these WMD’s and then you have the terrible genetic defects of newborns. To then have your government and medical professionals tell you not to have children can then lead to the loss of your civilization. As one man once put it when he pointed a finger at the US and said “You have killed the genetics of my country”…..what they didn’t tell you is that the US all killed the “Seed Bank” of Iraq…..the very place where agriculture began…..that once was the garden of the world………I am sorry to tell you that this has now all gone….thanks to the US and greedy companies such as Monsanta with their GM crops, pesticides and herbicides etc. 
So how far has this gone and how much human and environmental damage has been caused? We first have to look at the chart I have made up which shows all the areas of past and current areas of conflict where these WMD’s have been used. They are marked with a star and the air flow on this particular day reveals how these nano particles can move around the earth. On can see in some case that some countries get a concentrated dosage, courtesy of a low pressure system or in some cases the vortex brings the nano particles around for a second dosage some time later. It must be fully understood that no one can avoid this fallout…it’s in and around us all. This chart does not show the smaller vortexes or the localized coastal weather. 
DU contamination first started off in the Balkans and the level of cancers in that region is now out of control. Many people returning from a holiday are reporting all their friends and relatives are dying from cancer related problems and the local graveyards cannot accommodate the dead. In Falluja (Iraq) Dr Safa Katfan, a member of the BMA said: “I’ve been in the medical profession for 30 years; I’ve never heard of or seen such congenital deformities as in Iraq today.” Babies have been born with multiple heads, multiple tumours, with heart defects, missing limbs, spinal deformities and nervous system problems. They are seeing 2-3 cases each and every day. “We are talking about an epidemic of the greatest evil,” retired trauma surgeon David Halpin said. 
The situation that has been witnessed in Iraq over many years is happening in Afghanistan where these weapons were used on a much bigger scale. The problem has also crossed the border into Pakistan and India with many birth defects occurring in the Punjab. Finally we come back to Gaza which now shows the same trend with double the amount of deformed babies compared to last year. Many Professors and Doctors keep telling us they are not sure what is causing the problem. This is no longer an excuse because if DU is the culprit then this can be detected by simply testing for DU. The topic of DU in Gaza has been totally covered up by the UN and the central government. Just like Iraq and Afghanistan the authorities will not be able to hide this for much longer as the level of cancer and birth defects will continue to rise. 
I am sure that the US and the IDF will be pleased with the results because this is their way of depopulating the entire Gaza Strip and no doubt also the West Bank. As usual the world just continues to look on and says nothing. Their brothers in the Middle East should also be ashamed in allowing this genocide to continue. The UN is also encouraging this genocide by basically creating secondary contamination by recycling the radioactive waste in and around Gaza. We at the Palestine Telegraph  continue to keep up the pressure on this terrible situation and will keep pressing the Ministry of Health and the Hospital for answers as to why no one is talking about uranium contamination. 
It can only be stopped by the total prohibition of all weapons that contain uranium components. Obama is pushing for the ban on the larger WMD’s but this is a false façade. One needs to ban all such weapons i.e. the Ballistic Missile, Bombs, Missiles, Shells and Bullets that contain any form of uranium. The US, UK, NATO and IDF arsenal of weapons is over loaded with such WMD’s. They have all reclassified these smaller weapons as conventional weapons when they are certainly not. 
It is interesting to note that Tony Blair is holding back on the release of his book 
until after the next election has settled down. Could it be that some damage may be revealed in regard to the way his relationship with Brown panned out? Blair has already been paid for his book with an upfront amount of £4.6 millions in cash. The book is called “The Journey” and no doubt he will shine after its publication and enhance his hourly rate of public talking. I doubt if his book will reveal anything about those nukes that remain lost, and over which in 2003, he went to war with the wrong country! I also understand that he his desperately seeking the return of some very confidential and sensitive letter that could cause him much embarrassment! 
Before closing we must give a mention to the Chilcott or Iraq Inquiry that is an absolute farce from start to finish. It shows a trail of carefully orchestrated questions to which the witnesses had prepared their answers in advance. Instead of interrogating or cross examining those that participated in the inquiry, it allowed them all to blow off their own trumpets and wallow in their own self glorification. At times it made one intensely sick at their arrogance in proving they were right. The Chilcot team were absolute failures and where certainly not chosen for their ability to get to the truth behind the war. 
I noticed that the Conservative leader, David Cameron remained fairly laid back on the Iraq inquiry probably because he was part of the missing weapons fiasco and is thus implicated in not only receiving vast sums of money for his party but also knowing that they had gone missing and that the wrong country was attacked…..that is assuming an attack was necessary in the first place. It was all about regime change and very little else. Many believers consider this to be a sinister way to depopulate the world on a massive scale. Obviously with the focus being in the Arab countries that will eventually lead to the West having the ability to take control of the oil and gas reserves.

The former head of MI5 has claimed US intelligence agencies “concealed” their mistreatment of terror suspects.
Baroness Eliza Manningham-Buller said she only discovered alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded after retiring in 2007. 
In a lecture at the House of Lords, she said the US had been “very keen to conceal from us what was happening”. 
Her comments follow controversy over UK agents’ alleged collusion with US counterparts using torture techniques. 
Last month it emerged that Binyam Mohamed, a British resident formerly held at Guantanamo Bay, had been subjected to “cruel, inhuman and degrading” treatment. Ministers and current MI5 head Jonathan Evans have insisted that there was no collusion by UK security officers. 
However, questions remain about exactly when they learnt that the US apparently changed its rules on torture after the 9/11 attacks. 
Lady Manningham-Buller, who headed MI5 between 2002 and 2007, said: “The Americans were very keen that people like us did not discover what they were doing.” 
In a lecture at an event organised by the Mile End Group, she said she had wondered, in 2002 and 2003, how the US had been able to supply the UK with intelligence from Mohamed and was told that he was “very proud of his achievements when questioned about it”. 
“It wasn’t actually until after I retired that I read that, in fact, he had been waterboarded 160 times,” she said. 
Lady Manningham-Buller said the government had lodged “protests” with the US about its treatment of detainees, but refused to go into further detail. 
Mistreatment
A Foreign Office spokeswoman was not prepared to comment on the former MI5 chief’s comments. 
She said the Foreign Office could not, at this stage, find any details of protests lodged by the British government with the US over the treatment of detainees. 
BBC security correspondent Gordon Corera said Lady Manningham-Buller’s remarks were an acknowledgement MI5 had been slow to realise what the US was doing. 
However, he said, there was still not a complete picture of what happened. 
“It is clear that at some point documents came to the UK saying he [Binyam Mohamed] had been mistreated by the US. What we don’t know is exactly when those documents came and… who saw them,” he told BBC Radio 4′s Today programme.

International Women’s Day absurd says supermodel by Astrid Wendlandt (Reuters)
Millions of women around the world are feted on International Women’s Day but for Waris Dirie, the Somali nomad turned supermodel, the idea is absurd.
“Every day, women move mountains. It is an insult to have an international women’s day,” Dirie told Reuters before the premiere of a film based on her life story, coming out in France on Wednesday.
The film, Desert Flower, tells the story of how Dirie used her fame as a model to get the world to care about and fight against female circumcision.
Dirie underwent genital mutilation at the age of three together with her two sisters, who did not survive.
Dirie, a special ambassador to the United Nation for the elimination of female genital mutilation, said governments in Africa cared little about the issue.
“Governments do not care about that type of thing,” she said. “They do absolutely nothing to help.”
That is why, she said, help needed to come from non-governmental organizations (NGOs).
On its website, the Waris Dirie Foundation, estimates that at least 150 million women and girls are affected by the cruel practice which continues to be performed in Africa and elsewhere around the world.
Thousands of mothers continue to give up their little girls for mutilation even if they live in Europe or America as it represents a way for them to cling to their traditional beliefs.
The film says 6,000 women every day lose their genitals and are sown up. The practice is based on a belief that woman who are not circumcised are impure.
Women remain sown up until their marriage. They suffer lasting infections and psychological disorders.
The film is based on Dirie’s books.
Dirie was born in the Somali desert and fled her family after she was given in marriage to an old man.
She became a supermodel after a photographer noticed her while she was cleaning in a fast-food restaurant in London.
The Foundation in Support of the Dignity and Rights of Women, part of the French retail and luxury group PPR, supported the screening of the film and organized fund-raising to support NGOs that fight female genital mutilation.
Members of the Foundation include actress Salma Hayek, wife of PPR Chief Executive Francois-Henri Pinault, and designers Stella McCartney and Frida Giannini.
Funds from the film screening went to French NGO Equilibres et Populations which works against female circumcision in Mali.

Int’l Women’s Day: Women and Islam by Claire Spencer
When I came across this article in The Daily Mail, I hadn’t thought about “fatwa girl” Ayaan Hirsi Ali for a very long time – and never in this context.
Back then, I had been picking my way through The Lonely Planet guide to Amsterdam, noting sights that I might want to see, and generally finding out more about The Netherlands and its history.
At the bottom of page 36, in the Arts section, was a piece on the artist and director Theo Van Gogh, who had been murdered in 2004, shot off his bike by a member of the alleged Islamist organisation The Hofstad Network for his short film ‘Submission: Part 1’, which showed how verses from the Qur’an could be used to justify violence against women.
Right or wrong, it was a bold piece by an already controversial figure, and that boldness ultimately had its price. Pinned to his chest was a letter, promising among other vengeances the destruction of Hirsi Ali, with whom he had made the film. She has been under constant police protection in the US, where she now lives, ever since.
I wanted to find out more, so I did a bit more research. A brave, if polemical figure, Ayaan Hirsi Ali was born in Somalia in 1969, the daughter of a prominent member of the Somali Salvation Democratic Front. Hirsi Magan Isse, who had studied abroad in his youth, was opposed to female genital cutting, but during a period of imprisonment, Hirsi Ali’s grandmother had the procedure performed on her.
She was five years old.
But she did not become the atheist and outspoken critic of Islam that she was to become until much later.
As a student in The Netherlands at the time of 9/11, her faith was rocked when she heard Osama Bin Laden using the book that had defined her life up until that point being used to justify those attacks. She became an atheist in 2002, and started to formulate her critique of Islam and Islamic culture, rising to national prominence as she did so.
Up until this point, she had been a member of the Dutch Labour Party, but the events caused her to switch allegiance to the centre-right Party for Freedom and Democracy, and to stand for Parliament.
Her tenure was characterised by controversy, and often saw her incorrectly blur the lines between devout Muslims and extremists, dividing opinion and making her plenty of enemies.
As such, it is no small wonder that she caught the eye of Theo Van Gogh, who, in the words of political writer Ian Buruma in his book ‘Murder in Amsterdam’, was drawn not so much by what she said, but “the fact that people wished to prevent her from saying it.” She wrote the script for and narrated ‘Submission: Part 1’, Van Gogh directed. She had wanted “to get a discussion going and needle people into thinking” by confronting them with “dilemmas” and Van Gogh, thriving as he did on controversy, was a willing partner. Neither of them anticipated the consequences.
In light of her life, its rights, wrongs, abuses and achievements –I found the Daily Mail article strange, incongruous. True or not, it reads like just another sensationalised sex story, throwaway and tawdry, small fry compared to the death of a man, a fatwa, a clash of cultures.
You can probably surmise which is more important to the editors of The Daily Mail.
I’m sure they weren’t the first to take such an approach, and they probably won’t be the last. But it wasn’t without value, and reminded me of what she gave up to stand up for the values she held, to try and change the world she saw for the better, and that as much as she is a symbol, a fascinating narrative, a cautionary tale, a heroine, a threat – she is also human, and comes complete with everything that entails.
So on International Women’s Day, I urge you to take a look at Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who demonstrates that morality is highly subjective, and never straightforward.

RISKY JOURNEY
As the crow flies, the distance between El Geneina and Kakuma is 1,600 km (1,000 miles). Ibrahim Arbab, another Darfur refugee who made the journey – partly on foot – says it is highly risky. 
“Most refugees travel for days between El Geneina and the Nuba mountains; some don’t even make it,” he said. 
There are almost no roads in the Nuba Mountains, and most villages there are only accessible via ancient paths that cannot be navigated by vehicle. Since January this year, the U.N.-run Kakuma refugee camp – which is located near the border with Sudan and is home to 60,000 mainly Somali and Sudanese refugees – has received 35 refugees who have made the exhausting trip from Darfur. Rights groups, including Human Rights Watch, say women and girls have suffered serious abuses in Darfur, including rape, even during times of relative calm. Arbab, who arrived in Kakuma in August, said: “They (the Janjaweed) hacked helpless pregnant women to death and I saw with my eyes as two men threw three of my uncle’s children into a burning hut.” 
The claims come a week after Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir declared the war over following an initial settlement with the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), Darfur’s most powerful rebel force. Direct peace talks between JEM and Khartoum are due to begin in Qatar this week after months of clashes and protracted negotiations. 
According to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), renewed fighting has led to displacement in the eastern Jebel Marra region in the states of South Darfur and North Darfur, as well as western Jebel Marra and Jebel Moon in West Darfur. “Most of the people in Darfur are trapped in camps because they have no protection and no way of leaving Sudan either to go to Chad or to come to Kakuma,” said Arbab. 
With continued attacks in Darfur and flaring political tensions between North and South Sudan ahead of next month’s presidential and legislative elections, the U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR) is makingcontingency plans for up to 40,000 new Sudanese refugees to cross the border into Kenya.

RAISE Hope for Congo

• The conflict in eastern Congo is fueled by a multi-million dollar trade in minerals that end up in our laptops and cell phones. Send an email to the top electronics companies urging them to make their products conflict free. Tell your Senators and Representative to co-sponsor the Conflict Minerals Trade Act (H.R. 4128/S. 891) that will help end the trade in conflict minerals.
• Join this Facebook page to find out how your school or other institution can go conflict free.
• Visit  www.raisehopeforcongo.org to host a Congo event at your school.
• Actress and activist Emmanuelle Chriqui is raising money to support RAISE Hope for Congo through STOMP, a philanthropic foundation run by Australia Luxe Collective, makers of sheepskin boots and other high-end products. If you’re looking for new boots, check out STOMP and support RAISE Hope for Congo at the same time.

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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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