Somalis armed in the ongoing political struggle for the future of the Horn of Africa nation. 3 Somalis were killed by the US Navy on April 12, 2009 amid threats to take further military action in the Indian Ocean and inside the country.
Originally uploaded by Pan-African News Wire File Photos
Mogadishu, Somalia - US congressman Donald Payne came under mortar fire Monday as he was leaving from Mogadishu airport but no one was injured in the attack.
An African Union official said: "The plane of the congressman was leaving and the mortars started falling. There were no casualties but the attack was aimed at the congressman. He flew out safely."
Payne, congressman from New Jersey and a member of the foreign affairs committee, arrived in Mogadishu hours earlier for talks with President Sharif Sheikh Ahmed and his prime minister on rampant piracy off the country's coast.
His visit came the day after US forces shot dead three of four Somali pirates who had been holding an American captain hostage for five days in the Indian Ocean.
A Somali pirate chief earlier on Monday threatened to target Americans in revenge for the rescue of a US captain in a dramatic operation that saw naval snipers kill his captors.
At a press conference earlier Payne called for broader efforts against piracy off the lawless country's coast and defended Sunday's action that ended the five-day hostage standoff.
"Illegal activities must be dealt with; if you don't deal with criminal behaviour then they will continue," he added.
Somali pirates have taken advantage of good weather to increase their attacks in recent days, despite the presence of an international task force set up to defend vessels in one of the world's busiest shipping lanes. - AFP
Published on the Web by IOL on 2009-04-13 16:16:07
Obama Team Mulls Aims Of Somali Extremists
Seeing Potential Terror Threat, Officials Debate Their Options
By Greg Jaffe and Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, April 11, 2009; A01
Senior Obama administration officials are debating how to address a potential terrorist threat to U.S. interests from a Somali extremist group, with some in the military advocating strikes against its training camps. But many officials maintain that uncertainty about the intentions of the al-Shabab organization dictates a more patient, nonmilitary approach.
Al-Shabab, whose fighters have battled Ethiopian occupiers and the tenuous Somali government, poses a dilemma for the administration, according to several senior national security officials who outlined the debate only on the condition of anonymity.
The organization's rapid expansion, ties between its leaders and al-Qaeda, and the presence of Americans and Europeans in its camps have raised the question of whether a preemptive strike is warranted. Yet the group's objectives have thus far been domestic, and officials say that U.S. intelligence has no evidence it is planning attacks outside Somalia.
An attack against al-Shabab camps in southern Somalia would mark the administration's first military strike outside the Iraq and Afghanistan-Pakistan war zones. The White House discussions highlight the challenges facing the Obama team as it attempts to distance itself from the Bush administration, which conducted at least five military strikes in Somalia. The new administration is still defining its rationale for undertaking sensitive operations in countries where the United States is not at war.
Some in the Defense Department have been frustrated by what they see as a failure to act. Many other national security officials say an ill-considered strike would have negative diplomatic and political consequences far beyond the Horn of Africa. Other options under consideration are increased financial pressure and diplomatic activity, including stepped-up efforts to resolve the larger political turmoil in Somalia.
The most recent discussion of the issue took place early this week, just before the unrelated seizure of a U.S. commercial ship in the Indian Ocean by Somali pirates who are holding the American captain of the vessel hostage for ransom.
The administration has not shied away from missile attacks, launched from unmanned aircraft, in Pakistan, targeting what U.S. intelligence says are top members of al-Qaeda. Evidence against al-Shabab in Somalia is far murkier and the argument in favor of a strike is based on the potential threat the group poses to American interests.
"There is increasing concern about what terrorists operating in Somalia might do," a U.S. counterterrorism official said. According to other senior officials, the camps have graduated hundreds of fighters.
The FBI and intelligence officials have said that at least 20 young Somali American men have left this country for Somalia in recent years to train and fight with al-Shabab against the Somali government and occupying Ethiopian military forces. In February, a naturalized American -- 27-year-old Shirwa Ahmed of Minneapolis -- killed himself and many others in a suicide bombing in Somalia.
The U.S., Canadian and European fighters at the al-Shabab training camps are, for now, being used primarily as cannon fodder in Somalia's chaotic internal wars, Philip Mudd, the No. 2 official at the FBI's National Security Branch, told Congress last month. "We do not have a credible body of reporting right now to lead us to believe that these American recruits are being trained and instructed to come back to the United States for terrorist acts," he said. "Yet, obviously, we remain concerned about that and watchful for it."
Some officials have said that those trained at the camps could leave Somalia, making their way through countries such as Yemen, where al-Qaeda has a stronger presence. But officials said there has been little movement outside Somalia.
Al-Shabab was formed from the remnants of an Islamist government overthrown in 2006 by a U.S.-backed Ethiopian invasion. Many of its recruits joined to fight the Ethiopians, who have now largely withdrawn, and officials said U.S. intelligence believes most al-Shabab fighters have been drawn to the organization for nationalistic reasons rather than an interest in global terrorism.
The group has become the strongest force inside Somalia, holding a large swath of territory in the south and contesting the current government's hold on power.
Mudd compared al-Shabab to other nationalistic movements in places such as Chechnya and Bosnia that have drawn fighters from abroad. Foreign recruits raise the profile of the local militant groups and make it appear as though they are part of a broader struggle, Mudd said. "They're accepting non-Somali fighters. . . . I think it adds to their credibility. It's a public relations bonanza for them."
Some of the widespread anti-Ethiopia feeling in Somalia redounded on the United States. "Certainly the Ethiopians weren't very popular in Somalia, and the perception that anybody was helping them wasn't popular there," Dennis C. Blair, the director of national intelligence, said at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing last month.
The Bush administration asserted that some of al-Shabab's original leaders were responsible for the 1998 attacks on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and maintained ties to al-Qaeda. Last year, it added the group to its list of terrorist organizations. "There are indications that al-Qaeda has provided support for training activity" in the camps, said a U.S. counterterrorism official.
American officials do not discount the threat of an attack on the United States or Europe. "To the extent that the al-Shabab leadership talks to the al-Qaeda leadership in Pakistan," the counterterrorism official said, "if that occurs with increasing frequency, then our concerns will grow even stronger."
For the moment, however, U.S. officials are more concerned about attacks in Somalia and in the region. "We're talking about . . . U.S. and Western interests, as well as potential attacks against other countries in Africa."
Similar debates over how to deal with perceived threats in countries where the United States is not at war occurred during the Bush administration, which on several occasions canceled strikes because of insufficient evidence or concern about inflaming the local population and making a politically explosive situation worse. The newness of the Obama administration, one senior military official, has slowed the decision process even more.
They are "walking slowly," the official said, "and for the players with continuity, the frustration continues to grow."
But many on the national security team insist that it is their caution and willingness to consider all aspects of the situation that differentiate them from the overly aggressive posture of the Bush administration that they say exacerbated the terrorist threat.
'Pirates' Strike a U.S. Ship Owned by a Pentagon Contractor,
But Is the Media Telling the Whole Story?
By Jeremy Scahill, Rebel Reports. Posted April 8, 2009.
Reports say the crew of a U.S. cargo vessel seized early today has retaken the ship, but there's more to the story of rising "pirate" attacks.
UPDATE: At least one nuclear-powered U.S. warship is reportedly on its way to the scene of the hijacking off the coast of Somalia of a vessel owned by a major Pentagon contractor. A U.S. official told the Associated Press the destroyer USS Bainbridge is en route while another official said six or seven ships are responding to the takeover of the “Maersk Alabama,” which is part of a fleet of ships owned by Maersk Ltd., a U.S. subsidiary of a Denmark firm, which does about a half-billion dollars in business with the U.S. government a year.
The Somali pirates who took control of the 17,000-ton "Maersk Alabama" cargo-ship in the early hours of Wednesday morning probably were unaware that the ship they were boarding belonged to a U.S. Department of Defense contractor with "top security clearance," which does a half-billion dollars in annual business with the Pentagon, primarily the Navy. The ship was being operated by an "all-American" crew -- there were 20 U.S. nationals on the ship.
"Every indication is that this is the first time a U.S.-flagged ship has been successfully seized by pirates," said Lt. Nathan Christensen, a spokesperson for the U.S. Navy's Bahrain-based 5th Fleet. The last documented pirate attack of a U.S. vessel by African pirates was reported in 1804, off Libya, according to The Los Angeles Times.
The company, A.P. Moller-Maersk, is a Denmark-based company with a large U.S. subsidiary, Maersk Line, Ltd, that serves U.S. government agencies and contractors. The company, which is based in Norfolk, Virginia, runs the world's largest fleet of U.S.-flag vessels. The "Alabama" was about 300 miles off the coast of the Puntland region of northern Somalia when it was taken. The U.S. military says the Alabama was not operating on a DoD contract at the time and was said to be delivering food aid.
The closest U.S. warship to the "Alabama" at the time of the seizure was 300 miles away. The U.S. Navy did not say how or if it would respond, but seemed not to rule out intervention. "It's fair to say we are closely monitoring the situation, but we will not discuss nor speculate on current and future military operations," said Navy Cmdr. Jane Campbell.
The seizure of the ship seemed to have been short-lived. At the time of this writing, the Pentagon was reporting that the U.S. crew retook the ship and was holding one of the pirates in custody. At this point, it is unclear if the crew acted alone or had assistance from the military or another security force.
Over the past year, there has been a dramatic uptick in media coverage of the "pirates," particularly in the Gulf of Aden. Pirates reportedly took in upwards of $150 million in ransoms last year alone. In fact, at the moment the Alabama's seizure, pirates were already holding 14 other vessels with about 200 crew members, according to the International Maritime Bureau. There have been seven hijackings in the past month alone.
Often, the reporting on pirates centers around the gangsterism of the pirates and the seemingly huge ransoms they demand. Indeed, piracy can be a very profitable business, as the following report from Reuters suggests:
A rough back-of-the-envelope calculation shows that the operation to hijack the Saudi tanker, the Sirius Star, cost no more than $25,000, assuming that the pirates bought new equipment and weapons ($450 apiece for an AK-47 Kalashnikov, $5,000 for an RPG-7 grenade launcher, $15,000 for a speedboat). That contrasts with an initial ransom demand to the tanker's owner, Saudi Aramco, of $25 million.
"Piracy is an excellent business model if you operate from an impoverished, lawless place like Somalia," says Patrick Cullen, a security expert at the London School of Economics who has been researching piracy. "The risk-reward ratio is just huge."
But this type of coverage of the pirates is similar to the false narrative about "tribalism" being the cause of all of Africa's problems. Of course, there are straight-up gangsters and criminals engaged in these hijackings. Perhaps the pirates who hijacked the Alabama on Wednesday fall into that category. We do not yet know. But that is hardly the whole "pirate" story.
Consider what one pirate told The New York Times after he and his men seized a Ukrainian freighter "loaded with tanks, artillery, grenade launchers and ammunition" last year. "We don't consider ourselves sea bandits," said Sugule Ali:. "We consider sea bandits those who illegally fish in our seas and dump waste in our seas and carry weapons in our seas. We are simply patrolling our seas. Think of us like a coast guard."
Now, that "coast guard" analogy is a stretch, but his point is an important and widely omitted part of this story. Indeed the Times article was titled, "Somali Pirates Tell Their Side: They Want Only Money." Yet, The New York Times acknowledged, "the piracy industry started about 10 to 15 years ago… as a response to illegal fishing."
Take this fact: Over $300 million worth of tuna, shrimp, and lobster are "being stolen every year by illegal trawlers" off Somalia's coast, forcing the fishing industry there into a state of virtual non-existence.
But it isn't just the theft of seafood. Nuclear dumping has polluted the environment. "In 1991, the government of Somalia collapsed," wrote Johann Hari in The Independent. "Its nine million people have been teetering on starvation ever since -- and the ugliest forces in the Western world have seen this as a great opportunity to steal the country's food supply and dump our nuclear waste in their seas."
According to Hari:
As soon as the [Somali] government was gone, mysterious European ships started appearing off the coast of Somalia, dumping vast barrels into the ocean. The coastal population began to sicken. At first they suffered strange rashes, nausea and malformed babies. Then, after the 2005 tsunami, hundreds of the dumped and leaking barrels washed up on shore. People began to suffer from radiation sickness, and more than 300 died.
…
This is the context in which the "pirates" have emerged. Somalian fishermen took speedboats to try to dissuade the dumpers and trawlers, or at least levy a "tax" on them. They call themselves the Volunteer Coastguard of Somalia -- and ordinary Somalis agree. The independent Somalian news site WardheerNews found 70 per cent "strongly supported the piracy as a form of national defence."
As the media coverage of the pirates has increased, private security companies like Xe/Blackwater have stepped in, seeing profits. A few months ago, Blackwater executives flew to London to meet with shipping company executives about protecting their ships from pirate attacks. In October, the company deployed the MacArthur, its "private sector warship equipped with helicopters" to the Gulf of Aden. "We have been contacted by shipowners who say they need our help in making sure goods get to their destination," said the company's executive vice-president, Bill Matthews. "The McArthur can help us accomplish that."
According to an engineer aboard the MacArthur, the ship, whose crew includes former Navy SEALS, was at one point stationed in an area several hundred miles off the coast of Yemen. "Security teams will escort ships around both horns of Africa, Somalia and Yemen as they head to the Suez Canal… The McArthur will serve as a staging point for the SEALs and their smaller boats."
All of this is important to keep in context any time you see a short blurb pop up about pirates attacking ships. "Did we expect starving Somalians to stand passively on their beaches, paddling in our toxic waste, and watch us snatch their fish to eat in restaurants in London and Paris and Rome?" Hari asked. "We won't act on those crimes -- the only sane solution to this problem -- but when some of the fishermen responded by disrupting the transit-corridor for 20 percent of the world's oil supply, we swiftly send in the gunboats."
***
Just as it seemed that this drama was coming to an end, the story has taken a very bizarre turn. It seems as though the pirates essentially tricked the ship’s “all-American” crew into handing over the Alabama’s captain, Capt. Richard Phillips.
After reports, based on Pentagon sources, emerged that the ship had been retaken by the US crew, word came from the ship that the captain of the “Alabama” had been taken by the pirates onto a lifeboat. The details of how exactly the four pirates managed to get the captain onto a lifeboat are still sketchy, but it seems a little bit like a scene out of a Marx brothers movie. The ship’s second mate Kenn Quinn was interviewed on CNN and described how the crew was essentially tricked into handing the captain over to the pirates. Quinn spoke to CNN’s Kyra Phillips:
Quinn: When they board, they sank their boats so the captain talked them into getting off the ship with the lifeboat. But we took one of their pirates hostage and did an exchange. What? Huh? Okay. I've got to go.
Phillips: Ken, can you stay with me for just two more seconds?
Quinn: What?
Phillips: Can you tell me about the negotiations, what you've offered these pirates in exchange for your captain?
Quinn: We had one of their hostages. We had a pirate we took and kept him for 12 hours. We tied him up and he was our prisoner.
Phillips: Did you return him?
Quinn: Yeah, we did. But we returned him but they didn't return the captain. So now we're just trying to offer them whatever we can. Food. But it’s not working too good.”
As TV Newser pointed out, “Later Phillips gave what may be the understatement of the day: ‘It sounds like the pirates did not keep their end of the deal.’”
Jeremy Scahill, an independent journalist who reports frequently for the national radio and TV program Democracy Now!, has spent extensive time reporting from Iraq and Yugoslavia. He is currently a Puffin Writing Fellow at The Nation Institute. Scahill is the author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army. His writing and reporting is available at RebelReports.com.
No comments:
Post a Comment