Ecoterra Press Release 219 – The Somalia Chronicle June – December 2009, no 31

Following the Somalia Spring 2009 Chronicles, I herewith republish the Ecoterra press releases issued in the second half of 2009. I reproduce the integral version of all Ecoterra press releases in a recapitulative effort to provide the global readership with the most comprehensive collection of texts published worldwide about the most abominable Western postcolonial involvement in Africa, namely the systematic effort of extermination of the Somali Nation. The vast documentation provided serves as basic point of reference to students, researchers, analysts and intellectuals.

ECOTERRA Intl.

SMCM

Somali Marine & Coastal Monitor

ECOTERRA INTERNATIONAL - UPDATES & STATEMENTS, REVIEW & CLEARING-HOUSE

2009-07-31 FRI 13h55:47 UTC

Issue No. 219

A Voice from the Truth- & Justice-Seekers, who sit between all chairs, because they are not part of organized white-collar or no-collar-crime in Somalia or elsewhere, and who neither benefit from global naval militarization, from the illegal fishing and dumping in Somali waters or the piracy of merchant vessels, nor from the booming insurance business or the exorbitant ransom-, risk-management- or security industry, while neither the protection of the sea, the development of fishing communities or the humanitarian assistance to abducted seafarers and their families is receiving the required adequate attention, care and funding.

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

EA ILLEGAL FISHING AND DUMPING HOTLINE: +254-714-747090 (confidentiality guaranteed) - email: somalia[at]ecoterra.net

EA Seafarers Assistance Programme EMERGENCY HELPLINE : SMS to +254-738-497979 or sms/call +254-733-633-733

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

Cpt. Florent Lemaçon - F/Y Tanit - killed by French commandos - 10. April 2009 / Ras Hafun

NON A LA GUERRE - YES FOR PEACE

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

"... obligation to fight oppression and cruelty wherever it appears, and that any group of people who are degrading another group of people have to be fought against with whatever tools we have available to us. "

B. H. Obama - US-American President, who said also: The world has changed ! YES, WE CAN !

Clearing-House: Cut out the clutter - focus on facts !

(If you find this compilation too large or if you can't gasp the multitude and magnitude of important inter-related complex issues - you better do not deal with Somalia or other man-made "conflict zones". We try to make it as condensed as possibly.)

Breaking:

Reports from the area near MV HANSA STAVANGER say that all key-players among the captors of the vessel, who were onboard of the sea-jacked ship awaiting a delivery of the ransom, have gone off again. This is an indication that the case is not solved yet. It rather seems to develop along the lines of the MV Faina case because too many middlemen, brokers and contractors play around while the real owner is not coming forward. Though a warship is patroling the horizon, there is no indication that any crew member is still held ashore.

"Somali pirates shoot Turkish sailor", says Turkish media report - but most likely not true.

Pirates holding the Turkish bulk carrier MV HORIZON 1 off Somalia have shot and wounded one of the sailors, a Turkish newspaper quoted relatives as saying Friday.

The mother of one of the 23 crew said her son told them about the incident in a brief telephone conversation earlier this week.

"My son was weeping and asking us to save them. He said that they had run out of food... and that one (sailor) had been shot and wounded," the Radikal daily quoted Gulperi Sari as saying.

"I'm worried about my son's life... The government must resolve this issue," she said, as AFP reported.

The Horizon 1 was seized on July 8 while sailing from Saudi Arabia to Jordan with 33,000 cubic metres of sulphide.

Its Istanbul-based owner has said it is negotiating a ransom to secure the release of the ship and the 23 sailors, among them a woman, declining to reveal the sum being demanded by the pirates.

The vessel is anchored at the port of Eyl in northern Somalia's breakaway Puntland region.

However, direct information from Eyl reports that this story was most likely used to put pressure on the owner of the vessel to speed up ransom delivery. While one crew member had been slightly injured by broken glasses during the attack leading to the sea-jacking, the release of the vessel with 23 Turkish seafarers is said to be on track and expected soon, since talks have apparently been concluded in the Middle-East, though there was a conflict among the captors.

News from sea-jackings, abductions, newly attacked ships and vessels in distress

The overall situation is appalling for most of the crews, because the skins of those responsible for the crews have grown thicker and thicker over time while the criminal captors of innocent merchant vessels have partly abandoned their own code of conduct with respect to the treatment of the seafarers. During this time - when politicians, the media and the public at large are in summer-holidays slow-motion mode - those families of hostages, who feel that they should no longer be intimidated by governments and employers, run against concrete walls of business-as-usual bureaucrats, conning businessmen involved in the ransom deals and ignorant ship-owners.

German Ship Ransom Increased to $4 Million, Somali Pirate Says

By Hamsa Omar for Bloomberg

Somali pirates holding a German container ship for ransom increased their demand to $4 million from $3 million after the raiders disagreed among themselves on how to divide the money, a member of the gang said.

The German-flagged MV HANSA STAVANGER has been held since early April, when it was seized between the Seychelles and Kenya.

"We had previously agreed $3 million with the owners but due to some circumstances, mainly because we are so many and we have had the ship approximately four months, we decided to ask them to add an additional $1 million," Ahmed Hassan, a pirate whose gang hijacked the ship, said in a phone interview today. "It was intended to release the ship after the ransom but now it seems that it will take extra time because the owners haven´t yet answered our offer to increase the money to $4 million."

Should $4 million be paid, it would likely be a record for a vessel seized by Somali pirates. Ransoms have tended to range from $500,000 to $2 million, though $3 million was paid for the Saudi oil tanker Sirius Star last year, the Congressional Research Service said in a February report.

Calls to the Hamburg-based owner of the ship, Leonhardt- Blumberg, weren´t answered. The 21,000 deadweight-ton vessel was seized about 400 miles (645 kilometers) from land, in an area where pirates hadn´t previously been active.

Hopes [or No-Hopes] high for Hansa Stavanger release

By David Osler

MV HANSA STAVANGER, the German boxship held by Somali pirates since last April, could be released by the weekend, despite last-minute hold-ups in the negotiations, according to sources close to the talks.

Hopes are high that the full crew complement of 24 will be on board the vessel when it is freed, after an earlier revelation by Lloyd´s List that the master and three others were being held an hour´s drive inland, and had been subjected to psychological pressure including death threats.

Discussions have been particularly fraught after the pirates learned of an aborted attempt in May by Germany ´s elite GSG9 special forces to rescue the Liberia-flagged, 1997-built, 1,550 teu vessel.

But a private security contractor downplayed reports that claimed that a deal had been struck for a $3m ransom payment, only for the vessel´s captors to table a last-minute additional demand.

"There´s a bit of of to-ing and fro-ing going on. But the talks have not stalled by my info," he said. "There was an acceptance by pirates for the cash, then a demand it was with them by the next day, which was impossible. It is purely a timing and agreement issue on when the cash will drop from the heavens."

The comments come after Reuters published a piece on the Hansa Stavanger situation, based on a telephone conversation with some of the ship´s abductors. A pirate identified as Hassan is said to have claimed: "Some of our friends say we are many and so the Germans must add $1m or $500,000 to make the ransom about $4m.

"The Germans seemed to be angry after we broke the promise. They rarely answer our calls. Now they insist on the agreed $3m, but we are divided on this issue. We do not know how long it will take to release the ship."

Hansa Stavanger is owned by Hamburg shipping company Leonhardt & Blumberg, was captured about 400 miles off the southern Somali port of Kismayu on April 4. The vessel´s owners refused to comment.

The 30 men crew of officially Thai owned FV WINFAR 161 - linked to SEAHOUSE FISHERIES & AQUATIC RESOURCES of Manila is suffering tremendously, because it seems that this is another case where the owners of the vessel and those responsible for the crew just walk away and abandon their staff, while governmental officials of the nationalities involved have gone on summer-holidays.

Ukrainian crew members on British owned but Greek fronted MV ARIANA are suffering for specific health problems as well as little food and water. The Ukrainian officials seem not to have been able to alleviate their situation.

The captors of MV IRENE E.M. another vessel depending on Greek pro-active work to free its crew, is in very slow negotiations.

The Egyptian owner of FV MUMTAZ 1 and FV SAMARA AHMED - impounded for illegal fishing at Laskooray, has - together with his sidekick from Yemen - left Somalia again without having achieved any relieve for the 40 seafarers (including 6 minors) held onboard of the vessels or having paid the fine. Nobody seem to know now what the future shall bring for the men. The Egyptian government also seems to have no plan to rescue their nationals.

With the latest captures and releases now still at least 14 foreign vessels (13 if M/S IO EXPLORER is truly "gone") with a total of not less than 203 crew members are accounted for (of which 44 are confirmed to be Filipinos) and are held in Somali waters. They 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. MV JAIKUR 1 remains in Mogadishu harbor, but is an insurance and not a piracy case - all foreign crew was evacuated. 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, incl. presently held ones) and the mistaken sinking of one vessel by a naval force. For 2009 the account stands at 149 attacks (incl. averted or abandoned attacks) with 47 sea-jackings on the Somali/Yemeni pirate side as well as at least three wrongful attacks (incl. one friendly fire incident) on the side of the naval forces. More than 116 Somalis are held in foreign prisons under charges of piracy. Mystery pirate mother-vessels Athena/Arena and Burum Ocean as well as not fully documented cases of absconded vessels are not listed in the sea-jack count until clarification. Several other vessels with unclear fate (also not in the actual count), who were reported missing over the last ten years in this area, are still kept on our watch-list, though in some cases it is presumed that they sunk due to bad weather or being unfit to sail. In the last four years, 22 missing ships have been traced back with different names, flags and superstructures. Piracy incidents usually degrade during the monsoon season in winter and rise gradually by the end of the monsoon season starting from mid February and early April every year.

Present multi-factorial risk assessment code: GoA: YELLOW IO: YELLOW (Red = Very much likely, high season; Orange = Reduced risk, but very likely, Yellow = significantly reduced risk, but still likely, Blue = possible, Green = unlikely). Allegedly still/again two groups from Puntland alone are out hunting on the Gulf of Aden and in the Indian Ocean, where also groups from Harardheere have set out again, despite the heavy seas and the rough weather.

Directly piracy related reports

The true cost of ransoms by Lloyds List

Comment

The pirates of Puntland and wild shores of Somalia are causing a spot of bother for the usually stolid and unshakable world of London marine insurers and their P&I club peers.

Lloyd´s underwriters and the Men from the Clubs have been locked in discussions over the sticky issue of general average and the division of claims relating to piracy incidents off the Horn of Africa.

Shipowners are stumping up increasingly hefty ransoms to release crews, cargoes and vessels, and are turning to general average contributions to recoup the cost.

In the discreet world of marine insurance it is accepted that release costs can fall within general average cover in hull and machinery policies, as can other interests in the hijacked vessel.

Hull underwriters are shouldering these costs and indemnifying the shipowner, who can be left with shortfalls if others, such as the cargo owners, do not take a share of the general average.

These insurers´ specific beef with the P&I clubs is that these payments benefit the mutuals, which do not want hijacks to escalate into expensive crew, cargo or environmental liabilities.

The clubs point to their rulebooks and maintain that their interests in ransom situations are minimal (even if the benefit from early and safe release is substantial).

The issue raises a number of questions. Are the P&I clubs beneficiaries at the expense of the owners and hull insurers? Are they duty bound to contribute? Is the hull market paying to prevent even larger liability costs for loss of life or a pollution incident?

What is certain is that the informal agreements around general average are being tested to the hilt as the armed gangs demand ever larger ransoms.

Meanwhile, cargo interests from jurisdictions not as versed in the spirit of general average are also refusing to chip in, raising the prospect of owners insisting they put up security to ensure contributions.

Shipowners have made swift payment to secure the safety of their crew and vessels in the knowledge that they have the backing of their underwriters, clubs and cargo interests. If the system unravels, will owners think twice about these large sums? Are the crews´ interests set to be sidelined by stark commercial calculations?

Ecosystems, marine environment, IUU fishing and dumping, ecology

Fresh hope for world's fisheries

By Mark Kinver for BBC

There is fresh hope that the world's depleted fisheries can be saved from collapse, say a team of researchers.

They said that efforts introduced to halt overfishing in five of the 10 large marine ecosystems they examined were showing signs of success.

A combination of measures - such as catch quotas, no-take zones, and selective fishing gear - had helped fish stocks recover, they added.

Details of the two-year study by 19 marine scientists appear in Science.

However, the team warned, a large percentage of the world's fisheries remained unmanaged, so much work still had to be done to halt the damage caused by overfishing.

Optimistic outlook

The authors said the study, which looked at key fisheries in Europe, North America and New Zealand, had two goals:

The first was to examine current trends in fish stocks, while the second was to identify what tools had been used in attempts to replenish fish numbers.

"This was a little like a crime scene investigation for overfishing," said lead author Boris Worm, a marine biologist from Dalhousie University, Canada.

"We wanted to find out what were the tools that had been used to adjust exploitation rates and reduce the pressure on fish stocks," said Dr Worm.

"This allowed us to perform not only a much more in-depth assessment of fishery trends, but also - for the first time - to quantify the trends of exploitation rates, which is the proportion of fish removed from the ecosystem each year," explained Dr Worm.

"This is really quite a big step forward because the exploitation rate is the primary driver of depletion and collapse, just as CO2 is the primary driver of climate change."

However, he added that the exploitation rate was the one factor that could be adjusted by direct human intervention, such as introducing management practices.

Fisheries that are tightly managed are showing signs of recovery

The authors observed: "Some of the most spectacular rebuilding efforts have involved bold experimentation with closed areas, [fishing] gear restrictions and new approaches to catch allocations and enforcement."

But they warned that the signs of recovery should not be interpreted by policymakers as a sign that all was well beneath the waves.

The majority of fisheries were still in trouble, and were not being managed or regulated properly.

But Dr Worm said that the team's "watershed paper" offered a blueprint for sustainable fishing.

"It clearly shows what needs to be done to not only avoid fisheries collapse, but to actually rebuild fish stocks and ecosystems."

Kenya does not follow through on Maritime Labour Convention

By Andrew Mwangura (SAP)

After much effort by ship owners and maritime unions, a consolidated maritime labour convention was passed by the International Labour Organization in 2006.

This convention has the potential to radically change the lives of international merchant mariners. It will bring together numerous independent conventions, and it will give port states the ability to inspect and certify that the ILO labour standards are being met by visiting vessels.

Finally, it will make it much more expensive for substandard, bottom-feeding operators to undercut quality shipping companies by exploiting seafarers, and their conditions on-board.

With the recent ratification of the convention by the states of Panama and Norway , it is expected that the convention will come into force by 2011.

However, there appears to be no effort in Kenya to move ratification in the maritime labour laws. Sadly, this is standard operating procedures for Kenya government.

Kenya does apparently nothing to ratify International Maritime Labour Conventions. No better example of this is ILO Convention 185 and the Seafarers' Identification Document Convention of 2003.

It is high time now for the government of Kenya to recognize the importance and urgency of the Maritime Labour Convention-2006 and the work in the Fishing Convention - 2007 and to have them ratified so that Seafarers and Fishers may benefit from them.

Anti-piracy measures

EU Plans Somali Coastal Security Force

The European Union says it plans to train Somali security forces to tackle the pirates operating along the country's coast. The BBC reports that the EU will send a planning team to the region next month. Training is to take place in neighbouring Djibouti, which has French and US military bases.

The move fits in with calls from Somalia's Transitional Government that training its forces is the best way to defeat the pirates. It has already started to form a coastguard.

Added to this the Transitional Government, supported by many Western governments but opposed by Islamic militants, has only tenuous control over many parts of the country and even of areas of the capital Mogadishu.

The BBC says EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana announced the training plan following a meeting of the EU's 27 foreign ministers and said the EU was concentrating on three issues: the training itself, how to pay the salaries of the new security force and how to cooperate with the African Union peacekeeping mission already in Somalia.

Admirals still "admirable"? - No!

The question is only "Why this time and how?", since the EU refused proposals already made back in 1994 to set up coastal monitoring and guarding, to finance an observation plane against the illegal foreign fishing and to help develop Somali fishing communities and industries. The answer is clear: Already back then the monitors would have found many Europe-linked illegal fishing vessels and therefore the EU funding would have actually fully documented the European theft of resources and as such backfired.

Today the EU wants to make the goat the gardener, forget about the past plunder - including dumping of toxic waste from Europe - and do the "coast-guarding" by themselves with proxy-guards under their handout-command being paid a salary derived from the European taxpayer in order to continue the fish-supply to the European supermarkets and keep the rogue fishermen's-unions - especially in France - happy with new concessions as well as to roam around the territorial waters of Somalia and its EEZ just as if they would play at home.

That such can and will not work is obvious, but since European taxpayers and their political representatives seems to have to say nothing any more and obviously are only there to whitewash and sanction the operations already under way by the Navy "Admirals", nobody will have to wonder when in future the failed results of such closed-eyes-policies and actions can no longer be covered up.

It is not that the EU ministers had now agreed on a positive step forward on Somalia, but it is a mere sanctioning what their navies have been doning over the last many months persistently: Playing foreign politics - even behind the back of the Transitional Federal Government of Somalia and the navies own political capitals. The EUNAVFOR Operational Headquarters - located at Northwood (UK) - seems to have become the command post for business oriented political dealings in a ever more militarized world, while the piracy only provides for the convenient cover in order to coerce the taxpayers in to more and more exorbitant military spendings. Parliaments anyway are on summer holiday and their oversight seems anyway blurred to non-existing.

Already now the monies spent uselessly for EUNAVFOR (plus all the other navies) could have fed and developed the whole of Somalia for the next 10 years with everybody being happy and piracy seizing to exist. Such truly would have helped Somalia and benefited the whole region, but the British "Sealord" and his European vassals have obviously different plans.

For what do Europeans need elected representatives, politicians and diplomats, if the Admirals can do such an "admirable" job?

PRINCIPIIS OBSTA! – And Keep the Navies on a Very Short Leach

While humanitarian flight operations face bankrupcy - the military gets all the bucks they want.

Wings Over Somali Waters by strategypage.com

July 31, 2009: The international anti-piracy task force operating off the coast of Somalia, also has its own air force. About ten manned and UAV aircraft are available, all currently based in Djibouti. Three of these aircraft are being transferred to Kenya, where they will better cover the east coast of Somalia. This will enable the task force to monitor pirate mother ships (usually stolen fishing ships) that are going more than a thousand kilometers from the coast, to seek out larger, and more valuable (in terms of ransoms) ships coming out of the Persian Gulf, and making their way south to go around the southern tip of Africa.

So far this year, there have been over 250 attacks, most of them in the Gulf of Aden. Despite the 34 warships on duty, 78 merchant ships were boarded, and 31 of them taken. There have been more casualties this year, with six merchant seamen killed, 19 wounded and 561 taken hostage. Although the pirates have received over $100 million in ransoms, the pirate activities have cost shipping companies nearly $15 billion so far, in the form of increased insurance, fuel (moving at higher speeds, or taking detours) and crew (danger pay) costs.

Recently, Japan sent two P-3C maritime reconnaissance aircraft to Djibouti. Last year, Spain sent a P-3. The U.S. and France also have naval reconnaissance aircraft there, although the U.S. planes (P-3s and UAVs) are also there for counter-terrorism missions.

The site of most attacks has been the Gulf of Aden, which is one the busiest shipping lanes in the world (with nearly ten percent of all traffic). Each month, 1500-1600 ships pass the northern coast of Somalia. Last year about one ship out of every 400-500 was captured by pirates. With the pirates getting more and more ransom money for each ship, the number of pirate groups operating in the Gulf of Aden is growing. An increasing number of mother ships, usually captured fishing trawlers (able to stay out for weeks at a time, and carry speed boats for attacks) are traveling farther from the coast in the search of victims. The P-3s can search large areas of the high seas in search of these mother ships, which warships are now hunting down.

Most merchant ships are wary of pirate operations, and put on extra lookouts, and often transit the 1,500 kilometer long Gulf of Aden at high speed (even though this costs them thousands of dollars in additional fuel). The pirates seek the slower moving, apparently unwary, ships, and go after them before they can speed up enough to get away. For the pirates, business is booming, and ransoms are going up. Pirates are now demanding $2-3 million per ship, and are liable to get it for the much larger tankers and bulk carriers they are now seizing. The P-3s seek out the mother ships, and alert warships to the location where the pirates are operating.

But there are some problems. The American built P-3C maritime reconnaissance aircraft is getting old. The average age of the U.S. P-3Cs is 28 years. The P-3 entered service in 1962. The current version has a cruise speed of 610 kilometers per hour, endurance of up to 13 hours and a crew of eleven. The 116 foot long, propeller driven aircraft has a wingspan of nearly 100 feet. The P-3C can carry about ten tons of weapons (torpedoes, mines, or missiles like Harpoon and Maverick).

The 63 ton P-3 is based on the 1950s era Lockheed Electra airliner. The last P-3 was built in 1990. A more likely replacement for these elderly search planes, are UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles), like Global Hawk or smaller aircraft like Predator. These UAVs typically stay in the air for 24 hours, or more, at a time. What maritime reconnaissance aircraft need, more than anything else, is endurance or, as the professionals like to put it, "persistence."

Spain sent 90 personnel (air and ground crew) to Djibouti, while the Japanese sent 150. There is already a French Falcon business jet fitted out with maritime surveillance radar and other sensors.

214 Marines coming home this week

By James Gilbert

Nearly 90 Marines from the Yuma-based Harrier squadron VMA-214 are returning home Thursday and Friday after a seven-month deployment, the Marine Corps Air Station announced Tuesday.

The Marines have been serving aboard ship with the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit.

During the deployment, the detachment, composed of Marines primarily from Marine Attack Squadron 214 and Marine Aviation Logistics Squadron 13, participated in counter-piracy operations off the coast of Africa near Somalia in the Gulf of Aden.

The VMA-214 pilots used the AV-8B Harriers for surveillance and reconnaissance, according to Capt. Michael Maddock, who is a pilot. The aircraft's targeting pod cameras enabled pilots to gather valuable imagery of suspected pirate vessels.

Pirate attacks worldwide more than doubled in the first half of 2009 amid a surge of raids on vessels in the Gulf of Aden and the east coast of Somalia, an international maritime watchdog has reported this week.

Besides frequent land battles, the power vacuum also has allowed pirates to operate freely around Somalia's 1,900-mile coastline.

Six pilots, each flying a Harrier, are scheduled to land at the air station Thursday, while another 80 Marines and sailors are set to return Friday.

The detachment set sail on Jan. 9 from San Diego aboard the USS Boxer.

The squadron, one of four assigned to the Marine Corps Air Station, also traveled to Hawaii, Guam and Thailand during this deployment.

The remainder of VMA-214 is currently deployed to Afghanistan. The last time VMA-214 served with a Marine expeditionary unit was in 2007 when the Black Sheep traveled to Japan to join up with the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit.

No real peace in sight yet

UN's Envoy to Somalia Denies He's a Target and that War Crimes Are on Both Sides

By Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at the UN

More than a week after the Al Shabaab insurgents ordered out from the parts of Somalia that they control some segments of the UN system, notably UN envoy Ahmedou Ould Abdallah and the UN Development Program, the UN still refuses to speak or apparently even to think about why it became a target.

Inner City Press asked Ould Abdallah to respond to accusations that he has, in essence, taken sides in a civil war, and made himself a target. Ould Abdallah responded by asking, "You support the Islamists?" Video here, from Minute 12:06.

Inner City Press responded that it was asking for his and the UN's response to the statements of one of the parties in Somalia. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay has said, through her spokesman Rupert Colville, that "both sides were reported to have used torture and to have fired mortars indiscriminately into areas populated or frequented by civilians... The High Commissioner believed that some of these acts might amount to war crimes."

Inner City Press asked Ould Abdallah if he acknowledged that the forces of the Transitional Federal Government which he supports, and also of the AMISON African Union, have at time fired mortars into civilian areas. "I don't like to introduce AMISOM as a part of a problem," Ould Abdallah said. Video here, from Minute 16:06.

But isn't it the UN's role to speak out against the killing of civilians by either side? Rather than answer the questions about his neutrality, and relatedly about the efficacy of his diplomacy, Ould Abdallah joked that he is neutral because when he arrived in Somalia he said he would not engage in local politics, would not engage in business and would not get married in Somalia.

But refusing to speak up about, and in fact covering up, killing of civilians by one or more of the armed forces in Somalia shows a lack of neutrality. And Ould Abdallah's still unexplained role in the joint Law of the Sea Continental Shelf filing of the Kenyan Government and the TFG, funded by oil-exploring country Norway, constitutes business in the view of some.

Ould Abdallah told Inner City Press, next time we go to meet with the Islamists we will take you. In mid 2008, Inner City Press covered the Security Council's trip to the Somalia talks in Djibouti, top heavy with TFG officials who flew in from London. Business was done, in a $400 a night waterfront Kampinski Hotel. The Press stayed elsewhere.

When asked about the looting of his Office in Baidoa, in connection with al Shabaab ordering him and UNDP to get out, Ould Abdallah said it was mere theft of private property with, as a "bandage," statements against him. This is called, by some, being in denial.

Also in denial is the UNDP, which on July 28 told Inner City Press that "UNDP programmes and operations continue uninterrupted in Somalia." But it was looted and ordered out of the former TFG capital, Baidoa.

Ould Abdallah is a funny man. Wednesday he drew laughter when he called Somali piracy a form of hedge fund. But he did not state what if anything he has done about the problem on non-Somalis engaging in illegal fishing off the coast, or dumping toxic waste on the shore.

This was by his count his fourth or fifth briefing of the Security Council and the press in the past 20 months. The situation is hardly better. Perhaps the bombast, the willful blindness and yes, the lack of neutrality, are part of the problem.

Footnotes: On July 28, as Inner City Press passed through the UN's 37th floor Peacekeeping Office on route to a briefing about the UN's New Horizon plan, Ould Abddallah asked, who invited you here? He added, with a smile, "You are impossible." Others say that he is impossible -- including to discipline or replace. A Ban Ki-moon advisor from the 38th floor told Inner City Press that following Ould Abdallah's comments that the media should not report of the killing of civilians by AMISOM forces, he was told by the UN in New York to issue an apology, but refused to.

The source marveled at, and offered an explanation of, why Ould Abdallah is allowed to get away with it. The answer does not make this UN look good. Watch this site.

In Somalia, As UNDP Is Expelled by Shabaab, UN's Ban Claims Target is All UN

The day after Al Shabaab in Somalia attacked and targeted for expulsion three UN system agencies, specifically excluding other UN agencies from the ban, the UN put out a statement on July 21 that 'the Secretary General condemns the looting yesterday of UN offices in Somalia [which] target the whole gamut of UN peace and humanitarian operations in Somalia."

While the UN and Ban Ki-moon might wish the statement were true, it is dubious. Al Shabaab, as they did in earlier attacks on the UN Development Program, picked a particular part and approach of the UN system. UNDP was the middle man for unnamed, largely European and former colonialist funders of the armed forces, with questionable human rights records, which defended the Transitional Federal Government..

By contrast, as Inner City Press asked and wrote about last week, the UN World Food Program recently met with Al Shabaab, seemingly connected to WFP staying in the country.

UNDP will say, as its paid defenders have, that it takes sides in this civil war and chooses the TFG because it is entity the UN helped set up. But with so many of its parliamentarians not even living in Somalia, the TFG's credibility is questionable. And UNDP insiders tell Inner City Press that UNDP's reason for siding with the TFG is not unrelated to the fact that UNDP had make fees as middleman on funding to the TFG, while Al Shabaab is not getting, or even asking, for international aid.

Perhaps there are legitimate reasons why one part of the UN system -- in this case, UNDP, Ould Abdallah's UNPOS and Department of Safety and Security -- takes sides in a civil war and get thrown out of the country, while another part (WFP, UNICEF and others) speaks with both sides and stays in. A debate on these two approaches might be helpful. Instead, the UN rushes out a blurry statement which is inaccurate on its face, and expects that nothing will be said.

It is time for UNDP and its no longer so new Executive Director Helen Clark to come and take Press questions. There are been developments with regard to UNDP's involvement in diamond mining in Zimbabwe, and over-compensation of consultants. Written questions put to UNDP have been pending for months. Watch this site.

In Somalia, UNDP Said to Take Sides, No Financial Answers, UN Post Intrigue

Optimism about Somalia is a new trend in and around the in UN in New York. Days after the country's new foreign minister -- himself British -- told the Press outside the Security Council that one month of receipts from the Mogadishu port portends well for the paychecks of the Transitional Federal Government's ever multiplying number of parliamentarians, the International Peace Institute presented two experts, both upbeat about the negotiations in Djibouti and the UN which sponsored them.

As at the Council, however, no one would say how much the UN paid, from or to whom. IPI's two presenters, Ken Menkhaus of Davidson College and Somali expert Jabril Abdulle, both said that the Shabaab rebels are on the run, the port is in government hands and the future is rosy. Inner City Press asked for an assessment of the performance of UN envoy Ahmedou Ould Abdallah and the UN's Group of Experts on sanctions. The former called for a moratorium on reporting from Somalia; the later reported a few years ago that Somali militants were in South Lebanon for training, which made more Somali-watchers laugh.

Menkhaus defended the Group of Experts recent work, dismissing the Lebanon error -- circa 2006 -- as "in the distant past." He did, however, sound a cautionary note about the role of the UN Development Program, which he said has been paying the salaries of security forces in Somalia. Abdulle added that the UN paid to transport the bloated Somali TFG contingent from Djibouti to Mogadishu. On Friday, Inner City Press' question to Ould Abdallah about what the UN pays for in Somalia was referred, through his spokesperson Susie Price, to UNDP. Four days after promising an answer, UNDP has still not answered.

Menkhaus noted the attack on UNDP last year, and said the agency is perceived as taking sides. Perhaps this partiality is mirrored in an unwillingness to provide basic financial information about what it spends in Somalia, and on what.

Footnote: The head of IPI, Terje Roed Larsen, was not in attendance on Tuesday. Inner City Press has asked UN spokespeople for reaction to Syria's critique of Roed Larsen as exceeding him mandate as UN envoy under Security Council resolution 1559. Roed Larsen is also one of the most senior UN officials who has rebuffed Ban Ki-moon's call to make basic public financial disclosure. Now, Roed Larsen's wife Mona Juul is rumored as a closed but failed candidate for the vacant Assistant Secretary General post in the UN Department of Political Affairs vacated by Angela Kane. The post, sources say, is slated for UNDP's previous Middle East operative, Oscar Fernandez Taranco, well imbued in UNDP's culture. We'll see.

UAE Police boss Dahi dismisses report claiming pirate links

By Wafa Issa

The emirate's Police Chief has dismissed a report quoting a UN official as saying that Somali pirates might have been assisted by some of their compatriots in the UAE.

Lieutenant General Dahi Khalfan Tamim, Chief of Dubai Police, told Gulf News the UAE authorities will not react to allegations floating around in the media from time to time. However, the police will cooperate with official bodies directly involved in combating international crime when needed.

"I call on anyone who has substantial evidence that there is a link between members of the Somali community in Dubai and individuals involved in illegal activities in Somalia to inform Interpol and we always cooperate with this international body," said Dahi.

Dahi was commenting on a Reuters report which quoted the UN special envoy to Somalia, Ahmadou Ould Abdullah, as saying that "some elements of the Somali community in Dubai are involved in a number of activities which are undermining peace in Somalia."

The activities include piracy, illegal weapons transfers that skirt a UN arms embargo, and possibly indirect financial support for Islamist-led rebels whom the government is struggling to subdue, according to the report.

"Similar allegations circulated in the media a couple of months ago and until now not a single official has come back to us with concrete facts on suspected people. People who are making accusations must give names of the suspects instead of this generic talk about 'elements in a community'. They also need to bear the responsibility of their accusations," said Dahi. (GulfNews)

N.B.: Well, the Police boss better checks what is going on right now in Abu Dhabi concerning dealings executed by a Kuwaiti national.]

UN says humanitarian air service faces shutdown, again

The humanitarian air service run by the United Nations could face a shutdown next month in key locations due to a lack of funds, a spokeswoman said Friday. Emilia Casella from the World Food Programme said the service is used mainly to move humanitarian aid workers into hard-to-access areas, particularly in conflict zones, and also to fly medical supplies to where they are needed. In many cases, such as in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Darfur region of Sudan and Somalia, the flights are considered to be more cost effective and sometimes the only way to get aid to stranded civilians. "This is the most cost effective way to reach remote parts of Niger, for example, and that replicates itself in numerous countries," Casella said. In February, the service faced a similar shutdown, but was able to garner some funds to keep most of the operations running for several months. The flights to Niger and Ivory Coast, however, still had to be canceled, as there was not enough money to keep those lines open. The service to Chad, where many refugees from Darfur are residing in refugee camps, would be cut on August 15 and the flights to Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea would be grounded at the end of August, if donors do not provide funding. "It is absolutely definite that aid workers will not be able to get to parts of Darfur if the service is grounded," Casella said in Geneva. The total budget for the Humanitarian Air Service for 2009 is 160 million dollars. Less than 40 million have been raised from donors so far, and another 50 million is expected to come in from aid organizations that pay to take the flights. Non-governmental groups such as CARE International have also expressed concern about the grounding of flights, saying it will hamper their relief operations as well.

Before the EU developed their own lucrative airline ECHO-flight in 1994 with the UN following that model swiftly with UNCAS [(UN Common Air Service) - today UN Humanitarian Air Service (UNHAS)], which is operated by the UN World Food Programme (WFP), the NGOs could work the air-transport costs into their proposals and budgets and manage it much more cost-effective and task-oriented. It is just another sad example how governmental or supra-governmental interference into the up-front work of humanitarian groups - often politically or religiously motivated streamlining - hampers the actual relief work, just for the benefit of the bureaucrats and their business-friends. Especially in Somalia the tool was and is used to hamper access to vulnerable populations and critical areas for independent organizations, held hostage by rogue warlords or militias. It would be good to shut down this UN-Service - a dis-service in the true sense of this word - (and also ECHO-flight) and equip the NGOs with the necessary funding directly again.

Warlords Recruit Somali Child Soldiers

By Child Carity News

As if children in Somalia do not face enough dangers from a lack of food and water or political violence, they also face the dangers of being recruited or abducted into armed militias.In Somalia, it is commonplace for a child as young as eight years old to disappear.

Where do they go? The BBC reports that these children – some drugged, some brainwashed, and some paid a monthly lump sum of $50 – are recruited into Somali militias. Up and down Mogadishu´s streets and markets, roam young children, AK47s slung over their shoulders.

Non-state militia groups such as al-Shabab are believed by some Somali residents to be targeting the children of the country´s most poor in particular. Poverty-wracked populations live on the fringes of society, leaving them immensely vulnerable.

While the use of children in combat is not a new occurrence in Somalia, one child charity and child rights organization commented that the scale and frequency of recruitment is growing – a worrisome trend. For instance, earlier in June, forces in Mogadishu rescued five child soldiers.

As of reports made earlier this month, the fighting in Mogadishu has forced 200 000 to seek refuge in safer places.

Navi Pillay, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, only a few weeks ago said, "In this new wave of attacks, it is clear that civilians – especially women and children – are bearing the brunt of the violence."

The use of children under 15 years old (and under 18 years old according to many nation-states who have ratified an optional protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child) is prohibited by international human rights law.

Unfortunately, there remains today, an estimated 300 000 child soldiers around the world. The persistent trade in small or light arms to third world countries – in particular the AK47 – means that it is easy to arm young boys and girls. Child soldiers have been used in countries such as Sierra Leone, Liberia, Congo, Sudan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Colombia, Afghanistan and Burma.

Children are usually trained and traumatized, told they will be killed or otherwise harmed if they disobey a superior or attempt to escape. Often, they are alienated from their homes, family and friends as they can be made to kill members of their own communities.

However, there are rehabilitation centres in many countries across the world. In Somalia, the Marka Militia Rehabilitation Center, funded in part by the European Union, attempts to help former soldiers´ emotional and psychological wellbeing and help them re-integrate into society.

Aid Agencies Urge UN to Ensure Separation between Humanitarian and Political efforts in Somalia

Nine international aid agencies have highlighted the "urgent need for separation between humanitarian and political efforts in Somalia" in a letter to John Holmes, the Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs with the United Nations (UN) in Somalia.

The letter, dated July 27, stated that the blurring of humanitarian and political efforts has reached "dangerous proportions."

It went on to add: "There are few people working in Somalia who do not recognize that perception can be the difference between life and death."

Following threats by Islamic militants on three UN agencies, senior UN personnel have warned of "serious consequences for life-saving assistance efforts." Yet those UN agencies that were targeted were not directly involved in providing humanitarian assistance.

"These statements and the ongoing UN positions on Somalia are examples of how political efforts are being deliberately and unacceptably intertwined with humanitarian activities," continued the letter.

The people of Somalia have endured intolerable suffering over the last 20 years. Today, nearly half of the entire population requires humanitarian assistance due to persistent drought, periodic flooding and ongoing conflict.

UPDF soldiers ´poisoned´ in Somalia

By Risdel Kasasira & Andrew Bagala

Eight Ugandan soldiers on the Somali peace-keeping mission were by press time still in intensive care at a Nairobi hospital battling a strange ailment suspected to be a result of poisoning.

The soldiers are feared to have been poisoned through water sources by the Islamist fundamentalists, Al Shabaab, who are opposed to the interim government in Somalia and the peace-keeping mission, sources told Daily Monitor.

But Maj. Barigye Ba-Hoku, the African Union Peace Keeping Mission spokesman, yesterday dismissed the poisoning claims. "It´s not true because this ailment is general and it has affected the Somalis outside the camps. It´s not only the peacekeepers," he said.

"[Kenyan and Amisom] doctors are studying the cause of the illness and they will soon come up with the report," Maj. Ba-Hoku told Daily Monitor by telephone from Mogadishu.

The infected Ugandan peacekeepers are part of the over 50 who have contracted the ailment that has in the last three weeks hit the Burundian and Ugandan camps in Mogadishu. Al Shabaab early this month claimed they had poisoned Burundian peacekeepers.

Four of the Ugandan soldiers were evacuated from the Somali capital, Mogadishu, and flown to Nairobi on Tuesday for treatment at Nairobi International Hospital, sources who did not want to be named because of the sensitivity of the subject said.

The Ugandan and Burundian camps are about two kilometres apart, each with its water tanks. Last week, the Deputy Amisom Commander, Gen. Juvinele Niyoyunguriza, told a group of Ugandan journalists in Mogadishu that Burundian forces had been infected with a strange disease.

Gen. Niyonyunguriza said 50 soldiers had been admitted and four died at Nairobi International hospital.

Mr Gaffel Nkolokosa of African Union Mission for Somalia in Nairobi yesterday said 12 of the 50 were evacuated from Mogadishu three weeks ago and brought to Kenya for treatment after exhibiting symptoms similar to those of their colleagues who had been admitted. He, however, said they had recovered and returned to Burundi.

According to sources, the Ugandan soldiers had developed fever and skin rash, before developing body organs´ failure.

Amisom Medical Officer James Kiyengo said on Friday that the strange ailment is a bacterial infection caused by rat´s urine. He identified the infection as leptospirosis.

"It is spread by a rat. A rat could have urinated in the water tank. We need to keep hygiene and keep rats off," he said last week. He said the ailment causes fever and skin rash, but added that its spread can stopped through isolation of cases and giving them dexocycline injections.

Col. Kiyengo said they had received drugs from the Islamic Relief Association in the United States and Korean International Cooperation Agency for treatment of the force and the general Somali community.

Amisom, which comprises 4,300 Ugandan and Burundian soldiers, has come under intense attack from Al Shabaab, who consider the peacekeepers as an occupying force.

Twelve Ugandan peacekeepers have been killed since 2007.

Al Shabaab, a youthful group that has been terrorising Somalis since 2006, has now turned to using both psychological and combat war to scare Somalis from supporting Amisom and the Transitional Federal Government, which has been in place for barely seven months.

UPDF in Somalia hit by strange disease

A strange disease has killed two Ugandan peace-keepers in Somalia and affected 17 others who were flown to a hospital in Nairobi yesterday, according to the UPDF.

"One died in Mogadishu on Tuesday evening while another one died on Wednesday morning in Nairobi," said spokesperson Col. Felix Kulayigye.

"Another 17 are admitted at the intensive care unit of Nairobi Hospital."

UPDF has dispatched a medical team to Mogadishu to establish the cause of the problem.

"The symptoms are chest pain, fever, headache, swelling of the lower limbs, rapid heart-beat and difficulties in breathing," said Kulayigye.

"We have no confirmation yet on what disease they are suffering from." By the end of last week, over 50 Burundians had been hit by the same mysterious disease, killing four.

Dr. Col. James Kiyengo, the force medical officer, on Friday said they suspected the disease to be leptospirosis.

"Leptospirosis is a bacterial disease caused by exposure to water contaminated with the urine of infected animals," Dr. Kiyengo explained.

"For example, a rat could have urinated in a water tanker and spread the disease."

Al Shabaab, the Islamist insurgents fighting the Somali government and the peace-keepers, claimed responsibility, saying they had poisoned them.

But the claim was dismissed by medical officers of the African Union peace-keeping force, who said it was a bacterial infection as a result of poor hygiene and living conditions associated with the job.

According to the US Center for Disease Control, leptospirosis is a bacterial disease that affects humans and animals.

In humans it causes a wide range of symptoms, such as high fever, severe headache, chills, muscle aches, and vomiting. It may include jaundice (yellow skin), red eyes, abdominal pain, diarrhoea, or a rash.

If not treated, the patient could develop kidney damage, meningitis (inflammation of the membrane around the brain and spinal cord), liver failure and respiratory distress.

In rare cases death occurs. Humans become infected through contact with water, food or soil containing urine from infected animals, such as dogs, or rats, according to the US Center for Disease Control.

This may happen by swallowing contaminated food or water, through skin contact, such as the eyes or nose, or contact with broken skin.

The disease is not known to be spread from person to person. The time between a person's exposure to a contaminated source and becoming sick is about four weeks.

The illness lasts from a few days to three weeks. Without treatment, recovery may take several months. Leptospirosis is an occupational hazard for many people who work outdoors or with animals, such as farmers, veterinarians, fishermen or the military.

Dr. Kiyonga said the disease can be treated with antibiotics and prevented by boiling water and keeping out rats.

There are 4,300 AU peace-keepers in Somalia, of whom 2,700 are Ugandan.

The current Ugandan contingent will be replaced next month. Col. Nathan Mugisha is taking over from Gen. Francis Okello as force commander.

US Congressman Snubs Somaliland Foreign Minister But Meets with KULMIYE´s Foreign Secretary

US Congressman Donald Payne snubbed Somaliland foreign minister, Abdillahi Mohamed Duale, and met with Dr. Mohamed Omer- foreign secretary of Somaliland´s opposition KULMIYE party in Washington DC.

Dr. Omer arrived in Washington on Sunday at the invitation of Donald Payne (D-NJ), chairman of subcommittee on Africa and Global Health, while the foreign secretary of Somaliland who remained in Washington for days was told the congressman wasn´t available to see him.

This was so humiliating for president Dahir Rayale´s government following its refusal to attend and participate in recent congressional hearing about Somalia chaired by Donald Payne.

The Somaliland government refused the idea of sharing a roundtable with representatives from the self-declared autonomous region of Puntland and Somalia, saying Somaliland is independent from Somalia and would not be lumped together with it as if it was still an integral part of Somalia.

Officials of Somaliland´s leading opposition party, KULMIYE, however saw this in a completely different light and thought it would be well advised to meet with a powerful man like congressman Payne who is a friend of Somaliland and to "put our message across without compromising the sovereignty and independence of Somaliland in any shape or form".

Representative Donald Payne and Dr. Omer discussed a number of issues including the forthcoming Somaliland presidential election and other important issues in the region.

Representative Payne was quoted as saying that "the upcoming Somaliland presidential election should go ahead as planned".

In a statement issued by Dr. Saad Noor, Somaliland representative to the US, Somaliland foreign minister, Mr. Abdillahi Duale, was equally on a working visit to the US for almost two weeks as part of "a periodic review of the relations between the two countries comprising a follow-up on pending issues and consultations on areas of mutual interest".

Dr. Noor also confirmed Mr. Duale was received by president Obama´s advisor on Africa and met other officials from USAID although "Donald Payne refused to meet him," according to VOA radio.

Ted Dagne, a specialist on African Affairs at the Congressional Research Service, said: "Representative Donald Payne do not recognise Mr. Duale as the only one who represent the Somaliland people and will meet any other official from Somaliland," according to VOA radio- Somali Service.

Dr. Noor said: " while we have a great deal of respect for Rep. Donald Payne nonetheless we will not accept anything we consider to be detrimental to the independence and sovereignty of Somaliland".

Impacting reports from the global village

Maybe North Korea could help Somalia to pull off all illegal South Korean vessels from Somali waters!

N Korea 'seizes S Korea vessel'

By the BBC

A South Korean fishing boat has been towed away by a North Korean patrol boat off the peninsula's east coast, South Korean officials say.

The military says the ship had strayed north of the maritime border due to a problem with its navigation system.

South Korea has asked for the boat and the crew, who were fishing for squid, to be returned as soon as possible.

The incident comes as relations between the two rival Koreas have worsened over the North's nuclear and missile tests.

The 29-tonne fishing boat, named the 800 Yeonanho, "was tugged to the port of Jangjon at 0930 (0030 GMT)," said Lee Bung-woo, a defence ministry spokesperson in Seoul.

The North has not yet responded to Seoul's request to release the crew and boat, other officials said.

Beyond radar reach'

Mr Lee said the boat's crew had reported a malfunction with their satellite navigation system shortly before it was seized 11km (seven miles) into North Korean waters at 0627 (2127 GMT).

The 800 Yeonanho did not respond to calls from the South Korean navy trying to identify the boat, a spokesman for South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff, Park Sung-woo, said.

"The ship was out of the reach of our radars when it crossed the Northern Limit Line (NLL)," he said.

"The boat was also tiny and built with reinforced plastics, which made it hard to identify the vessel with radars."

The NLL is the de facto maritime boundary between North and South Korea, established after the Korean War ended in 1953. The two countries are still technically at war, as a peace treaty was never negotiated.

There is concern that the current tensions between the two sides may complicate the issue, following the North's recent nuclear test and the South's support for international sanctions, says the BBC's John Sudworth in Seoul.

A South Korean worker who was based at a joint industrial project has been held for almost four months by the North, accused of insulting its political system.

Two US journalists, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, who were seized along North Korea's border with China in March, are also still being held.

But similar incidents involving fishing vessels straying across the boundary have been successfully resolved in the past.

A South Korean boat that drifted into the North's waters in 2006 was returned after 18 days, and the South's military says it recently returned two Northern fishing boats that had strayed over the line.

Ethiopia - Co-operation of Amhara pro-democracy forces and Oromo pro-freedom fronts against Weyane

By Fayyis Oromia

It was already written that Weyane's leader, Meles Zenawi, has said: Amhara-Oromo conflict, i.e the historical face-off between Oromo and Amhara in Ethiopia, is a unique historical advantage for Weyane to perpetuate its rule. He also said regarding the dialogue between Amhara forces and Oromo fronts within AFD, seemingly rightly, that it is a marriage between "fire and straw (isat ina ciid)". It is really pity that these two BIG nations live in conflict against each other just caused by the hitherto ruling class of the empire and its sponsors aka European colonizers, the effect being the fate of both nations to live now under subjugation by minority group of Tigrean ruling class.

Disregarding the hitherto Abesha ruling class, actually both Amhara and Oromo peoples were victims of European colonizers. The main conflict and imbalance of power between Amharas and Oromos started at the end of 19th century at which time Europeans had their programm of scramble for Africa. It is said that French colonizers used to move horizontal between Dakar and Djibouti, whereas British colonizers' move was vertical between Cape town and Cairo. These two forces were about to confront each other in the Horn of Africa. To avoid the confrontation the British had to do their usual manipulation in Africa: choosing one ethnic group as a "superior", and using it to suppress the others which they consider as the "inferiors". They told the Amharas that they are "superior" Semitics and Christians who had to "civilize" the "inferior animist" Oromos and others in the south. They gave them weapons and helped them by giving military advice.

Indirectly they controlled the area without confronting the French army. With such manipulation, both Amharas and Oromos became victims, since then both are not free. Amhara rulers being the ex-servants of British (as suppressors of Oromos), both Amharas as a people and Oromos as the suppressed subjects were/are still lacking freedom.

Now a days Tegarus' ruling class play the same role as servants of American imperialists again to suppress Oromos and of course at the moment Amharas are as suppressed as Oromos. Theoretically now there is nothing which can hinder the alliance of Amhara and Oromo forces to come together and fight for their freedom as they attempted in AFD, but still there are practical problems. Both need yet to learn to stop their mantra of crying for mere unconditional Ethiopian unity and mere Oromian independence without a union respectively. Amharas crying for unconditional unity makes Oromos only be sceptical for Oromos know what Amharas want to achieve with this pretext. At the same time the attempt of some Oromos to forge independence without giving the possibility for a union and without giving a value for the benefit of a union among neighbouring nations makes Amharas to panic for they think that they will be driven out of Oromia. Such move of certain Oromo organizations seems to be as contraproductive as the cry of Amharas for unity.

Beside that, Weyanes do manipulate this "difference" between the two BIG nations to creat more discord and make them fight each other. In order to neutralize such evil deed of Weyane, very important now for the two is to concentrate on the common agenda: freedom and democracy. If both come to their senses and rally behind these two ideals, the other two virtues they cry for will be fulfilled indirectly: independent Oromia in an integrated (united) Ethiopia. Is this impossible? NO! It is possible if all nations in the empire will be free from tyranny, killing, and looting like what is happening under Weyane now. So our main problem now a days is the lording, killing and looting that all the nations in the empire do suffer under fascist Weyane. The "fool" victims from the two BIG nations need to come to their sense and say together: NO to fascism!

continue reading: http://nazret.com/blog/index.php?blog=15&title=ethiopia_co_operation_of_amhara_and_orom&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1

Aid won´t fix the crisis in Yemen

By Jane Novak (*)

Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh celebrated the 31st anniversary of his ascension to power. The Sana´a regime, perverted by corruption, is largely unable to provide public services, including water, electricity, security, medical care and education. A third of Yemenis—7 million people—are malnourished. Police and military units act as enforcers for corrupt officials. The judiciary dispenses political retribution. Torture in Yemeni jails is systemic and brutal.

On his anniversary, Saleh published an essay calling for dialog and tolerance. The same week, 18 protesters were killed by police, a journalist sentenced to jail and an opposition party prevented from holding its conference. A four-year rebellion in the north and a two-year uprising in the south threaten to engulf the nation in violence. Known al Qaeda operatives roam the capital freely, and teenage suicide bombers routinely target elderly tourists.

Yemen´s donors believe stabilizing President Saleh´s regime will thwart the devolution of Yemen into a failed state and an al Qaeda safe haven. U.S. aid proposed for 2010 is at the highest levels in years. The Department of Defense allocated $66 million in military aid, mostly for patrol boats and armored pick-ups. Congress´ Foreign Operation Appropriation bill includes an additional $15 million in military aid and $40 million in development and economic aid. Other humanitarian aid is channeled through USAID. However, increased funding to Yemen is a questionable strategy that may escalate instability.

Yemen already receives more aid than it can effectively absorb. Donors pledged $4.6 billion in 2006. Yemen declared "renewed commitment to urgent reforms." Years later, the state is still drawing up implementation plans for much of the funds. The lack of progress was a significant disappointment, yet predictable in an environment of rampant corruption. Billions in aid, oil revenue and other state funds are embezzled, stolen, diverted or misdirected, without consequence. Absent strict oversight, aid is subject to elite capture and often does not reach intended recipients.

U.S. military aid intended for border security may wind up fueling atrocities. The Yemeni military bombed cities and villages heavily in the northern Sa´ada province while countering a rebellion that began in 2004. The Sa´ada War, dubbed "Yemen´s Darfur," forced nearly 200,000 citizens to flee their homes. The government blocked food, aid and medicine to 700,000 Sa´ada residents in "an act that appears to constitute an illegal collective punishment," Human Rights Watch found. Officials explained the deliberate starvation was meant to pressure villagers to turn over rebel fighters.

The small band of Zaidi rebels—triggered by political exclusion—grew to thousands. They claim they are acting in self-defense against a Wahabbi-inspired campaign of Shiite eradication. The Yemeni government insists the rebels seek to re-establish a theocratic monarchy.

The latest ceasefire required the release of arbitrarily arrested Hashemite men and boys, but hundreds are still in jail. With the government´s mediation committee headed by a major arms dealer, sporadic clashes indicate the war will likely resume and may spread beyond its previous boundaries to engulf the nation. The International Crisis Group recommends that to preserve the fragile peace, external parties "refrain from military assistance to the parties in conflict, including the Yemeni government."

In South Yemen, massacres of protesters have become routine. The "southern mobility movement" began in 2007, calling for equal rights denied after 1990´s unity of North and South Yemen. The government´s response to the unrest was to shoot into the crowds and arrest thousands, sparking a cycle of civil unrest. Dozens of citizens were "deliberately killed or died as a result of excessive use of force by the security forces during peaceful protests," Amnesty International said. In June, there were 42 demonstrations, 17 injuries and five deaths. On July 23, a particularly bloody day, 18 protesters were killed during a demonstration in Zanzibar, Abyan. Protesters are now demanding southern independence and allege the unified Yemeni state is illegal under international law. With no end in sight, U.S. military aid—even trucks—may inadvertently facilitate the civilian slaughter.

Saleh´s regime is also engaged in a drastic campaign of media repression. Journalists have been banned from Sa´ada since 2004 and jailed for writing about the war. As unrest escalates in the south, so does the punishment of journalists who report the news. The non-governmental media is being forced into bankruptcy, court and prison. Bumping foreign aid in the midst of this massive media repression sends the wrong message from the U.S. to the Yemeni people.

The Committee to Protect Journalists condemned the "months-long assault on the media" where "physical assaults have been coupled with dozens of arrests of independent journalists, editors and bloggers." The government banned seven independent newspapers, including the long-established al-Ayyam, forcing hundreds of journalists out of work. Police disrupted demonstrations supporting al Ayyam with live fire. Dozens of Yemeni news websites are blocked. In Yemen, al Qaeda has greater Internet freedom than reformers.

Perhaps the fundamental question for the donor community, especially the U.S., is how to best secure their citizens from the growing terror threat from Yemen. A more active and visible presence of al Qaeda heightens concerns about Yemen´s potential implosion. Since 2007, nearly a dozen so-called al Qaeda attacks targeted tourists and foreign interests, including the U.S. Embassy. However, the ecosystems that nurture al Qaeda in Yemen and regionally are supported by Yemeni state resources, as are a variety of criminal enterprises. The idea that President Saleh put the fight against al Qaeda on the back burner because of civil unrest is misguided. Al Qaeda thrived in Yemen because it was nurtured, not neglected.

The final president of South Yemen, Ali Salem al Beidh, said the Sana´a regime is creating regional crisis, "not only in our occupied South Yemen but also in Somalia, as well as in the weapon markets in Yemen and in the Al-Qaeda Organization cells in Saudi Arabia. It ranges from launching an air bridge to ensure the flow of jihadist terrorism to Iraq, to sending Yemeni official equipment, arms and ammunition to the Somali pirates in the Indian Ocean and the Gulf of Aden, to controlling the outlets of weapon and drugs trafficking and money laundering."

Yemen´s counter-terror policies are farcical and include releasing convicted terrorists, pretending terrorists are in jail or dead, and other elaborate ploys to deceive Western nations. Saleh deployed jihadists during Yemen´s 1994 civil war and in the recent Sa´ada War and appears ready to unleash these terrorists against protesters in the south. Local media reported numerous al Qaeda training camps within or facilitated by the Yemeni military. Scores of terrorists receive military salaries. Fears that without Saleh the resulting vacuum will allow terrorist entrenchment ignores the reality on the ground.

There is nothing to suggest that the regime would sincerely battle al Qaeda if it rid itself of other distractions. A truce in 2003 between the Yemeni al Qaeda and the regime led to several years where terror activity was externally directed. Reports indicate that Saleh requested additional jihadists from Ayman al Zawahiri late in 2008. Within months, an influx of foreign jihadists began amassing in Sa´ada. The survival of the regime hinges on fundamentalist support.

President Saleh uses jihadists and the takfist ideology against his political rivals. Moderates, intellectuals, reformers, Shiite rebels, secularists and southern socialists are all apostates according to Saleh. The Defense Ministry published a fatwa legitimizing jihad in defense of the state. Hardcore Salafi preachers issued a 2006 fatwa that opposition to Saleh was un-Islamic. The government supports the spread of extremist schools and risks creating a generation of fanatics. The weakening of Saleh´s grip would necessarily bring about an enhanced political pluralism and balance of ideologies. Yemen historically is a pluralistic and tolerant society.

The structural remedy to corruption, violence against civilians and extremist thinking is a free press. Good governance cannot exist without it. Dialog among citizens occurs in the media. If there is one lever for reform, it is the Yemeni press. It is imperative to tie necessary aid to the ability of journalists to perform their jobs without retribution. The Yemeni press heroically weathers the punishment for performing its watchdog role. But it is on the brink of extinction.

One trigger of instability (or perhaps progress) in Yemen is the administration´s visible failure to reform. As the elite are unmasked as epically corrupt, public discontent grows. If the U.S. wants to support Yemen´s "nascent democracy," it must realize that popular will can leverage reform, as donor aid cannot. Any successful anti-corruption campaign results in the displacement of the corrupt elite, thus reform in Yemen is systematically undermined from within.

For over a decade, Saleh´s toxic dictatorship ravaged Yemen´s human and natural resources, institutions and economy. Artificially prolonging the Sana´a regime is a strategy that failed already. Yemen, in all or in part, may transition from authoritarianism to responsible governance, and perhaps today is closer than ever. While the U.S. does not endorse or support a leadership change in Yemen, neither should it actively thwart the natural democratic progression of the state. Throwing out the tyrant is standard procedure in a revolution.

(*) Jane Novak is an American journalist and blogger well known in Yemen. The author of over 60 articles on Yemen´s internal affairs, her website armiesofliberation.com has been banned in Yemen since 2006.

Diplomats propose foreign policy shift

By Mwakera Mwajefa

A new foreign policy guideline is being discussed by Kenyan envoys before it is presented to the Cabinet for approval.

The document focuses on aspects to be examined by officials in foreign missions to advance the country´s interests and improve its image.

Foreign Affairs public and communication director Egara Kabaji announced the new policy in a press release on Tuesday at the Ambassadors and High Commissioners 15th Biennial Conference in Mombasa.

"For 45 years, we have operated rudderless but now we have a guide on how to interact with the rest of the world," he said.

Kenya´s representatives abroad are expected to ensure the policy framework is in line with Vision 2030 objectives.

"Through economic, peace, environment, diaspora and culture diplomacy, our heads of mission are not only expected to market Kenya but also attract investment in the host countries," he said.

Prof Kabaji said a restructuring programme in the ministry had resulted in savings of Sh847 million annually, money used to open new diplomatic missions without additional funding from the Treasury.

Prof Kabaji revealed that the ministry would set up a database to improve communication with Kenyans in the diaspora to boost remittances.

He, however, was concerned by the reduction of visa charges from $50 to $25, saying this sent a message that the country was a cheap tourist destination.

Sources privy to deliberations at the conference but who are not authorised to comment, told the Nation the Somali situation was cause for concern.

"The situation in Somalia and its effects on our country generated a lot of interest among diplomats," the sources said.

For over two decades, Somalia has operated without a government, resulting in warlords, militias and clan leaders fighting for supremacy.

According to the sources, diplomats will now sign performance contracts to assess what they are learning from host countries for Kenya´s benefit.

"Being our eyes and ears abroad, we expect them to tell us what they are doing to benefit us," the sources said.

It's our pan-African instinct to help Somalia

By James Magode Ikuya

It is an African adage that one should run to the rescue of a neighbour´s house if it is on fire.

The process that makes people belong to and live in a community with each other itself demands cooperation and solidarity with each other especially in times of adversity, well knowing that each one´s safety arises from that of all others.

The obligations of Community members to each other used to be sanctioned by customary law and Community up-bringing. This sound age-old African practice compels us to agonize over the situation of the people of Somalia where chaos has been reigning ever since the fall of Siad Barre regime.

It is probably from this legitimate concern that the present Government offered to send Ugandan troops as part of the African peace-making in that country. However, for an act of solidarity to be valid and welcome, it must address the cause of distress and enable the victims to overcome their hardship.

A situation of famine requires offerings of grain, a funeral is supported with wails and an affliction demands a medicine man while devastation of dwellings needs building materials and builders.

Somalia state typified the colonial formation in Africa which aggregated and superimposed the colonial state over African communities in disregard of the obtaining ways of life that was embraced by the African people.

Under the pretext of introducing development, Africans were herded into new relations over which they were not the masters. The pre-colonial society was based on the attachment of communities to their possessions which they held in accordance to their customs and rules.

The advent of the colonial state over the African communities superseded the operations of these old customary relations and relegated these practices to the backyard of private, individual aptitudes. The relations , hitherto understood as inviolable in each of the African communities, were dissolved and overridden.

Thus, despite our lip-service to supporting each other when one´s house is on fire, we find that in case of an outbreak of fire today in most parts of our urban areas, it is essentially the task of defined state organs like the fire-brigade to fight it off.

Those who flock towards the incident do so mainly out of their old habits or simple curiosity from idleness. There is no legal requirement that a passerby can divert from one´s business to attend to a consuming fire in his neighbourhood.

The definition of the modern state in a manner that counterpoises valued connections in the African society was bound to render a split personality out of the African person.

He lives in the new order dominated by the commerce and finances of the western countries while, at the same time, retaining the instinct of previous community identity.

The modern African state became strong only in its superficiality. Its existence was not from the volition of society but just because it was brutal and had to be obeyed, being an organ for the monopoly of violence and coercion over the people.

It exerted control out of the fear of the uniform of the policeman, the murderous armies, jails or magistrates who instituted them. Outside the eyes of these organs, ordinary people knew what to rely on in their lives amongst themselves.

They found solace as they retreated to handle their innermost feelings through the rituals that they performed, the diviners they consulted, the burial ceremonies they engaged in and the happy laughter that they cracked with each other.

The colonial state tried with forced labour to extract what it could out of their territory. But this subsequently roused resentment, leading to anti-colonial feelings and the rise of struggle for independence.

There was hope that the installing of a regime of local faces would recreate freedom and the advancement of people´s aspirations.Instead, the regimes became more and more autocratic.

Basic expectations were flouted or ignored. The regimes failed to translate the weapon of independence struggle into a program for the people. They became paralyzed in trying to serve foreign masters without particularly mastering how to do it without losing popularity.

Their hold on the state weakened. They failed to meet a single popular use in their countries. With the increasing weakening of the old colonial states under the African regimes, the African states have become even more meaningless contrivance in the lives of the people.

Not only were the concerns of the people, which the colonial state had submerged, left unattended to, they were also made worse by mannerism of the new regimes.

The regimes engaged in wastage of public resources, abuse of authority and ethnic discrimination of the people they ruled. This is why disenchantment broke out into armed insurgency in many African countries.

The success of these insurrections could only depend on how they were organized in the first place. Where the insurgents failed to correctly identify their national problem, every act of their attempt also compounded their issues.

In Somalia the only thing for which a state is usually known, its apparatus of violence, also collapsed under rivalries breaking the society into incongruous pieces.

As an African people, Ugandans must learn what happened in Somalia in order to help them. This presupposes knowing why the Siad Barre regime in Somalia collapsed and resulted into such a havoc that has wrecked the country.

The sending of Uganda troops to Somalia as an expression of solidarity with them presumes that what the Somalis needed were troops.

A more careful analysis would show that the most appropriate assistance to the Somalia people is to share with them political experience and wisdom. Out of their own political awakening they would then be in position to mentor the forming of their state in accordance with their own conditions.

No amount of munitions, Ugandan soldiers or US support for troops deployment can replace the importance of the conscious will of the Somalis themselves.

Who's responsible for the Arab world?

By Khaled Diab for The Guardian

A UN report has reignited the controversy over who is to blame for the sorry state of the Arab world: Arabs or the west?

First, the good news. Arab countries have the lowest levels of malnutrition and hunger in the developing world, have made "striking progress" in extending the lives of their citizens, abject poverty is comparatively low and, surprisingly (for me at least), levels of income inequality are moderate across most of the region. These are some of the few silver linings contained in the latest disillusioning and disturbing Arab Human Development Report (AHDR).

Despite the bad international press the conflicts in the region draw, the Arab world is, based on its level of violent crime, just about the safest place in the world. The real threat to people's safety comes not from outlaws but from those above the law, an altogether different gang of criminals: Arab leaders and foreign occupiers.

The AHDR concludes that the Arab state is often "a threat to human security, instead of its chief support". This edition of the report has shifted its perspective from collective security and development to the emerging perspective of individual "human security". It describes human security as "the rearguard of human development" which "focuses on enabling peoples to contain or avert threats to their lives, livelihoods and human dignity".

The report identifies seven categories of threats which can be divided into two broad groups: internal and external. One of the greatest of these threats, as hinted above, is the state's role as defender of a ruling elite rather than champion of all the people. This is achieved through repressive security measures and a bloated security apparatus, built-in institutional weakness, and the co-opting of nationalism to serve the survival of the regime.

In the absence of impartial law and order and as a side effect of political and economic powerlessness, women are particularly vulnerable to abuse. "Arab women, like many of their peers in other regions, sustain both direct and indirect violence," the AHDR observes.

In this, as with so many other issues, taking a regional perspective masks the massive differences between individual countries. In fact, there is a mind-boggling diversity of societies: from multi-ethnic Sudan to largely homogenous Egypt, from dirt-poor Yemen to the super-rich princedoms in the Gulf, from the largely secular Lebanon and Tunisia to the autocratic theocracy of Saudi Arabia. For example, the proportion of women who get married before they are 18 ranges from a massive 45% in Somalia to 2% in Algeria.

In my view, the Arab state's failure to serve its citizens is intimately connected – both as a cause and effect – with the region's lacklustre economic performance, as is the region's instability. Shockingly, the AHDR quotes World Bank figures that show the region's economies to have grown collectively by a mere 6.4% in real terms in the quarter of a century between 1980 and 2004.

This is partly due to the Arab world's addiction – both direct and indirect – to oil-fuelled growth, and the dismantling of the industrial infrastructure in the more industrialised states that occurred as part of the so-called "reforms" pushed by the World Bank and IMF. In fact, today, Arab countries are less industrialised than they were in 1970.

Modest economic growth or even stagnation in itself is not a problem if the fruits are distributed equitably and the population is stable. But Arab elites are increasingly hogging big slices of the economic pie, while the "youth bulge" has led to mass unemployment in most countries, especially among young people. To add pain to indignity, the "structural reforms" many countries had to undergo mean that subsidies and other benefits are becoming almost non-existent.

And the region's ecological carrying capacity is being strained by its continued population growth and global environmental pressures. Ironically, although the Arab world is a minor contributor to greenhouse gas emission, it is set to become one of the main victims of climate change, as the region's water sources dry up and desertification spreads on the back of rising temperatures.

Another more controversial external threat is foreign military occupation and intervention. "Many of the threats to human security discussed in the report coalesce in situations of occupation, conflict and military intervention," the authors note, drawing on the evidence of three case studies covering Iraq, the occupied Palestinian territories and Somalia. "They spark both resistance and a cycle of violence and counter-violence that engulfs occupied and occupier alike [and] undercut human security in other Arab and neighbouring countries."

In an apparent pre-emptive bid at damage control with the US and Israel, the UNDP, according to the report's lead consultant, moved the chapter on foreign occupation to the end of what is billed as an "independent" report. "[This] undermines the impact of Israeli occupation in Palestine and American occupation in Iraq to human security," Mustapha Kamel al-Sayed, who disowned the report, told al-Masry al-Youm.

This has sparked some heated debate among Arab intellectuals, with some going so far as to suggest that the AHDR is little more than intellectual cover for western expansionism in the region. Some have even linked the report's absence for the last four years with ill intent. "Suddenly, out of nowhere, it appears again this year to lecture us about security, while foreign military occupations and interferences, and their catastrophic consequences on the region are at the bottom of its concerns," wrote one journalist.

But such an attitude risks throwing out the baby with the bathwater since, to my mind, it lets off Arab leaders too lightly. Foreign occupation is definitely a major threat – and outright disaster for the societies directly affected – and deserves far more than footnote status. But we most not overlook that, almost without exception, Arab regimes, whether they are western clients or not, are a major cause of insecurity for their peoples – in fact, the ruling elite often behaves as though they were a foreign occupier.

In addition, the AHDR has taken the consistent and anti-interventionist stance that: "sustainable change can only come from within". It even argues that the region's increasingly dynamic and outspoken civil society offer the best hope for the future.

The UNDP may have toned things down somewhat to deflect some of the heat it might get from the United States, but this does not make it an instrument of "western imperialism". After all, it also seemed to be appeasing Arabs by dropping a chapter on the "ticking bomb" of identity conflicts. "The casualties of the situation in South Sudan, civil war in Lebanon and other such conflicts are very high and yet this chapter was reduced to two pages integrated into another chapter," al-Sayed pointed out.

Arabs and those interested in assisting the region to develop would do well to pay close attention to the seven "building blocks" of human security outlined in the AHDR, which range from empowering women and economic diversification to guaranteeing the rule of law and protecting the environment.

Mystery of Taliban funds - Editorial DailyTimes

The US special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Mr Richard Holbrooke, says that Taliban militants are receiving more funding from their sympathisers abroad than from Afghanistan´s illegal drug trade. This statement contradicts the sole Pakistani source that has been forthcoming on the subject: Governor NWFP Mr Owais Ghani thinks that the Taliban in FATA and other tribal areas are spending a budget of Rs 14 billion annually, and the money comes, primarily, from drugs smuggling from Afghanistan.

Mr Holbrooke says: "More money is coming from the Gulf than is coming from the drug trade to the Taliban". He didn´t say it but he must mean: Iran, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Iraq. He is clearly relying on what NATO military officials in Afghanistan think: the Taliban raise USD60-100 million a year from the trade in illegal narcotics. He says: "What I believe happens is that the Taliban fund local operations in the Pashtun belt out of drug money, but the overall effort gets massive amounts of money from outside Afghanistan".

He thinks the governments in the Gulf are not involved, but that sympathisers from all over the world are — "with the bulk of it appearing to come from the Gulf". When a Pakistani representative says the Taliban are getting drug money there are layers of meaning in it. First of all, it is a matter of record that during the Taliban rule in Afghanistan, the militia had successfully curbed poppy cultivation in many parts of the country under their control. The arrival of the Americans in Afghanistan has strengthened the warlords and their "business" of poppy cultivation in the country. What is also on record is the fact that the family of the Afghan president Mr Karzai is involved in the drug trade.

The fact is that the insurgency is very likely to have multiple sources of funding, not just one. Not even one source which caters to the bulk of funds being used to sustain the insurgency and terrorist operations across the region. It is difficult to estimate how much of the money is coming from what source. What makes eminent sense though is to have more than one channel to ensure that the supply doesn´t dry out if one particular source is detected.

Also, we may be forgetting Al Qaeda in all this. Al Qaeda has its old "gold stream" coming into Pakistan and Afghanistan from the UAE in general and Dubai in particular. It started with the purchase of gold and diamonds all over the world — Aafiya Siddiqi was allegedly a part of that network — and then converting them into whatever currency was needed in the area of operation. The half a million dollars supposed to have been spent on the 9/11 operation had allegedly gone to the US from Dubai via Pakistan. Carrying large amounts of currency on flights to and from the UAE is more dangerous than carrying gold. And the institution of hawala is not dead yet.

One cannot ignore the "income" the Taliban count on through criminal activities. Not only do they allow criminal groups to kidnap people for huge ransoms, they levy their own taxes and "protection money" in the areas where they have replaced the writ of the state. And that includes Peshawar itself where the Governor NWFP has his residence. One reason the "emirate" took shape under Baitullah Mehsud was the need to create his own source of revenue through taxing the transporters of the area. Warlord Fazlullah was tolerated by the Taliban and Al Qaeda even when he became "excessive" — which finally led to his ouster from Swat — because he had a good source of revenue from the state-owned emerald mines he had taken over.

Opposition to the Taliban among the local influential groups in Pakistan has grown because of the need of the Taliban to extort money from them to make up the funds for the purchase of weapons and explosives, paying off its foot-soldiers and compensating the families of the "martyr" Taliban.

Taliban trouble in Nigeria

After an uprising involving four predominantly Muslim states of Nigeria, the police finally caught up with the crux of the movement under one Muhammad Yusuf in the city of Maiduguri. But the clash has resulted in 250 dead. The uprising is in favour of the Islamic sharia inspired by the Saudi puritanical faith that lays down the condition of sharia wherever the Muslims live. So intense is this feeling in favour of the sharia that even the Muslim minority in the UK is asking for a "sharia for all".

The Maiduguri killings are not new. Violence has been steady in Africa´s largest country of 130 million people because one half the country, which is Muslim and lives in the northern provinces, demands Islamic law. The country is very plural in composition: Muslim 50 percent, Christian 40 percent, indigenous beliefs 10 percent. Needless to say when sharia is demanded the two other communities feel threatened and band together defensively. Things could have simmered down but Nigeria was taken into the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC) as an "Islamic" state, unleashing the trouble that is unfolding today.

Last year too there was trouble from the northern states. Between the Muslim north and the non-Muslim south, there are cities where the two communities are interpenetrated. The northern states have unilaterally imposed the sharia without changing the federal constitution and are handing out punishments of rijm (stoning to death) to Muslim women. Christians and pagans have fled the troubled areas and are homeless refugees inside Nigeria.

The federation has rejected Islamisation which means the uprising will first cut off the north from the rest of the country, then cause a civil war to take place. Nigeria has oil and gas in the south but if the Muslims can´t embrace moderation the state will be bifurcated and the Muslims will get nothing. So Nigeria can learn from Algeria from the recent past; it can also learn from Somalia of today.

Terrorism probe into Dutchmen arrested in Kenya

The Dutch authorities have launched an investigation into the possible involvement with terrorism of four Dutchmen arrested by the police in Kenya earlier this week.

The men are in custody in Belgium after arriving at Brussels airport on Thursday morning at the request of the Dutch justice department. A request for their extradition to the Netherlands has been made.

The four men are suspected of belonging to a terrorist organisation, says the justice department on its website. Two homes of the arrested men in The Hague were searched by police on Thursday morning and a ´considerable amount of documents´ seized, says the justice department.

According to the Kenyan authorities the four were stopped on the Somali border on their way to a Jihadist training camp.

The Dutch justice department says one of the four men now in Belgian custody was arrested in 2005 in Azerbeidzjan where he wanted to join the jihad and was extradited to the Netherlands.

Three of the men, who are all 21-years-old, are Dutch and one is a Moroccan with a Dutch residency permit, according to the justice department.

According to the website of public broadcaster Nos, the men belong to a group of Muslims which has been banned from the As-Soennah mosque in The Hague because of their radical beliefs.

The Dutch secret service AIVD have been keeping an eye on the men, reports Nos.

After "independence" in Kenya (was there?) and under today's terroristic "war on terrorim" everywhere:

First they came for the communists,

and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.

Then they came for the Labour Unionists,

and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Labour Unionist.

Then they came for the Muslim,

and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Muslim.

Then they came for me —

and by that time no one was left to speak up.

(adapted from the original, stated by Pastor Martin Niemoeller)

Dutch return Ghana chief's severed head

By NRC Handelsblad

The descendants of an African chief who was hanged and decapitated by a Dutch general 171 years ago reluctantly accepted the return of his severed head Thursday, still angry even as the Dutch tried to right a historic wrong.

The head of King Badu Bonsu II was discovered last year in a jar of formaldehyde gathering dust in the anatomical collection of the Leiden university medical centre. The Dutch government agreed to Ghanaian demands that the relic be returned.

On Thursday, members of the king's Ahanta tribe, dressed in dark robes and wearing red sashes, took part in the hand-over ceremony, honouring his spirit by toasting with Dutch gin and then sprinkling the drink over the floor at the Dutch foreign ministry.

But descendants of the chief said they were not consoled.

"I am hurt, angry. My grandfather has been killed," said Joseph Jones Amoah, the great-great-grandson of the chief.

Protocol

The chief's head was stored elsewhere at the ministry and was not displayed during the ceremony. It is expected to be flown with the tribe members back to Ghana on Friday.

Tribal elders said after the hand-over that they were also angry because they had been sent by their current chief only to identify the head, not retrieve it. Taking it back without first reporting to the chief would be a breach of protocol, they said.

"We, the Ahanta, are not happy at all," said Nana Etsin Kofi II.

The head was taken by major-general Jan Verveer in 1838 in retaliation for Bonsu's killing of two Dutch emissaries, whose heads were displayed as trophies on Bonsu's throne, said Arthur Japin, a Dutch author who discovered the king's head when he was working on a historical novel.

The elders demanded the Dutch government provide aid to their tribe to appease the slain chief.

Nana Kwekwe Darko III, who tipped the gin on the floor in a Ghanaian tradition of respect for the dead, dabbed tears from his eyes afterwards and said he wanted the Dutch to build schools and hospitals for his people.

Ministry spokesman Bart Rijs said that 10 tribal chiefs who came from Ghana had agreed before the ceremony to take the head home. The official transfer was between the two countries' governments, he said.

Dutch apologies

Foreign minister Maxime Verhagen used the ceremony to apologise for Dutch involvement in the slave trade. Ghana, then known as Gold Coast, was a base for Dutch slave traders.

"We are also here because of our mutual desire to lay to rest episodes in [...] history that were unfortunate and shameful," Verhagen said. "Our common past also includes the infamous slave trade, which our traders engaged in and sustained and which inflicted so much harm on so many people in so many parts of the world."

Ghana has lobbied for the head's return since it was discovered.

"Without burial of the head, the deceased will be hunted in the afterlife. He's incomplete," Eric Odoi-Anim, a Ghanaian diplomat in the Netherlands said after the discovery. "It's also a stigma on his clan, on his kinsmen, and him being a chief — this is even more serious."

It was unclear what would become of it once it reaches Ghana.

Berima Asamoah Kofi IV, a traditional chief who now lives in the Netherlands, said the Ahanta chief would ultimately decide its fate.

"Whatever he says, we are going to do," he said.

Special feature:

Decline and Fall of the American Empire E

By Jim Quinn (libertarian) for Casey Research

After ruling much of the known world for centuries, Rome fell due to a number of factors that, historians believe, would not have been fatal in isolation, but that proved terminal in combination. Military overspending and overreach, an untenable economic system, and currency debasement all played a role.

"The decline of Rome was the natural and inevitable effect of immoderate greatness. Prosperity ripened the principle of decay; the causes of destruction multiplied with the extent of conquest; and as soon as time or accident had removed the artificial supports, the stupendous fabric yielded to the pressure of its own weight." Edward Gibbon - The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

After ruling much of the known world for centuries, Rome fell due to a number of factors that, historians believe, would not have been fatal in isolation, but that proved terminal in combination. Military overspending and overreach, an untenable economic system, and currency debasement all played a role. As has been well documented, the Roman emperors attempted to distract the populace from the increasingly dire reality of their situation by providing bread and circuses. But entertainments could not stop the nation-state from yielding to the pressure of its own weight.

There are numerous parallels between the end of the Roman Empire and the path the 226-year-old American republic is now on. One difference in these fast-moving times is that empires can rise more rapidly, but are also likely to decline more rapidly.

Conquest & Overreach

"The decay of trade and industry was not a cause of Rome's fall. There was a decline in agriculture and land was withdrawn from cultivation, in some cases on a very large scale, sometimes as a direct result of barbarian invasions. However, the chief cause of the agricultural decline was high taxation on the marginal land, driving it out of cultivation. Taxation was spurred by the huge military budget and was thus - indirectly' the result of the barbarian invasion."

Arthur Ferrill - The Fall of the Roman Empire: The Military Explanation

The Roman Empire's economy was based on the plunder of conquered territories. As the empire expanded, it installed remote military garrisons to maintain control and increasingly relied on Germanic mercenaries to man those garrisons.

Ultimately, as its territorial expansion waned and began to contract, less and less booty became available to support the empire's widespread ambitions and domestic economy. The outsourcing of the military and the cultural dilution from the bloated empire led to lethargy, complacency, and decadence amongst the formerly self-reliant and hard-working Roman citizenry.

In the modern context, as the only major power whose productive capacity was not destroyed during World War II, the American Empire emerged from the ashes of that conflict.

The parallels with Rome do not repeat, but they do rhyme.

Rather than plunder, the U.S. used its unique status to dictate terms that made the U.S. dollar the world's de facto reserve currency and positioned its robust new manufacturing sector to supply the world with the cars, machinery, appliances, and electronics it so desperately needed. The U.S. trade surplus with the nations of the world led to escalating U.S. wealth and prosperity.

Meanwhile, the U.S. military, about which I'll have more to say in a moment, was increasingly asked by the nation's politicians to take on the role of the world's policeman, leading to action in dozens of conflicts. And even where no direct military role was taken, the U.S. has shown a keen willingness to exert coercive power - including threats, sanctions, and even assassinations - if it was seen to advance American interests.

Simply, in the 20th century, the U.S. became an empire in all but name.

Bread and Circuses

"Already long ago, from when we sold our vote to no man, the People have abdicated our duties; for the People who once upon a time handed out military command, high civil office, legions - everything, now restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things: bread and circuses."

Roman Poet Juvenal - 77 AD

British historian Andrew J. Toynbee convincingly argues that the Roman Empire had a rotten economic system from its inception and its institutions steadily decayed over time.

The government didn't have proper budgetary systems, and so it squandered resources maintaining the empire while producing little of value. When the spoils from conquered territories were no longer sufficient to cover its many expenses, it turned to higher taxes, in effect shifting the burden of the immense military structure onto the back of the citizenry. The higher taxes forced many small farmers to let their land go barren. To distract its citizens from the worsening conditions, Roman politicians played the populist card by providing free wheat to the poor and entertaining them with circuses, chariot races, and other entertainments.

The American Empire has reached the point where it now faces similar structural imbalances, but to pay its bills, it has largely chosen to borrow from foreign countries in recent years. And the bills are large.

The $765 billion of annual military expenditures by the United States equals the military expenditures of the rest of the world combined.

The social safety net put in place over the decades by politicians attempting to get reelected has resulted in a large number of Americans now almost totally dependent upon the almighty state for their well-being. Threatening to rip apart the country's social fabric, the "new American" will vote for anyone who promises to sustain his dependency even as the nation increasingly struggles under the weight of $56 trillion of unfunded liabilities.

The non-farm workforce in the United States totals 133 million people. Of that number, the government directly employs 22.5 million. Millions more are employed by industries heavily dependent on government spending, such as defense, construction, and healthcare. The annual maintenance cost of the country's safety net now costs American taxpayers hundreds of billions.

Medicare and Medicaid annual spending $682 billion

Social Security annual spending $612 billion

Food stamps & other food programs $ 60 billion

Federal unemployment payments $ 45 billion

America has evolved from a nation of savers to a nation of consumers with a throw-away mentality and driven by little more than the desire for instant gratification. Worse, large segments of our society are convinced that they are owed something. To most, civic duty has become a quaint, outmoded concept. Happy to accommodate - in exchange for a reliable vote come election time - the government keeps the public satiated and sedated by providing them with an ever-increasing list of "public services."

Roman poet Juvenal described how the Roman citizens abdicated their duties to the state and turned to bread and circuses. The programs listed above represent just some of the bread that American citizens now feel entitled to.

Here in America, we know how to provide circuses on a grand scale. Roman citizens were satisfied with a good chariot race. In these modern times, Americans can find entertainment and distraction with 24-hour-a-day cable TV, the Internet, iPhones, iPods, Blackberries, 1.1 million retail stores, 1,100 malls, 17,000 golf courses, Britney Spears, Kim Kardashian, Housewives of Orange County, New York, Atlanta, and New Jersey, American Idol, Survivor, Rock of Love, Flip That House, 660 stations with nothing on, Las Vegas, Disney World, MLB, NFL, NBA, NHL, WWF, porn, and mega-churches all competing to fill the void in people's lives.

There isn't enough time in the day to take in all of the circuses, but with what little spare time we have available, we are now able to check our email anywhere on Earth and stay in constant contact with the office even in the middle of the night or, more typically these days, in the middle of dinner. And we can text and twitter our every thought to our circle of friends and followers, providing next to no lasting purpose or benefit to anyone.

Approximately 12% of the U.S. population (36 million people) is considered poor, and many of them are totally dependent upon the state. Yet that term seems out of sync with the fact that many of those individuals have cell phones ($500/yr.), cable TV ($900/yr.), Internet access ($500/yr.), cars ($5,000/yr. lease), houses ($6,000/yr.), eat fast food ($1,000/yr.), and can smoke a pack a day ($1,500/yr.).

How can this be?

For the answer, look no further than Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke, and the Federal Reserve, in cahoots with the financial geniuses on Wall Street, who made it standard practice to create money out of thin air and encourage anyone with a heartbeat to avail themselves of it in the form of low-cost loans - no proof of income or assets required.

The arrangement worked just fine until the banks could no longer hide the bad debt or sell it to the greater fool. Now it has collapsed onto the backs of American taxpayers.

Debasement

"The supply of foodstuffs in the cities declined. The people in the cities were forced to go back to the country and to return to agricultural life. Consequently, the emperors made laws against this movement. There were laws preventing the city dweller from moving to the country, but such laws were ineffective. As the people did not have anything to eat in the city, as they were starving, no law could keep them from leaving the city and going back into agriculture. The city dweller could no longer work in the processing indus?tries of the cities as an artisan. And, with the loss of the markets in the cities, no one could buy anything there anymore." Ludwig von Mises - Human Action

Economist Ludwig von Mises argued that flawed economic policies played a key role in the impoverishment and decay of the Roman Empire. He contended that interventionist economic policies, including price controls that resulted in prices substantially below their free-market equilibrium levels, ultimately led to inflation.

Further, Rome was spending more than it could afford. The free food rations for the poor of Rome and Constantinople - as well as the many entertainments - were costing a fortune. The purchasing of exotic spices, silks, and other luxuries from the Orient bled Rome of its gold - gold that didn't return. Soon Rome didn't have enough gold to produce coins. And so it debased its coins with lesser metals until there was no gold left.

To cover the trillions it is spending each year propping up its empire, the U.S. government is now increasingly forced to rely on printing and borrowing the funds to do so, steadily debasing the currency in the process.

But the nation's currency debasement is nothing new. Rather, it began in 1913 with the creation of the Federal Reserve. It accelerated when FDR confiscated all the gold in the country in the 1930s. When Richard Nixon took the U.S. off the gold standard in 1971, the show really got on the road, as that freed the Federal Reserve to print unlimited amounts of dollars. As a result, the dollar has lost 93% of its value versus gold since 1970.

The Military Complex

Lessons from ancient Rome regarding the cost of maintaining a far-flung empire have been ignored. Today, U.S. boots stomp on the ground of over 117 countries. Even the use of mercenaries, in the form of thousands of Blackwater guards and other private contractors filling roles formerly left to the military, has become commonplace.

Using military assets to pursue political goals, as is the norm in empire building, has led to unintended consequences and wasted opportunities.

One of the most egregious of those lost opportunities came following the bankruptcy and collapse of the Soviet Union. The United States had won the Cold War, but failed to recognize the cautionary signs on the path ahead.

As the only remaining superpower on earth, America fell into the same trap that has befallen previous empires. Instead of concentrating on proactively confronting domestic challenges, such as unfunded Social Security and Medicare liabilities, and developing a comprehensive energy plan to wean ourselves off Middle East oil, we continued to intervene in costly foreign adventures.

Including, among many others, supplying both Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein with weapons and money during their fights against our enemies, leading to unintended consequences we live with to this day.

Seeking to maintain its widespread interests and to defend itself from the many enemies created by building and protecting those interests, the American military complex has grown to the point where it now spends an amount equal to 44% of all taxes collected from its citizens.

Since 1991 alone, the U.S. has interceded in Kuwait, Somalia, Bosnia, Sudan, Afghanistan, and Iraq, among others. In no case has Congress fulfilled its obligation of declaring war. Instead, it has delegated sole responsibility for waging war to the president, weakening the structure of our three-branch government. Over that period of time, the U.S. has spent $7 trillion on defense.

The National Debt in 1991 was $3.2 trillion. Today, it is $11.6 trillion, a 360% increase in eighteen years. In 2001, spending on defense was 17% of the government budget. In 2008, defense, Homeland Security, and war spending accounted for 26% of government spending.

Collapse

Economic history books will likely mark 1980 as the year that the rapid phase of the decline of the American Empire began. That's when the first wave of the Baby Boomer generation reached the age of 35 and turned its attention to living the American dream ? on borrowed money. Since that year, household debt has surged from $1 trillion to $14 trillion, while the savings rate has plunged from 12% to below 0%.

There are many ways to use credit, some quite intelligent and practical. Rotating credit card debt to buy the latest non-necessity does not fall into that category. Today in America, there are $956 billion of credit card debt outstanding, or $9,000 per household. The average American has nine credit cards. A credit card allows every person to live above their means for awhile... just as did the home equity loans taken against artificially elevated house prices anchored on mortgages people couldn't afford.

This is where reality and fantasy meet. People can only borrow and spend if the Federal Reserve and bankers provide the funds to do so, and without asking a lot of questions about suitability. By creating money out of thin air and handing it out to people with no legitimate means of repaying it, the financial elite and their friends in Washington have played an essential role in bringing the U.S. and even the global economy to its knees.

Yet, for all the evidence, a large swath of Americans still believes the nation hasn't gone off course. These people consider borrowing in order to live beyond their means a rational choice. They expect the government to save them when they get into trouble and think that taxing the rich to pay for a bigger and bigger safety net is a reasonable idea.

In a truly free-market society, this sizable segment of the public would have already learned a brutal lesson they'd remember for the rest of their lives. Instead, the brutal lesson is being learned by people who played by the rules and didn't take ridiculous risks, but who are now being coerced by the government to pay for the misdeeds of the over-indebted fools who did.

The crushing levels of debt resulting from decades of excess; the far-reaching military presence; the politically motivated social safety net and other popular but unaffordable programs have now reached the point that the economic decline of the American Empire is a foregone conclusion.

The current downturn is not going to be like previous recessions that lasted on average 16 months. Even as the government responds by trying to borrow and spend the country back to prosperity, there is no ignoring that the economic base has been gutted and the future social program liabilities have essentially bankrupted the country.

As was the case in the final stages of the Roman Empire, the unsustainable military, social, and political excesses have reached the point that, in combination, they are now likely to prove catastrophic.

A Final Thought

For over a thousand years, Roman conquerors returning from the wars enjoyed the honor of a triumph - a tumultuous parade. In the procession came trumpeters and musicians and strange animals from the conquered territories, together with carts laden with treasure and captured armaments. The conqueror rode in a triumphal chariot, the dazed prisoners walking in chains before him. Sometimes his children, robed in white, stood with him in the chariot, or rode the trace horses. A slave stood behind the conqueror, holding a golden crown, and whispering in his ear a warning: that all glory is fleeting.

George C. Scott as Patton

Which begs the question, who is now standing behind the current political leadership, reminding them that their elevated positions are temporal? Unfortunately, the excesses they have created, and the dislocations caused by those excesses, will be with this country for generations.

America´s New-Old Military Thinking

By Paul Rogers for openDemocracy.net

From Somalia to Iraq, Afghanistan to Lebanon, an emerging global landscape of variable security threats is provoking United States military analysts into an intense process of reflection.

The centre of the wars that the western powers, principally the United States and Britain, are involved in has moved east. Afghanistan, where the "war on terror" was launched in October 2001, has replaced Iraq as the site of their principal military effort. But as the campaign there becomes increasingly mired in difficult local terrain, a larger effort is being made to use this shift in the major theatre of war to think about the fundamental purposes of what these powers are engaged in.

What are the wars and local insurgencies the United States and Britain are seeking to win, manage or contain now about? How are the different "small" conflicts around the world related to each other? How do military analysts now understand the current security threats faced by western states? Such questions shadow the increasingly fraught atmospherics of the anti-Taliban effort in Afghanistan.

The Afghan dilemma

A tough summer campaign by British forces in Afghanistan's southern province of Helmand is incurring almost daily casualties that are widely reported by the media. There is a fairly even split of public opinion between those supporting and those opposing a continued presence in the country; while overall backing for the troops is often accompanied by doubts over their mission and military strategy. What is most striking about mid-2009 is that these doubts and concerns have been voiced by senior military and political figures.

The British government has been on the defensive in a controversy over equipment limitations. This itself can become a diversion from the reality on the ground, namely the unexpectedly strong resistance that the Taliban and other paramilitaries are offering in Helmand. Moreover, in many ways the experience of the British troops is little different to that of the other national contingents (Canadian, Dutch or American) that have been heavily involved in direct combat. All forces in southern Afghanistan have been struggling with the same problem: how to bring in larger numbers of heavily armoured vehicles and helicopters, as they face paramilitaries adept at disrupting road patrols.

A view that has quickly acquired the status of an orthodoxy is that the answer is "more helicopters". This too is misleading, on two counts. The first is that any enduring presence by western forces, intended as a medium-term prelude to a handover to a rebuilt Afghan national army, requires numerous small units entrenched in towns across the province and able to conduct frequent foot-patrols. This presence cannot be provided by helicopters, and even robust armoured road vehicles have limited relevance.

The second point is that any greater reliance on helicopters will be met by paramilitary attempts to acquire shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missiles. It was the introduction of these weapons that inflicted so much damage on the Soviet forces in Afghanistan in the 1980s, even arguably creating a military turning-point in the war. They could once again become a major threat.

Turn, and turn again

A wider view of the evolving conflict entails recognition that the war in Afghanistan is closely linked both with what has happened in Iraq and current developments in Somalia. The impact of the "insurgency knowledge" gained by paramilitaries in Iraq is clear enough, as is its translation into both countries. What has happened is that Iraq has been a six-year combat-training zone for young paramilitaries from across the middle east and north Africa, a process that will have an enduring impact.

These trends are part of a more general change in military circumstances, as a worldwide security environment emerges that is markedly different to what was anticipated as recently as 2000. This evolving environment is provoking intense rethinking within the US armed forces - though to some extent what they are engaged is less new thinking than a recovery of ideas that were common currency in the 1990s but receded to the background when George W Bush came to power in January 2001.

For example, a notion that was common in the US navy in the early 1990s was that its post-cold-war function would be to "keep the violent peace" and protect US interests across the world. A more colourful way of expressing the same point was used in 1993 by Bill Clinton's first CIA director James Woolsey, when he said that the United States had slain the dragon (the Soviet Union) but now lived in a jungle full of poisonous snakes.

This perspective was embodied in the mid-1990s in an emphasis on special forces and amphibious-warfare capabilities, but their moment passed when the Bush administration's neo-conservative agenda revealed itself to have other priorities. The idea of "taming the jungle" was essentially defensive; now, in 2001, a much more aggressive and proactive project - creating the "new American century", in which global security is guaranteed by a single, unrivalled superpower - came to the forefront.

This worldview regarded 9/11 with utter shock and dismay. It reacted with fury and the appearance of certitude, and prepared its military for what was intended to be a definitive and awesome demonstration of unchallengeable military might. But the outcomes of this policy choice - two bitter and lengthy wars, the risk of deep instability in Pakistan, and the continuing risk of al-Qaida attacks - only deepened its predicament and exposed its inner fragility.

The response has been a bout of serious reflection within the US military as to its future direction. The debates that are occurring are made even more sombre by the spreading acknowledgment that the routinely huge increases in military budgets under the Bush administration cannot be maintained in an era of more constrained American power.

The militant mix

A conventional digest of these debates sees them in terms of two broad views: arguing that the United States's main military emphasis should either be on preparation for counterinsurgency campaigns, or on conventional wars (most likely involving Iran, or in the longer term China or a renewed Russia).

A recent study concludes that this is too much of a simplification (see Frank G Hoffman, "Hybrid Threats: Reconceptualizing the Evolving Character of Modern Conflict", Strategic Forum, April 2009 [Institute for National Strategic Studies, Washington]).

Frank G Hoffman identifies four, rather than two, schools of thought:

Counterinsurgents - who focus heavily on irregular forces as the main threat

Traditionalists - who are concerned very much with conventional warfare

Utility infielders - who say the answer is to create forces that are sufficiently agile and well-trained to handle any threat

Division-of-labour people - who want forces divided into different categories to meet the different threats.

These varied currents tend to be complicated by inter-service rivalry, with the army and the marines emphasising counterinsurgency and the air force and navy much more geared to conventional war. These divisions are not absolute, and there is certainly some overlap; but they still run deep. They are also accentuated by the sheer costs and timescales involved in expensive projects such as aircraft-carriers and new strike-aircraft, as well as the need for senior officers to protect their own careers.

There is nonetheless a sense in which military analysts are going beyond these institutional limitations to focus on what are increasingly being termed "hybrid threats". This approach recognises that in the reasonably near future the the United States and its allies will face opponents - non-state movements, and possibly states - that according to circumstances employ a combination of guerrilla tactics and conventional war. These opponents may be all the more challenging in their versatile capacity to recognise the overwhelming conventional military power available to the United States and its allies without being in any way cowed by it.

Thus, Hizbollah in southern Lebanon in 2006 used a complex mix of strategies - ranging from sophisticated anti-ship missiles acquired from Iran to guerrilla tactics close to the Israeli border. In Iraq, the conventional forces of the special republican guard (SRG) military units were the backbone of the military units that initially fought the US after 2003. These rapidly evolved into effective guerrilla forces; in turn, they attracted young paramilitaries from across the region, and the tactics and weapons developed in Iraq have since turned up in other war-zones.

Frank G Hoffman cites intelligence sources suggesting that several middle-eastern states, most likely including Iran and Syria, are purposely developing irregular units on a substantial scale while retaining conventional forces. The latter may have a defensive function; they may be no match for the US military, but could combine with irregular warfare in any future confrontation to create real damage.

Hoffman concludes that the United States:

"must maintain the ability to wage successful campaigns against both large, conventionally armed states and their militaries and against widely dispersed terrorists - and against everything in between. We must be smart about our force posture and lean towards agile, rigorously multipurpose forces capable of being adaptive in approach to the unique conditions each conflict poses."

The far horizon

In its own way, such thinking is typical of the intelligent analysis being conducted in some of the United States's military-research centres. It is all a long way from the immediacy of Washington's politics, and all the more interesting for that. But it also remains limited by a basic premise: that the world is a jungle and that jungle has to be tamed.

This analysis thus says very little about the underlying causes of conflict; and still less about why states and sub-state groups may be antagonistic to US interests in particular and western power in general. Moreover, it shows no recognition of any wider understanding of security, one that could raise awareness of the need to address two major global issues: the widening socio-economic divide and the likely impact of climate change.

But it does at least recognise what the eight years since 9/11 have made unavoidably clear: that the world is changing. The best military analysts have the habit of thinking long term. It is as good a reason as any for engaging with them on these much wider and more fundamental security issues.

Obama´s empire

By Catherine Lutz for News Statesman

The global reach of the US military today is unprecedented and unparalleled. Officially, more than 190,000 troops and 115,000 civilian employees are massed in approximately 900 military facilities in 46 countries and territories (the unofficial figure is far greater). The US military owns or rents 795,000 acres of land, with 26,000 buildings and structures, valued at $146bn (89bn pounds). The bases bristle with an inventory of weapons whose worth is measured in the trillions and whose killing power could wipe out all life on earth several times over.

The official figures exclude the huge build-up of troops and structures in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past decade, as well as secret or unacknowledged facilities in Israel, Kuwait, the Philippines and many other places.

The 44th president of the United States was elected amid hopes that he would roll back his country´s global dominance. Today, he is commander-in- chief of an unprecedented network of military bases that is still expanding.

In December 2008, shortly before being sworn in as the 44th president of the United States, Barack Obama pledged his belief that, "to ensure prosperity here at home and peace abroad", it was vital to maintain "the strongest military on the planet". Unveiling his national security team, including George Bush's defence secretary, Robert Gates, he said: "We also agree the strength of our military has to be combined with the wisdom and force of diplomacy, and that we are going to be committed to rebuilding and restrengthening alliances around the world to advance American interests and American security."

Unfortunately, many of the Obama administration' s diplomatic efforts are being directed towards maintaining and garnering new access for the US military across the globe. US military officials, through their Korean proxies, have completed the eviction of resistant rice farmers from their land around Camp Humphreys, South Korea, for its expansion (including a new 18-hole golf course); they are busily making back-room deals with officials in the Northern Mariana Islands to gain the use of the Pacific islands there for bombing and training purposes; and they are scrambling to express support for a regime in Kyrgyzstan that has been implicated in the murder of its political opponents but whose Manas Airbase, used to stage US military actions in Afghanistan since 2001, Obama and the Pentagon consider crucial for the expanded war there.

The global reach of the US military today is unprecedented and unparalleled. Officially, more than 190,000 troops and 115,000 civilian employees are massed in approximately 900 military facilities in 46 countries and territories (the unofficial figure is far greater). The US military owns or rents 795,000 acres of land, with 26,000 buildings and structures, valued at $146bn (89bn pounds). The bases bristle with an inventory of weapons whose worth is measured in the trillions and whose killing power could wipe out all life on earth several times over.

The official figures exclude the huge build-up of troops and structures in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past decade, as well as secret or unacknowledged facilities in Israel, Kuwait, the Philippines and many other places. In just three years of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, 2bn pounds was spent on military construction. A single facility in Iraq, Balad Airbase, houses 30,000 troops and 10,000 contractors, and extends across 16 square miles, with an additional 12 square mile "security perimeter".

>From the battle zones of Afghanistan and Iraq to quiet corners of Curacao, Korea and Britain, the US military domain consists of sprawling army bases, small listening posts, missile and artillery testing ranges and berthed aircraft carriers (moved to "trouble spots" around the world, each carrier is considered by the US navy as "four and a half acres of sovereign US territory").

While the bases are, literally speaking, barracks and weapons depots, staging areas for war-making and ship repairs, complete with golf courses and basketball courts, they are also political claims, spoils of war, arms sale showrooms and toxic industrial sites. In addition to the cultural imperialism and episodes of rape, murder, looting and land seizure that have always accompanied foreign armies, local communities are now subjected to the ear-splitting noise of jets on exercise, to the risk of helicopters and warplanes crashing into residential areas, and to exposure to the toxic materials that the military uses in its daily operations.

The global expansion of US bases - and with it the rise of the US as a world superpower - is a legacy of the Second World War. In 1938, the US had 14 military bases outside its continental borders. Seven years later, it had 30,000 installations in roughly 100 countries. While this number was projected to shrink to 2,000 by 1948 (following pressure from other nations to return bases in their own territory or colonies, and pressure at home to demobilise the 12 million-man military), the US continued to pursue access rights to land and air space around the world.

It established security alliances with multiple states within Europe (Nato), the Middle East and south Asia (Cento) and south-east Asia (Seato), as well as bilateral agreements with Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand. Status of Forces Agreements (Sofas) were crafted in each country to specify what the military could do, and usually gave US soldiers broad immunity from prosecution for crimes committed and environmental damage caused. These agreements and subsequent base operations have mostly been shrouded in secrecy, helped by the National Security Act of 1947. New US bases were built in remarkable numbers in West Germany, Italy, Britain and Japan, with the defeated Axis powers hosting the most significant numbers (at one point, Japan was peppered with 3,800 US installations) .

As battles become bases, so bases become battles; the sites in east Asia acquired during the Spanish-American war in 1898 and during the Second World War - such as Guam, Thailand and the Philippines - became the primary bases from which the US waged war on Vietnam. The number of raids over north and south Vietnam required tons of bombs unloaded at the naval station in Guam. The morale of ground troops based in Vietnam, as fragile as it was to become through the latter part of the 1960s, depended on R&R (rest and recreation) at bases outside the country, which allowed them to leave the war zone and yet be shipped back quickly and inexpensively for further fighting. The war also depended on the heroin the CIA was able to ship in to the troops on the battlefield in Vietnam from its secret bases in Laos. By 1967, the number of US bases had returned to 1947 levels.

Technological changes in warfare have had important effects on the configuration of US bases. Long-range missiles and the development of ships that can make much longer runs without resupply have altered the need for a line of bases to move forces forward into combat zones, as has the aerial refueling of military jets. An arms airlift from the US to the British in the Middle East in 1941-42, for example, required a long hopscotch of bases, from Florida to Cuba, Puerto Rico, Barbados, Trinidad, British Guiana, north-east Brazil, Fernando de Noronha, Takoradi (now in Ghana), Lagos, Kano (now in Nigeria) and Khartoum, before finally making delivery in Egypt. In the early 1970s, US aircraft could make the same delivery with one stop in the Azores, and today can do so non-stop.

On the other hand, the pouring of money into military R&D (the Pentagon has spent more than $85bn in 2009), and the corporate profits to be made in the development and deployment of the resulting technologies, have been significant factors in the ever larger numbers of technical facilities on foreign soil. These include such things as missile early-warning radar, signals intelligence, satellite control and space-tracking telescopes. The will to gain military control of space, as well as gather intelligence, has led to the establishment of numerous new military bases in violation of arms-control agreements such as the 1967 Outer Space Treaty. In Colombia and Peru, and in secret and mobile locations elsewhere in Latin America, radar stations are primarily used for anti-trafficking operations.

Since 2000, with the election of George W Bush and the ascendancy to power of a group of men who believed in a more aggressive and unilateral use of military power (some of whom stood to profit handsomely from the increased military budget that would require), US imperial ambition has grown. Following the declaration of a war on terror and of the right to pre-emptive war, the number of countries into which the US inserted and based troops radically expanded. The Pentagon put into action a plan for a network of "deployment" or "forward operating" bases to increase the reach of current and future forces. The Pentagon-aligned, neoconservative think tank the Project for the New American Century stressed that "while the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein".

The new bases are designed to operate not defensively against particular threats but as offensive, expeditionary platforms from which military capabilities can be projected quickly, anywhere. The Global Defence Posture Review of 2004 announced these changes, focusing not just on reorienting the footprint of US bases away from cold war locations, but on remaking legal arrangements that support expanded military activities with other allied countries and pre-positioning equipment in those countries. As a recent army strategic document notes, "Military personnel can be transported to, and fall in on, pre-positioned equipment significantly more quickly than the equivalent unit could be transported to the theatre, and pre-positioning equipment overseas is generally less politically difficult than stationing US military personnel."

Terms such as facility, outpost or station are used for smaller bases to suggest a less permanent presence. The US department of defence currently distinguishes between three types of military facility. "Main operating bases" are those with permanent personnel, strong infrastructure, and often family housing, such as Kadena Airbase in Japan and Ramstein Airbase in Germany.

"Forward operating sites" are "expandable warm facilit[ies] maintained with a limited US military support presence and possibly prepositioned equipment", such as Incirlik Airbase in Turkey and Soto Cano Airbase in Honduras. Finally, "co-operative security locations" are sites with few or no permanent US personnel, maintained by contractors or the host nation for occasional use by the US military, and often referred to as "lily pads". These are cropping up around the world, especially throughout Africa, a recent example being in Dakar, Senegal.

Moreover, these bases are the anchor - and merely the most visible aspect - of the US military's presence overseas. Every year, US forces train 100,000 soldiers in 180 countries, the presumption being that beefed-up local militaries will help to pursue US interests in local conflicts and save the US money, casualties and bad publicity when human rights abuses occur (the blowback effect of such activities has been made clear by the strength of the Taliban since 9/11).

The US military presence also involves jungle, urban, desert, maritime and polar training exercises across wide swathes of landscape, which have become the pretext for substantial and permanent positioning of troops. In recent years, the US has run around 20 exercises annually on Philippine soil, which have resulted in a near-continuous presence of US soldiers in a country whose people ejected US bases in 1992 and whose constitution forbids foreign troops to be based on its territory. Finally, US personnel work every day to shape local legal codes to facilitate US access: they have lobbied, for example, to change the Philippine and Japanese constitutions to allow, respectively, foreign troop basing and a more-than-defensive military.

Asked why the US has a vast network of military bases around the world, Pentagon officials give both utilitarian and humanitarian arguments. Utilitarian arguments include the claim that bases provide security for the US by deterring attack from hostile countries and preventing or remedying unrest or military challenges; that bases serve the national economic interests of the US, ensuring access to markets and commodities needed to maintain US standards of living; and that bases are symbolic markers of US power and credibility - and so the more the better.

Humanitarian arguments present bases as altruistic gifts to other nations, helping to liberate or democratise them, or offering aid relief. None of these humanitarian arguments deals with the problem that many of the bases were taken during wartime and "given" to the US by another of the war's victors.

Critics of US foreign policy have dissected and dismantled the arguments made for maintaining a global system of military basing. They have shown that the bases have often failed in their own terms: despite the Pentagon's claims that they provide security to the regions they occupy, most of the world's people feel anything but reassured by their presence. Instead of providing more safety for the US or its allies, they have often provoked attacks, and have made the communities around bases key targets of other nations' missiles. On the island of Belau in the Pacific, the site of sharp resistance to US attempts to instal a submarine base and jungle training centre, people describe their experience of military basing in the Second World War: "When soldiers come, war comes." On Guam, a joke among locals is that few people except for nuclear strategists in the Kremlin know where their island is.

As for the argument that bases serve the national economic interest of the US, the weapons, personnel and fossil fuels involved cost billions of dollars, most coming from US taxpayers. While bases have clearly been concentrated in countries with key strategic resources, particularly along the routes of oil and gas pipelines in central Asia, the Middle East and, increasingly, Africa, from which one-quarter of US oil imports are expected by 2015, the profits have gone first of all to the corporations that build and service them, such as Halliburton.

The myth that bases are an altruistic form of "foreign aid" for locals is exploded by the substantial costs involved for host economies and polities. The immediate negative effects include levels of pollution, noise, crime and lost productive land that cannot be offset by soldiers' local spending or employment of local people. Other putative gains tend to benefit only local elites and further militarise the host nations: elaborate bilateral negotiations swap weapons, cash and trade privileges for overflight and land-use rights. Less explicitly, rice imports, immigration rights to the US or overlooking human rights abuses have been the currency of exchange.

The environmental, political, and economic impact of these bases is enormous. The social problems that accompany bases, including soldiers' violence against women and car crashes, have to be handled by local communities without compensation from the US. Some communities pay the highest price: their farmland taken for bases, their children neurologically damaged by military jet fuel in their water supplies, their neighbours imprisoned, tortured and disappeared by the autocratic regimes that survive on US military and political support given as a form of tacit rent for the bases. The US military has repeatedly interfered in the domestic affairs of nations in which it has or desires military access, operating to influence votes and undermine or change local laws that stand in the way.

Social movements have proliferated around the world in response to the empire of US bases, ever since its inception. The attempt to take the Philippines from Spain in 1898 led to a drawn-out guerrilla war for independence that required 126,000 US occupation troops to stifle. Between 1947 and 1990, the US military was asked to leave France, Yugoslavia, Iran, Ethiopia, Libya, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Algeria, Vietnam, Indonesia, Peru, Mexico and Venezuela. Popular and political objection to the bases in Spain, the Philippines, Greece and Turkey in the 1980s gave those governments the grounds to negotiate significantly more compensation from the US. Portugal threatened to evict the US from important bases in the Azores unless it ceased its support for independence for its African colonies.

Since 1990, the US has been sent packing, most significantly, from the Philippines, Panama, Saudi Arabia, Vieques and Uzbekistan. Of its own accord, for varying reasons, it decided to leave countries from Ghana to Fiji. Persuading the US to clean up after itself - including, in Panama, more than 100,000 rounds of unexploded ordnance - is a further struggle. As in the case of the US navy's removal from Vieques in 2003, arguments about the environmental and health damage of the military's activities remain the centrepiece of resistance to bases.

Many are also concerned by other countries' overseas bases - primarily European, Russian and Chinese - and by the activities of their own militaries, but the far greater number of US bases and their weaponry has understandably been the focus. The sense that US bases represent a major injustice to the host community and nation is very strong in countries where US bases have the longest standing and are most ubiquitous.

In Okinawa, polls show that 70 to 80 per cent of the island's people want the bases, or at least the marines, to leave. In 1995, the abduction and rape of a 12-year-old Okinawan girl by two US marines and one US sailor led to demands for the removal of all US bases in Japan. One family in Okinawa has built a large peace museum right up against the edge of the Futenma Airbase, with a stairway to the roof that allows busloads of schoolchildren and other visitors to view the sprawling base after looking at art depicting the horrors of war.

In Korea, the great majority of the population feels that a reduction in US presence would increase national security; in recent years, several violent deaths at the hands of US soldiers triggered vast candlelight vigils and protests across the country.

And the original inhabitants of Diego Garcia, evicted from their homes between 1967 and 1973 by the British on behalf of the US for a naval base, have organised a concerted campaign for the right to return, bringing legal suit against the British government, a story told in David Vine's recent book Island of Shame.

There is also resistance to the US expansion plans into new areas. In 2007, a number of African nations baulked at US attempts to secure access to sites for military bases. In eastern Europe, despite well-funded campaigns to convince Poles and Czechs of the value of US bases and much sentiment in favour of accepting them in pursuit of closer ties with Nato and the EU, and promised economic benefits, vigorous protests have included hunger strikes and led the Czech government, in March, to reverse its plan to allow a US military radar base to be built in the country.

The US has responded to action against bases with a renewed emphasis on "force protection", in some cases enforcing curfews on soldiers, and cutting back on events that bring local people on to base property.

The department of defence has also engaged in the time-honoured practice of renaming: clusters of soldiers, buildings and equipment have become "defence staging posts" or "forward operating locations" rather than military bases. Regulating documents become "visiting forces agreements", not "status of forces agreements", or remain entirely secret. While major reorganisation of bases is under way for a host of reasons, including a desire to create a more mobile force with greater access to the Middle East, eastern Europe and central Asia, the motives also include an attempt to prevent political momentum of the sort that ended US use of the Vieques and Philippine bases.

The attempt to gain permanent basing in Iraq foundered in 2008 on the objections of forces in both Iraq and the US. Obama, in his Cairo speech in June, may have insisted that "we pursue no bases" in either Iraq or Afghanistan, but there has been no sign of any significant dismantling of bases there, or of scaling back the US military presence in the rest of the world.

The US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, recently visited Japan to ensure that it follows through on promises to provide the US with a new airfield on Okinawa and billions of dollars to build new housing and other facilities for 8,000 marines relocating to Guam. She ignored the invitation of island activists to come and see the damage left by previous decades of US base activities. The myriad land-grabs and hundreds of billions of dollars spent to quarter troops around the world persist far beyond Iraq and Afghanistan, and too far from the headlines.

(*) Catherine Lutz is a professor at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University and editor of "The Bases of Empire: the Global Struggle against US Military Posts"

US military's Africa reach

By Joe Powell

The New Statesman, a British weekly magazine, has an interesting map in this week's issue showing the distribution of American military bases around the world. The largest presence in a non-combat capacity is in Germany, followed by South Korea, Japan and Italy. Iraq and Afghanistan have an unknown number of bases.

Uganda is of course home to one base and is joined on the African continent by Algeria, Chad, Cote d´Ivoire, Djibouti, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Sao Tome and Príncipe, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Tanzania and Tunisia.

These are also most of the countries that were considered for the home of AFRICOM, the US-Africa military command base currently housed in Stuttgart.

So should Uganda be proud to be hosting military facilities of the world´s superpower? Or does it compromise the sovereignty of the country?

How Will the Arab World Wake Up?

By Dr. Bouthaina Shaaban (*)

After UNDP published its report on the Arab world, with one of its shocking conclusions being that half of the world´s refugees are Arabs, The Economist published in its latest edition 24 – 30 July a 14 page report about the Arab world with an editorial holding Arabs responsible for all the consequences of the colonial policies which divided their land and set up regimes in a way that makes it almost impossible to achieve Arab integration, if not unity, and solidarity, which – we all know – is the only way to Arab power.

One indicator of Arab weakness and complete intellectual alienation is that The Economist itself had compiled reports in the past on what brings the Arabs together, the problems they face, and youth unemployment in the Arab world which needs 50 million jobs to be created by 2020. The study, important as it is, should be read with a great degree of sorrow and bewilderment. It is not enough that the Arab world has become fertile ground for invasion, occupation, colonization, oppression and fragmentation, the interpretation of these events and the assessment of their consequences has become the monopoly of the thinking classes in the West who obviously do their best to achieve the interests of their governments and nations.

There is nothing wrong with that, for it´s the right of intellectuals, even their duty, to work for the best interest of their countries and peoples. The question, however, is: how does the Arab world view such reports which address the life and resources of its people; and where is this world heading in light of the tough competition among developed countries for achieving food and water security and obtaining resources, technology and energy.

Neither the UN report nor The Economist reports blame Western powers for the occupation of Iraq or Palestine, or the bloody intervention in Somalia. The reports do not describe or analyze the expropriation of land and water sources in Palestine. They also avoid any mention of the tragedies of women and children, the extremely bad condition of education in Palestine and Iraq as a result of brutal occupation.

This is hardly surprising, but where is the Arab characterization of the Arab condition? Where is the open, candid and on-going discussion of the Arab condition? Where are the Arab strategies which could lead Arabs towards salvation, particularly that education in the Arab world is in a dire state in terms of quality and keeping abreast with global revolutions in the fields of technology and knowledge.

There is no doubt that Arabs have undergone waves of ferocious attacks for the past century which aimed at dividing them, occupying their land and controlling their resources. But it is undeniable that the Arabs failed to do one essential thing which is building active institutions which are able to mobilize, regulate and organize the social, economic and political forces in their societies. As The Economist editorial mentions, but for reasons different from those I have in mind, "democracy is not only about elections. It is about education, coexistence, and building independent institutions like an independent judiciary and free media".

Real citizenship is not only caring about oneself and one´s family and relatives, it is about building a nation and caring about its future. Individual salvation is a dominant phenomenon in the Arab world, and seeking to secure the future of one´s children and grandchildren, at the expense of the future of the nation, whereas building the future of the nation should be the only insurance policy for everyone.

Throughout the Arab world, people remember with nostalgia the quality of schools and universities in the second half of the 20th century and the giants who produced endurable thought and philosophy.

But we failed to understand the main factors which enabled Western countries to achieve quantum leaps in all areas. We limited ourselves to condemning the democratic countries which occupied Iraq and Afghanistan and which support Israel in committing the ugliest crimes against Arabs. We have not thought carefully about why and how this is happening. Is it an imbalance in the Western value system, or a failure on our part to communicate with these countries and get through to them via the institutional channels which they use and respect instead of the repeated calls for them to understand and respect our way of communicating our positions towards what is happening to our countries?

How can we do that while Arab investment in the West has so far targeted hotels, real estate and entertainment and has not cared to target educational, cultural or media institutions? We remained consumers of products and ideas, even those which characterize and evaluate us and draw visions of our future.

If some people think this needs extraordinary or modern technology to achieve, they are wrong. The main driving force for development and modernization in the West remains the human mind. Modern technology is easy to come by compared with enlightened thought which produces technology, ideas, materials and institutions and all that which drive people towards a better future. There is nothing wrong in acknowledging that we have not woken up yet, but what is dangerously wrong is to remain complacently asleep while blaming colonialism and the enemies of freedom. Human beings remain the most precious capital, and education is the key to mobilizing this tremendous asset. So, let us start with an open and candid discussion of the condition of education as an indication of our awakening; and when the Arabs wake up they are bound to produce, as they did in the past, what is best for them and for humanity.

(*) Dr. Bouthaina Shaaban is the Presidential Advisor for Political and Media Affairs with the Rank of Minister in Syria. She has been a writer and professor at Damascus University since 1985. Before assuming her current ministerial position, Dr. Shaaban occupied the post of Director of the Press Office at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Syria. She received her PhD in English Literature from Warwick University in the UK in 1982 and joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as an advisor in 1988. Since then, she has represented Syria as a spokeswoman on the international level. In 2005, Dr. Shaaban was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, and in the same year, was presented with the ´Most Distinguished Woman in a Governmental Position Award´ by the Arab League. Dr. Shaaban has published four books, and contributed to numerous others.

More Than 500 Somalis Demonstrate in Greece

More than 500 Somalis in Greece have made largely organized demonstration in Greece, just after government police forces detained more than 200 Somalis in the morning there, witnesses told Shabelle radio on Thursday.

A 50 year old Somali woman, who was taking part in the demonstrations, told Shabelle radio that she was on a voyage for at least 17 years and absent from her motherland - pointing out that they decided to be part of the demonstration against the arrest of the Somalis.

"The police of Greece arrested 200 hundred more Somalis including pregnant women. The soldiers have dealt with the Somalis brutally; they also tortured them and carried them with seven buses. We do not know the reason of the arrest," she said while she was breaking into tears.

Reports say that the demonstration was a response to actions by the police forces of the Greece government, who entered on Thursday morning forcibly into a house, where many Somali people live and sent many to the jails of that country.

We do not send pictures with these reports, because of the volume, but picture this emetic scene with your inner eye:

A dying Somali child in the macerated arms of her mother besides their bombed shelter with Islamic graffiti looks at a fat trader, who discusses with a local militia chief and a UN representative at a harbour while USAID provided GM food from subsidised production is off-loaded by WFP into the hands of local "distributors" and dealers - and in the background a western warship and a foreign fishing trawler ply the waters of a once sovereign, prosper and proud nation, which was a role model for honesty and development in the Horn of Africa. (If you feel that this is overdrawn - come with us into Somalia and see the even more cruel reality yourself!)

There is no limit to what a person can do or how far one can go to help - if one doesn't mind who gets the credit !

ECOTERRA Intl. maintains a register for persons missing or abducted in the Somali seas (Foreign seafarers as well as Somalis). Inquiries by family member can be sent by e-mail to office[at]ecoterra-international.org

For families of presently captive seafarers - in order to advise and console their worries - ECOTERRA Intl. can establish contacts with professional seafarers, who had been abducted in Somalia, and their wives as well as of a Captain of a sea-jacked and released ship, who agreed to be addressed "with questions, and we will answer truthfully".

ECOTERRA - ALERTS and pending issues:

PIRATE ATTACK GULF OF ADEN: Advice on Who to Contact and What to Do http://www.noonsite.com/Members/sue/R2008-09-08-2

NATURAL RESOURCES & ARMED FISH POACHERS: Foreign navies entering the 200nm EEZ of Somalia and foreign helicopters and troops must respect the fact that especially all wildlife is protected by Somali national as well as by international laws and that the protection of the marine resources of Somalia from illegally fishing foreign vessels should be an integral part of the anti-piracy operations. Likewise the navies must adhere to international standards and not pollute the coastal waters with oil, ballast water or waste from their own ships but help Somalia to fight against any dumping of any waste (incl. diluted, toxic or nuclear waste). So far and though the AU as well as the UN has called since long on other nations to respect the 200 nm EEZ, only now the two countries (Spain and France) to which the most notorious vessels and fleets are linked have come up with a declaration that they will respect the 200 nm EEZ of Somalia but so far not any of the navies operating in the area pledged to stand against illegal fishing. So far not a single illegal fishing vessel has been detained by the naval forces, though they had been even informed about several actual cases, where an intervention would have been possible. Illegally operating Tuna fishing vessels (many from South Korea, some from Greece and China) carry now armed personnel and force their way into the Somali fishing grounds - uncontrolled or even protected by the naval forces mandated to guard the Somali waters against any criminal activity, which included arms carried by foreign fishing vessels in Somali waters.

LLWs / NLWs: According to recently leaked information the anti-piracy operations in the Gulf of Aden are also used as a cover-up for the live testing of recently developed arsenals of so called non-lethal as well as sub-lethal weapons systems. (Pls request details) Neither the Navies nor the UN has come up with any code of conduct in this respect, while the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Program (JNLWP) is sponsoring several service-led acquisition programs, including the VLAD, Joint Integration Program, and Improved Flash Bang Grenade. Alredy in use in Somalia are so called Non-lethal optical distractors, which are visible laser devices that have reversible optical effects. These types of non-blinding laser devices use highly directional optical energy. Somalia is also a testing ground for the further developments of the Active Denial System (ADS) Advanced Concept Technology Demonstration (ACTD). If new developments using millimeter wave sources that will help minimize the size, weight, and system cost of an effective Active Denial System which provides "ADS-ACTD-like" repel effects, are used has not yet been revealed. Obviously not only the US is developing and using these kind of weapons as the case of MV MARATHON showed, where a Spanish naval vessel was using optical lasers - the stand-off was then broken by the killing of one of the hostage seafarers. Local observers also claim that HEMI devices, producing Human Electro-Muscular Incapacitation (HEMI) Bioeffects, have been used in the Gulf of Aden against Somalis. Exposure to HEMI devices, which can be understood as a stun-gun shot at an individual over a larger distance, causes muscle contractions that temporarily disable an individual. Research efforts are underway to develop a longer-duration of this effect than is currently available. The live tests are apparently done without that science understands yet the effects of HEMI electrical waveforms on a human body.

ECOTERRA Intl., whose work does focus on nature- and human-rights-protection and - as the last international environmental organization still working in Somalia - had alerted ship-owners since 1992, many of whom were fishing illegally in the 200 nm Exclusive Economic Zone, to stay away from Somali waters. The non-governmental organization had requested the international community many times for help to protect the coastal waters of the war-torn state, but now lawlessness has seriously increased and gone out of hand.

ECOTERRA members with marine and maritime expertise, joined by it's ECOP-marine group, are closely and continuously monitoring and advising on the Somali situation. (for previous information concerning the topics please google keywords ECOTERRA (and) SOMALIA)

The network of the SEAFARERS ASSISTANCE PROGRAMME helped significantly in most sea-jack cases. ECOTERRA Intl. is working in Somalia since 1986 on human-rights and nature protection, while ECOP-marine concentrates on illegal fishing and the protection of the marine ecosystems. Your support counts too.

Please consider to contribute to the work of SAP, ECOP-marine and ECOTERRA Intl. Please donate to the defence fund.

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