The Pirates Of Puntland

A Tale of Somali Pirates, Ethiopia and the U.S.A.

By TOM MOUNTAIN
Weekend Edition
August 27-29, 2010
Courtesy Of "CounterPunch"

Pirates, warlords, Marxist guerilla turned G-20 statesman and the USA… the real story of the Somali pirates in the Horn of Africa is a tale that needs telling.

This story starts in a place calling itself Puntland, after The Land of Punt, a once great and glorious civilization in Africa’s Horn, today a forgotten legend found only in the most ancient texts. Formerly part of Somalia, Puntland can be found at the very tip of the Horn of Africa. From its shores desperadoes in small, open boats motor hundreds of miles into the Indian Ocean in search of unwary ships to hijack and hold for ransom.

Many reasons are given for what drives these pirates but the question not being asked is how they have managed to get away with extorting over a quarter of a billion dollars from the international community.
The fact remains that despite the assembled flotillas from much of the world’s navies, with unmanned drones flying over head and satellites in space watching their every move, the Somali pirates of Puntland have been almost unimpeded in collecting their loot and returning to their lairs. No Delta Force commando raids, no cruise missiles, not even a smart bomb, little if any attempt has been made to bring these pirates to justice. The answer to this mystery lies at the very core of US foreign policy which is based on using local gendarmes to do its dirty work, and of course, being able to distance itself from these crimes when they are exposed.

The warlords in Puntland are allied with the Ethiopian regime, lead by Meles Zenawi, a Marxist guerilla turned G-20 statesman. With both regimes built on a house of cards the USA and its western allies are afraid to place any stress on the lot in fear of it all falling down. With the Ethiopian regime gone, who is going to enforce western interests in East Africa?

The law of the jungle rules life in the Horn of Africa and in Puntland in particular. In this struggle for survival, clan connections, and loyalty, are all important. In Puntland the clans are ruled by a council of warlords, whose brigandry and opportunism has earned them the support of the murderous clique of former Marxist guerillas who today rule Ethiopia. Ethiopian P.M. Meles Zenawi and his former comrades in arms in the Tigrayan Peoples Liberation Front, one-time followers of Enver Hoxha and the Albanian Communist Party’s version of world revolution, are today enforcing Pax Americana in East Africa.
From his seat of power in Addis Ababa, where in past days another western cop on the beat, Emperor Haile Sellasie, kept his imperial court, Meles Zenawi recently summoned his minions in Puntland. Upon the Puntland leaderships arrival in Addis Ababa press conferences were held where gestures of fealty were duly made and close ties proclaimed, but behind the scenes, fractious meetings marked by not so veiled threats marked the days. It would seem that not enough of the loot collected by the pirates of Puntland was making its way back to the regime in Addis Ababa.

Meles Zenawi, who soon after this meeting would be on the world stage at the G-20 meeting in Toronto, needs Puntland for its Indian Ocean coastline and as a bulkhead against outbreak of Somali nationalism in Somaliland in the north and the Islamic resistance in the south. He also needs Puntland as a safe haven for the Ethiopian military, still licking its wounds after its mauling by the Islamic resistance and its withdrawal from southern Somalia.

The USA needs Meles to continue enforcing its interests in the Horn of Africa and in times past has seen their enforcers of Pax Americana collapse when domestic matters explode. Ethiopia is fighting home grown insurgencies in its southeast in the Ogaden, in the north in Tigray, in the west in Gambella and in the south west in Oromia. The defeat in Somalia at the hands of a small, poorly trained and armed rag tag bands of Islamic fighters in the southern and Mogadishu regions of Somalia has further demoralized the Ethiopian military which has never recovered from the loss of tens of thousands of its best troops a decade ago in the invasion of Eritrea.

Invasions and counterinsurgency take a large military. A large military requires a lot of money, and with a domestic economy crippled by famine, civil war and a decades-long kleptocracy, Ethiopia is one of the most aid-dependent countries in the world.

Ethiopia has about 80 million people and with its abundance of water, rich agricultural land, minerals and now even oil, should be a rich country, at the very least able to feed its own people. In real life Ethiopia’s number one hard currency earner is cut flowers, about $400 million a year. With coffee, at $250 million a year, coming in second, Ethiopia has less than $1 billion a year in foreign currency to bankroll its imports. As a result Ethiopia remains the largest recipient of western aid in sub Saharan Africa, with some years receiving almost 90 per cent of such. Ethiopia also is the recipient of about $2 billion a year in loans, and with such a small export base, it shouldn't be surprising that most of these loans go unpaid. “Debt Forgiveness for Africa” is how it ends up being described.

What is almost unknown in the west is that Ethiopia also has the largest, best equipped army in Africa, though finding information in the western media about Ethiopia’s military has been all but impossible for over a decade now.

Ethiopia invaded its former colony Eritrea in 2000 and by its own admission lost 123,000 of its own soldiers killed in action. Ethiopia invaded Somalia at the end of 2006, something no Ethiopian leader in history had ever done, and quickly found itself attacked from all sides by the Islamic resistance. By the time Ethiopia officially “withdrew” some two years later, estimates of Ethiopian soldiers killed in action range from 20-30,000.

Today, the Ethiopian army is conducting search and destroy operations throughout the ethnically Somali Ogaden region and at the same time, during a series of the worst droughts in history, blocking all food aid to 90 per cent of the province. Even the Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders have been expelled. What is being committed can only be described as genocide and Ethiopia doesn't want any witnesses blowing the whistle on them.

If Ethiopia can carry out genocide against its own population for years now with the unwavering support of its western funding agencies, it is little wonder that the pirates of Puntland have nothing to fear from all the naval flotillas in the world. The empire of the USA maybe crumbling but it still calls the shots when it comes to its gendarmes on the beat in East Africa, and little is being allowed to threaten an already shaky Ethiopian regime.
The tale of the pirates of Puntland may be hard to believe, but then truth is so often stranger than fiction. And with fiction passing as fact in the western media when it comes to the Horn of Africa, it behooves one and all to stop and take a second look at what is really going on in our parts.

Thomas Mountain lives in Eritrea and can be reached at thomascmountain@yahoo.com

Terrorizing Aid To Somalia

The United States Is Willfully Letting Millions Of Somalis Go Hungry In Its Drive To Hunt Down Terrorists

BY NATALIE PARKE
OCTOBER 30, 2009
Courtesy Of Foreign Policy Magazine

There is a new humanitarian crisis unfolding in Somalia, and the United States is partly to blame. Despite sending $2 million and 40 tons of arms and ammunition to the country's Transitional Federal Government (TFG) earlier this year, now, the United States is withholding humanitarian aid until relief agencies agree to comply with strict, game-stopping conditions.

The decision to abruptly halt assistance came following suspicions that U.S. aid might be ending up with Somali "terrorists." The main worry is an al Qaeda-linked group called al-Shabab, the leading Islamic militant group fighting against the feeble but internationally backed government. Al-Shabab controls most of south-central Somalia, while the TFG controls only a few areas of the capital, Mogadishu. The south-central region is home to 2.7 million of the 3.63 million Somalis in need of emergency assistance. So, reaching many of Somalia's people with aid would likely entail operating on al-Shabab's turf and interacting with elements of the group to facilitate logistics.

U.S. Treasury Department sanctions strictly prohibit any financial transactions or dealings with al-Shabab and other Somali groups labeled as "terrorists." Yet clearly the concern is not absolute; the U.S. government seems less concerned that the guns and ammo sent as military assistance, intended to prop up the fragile government and keep control of a country brimming with violence, are allegedly being resold on the streets of Mogadishu.

The halt in humanitarian assistance will cripple the work of relief organizations and, as a consequence, hurt their Somali beneficiaries. U.S. officials justifiably fear that they and their partners could be held responsible, even prosecuted, for supporting terrorists if relief funds ended up in the hands of al-Shabab. At first, the U.S. government reviewed the situation and "delayed" funding. Subsequently, Washington issued conditions with which aid agencies must comply to legally operate in Somalia. But the conditions are so restrictive that it would be virtually impossible for operating agencies to meet them. (To preserve the security of those groups on the ground, specific conditions cannot be stated here.)

The damage is not just temporary. The new, politically charged rules would destroy relief organizations' neutrality in Somalia. Humanitarian aid derives its legitimacy from impartiality -- the notion that aid is provisioned on need alone, rather than politics. In Somalia, where the U.S. government is often viewed unfavorably, political impartiality is a practical consideration as well; it is central to the ability of relief agencies to function safely and effectively. The new U.S. conditions would undermine this core principle by making it nearly impossible for relief agencies to legally operate in al-Shabab-run territory, including many of the most desperate regions of Somalia. The country is already one of the most dangerous for humanitarian workers, so the United States' attempt to bring relief workers under its purview will only increase Somali suspicion toward them and make the environment more precarious.

On top of this policy disaster, money for relief in Somalia is running out. The U.N. World Food Program estimates that its coffers will be empty within the next few weeks. Even if more funds were pledged today, it could require as many as four months for the money to reach beneficiaries on the ground. There will be an inevitable gap in assistance to Somalis.

The timing could not be worse. The country's already catastrophic humanitarian crisis is being compounded by a drought that has struck much of the Horn of Africa. Nearly half the population is estimated to urgently need aid -- some 3.63 million people.

The U.S. government is holding the Somalia relief enterprise and its beneficiaries hostage to its counterterrorism policy. Agencies have resolutely upheld their commitment to humanitarian impartiality and refused to be shut down by unreasonable conditions. Unfortunately, that precludes them from accepting U.S. funds -- normally half of all aid to Somalia. Until Washington lets agencies fulfill their mission unhindered, the U.S. mission to win "hearts and minds" in Somalia, a feared up-and-coming stronghold of terrorism, will be completely undermined. Knowingly allowing millions of people to suffer is no way to win friends.

Ethiopia-Gate

The Aid-To-Arms Diversion Scandal In The Horn of Africa

By Thomas C. Mountain
Online Journal Contributing Writer
Jul 31, 2009, 00:21
Courtesy Of The Online Journal

ASMARA, Eritrea -- Ethiopia, one of the world’s poorest countries has Africa’s largest, best-equipped army. Ethiopia is the largest recipient of aid in sub-Saharan Africa, receiving up to 90 percent some years. Ethiopia, with millions starving and tens of millions more just surviving, has spent at least $20 billion on its military since 1999.

Ethiopia’s chief economic advisor estimated that by 2001 Ethiopia had already spent $3 billion on the Eritrean invasion.

Ethiopia has at least a million troops under arms, dwarfing the other armies in Africa. When I say best equipped, I am speaking of at least 15 armored divisions (10,000 soldiers to a division with each division including a tank brigade, a heavy artillery brigade, a heavy machine gun brigade and an anti-aircraft-artillery brigade).

I am referring to an army that in 2000 invaded its former colony, Eritrea, in a two-month long war that saw the Ethiopian government release a figure of 123,000 dead for the conflict. Being that for every one soldier killed you must expect three wounded, about 500,000 killed or wounded in a war that remains almost completely unknown to most of the world is pretty covert.

When it comes time to add up the total cost of Ethiopia-gate one cannot only include the Western “aid” that was diverted to arms purchases, mainly from Russia and Bulgaria, even North Korea. You also have to include all the so-called “loans” given to Ethiopia by the likes of the World Bank, IMF, EU, etc. Ethiopia has received tens of billions of dollars in “loans” this past decade, almost all of which have been or are scheduled to be “forgiven.” So much for “debt forgiveness” helping Africa.

And all of this while famine stalks the land, few if any have clean drinking water or know a full stomach let alone have electricity, schools or medical care. Tuberculosis and even polio remain endemic and AIDS kills an untold number every year.

Yet try and find something putting all of this together in one article in the Western media and you will search in vain. Since 1999, even finding out basic information on Ethiopian arms purchases has become nearly impossible. Of course, Yemen, Ethiopia’s neighbor and another one of the poorest countries in the world, is reported to be buying billions of dollars in arms, though even this story has disappeared from the media.

When you do put it all together, adding one of the poorest countries in the world, recipient of a lot of Western cash in the form of aid and loans, with an enormous, well-equipped army and you come up with Ethiopia-gate, the aid to arms diversion scandal in the Horn of Africa. Why? Because the West needs someone to do its dirty work in East Africa and Ethiopia was chosen to be its local enforcer, its cop on the beat some may say. Yesterday it was the invasion of Eritrea, today the invasion of Somalia.

Of course, knowingly allowing all this aid and loans from Western governments and financial institutions to not go to the starving children it was claimed to be appropriated for violates innumerable laws. Maybe this is why Ethiopia-gate remains the worlds number one covert military operation.

Stay tuned to Onelinejournal.com for more news from the Horn of Africa that the so-called “free press in the West” refuses to cover.

Thomas C. Mountain, the last white man living in Eritrea, was in a former life, educator, activist and alternative medicine practitioner in the USA. Email thomascmountain at yahoo.com.

Copyright © 1998-2007 Online Journal

Who Are Al-Shabab?

UPDATED ON: Tuesday, August 04, 2009
07:20 Mecca time, 04:20 GMT
Courtesy Of Al-Jazeera

Al-Shabab was previously the military wing of the Islamic Courts Union [File: EPA] Al-Shabab - meaning "The Youth" in Arabic - are believed to be largest group among several Islamist and clan militias battling the transitional government in Somalia. The group was formerly the military wing of the deposed Islamic Court Union (ICU) that controlled much of central and southern Somalia in late 2006. However, they were forced out of Somalia by Ethiopian troops in support of the largely powerless UN-backed interim government. The group refused to engage in the peace process that brought elements of the Islamic courts into the government earlier this year. Sharif Ahmed, a former leader of the ICU, was sworn in as president of Somalia's government, but his former allies vowed to topple accusing him of betraying the country. Al-Shabab is led by Muktar Ali Robow, also known as Abu Mansoor, who was previously the Islamic courts' deputy defence secretary. Since Sharif's government took power, al-Shabab has been waging a brutal war against Somalia's government forces. Well-Organised Although very little known about the group, it is considered to be a well-organised, hierarchical organisation. Among the group's stated objectives is to implement its own strict interpretation of Islamic law, or sharia, in Somalia. Al-Shabab first emerged when they started fighting criminal gangs in Mogadishu, the capital, and later began targeting the city's kidnapping rings, pitting the group directly against the clan leaders who profited from the rings. It is believed that Adan Hashi Ayro, the group's former military, and his fellow al-Shabab patrons were trained in Afghanistan and built the group along the lines of the Taliban, that ruled in Kabul until 2001. Adan Hashi Ayro was killed in a US missile attack in May 2008. Al-Shabab is claimed to have links with al-Qaeda and is on the United States' list of "terrorist organisations". The FBI has expressed concern that the group may be expanding its reach and actively recruiting western nationals to fight in Somalia and Ahmed has spoken repeatedly of an influx of foreign fighters fuelling the war. No one knows for sure where al-Shabab gets its financial and logistical support, but Eritrea and some Arab nations have been accused of funding the conflict. Asmara has repeatedly denied the claims.

Ethiopia NEVER Left Somalia

It Was A Deceptive Charade

By Sophia Tesfamariam
May 22, 2009
Courtesy Of The American Chronicle

The BBC and other media are reporting the "return of Ethiopian troops to Somalia". How can they "return" when they never left? My sources, who served as advisors to Abdulahi Yusuf, leader of the Eldoret formed Transitional National Government of Somalia (TNG), tell me that Meles Zenawi´s forces never left Somalia. They may have left Mogadishu but they certainly did not leave Somalia. The Ethiopian regime has lied abut its presence in Somalia from day one. After denying its presence in Somalia in 2006, it was forced to admit that it had forces all over Somalia. Then it came up with a convenient lie and claimed that it was there at the invitation of Abdulahi Yusuf´s TNG. The media reported about the presence of 8000 Ethiopian troops. That too was a lie. There were over 25,000 Ethiopian troops in Somalia.

It was on Christmas Eve 24 December 2006 that the US-backed minority regime in Ethiopia invaded Somalia to oust the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) which was expanding its influence throughout Somalia. Sheikh Sharif, who now heads the TNG, was "hunted down" by Meles Zenawi´s forces. Vicki Huddleston and Jendayi E. Frazier called the UIC a threat to Ethiopia´s security and accused them of harboring Al Qaeda operatives, including those who bombed the US Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and for "introducing strict Islamic laws" and "banning khat". The invasion brought chaos and destruction to Somalia. Over a million people were displaced, tens of thousands massacred in cold blood and Somali´s infrastructures destroyed. The UN led international community created another TNG in Djibouti, forced the resignation of Abdulahi Yusuf, and Sheikh Sharif Ahmed was chosen as the new President of Somalia.

Just as the Bush Administration was leaving Washington, in January 2009, after two years of pillage and destruction, Meles Zenawi claiming "victory", announced that his marauding forces would leave Somalia. Only the gullible believed that unlikely story. If the Ethiopian troops were to leave Somalia, who then was going to "prop up" the new TNG formed in Djibouti? After all, it was not chosen by the people of Somalia. The west may have labeled the new TNG "moderate", but that is not going to bring it legitimacy in the eyes of the Somali people. The people of Somalia must be given the chance to choose their own leaders and set the criteria for themselves.

The people of Somalia had accepted Sheikh Sharif and the UIC in 2006 in spite of the labels placed on them by Jendayi Frazier and Meles Zenawi. They had accepted Sheikh Sharif Ahmed then because he was borne out of their struggle against the Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Anti Terrorism-CIA sponsored warlords who had prevented the Eldoret formed TNG from establishing itself in Somalia, forcing it to remain in Kenya for over two years. Jendayi Frazer and Meles Zenawi planned and carried out the ouster of the UIC and Sheikh Sharif Ahmed from Somalia in order to establish the puppet regime of Abdulahi Yusuf and Ali Mohammed Ghedi, a regime that would be amenable to Meles Zenawi and the West.

Sheikh Sharif was forced into exile and so were his comrades. He took refuge in Eritrea where the Alliance for the Re-liberation and Reconstitution of Somalia (ARS) was formed by about 450 Somalis representing a cross section of the Somali people. They called for the unconditional removal of Ethiopian and other foreign forces from Somalia. Jendai Frazer and Meles Zenawi blacklisted Eritrea for not supporting the puppet TNG led by Abdulahi Yusuf and Ali Mohammed Ghedi. The UN Security Council decided that the TNG led by Abdulahi Yusuf was the only legitimate government of Somalia.

Today, the UN is once again telling us that the only legitimate government of Somalia is the one led by Sheikh Sharif Ahmed, the same person that was "hunted down" by Meles Zenawi´s forces in 2006 and 2007. The US led international community is once again insisting that all nations accept the newly formed TNG. Sheikh Sharif Ahmed was brought to Mogadishu, but the violence and destructions continue. Today, we hear that Ethiopia is once again in Somalia. I contend that they never left. How many forces did the Djibouti TNG have when it came to Mogadishu? Who took over when the Ehtiopians supposedly left in January? Did the African Union forces have the capacity to take over?

How many troops were trained by Ethiopia and UNDP? Did they remain to support the new TNG or did they leave with Abdulahi Yusuf?

I doubt that even the UN has answers to these questions. With all the lies being reported and repeated, it can be very hard to discern the facts about Somalia, but you do not need to be a rocket scientist to figure out this hoax.

Let us take a look at the UN Monitoring Group´s Report of December 2008 to get a better understanding of the forces in Somalia. This is what the Report says about the TNG forces trained by Ethiopia:

"…The Transitional Federal Government possesses a security establishment of fewer than 20,000 personnel, including military, police and intelligence services. Many of these, however, are believed to be "phantoms", whose pay — when disbursed — is diverted by senior commanders. Payment is irregular. Over the course of the past six months, effective force levels have been further depleted by attrition and defection…"

"…The Government of Ethiopia informed the Monitoring Group in October 2008 that it had trained 17,000 Somali security personnel, but did not specify how many were police and how many military. Of that total, Ethiopia believes less than 3,000 may still be effective, suggesting an attrition rate of over 80 per cent. Since most soldiers who desert or defect take their weapons and uniforms with them, this represents some 14,000 new weapons entering Somali territory…"

"…In 2008, Ethiopia began to withdraw its forces from Somalia and gradually transfer authority to the Transitional Federal Government. During the course of this process, as many as 14,000 Ethiopian-trained troops are believed to have deserted or defected, usually with their uniforms and weapons…"

"…On a smaller scale, UNDP reported in January 2008 that 225 police officers whom it had trained could not be traced, and estimated that 40 per cent of trainees had deserted by November 2008. According to media reports and a senior Transitional Federal Government source, at least several hundred such trainees have joined armed opposition groups, often taking their arms, uniforms and vehicles with them…"
Here are some news reports about the defection of TNG forces:

"…A group of soldiers formerly loyal to the allied governments of Somalia and Ethiopia have reportedly switched sides and "surrendered" over to militants leading the insurgency…Abdirahim Isse Addow, a spokesman for the Islamic Courts movement, said seven Somali soldiers and one Ethiopian military officer said the Islamists would welcome the defecting soldiers…A soldier who spoke for the defecting Somali troops said they were all trained in Ethiopia and deployed at the ex-pasta factory, in north Mogadishu…" (Garowe online 7 September 2008)

"…During this week's fighting, some government troops have defected to the insurgents, although the government denies it. The local television station HornAfrik has run video of Islamist fighters displaying 17 military vehicles with government plates they said were brought over by defecting soldiers…" (Associated Press 15 May 2009)

According to my sources, the minority regime in Ethiopia, master of gimmicks and deceptions, is at it again. In an elaborate scheme designed to hoodwink the international community and fleece donors of more funds, it seems the shameless regime in Ethiopia is passing off "Ethiopian Somalis" as Somalis. It is the same gimmick it has used to present Tigrayans as Eritreans. Farfetched you say? Well, considering the deceptive nature of the regime and its past activities…

In December 2008, the UN Monitoring Group on Somalia reported the following:

"…At the end of February 2008, the Ethiopian Ministry of Foreign Affairs sent a project document and funding request to the British Government. The project envisaged a six-month training course for 10,000 Somali police, but did not address their subsequent integration into the Somali police force. The description of the training curriculum is vague…Subsequent requests by donors and UNDP to inspect the training course on location were rejected by the Ethiopian Government. They were, however, invited to attend the graduation ceremony that took place on 5 July 2008…The Ethiopian Government provided all trainees with uniforms and individual weapons in preparation for their deployment to Somalia. The military and police contingents traveled in joint convoys from the Ethiopian border to Baidoa. The Ethiopian-trained military contingent remained under Ethiopian Command…"

Why was the TPLF regime being so secretive about its training program if it was on the up and up? According to my sources, all the remaining TNG forces and the "Somali Ethiopians" are under the command of a certain Ethiopia General "Gere". If they are Somalis, why are they not under TNG control? If that is not bad enough, turns out, the African Union Mission to Somalia (AMISOM) is also under Ethiopian command. It should be recalled that Meles Zenawi heads the African Union´s Peace and Security Council (AU-PSC) which created AMISOM in 2007. Leave it to the bigoted regime to come up with such a deceptive charade.

There is also news about the Sheikh Sharif TNG "downplaying" Ethiopia´s presence in Somalia. That comes as no surprise. When the minority regime´s forces were hunting him down in 2006 and when he took refuge in Eritrea, he was singing a different tune. The UIC was calling for the unconditional removal of Ethiopian forces. Today, he imagines that with the blessing of the UN and AU, he is now part of the "bloc". In a shameful and reckless display of political immaturity, pandering to Meles Zenawi, he has also taken to denouncing Gimbot 7 (Ethiopian opposition), he knows nothing about. He ought to worry about the people of Somalia´s opposition to his illegitimate TNG, then worry about Gimbot 7.

Instead of engaging in senseless propaganda on behalf of Meles Zenawi and the "bloc", Sheikh Sharif Ahmed ought to be calling for the unconditional removal of all Ethiopia, Burundi and Ugandan troops from Somalia, for that is what the Somali people want. He should also be calling on the international community to stop exploiting the instability in Somalia and stop the illegal fishing off the coast of Somalia; stop the dumping of nuclear and other waste etc. The UN special envoy to Somalia ought to be defending the rights of the Somali people. Johann Hari in an Independent article posted on the 5 January 2009 wrote:

"...Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the UN envoy to Somalia, tells me: "Somebody is dumping nuclear material here. There is also lead, and heavy metals such as cadmium and mercury – you name it." Much of it can be traced back to European hospitals and factories, who seem to be passing it on to the Italian mafia to "dispose" of cheaply. When I asked Mr Ould-Abdallah what European governments were doing about it, he said with a sigh: "Nothing. There has been no clean-up, no compensation, and no prevention."…At the same time, other European ships have been looting Somalia's seas of their greatest resource: seafood. We have destroyed our own fish stocks by overexploitation – and now we have moved on to theirs. More than $300m-worth of tuna, shrimp, and lobster are being stolen every year by illegal trawlers. The local fishermen are now starving…"

The sad thing about this whole sordid criminal, almost mafia-like state of affairs in Somalia is the silence and the acquiescence of the US led international community and the duplicity of the UN Envoy as Somalia disintegrates further. Instead of pointing their blood soaked fingers at Eritrea, they ought to take a good look at the destruction and mayhem they have caused in Somalia as they advance their own interests at the expense (lives) of the Somali people.

It was on 24 May 2007 that I saw Sheikh Sharif Ahmed and his delegation at the Asmara stadium, sitting in a place reserved for guests who come to participate in the Independence Day celebrations. The Government and people of Eritrea treated him with dignity and respect and as one of Eritrea´s friends. Today, as Eritrea celebrates the 18th Independence Anniversary, he finds himself neither a friend of Eritrea, nor wanted or accepted by the Somali people he purports to lead. Forgetting the magnanimity of the Government and people of Eritrea, and has joined in the anti-Eritrea chorus led by the very regimes that hunted him down in 2006. Today, while other invited guests and dignitaries experience the hospitality and friendship of the Eritrean people, Sheikh Sharif Ahmed and the "bloc" led by Meles Zenawi will watch from a distance as Eritrea and her people celebrate their hard earned independence.

US-NATO Plans To Control The Indian Ocean

The Crisis In Somalia

By Rick Rozoff
May 3, 2009
Courtesy Of Global Research

Cold War Origins

For the past seven months world news outlets have provided daily coverage on what has been described as escalating piracy off the coast of Somalia in the Gulf of Aden and attempts by international, primarily Western, military vessels to combat it.

Absent from such reporting, as the exigencies of commercial news broadcasting inevitably entail, is how and why the situation in the region reached the impasse it has and what its broader significance is.

Instead the picture presented is, according to the standard formula, a point on a blank canvas with no historical depth, no geoeconomic and geopolitical width and no strata of diversified and interrelated causes that contribute to and dynamics that result from what is in truth a lengthy and complex process of developments.

In short the Somali situation is portrayed as a simple and self-contained event that at a seemingly gratutitous moment was declared a crisis.

There are dozens of comparable cases in the world, analagous in the general sense of presenting economic, security, national and regional threats to other nations and their environs, but these have not been declared crises and so aren't given world attention.

The determination of what constitutes a crisis, and a world crisis at that, since the end of the Cold War is a prerogative of the United States and its allies, the governments of which render the verdict, with their own and much of the world's news media echoing the claim.

And the evaluation is inevitably a onesided affair. What has been observed about Europe's most mature writers - Skakespeare, Goethe and Balzac, for example - that their antagonists were never mere villains, that they reflected the complexity and even ambiguity of real life with no character monopolizing the virtues or the vices - is summarily discarded and a broad panaroma of multifaceted motives, players and conflicts reduced to an banal pseudo-morality play with just three actors: Evil culprits, innocent victims and valiant heroes.

The first category is assigned to any individual or group which is opposed to the designs on their nation by major Western powers or, what is interpreted by the latter as the same thing, pursue a policy of protecting local rights and interests. The second is comprised of whoever can be cast into the role to arouse indignation and hostility against the first, currently the crews of Western commercial vessels in the Gulf of Aden. And the third is led by the United States, NATO and the European Union, the self-deputized military vigilantes of the world.

That many of those off the Somali coast capturing foreign, mainly Western, vessels and holding them, their cargo and their crews for ransom are reported to be former fishermen driven out of their sole occupation by years of intrusive and illegal large-scale poaching by world commercial concerns or affected by eighteen years of toxic, including nuclear, wastes dumped off their shores isn't acknowledged. To do so would complicate the narrative contrived by those who have with disastrous consequences interfered in the internal affairs of Somalia and its neighborhood for several decades and are in large part responsible for the current crisis.

Instead the action begins where the governments of the Western states that have deployed warships, helicopters, snipers and bases to the region script its opening act: With pirates.

As though a director would begin a production of Shakespeare's Hamlet with the protagonist thrusting his sword through Polonius and not with the visitation of his father's ghost, so that Hamlet appeared as a brutal murderer and not a reluctant avenger of parricide and regicide.

The national tragedy of Somalia didn't begin last summer with an increase in the seizure of foreign vessels off its coast; it didn't begin with the armed conflict between the Transitional Federal Government and the Islamic Courts Union in 2006 and the invasion by military forces of the US proxy government of Ethiopia; it didn't commence in 1991 with the ouster of long-time president Siad Barre and internecine fighting between militia groups.

It started in 1977.

Eight years earlier, almost forty years to the day, a military government headed by General Siad Barre came to power in Somalia. Anticipating what would become a general pattern in Africa and indeed throughout most of the non-Euro-Atlantic world, the government pursued a path of non-capitalist, avowedly socialist development. The term Barre and his allies used was scientific socialism; that is, Marxism.

In the decade between 1969 and 1979 similiar political and socio-economic transformations occurred throughout Africa, resulting in socialist-oriented goverments allied with and receiving assistance from the Soviet Union. In addition to Somalia, nations matching this description included Angola, Benin, Capo Verde, the Republic of Congo (Brazzaville), the Republic of Guinea (Conakry), Guinea Bissau, Libya, Madagascar, Mozambique and Sao Tome and Principe, with Namibia, Rhodesia, South Africa and Western Sahara poised to follow suit.

The pattern also emerged in Asia - Vietnam with its unification in 1975, Laos, Cambodia (after the ouster of the Khmer Rouge in 1978) and Afghanistan; on the Arabian peninsula with South Yemen; and in Latin America and the Caribbean with Chile, Nicaragua, Grenada, Jamaica and Surinam during the same period.

What was progressing at an apparently inexorable pace was the integration of the Soviet-led socialist bloc, including Cuba, with the entire developing, non-aligned world which coincided with and gave substance to the demands for a New International Economic Order advocated by the developing nations through the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and supported by the world socialist community.

Demands included the replacement of the US-enforced Bretton Woods system - the World Bank and International Monetary Fund in the first instances - in a revision of the entire international economic system that would elevate the nations of the South from mere monoculture exporters to diversified and modernized countries with with industrial bases.

On March 25, 1975 the Second General Conference of UN Industrial Development Organisation, meeting in Peru, adopted the Lima Declaration and Plan of Action on Industrial Development and Co-operation which included the following provisions:

"That every state has the inalienable right to exercise freely its sovereignty and permanent control over its natural resources, both terrestrial and marine, and over all economic activity for the exploitation of these resources in the manner appropriate to its circumstances, including nationalisation in accordance with its laws as an expression of this right, and that no state shall be subjected to any forms of economic, political or other coercion which impedes the full and free exercise of that inalienable right."

"That special attention should be given to the least developed countries, which should enjoy a net transfer of resources from the developed countries in the form of technical and financial resources as well as capital goods, to enable the least developed countries in conformity with the policies and plans for development, to accelerate their industrialisation."

"The new distribution of industrial activities envisaged in a New International Economic Order must make it possible for all developing countries to industrialise and to obtain an efficient instrument within the United Nations system to fulfil their aspirations."

One objective of the plan was to insure that by 2000 25-30% of world industrial production was to occur in the developing world - and not in the manner that has ensued in the current neoliberal order with the transfer of manufacturing to underdeveloped states in a manner that has rather intensified than diminished exploitation of both labor and resources.

With the rising tide of political changes in the developing world during the same time, a shift from neocolonialist dependency toward genuine independence and development, and the support of the Soviet-led socialist bloc - which with its industrial base was issuing longterm, low interest loans to southern nations for infrastructual and industrial projects - the prospects for the creation of new global economic and political order was on the near horizon.

But not everyone was pleased with this development.

The US - alone - opposed the Lima Declaration and the follow up New Delhi Declaration and Plan of Action four years later.

America's NATO allies, almost to a member at the time former colonial powers bent on maintaining historial prerogatives over their former possessions, were no less dissatisfied.

And the People's Republic of China, having lost earlier bids to dominate the world communist movement and what it deemed the Third World alike, was focused entirely on combating what it derided as "Soviet social imperialism" and after the secret meeting of Henry Kissinger and Chou En-lai in Beijing in 1971, followed by Richard Nixon's meeting there with Mao Tse-Tung the next year, worked hand-in-glove with the US to counter Soviet influence around the world, including providing joint support to armed groups fighting against the governments of Angola, Afghanistan, Cambodia and Ethiopia.

With what would in the 21st Century be called the US's hard power/soft power duality and rotation, the Nixon era method of dealing with the reorientation of developing nations away from the West and toward the East - most cynically and brutally exemplified by its support to the military overthrow of the elected Salvador Allende government in Chile in 1973 - gave way to that of the Carter administration and its foreign policy grey eminence and all-purpose Mephistopheles Zbigniew Brzezinski in January of 1977.

The Carter administration had barely moved into the White House when it began to bribe the governments of Somalia, Afghanistan, Egypt and Iraq into entering political and military alliances and in several cases giving notorious "green lights" for military invasions of other nations. Its foreign policy architect was not Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, but the man who brought about Vance's downfall and resignation over the Operation Eagle Claw fiasco in Iran in 1980: Brzezinski, an arch-Russophobe during the Soviet period and ever since even onto the grave.

Somalia is the main subject of investigation, but a brief review of similiar cases is in order.

In its first year in office the Carter administration bought off Egypt's Anwar Sadat, splitting the Arab world, destroying any unified approach to the Palestinian catastrophe and the realization of UN resolutions 242 and 338 and ousting the Soviet Union as the fourth partner in the Middle East peace process, leaving Israel and Egypt armed and backed by the US and the rest of the Arab world, including Palestine, unrepresented, unprotected and defenseless.

Since 1979 Egypt has been the second largest recipient of US military aid in the world, with only Israel besting it in that category. Over the past thirty years Egypt has received more US aid, over $30 billion, than any other country.

In the period between Anwar Sadat's visit to Israel in November of 1977 and the Camp David Accords of September of 1978, in March of 1978 Israeli launched an invasion of Lebanon, Operation Litani, with over 25,000 troops, a warm-up exercise for the full-fledged attack of 1983.

This was one of the green lights given by the Carter administration.

A year later Washington gave a green light to China to invade Vietnam, according to Beijing to "punish" the latter for its role in helping drive the Khmer Rouge from Cambodia the previous year.

In the summer of 1978 US National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, emulating Kissinger's trip in 1971, paid a secret visit to Beijing to normalize relations with China, leading to recognition of the People's Republic and derecognition of Taiwan on January 1, 1979.

On January 29, 1979 Chinese Vice Premier Deng Xiaoping arrived in Washington, the first visit by a senior Chinese official to the United States since 1949.

According to former Balkans hand and current US Afghanistan-Pakistan point man Richard Holbrooke, the trip "began with a private dinner at Brzezinski’s house." [1]

Deng left on February 6 and eleven days later China launched an invasion of Vietnam along its entire northern border.

Reports exist that in July of 1980 US CIA officials - some rumors say Brzezinski himself - travelled to the Jordanian capital of Amman to meet with high-ranking officials of the Iraqi government. Then Iranian president Abol Hassan Bani-Sadr claims the meeting included both Brzezinski and Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. [2]

As recently as March of 2009 Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei renewed the accusation, stating that "They gave Saddam the green light to attack our country. If Saddam had not received the green light from the U.S., most probably he would not have attacked our borders."

Later the first Reagan administration secretary of state, Alexander Haig, wrote in a memo to Reagan that "President Carter gave the Iraqis a green light to launch the war against Iran through [Saudi Arabian Prince] Fahd."

In appreciation of Somalia's geostrategic importance, in the first days of the Carter-Brzezinski administration efforts were made to wean Somalia from its pro-Soviet stance and to secure military, mainly naval, bases on its territory.

The covert campaign was largely conducted through the mediation of Saudi Arabia and in July led to the Somali invasion of the Ogaden region of Ethiopia with tens of thousands of troops, tanks and warplanes.

"Somalia had mounted its major offensive in Ogaden because of a U.S. promise to furnish arms aid. The U.S. policy had resulted from Ethiopia's decision to expel U.S. military advisers from the country and its successful bid for aid from the Soviet Union.

"According to the report, Somali President Mohamed Said Barre had received secret U.S. assurances that the U.S. would not oppose 'further guerrilla pressure in the Ogaden' and would 'consider sympathetically Somalia's legitimate defense needs.' [3]

The Soviet Union and its Cuban ally assisted Ethiopia and the US and China, mainly through Saudi Arabia, provided arms to Somalia.

Brzezinski urged the deployment of the US aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk to the region as a show of support to Somalia and an act of defiance toward the Soviet Union and its Ethiopian ally and, referring to the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks of the time, said "SALT lies buried in the sands of the Ogaden," as a report of the time phrased it "signifying the death of detente."

Somalia was defeated and withdrew the last of its military forces from the Ogaden Desert in March of 1978. Estimates are that the war cost Somalia one-third of its army, three-eighths of its armored units and half of its air force.

In marked the beginning of the end for Barre and for Somalia itself. Barre would linger on as president of a weakened Somalia until his overthrow in 1991, yet another former client cast off after having served his purpose.

His ouster would be followed by years of conflict between rival armed militias and US military intervention that caused the deaths of thousands of Somalis.

Yet for all the horrors US administrations from that of Carter to the current one have visited upon the Somali people, Washington gained what it intended to: Military bases and forces astride many of the world's most strategic shipping lanes and chokepoints in an area encompassing the Suez Canal and the Red Sea into the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean.

In 1977 the Carter White House issued a presidential directive calling for a worldwide mobile military force which in October of 1979 Carter would officially designate Rapid Deployment Forces (RDF).

The site for its first deployments were to be the recently acquired military client states of Somalia and Egypt along with Sudan, Oman and Kenya.

The initiative was inaugurated as the Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force (RDJTF) on March 1, 1980 and according to its first commander, "It's the first time that I know of that we have ever attempted to establish, in peacetime, a full four service Joint Headquarters." [4]

Orginally envisioned to focus on the Persian Gulf, the RDJTF was expanded to include Egypt, Sudan, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia as well as Afghanistan, Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Oman, Pakistan, the People's Republic of Yemen [Aden], Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and the Yemen Arab Republic.

That is, from the Mediterranean Sea and the Persian Gulf to the eastern coast of Africa to the western one of the Indian subcontinent with the northern half of the Indian Ocean and its seas and gulfs included.

Carter's announcement of the launching of the Rapid Deployment Forces preceded by three months his 1980 State of the Union Address in which he laid out the doctrine that has since borne his name.

Coming less than a month after the first Soviet troops entered Afghanistan, Carter's comments included this disingenuous hyperbole:

"The region which is now threatened by Soviet troops in Afghanistan is of great strategic importance: It contains more than two-thirds of the world's exportable oil. The Soviet effort to dominate Afghanistan has brought Soviet military forces to within 300 miles of the Indian Ocean and close to the Straits of Hormuz, a waterway through which most of the world's oil must flow."

That at the time a small handful of Soviet troops had arrived in Kabul, the capital of a landlocked nation hundreds of miles from one of the world's five oceans, could in no conceivable manner affect the Straits of Hormuz.

Carter continued: "An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force."

Brzezinski claims credit for authoring the second half of the above sentence, modeling it on the Truman Doctrine "to make it very clear that the Soviets should stay away from the Persian Gulf." [5]

It is exactly the Carter Doctrine that was employed by the US for its two wars against Iraq in 1991 and 2003 and for its ongoing military presence in the Persian Gulf in preparation for aggression against Iran.

As "soft power" Carter was succeeded by "hard power" Reagan, the Rapid Deployment Forces were converted into Central Command, the US's first new regional military command since World War II, under Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger.

Central Command (CENTCOM) has as its area of responsibility twenty nations: Afghanistan, Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, the United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, and Yemen. It also takes in the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf and western portions of the Indian Ocean.

It also included the only African nations not formerly assigned to the European and Pacific Commands - Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Seychelles, Somalia and the Sudan - until all 53 African states were turned over to the new African Command last October.

CENTCOM was the main force in the 1991 and 2003 wars against Iraq and the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan. Both Iraq and Afghanistan remain in its area of responsibility and its current commander, General David Petraeus, is in charge of operations in both nations.

It has bases in Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Pakistan and Central Asia and until recently at Camp Lemonier in Djibouti on the Horn of Africa, now part of African Command.

The Command's zone of operations is in fact the northern half of the Indian Ocean from the Persian Gulf and the Straits of Hormuz where some 40% of the oil shipped in the world passes to the Gulf of Aden where, as recent reports frequently repeat, ten percent of all global shipping occurs to the Strait of Malacca between Malaysia and Indonesia where 25% of world trade, including half of all sea shipments of oil and two-thirds of global liquefied natural gas shipments bound for East Asia, pass.

In addition to the US, NATO launched its first naval operation in the Gulf of Aden last October and has now resumed it with the deployment of the Standing NATO Maritime Group 1 (SNMG1).

The SNMG1 held naval maneuvers with Pakistan last week off the coast of Karachi in the Arabian Sea.

These deployments are a continuation of NATO's plans in the region described last year by veteran Indian journalist M K Bhadrakumar in an article titled "NATO reaches into the Indian Ocean":

"By October 15 [2008], seven ships from NATO navies had already transited the Suez Canal on their way to the Indian Ocean. En route, they will conduct a series of Persian Gulf port visits to countries neighboring Iran - Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, which are NATO's 'partners' within the framework of the so-called Istanbul Cooperation Initiative. The mission comprises ships from the US, Britain, Germany, Italy, Greece and Turkey.

"NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Europe, General John Craddock, acknowledged that the mission furthers the alliance's ambition to become a global political organization.

"By acting with lightning speed and without publicity, NATO surely created a fait accompli.

"NATO's naval deployment in the Indian Ocean region is a historic move and a milestone in the alliance's transformation. Even at the height of the Cold War, the alliance didn't have a presence in the Indian Ocean. Such deployments almost always tend to be open-ended.

"In retrospect, the first-ever visit by a NATO naval force in mid-September last year to the Indian Ocean was a full-dress rehearsal to this end. Brussels said at that time, 'The aim of the mission is to demonstrate NATO's capability to uphold security and international law on the high seas and build links with regional navies.' In 2007, a NATO naval force visited Seychelles in the Indian Ocean and Somalia and conducted exercises in the Indian Ocean and then re-entered the Mediterranean via the Red Sea in end-September.

"[An] Indian warship [dispatched off the coast of Somalia] will eventually have to work in tandem with the NATO naval force. This will be the first time that the Indian armed forces will be working shoulder-to-shoulder with NATO forces in actual operations in territorial or international waters.

"The operations hold the potential to shift India's ties with NATO to a qualitatively new level." [6]

Securing the safe passage of vessels in the Gulf of Aden and particularly those delivering United Nations World Food Programme aid is a legitimate concern.

But plans by the United States and NATO to take control of the whole Indian Ocean for military purposes and to insure global energy dominance is not a legitimate concern.

Notes

1) Project Syndicate, December 28, 2008
2) My Turn To Speak: Iran, The Revolution And Secret Deals With The U.S, 1991
3) Newsweek, September 23, 1977
4) Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies Journal, June 1981
5) Power and Principle: Memoirs of the National Security Adviser
6) Asia Times, October 20, 2008

Rick Rozoff is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Global Research Articles by Rick Rozoff

Pirates Of Procurement

By John Feffer and Tom Engelhardt,
April 22, 2009
Courtesy Of Anti-War News

Sometimes, it seems as if all U.S. global geopolitics boils down to little more than a war for money within the Pentagon. In the best of times, each armed service still has to continually maintain and upgrade its various raisons d’être for the billions of dollars being poured into it; each has to fight – something far more difficult in economic hard times – to maintain or increase its share of the budgetary pie. The remarkable thing is that we are now in the worst of economic times and yet, for one more year, the Pentagon can still pretend that it just ain’t so. After eight years in which the Bush administration broke the bank militarily, an already vastly bloated Pentagon budget will miraculously rise once more, even if by a relatively modest 4 percent, in the coming fiscal year. But don’t for a second think that the Army, Air Force, Marines, and Navy aren’t already scrambling for toeholds suitable for a more precarious future.

Our unchallenged imperial Navy rules the sea lanes of the planet. Its 11 aircraft carrier battle groups, those vast waterborne military bases, roam the oceans of the world without opposition. But there’s a problem. Right now, as John Feffer, co-director of the invaluable website Foreign Policy in Focus and TomDispatch regular, points out below, the American war of note is on the ground in (and in the air over) the Af-Pak theater of operations, which leaves the Navy scrambling for meaning – that is, future money.

Right now, the Army and the Marines are getting the headlines and the attention, which could mean the lion’s share of future loot, as they recalibrate based on a counterinsurgency future. (One, two, many Afghanistans…) So, thought of in naval terms, the Somali pirates – that is, an actual threat at sea – have arrived just in the nick of time, providing an excuse for a new wave of potential expenditures aimed at creating the equivalent of counterinsurgency warfare at sea. In fact, think of those pirates as just the leading edge of a wave of new naval missions involving various forms of low-intensity operations afloat: not just piracy but also “seaborne terrorism, nuclear proliferation, drug smuggling, and human trafficking” for which naval planners and boosters are already starting to beat the drums.

And of course, no new mission should lack its preferably expensive, high-tech weaponry: in this case, the Littoral Combat Ship, a mighty pile of money in a relatively small package. A third the size of a destroyer, this $500 million craft is meant to patrol the planetary shallows, even if it has so far proved a production-plagued nightmare. Nonetheless, Secretary of Defense Gates has just modestly upped the craft’s production – and there’s more to come from Navy “reformers.” Count on a new array of smaller, shallow-water vessels that could be formed into little armadas already termed by one naval officer “Influence Squadrons.”

Right now, of course, unmanned aerial drones are the hottest thing in the new Air Force counterinsurgency arsenal (and the Navy’s commissioning them as well), so how about unmanned robo-boats? Don’t worry: they’re already being considered as part of the new Navy mission. The sea’s the limit, so to speak. Tom

Monsters vs. Aliens

Why terrorists and pirates are not about to team up any time soon

By John Feffer

In the comic books, bad guys often team up to fight the forces of good. The Masters of Evil battle the Avengers superhero team. The Joker and Scarecrow ally against Batman. Lex Luthor and Brainiac take on Superman.

And the Somali pirates, who have dominated recent headlines with their hijacking and hostage-taking, join hands with al-Qaeda to form a dynamic evil duo against the United States and our allies. We’re the friendly monsters – a big, hulking superpower with a heart of gold – and they’re the aliens from Planet Amok.

In the comic-book imagination of some of our leading pundits, the two headline threats against U.S. power are indeed on the verge of teaming up. The intelligence world is abuzz with news that radical Islamists in Somalia are financing the pirates and taking a cut of their booty. Given this “bigger picture,” Fred Iklé urges us simply to “kill the pirates.” Robert Kaplan waxes more hypothetical. “The big danger in our day is that piracy can potentially serve as a platform for terrorists,” he writes. “Using pirate techniques, vessels can be hijacked and blown up in the middle of a crowded strait, or a cruise ship seized and the passengers of certain nationalities thrown overboard.”

Chaotic conditions in Somalia and other countries, anti-state fervor, the mediating influence of Islam, the lure of big bucks: these factors are allegedly pushing the two groups of evildoers into each other’s arms. “Both crimes involve bands of brigands that divorce themselves from their nation-states and form extraterritorial enclaves; both aim at civilians; both involve acts of homicide and destruction, as the United Nations Convention on the High Seas stipulates, ‘for private ends,’” writes Douglas Burgess in a New York Times op-ed urging a prosecutorial coupling of terrorism and piracy.

We’ve been here before. Since 2001, in an effort to provide a distinguished pedigree for the Global War on Terror and prove the superiority of war over diplomacy, conservative pundits and historians have regularly tried to compare al-Qaeda to the Barbary pirates of the 1800s. They were wrong then. And with the current conflating of terrorism and piracy, it’s déjà vu all over again.

Misreading Piracy

Unlike al-Qaeda, the Somali pirates have no grand desire to bring down the United States and the entire Western world. They have no intention of establishing some kind of piratical caliphate. Despite Burgess’ claims, they are not bent on homicide and destruction. They simply want money.

Most of the pirates are former fishermen dislodged from their traditional source of income by much larger pirates, namely transnational fishing conglomerates. When a crippled Somali government proved incapable of securing its own coastline, those fishing companies moved in to suck up the rich catch in local waters. “To make matters worse,” Katie Stuhldreher writes in the Christian Science Monitor, “there were reports that some foreign ships even dumped waste in Somali waters. That prompted local fishermen to attack foreign fishing vessels and demand compensation. The success of these early raids in the mid-1990s persuaded many young men to hang up their nets in favor of AK-47s.”

Despite their different ideologies – al-Qaeda has one, the pirates don’t – it has become increasingly popular to assert a link between radical Islam and the Somali freebooters. The militant Somali faction al-Shabab, for instance, is allegedly in cahoots with the pirates, taking a cut of their money and helping with arms smuggling in order to prepare them for their raids. The pirates “are also reportedly helping al-Shabab develop an independent maritime force so that it can smuggle foreign jihadist fighters and ’special weapons’ into Somalia,” former U.S. ambassador to Ethiopia David Shinn has recently argued.

In fact, the Islamists in Somalia are no fans of piracy. The Islamic Courts Union (ICU), which had some rough control over Somalia before Ethiopia invaded the country in 2006, took on piracy, and the number of incidents dropped. The more militant al-Shabab, which grew out of the ICU and became an insurgent force after the Ethiopian invasion, has denounced piracy as an offense to Islam.

The lumping together of Islamists and pirates obscures the only real solution to Somalia’s manifold problems. Piracy is not going to end through the greater exercise of outside force, no matter what New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman may think. (In a recent column lamenting the death of diplomacy in an “age of pirates,” he recommended a surge in U.S. money and power to achieve success against all adversaries.) Indeed, the sniper killing of three pirates by three U.S. Navy SEALs has, to date, merely spurred more ship seizures and hostage-taking.

Simply escalating militarily and “going to war” against the Somali pirates is likely to have about as much success as our last major venture against Somalia in the 1990s, which is now remembered only for the infamous Black Hawk down incident. Rather, the United States and other countries must find a modus vivendi with the Islamists in Somali to bring the hope of political order and economic development to that benighted country.

Diplomacy and development, however lackluster they might seem up against a trio of dead-eyed sharpshooters, are the only real hope for Somalia and the commercial shipping that passes near its coastline.

From the Shores of Tripoli

It would have been the height of irony if the sharpshooters who took out the three Somali youths in that lifeboat with their American hostage had been aboard the USS John Paul Jones, a Navy guided-missile destroyer. Considered the father of the American Navy, Jones was quite the pirate in his day. Or so thought the British, whose ships he seized and looted.

We are left instead with the lesser irony of the sharpshooters taking aim from the USS Bainbridge. This ship was named for Commodore William Bainbridge, who fought against the Barbary pirates in the battles of Algiers and Tunis during the Barbary Wars and was himself taken prisoner in 1803.

The parallels between the pirates of yesterday and today are striking. Then, as now, American observers miscast the pirates as Muslim radicals. In fact, as Frank Lambert explains in his book The Barbary Wars, those pirates actually served secular governments that were part of the Ottoman Empire (much as Sir Francis Drake plundered Spanish ships on behalf of Queen Elizabeth in the 16th century or Jones served the United States in the 18th). Then, as now, the pirates resorted to preying on commercial shipping because they’d been boxed out of legitimate trade.

The Barbary pirates took to looting European vessels because European governments had barred the states of Algiers, Tripoli, and Morocco from trading in their markets. Back then, the fledgling United States accused the Barbary pirates of being slavers without acknowledging that the U.S. was then the center of the global slave trade. Today, the U.S. government decries piracy, but doesn’t do anything to prevent the maritime poaching of fishing reserves that helped push pirates from their jobs into risky but lucrative careers in freebooting.

The most improbable link, however, involves the conflation of terrorism and piracy. In the aftermath of Sept. 11, pundits and historians identified the U.S. military response to the Barbary pirates as a useful precedent for striking out against al-Qaeda. Shortly after the attacks, law professor Jonathan Turley invoked the war against the Barbary pirates in congressional testimony to justify U.S. retaliation against the terrorists. Historian Thomas Jewett, conservative journalist Joshua London, and executive director of the Christian Coalition of Washington state Rick Forcier all pointed to those pirates as Islamic radicals avant la lettre to underscore the impossibility of negotiations and the necessity of war, both then and now.

The battle against the Barbary pirates led to the creation of the U.S. Marine Corps (”to the shores of Tripoli”) and the first major U.S. government expenditure of funds on a military that could fight distant wars. For historians like Robert Kagan (in his book Dangerous Nation), that war kicked off what would be a distinguished history of empire, which he contrasts with the conventional wisdom of a United States that only reluctantly assumed its hegemonic mantle.

Will the current conflict with the Somali pirates, if successfully linked in the public mind to global terrorism, serve as one significant part of a new justification for the continuation of empire and a whole new set of military expenditures needed to sustain such a venture?

The New GWOT?

The United States has the most powerful navy in the world. But what it can do against the Somali pirates is limited. Big guns and destroyers are incapable of covering the necessary vast ocean expanses in which the relatively low-tech pirates operate, can’t respond quickly enough to pinprick attacks, and ultimately aren’t likely to intimidate what Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has quite correctly termed “a bunch of teenage pirates” with little to lose.

“The area we patrol is more than one million square miles, and the simple fact of the matter is we just can’t be everywhere at once to prevent every attack of piracy,” says Lt. Nathan Christensen, of the U.S. Fifth Fleet in Bahrain. Last year, approximately 23,000 ships passed through the Gulf of Aden. Pirates snagged 93 of them (some large, some tiny). Yet, in part because these trade routes are so crucial to global economic well-being, this minuscule percentage struck fear into the hearts of the most powerful countries on the planet.

The failure of the U.S. Navy to stamp out piracy has led to predictable calls for more resources. For instance, to deal with nimble, low-intensity threats like the speedy pirates, the Pentagon is looking at littoral combat ships instead of another several-billion-dollar destroyer. The Navy is planning to purchase 55 of these ships, which, at $450-$600 million each, will come in at around $30 billion, a huge sum for a project plagued with costs overruns and design problems. With the ground (and air) war heating up in Afghanistan and the CIA in charge of operations in Pakistan, the Navy is understandably trying to keep up with the other services. The Navy’s goal of a 313-ship force, which boosters champion regardless of cost, can only be reached by appealing to a threat comparable to terrorists on land. Why not the functional equivalent of terrorists at sea?

Pirates are the perfect threat. They’ve been around forever. They directly interfere with the bottom line, so the business community is on board. Unlike China, they don’t hold any U.S. Treasury Bonds. Indeed, since they’re non-state actors, we can bring virtually every country onto our side against them.

And, finally, the Pentagon is already restructuring itself to meet just such a threat. Through its “revolution in military affairs,” the adoption of a doctrine of “strategic flexibility,” and the cultivation of rapid-response forces, the Pentagon has been gearing up to handle the asymmetrical threats that have largely replaced the more fixed and predictable threats of the Cold War era, and even of the “rogue state” era that briefly followed. The most recent Gates military budget, with its move away from outdated Cold War weapons systems toward more limber forces, fits right in with this evolution. Canceling the F-22 stealth fighter aircraft and cutting money from the Missile Defense Agency in favor of more practical systems is certainly to be applauded. But the Pentagon isn’t about to hold a going-out-of-business sale. The new Obama defense budget will actually rise about 4 percent.

George W. Bush’s Global War on Terror, or GWOT, turned out to be a useful way for the Pentagon to get everything it wanted: an extraordinary increase in spending and capabilities after 2001. With GWOT officially retired and an unprecedented federal deficit looming, the Pentagon and the defense industries will need to trumpet new threats or else face the possibility of a massive belt-tightening that goes beyond the mere shell-gaming of resources.

The War on Terror lives on, of course, in the Obama administration’s surge in Afghanistan, the CIA’s campaign of drone attacks in the Pakistani borderlands, and the operations of the new Africa Command. However, the replacement phrase for GWOT, “overseas contingency operations,” doesn’t quite fire the imagination. It’s obviously not meant to. But that’s a genuine problem for the military in budgetary terms.

Enter the pirates, who from Errol Flynn to Johnny Depp have always been a big box-office draw. As the recent media hysteria over the crew of the Maersk Alabama indicates, that formula can carry over to real life. Take Johnny Depp out of the equation and pirates can simply be repositioned as bizarre, narcotics-chewing aliens.

Then it’s simply a matter of the United States calling together the coalition of the willing monsters to crush those aliens before they take over our planet. And you thought “us versus them” went out with the Bush administration…

John Feffer is the co-director of Foreign Policy in Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies. His writings can be found at his Web site, and you can subscribe to his weekly e-newsletter, World Beat, here.

Copyright 2009 John Feffer

Somali Piracy Or Somali Patriotism?

Posted on Wednesday, April 15th, 2009 at 2:42 am
Courtesy Of Steve Linnabary

I always get a little skeptical when I see democrats and republicans agreeing on almost anything. Especially when it comes to their propensity to ignore the US Constitution.

Recently, both the democrats and the republicans were cheering President Obama’s violation of the US Constitution. Article 1, Sec. 8 pretty clearly authorizes Congress to define and punish matters of piracy and crimes on the high seas. There is probably a good reason the nation’s founders included this reference.

There is nothing in the US Constitution that authorizes the President to order US Navy snipers to kill persons on a Coast Guard vessel (of a country we don’t recognize) in order to keep a Danish owned ship from paying it’s toll to cross a section of water.

Why don’t we and others recognize this country? For starters, western nations then would be forced to stop over fishing (and depleting the food reserves of a very poor country) off this country’s coast. But that could mean paying a little more for sushi!

Secondly, it has long been alleged that many European and Asian countries have been dumping hazardous wastes into these same waters. Largely ignored by western media and human rights organizations, the issue came to a fore after the 2004 tidal wave washed tons of waste and waste containers ashore, particularly in the northeastern secessionist state of Puntland.

Nick Nuttall, a UNEP spokesman had this to say “And the waste is many different kinds. There is uranium radioactive waste. There is lead, and heavy metals like cadmium and mercury. There is also industrial waste, and there are hospital wastes, chemical wastes– you name it.”

And still, the UN and it’s benefactors refused to act on the atrocities against the people of the former nation of Somalia.

There are currently at least four different operating governments in this former country. In the northwest is Somaliland, the only one with quasi recognition from any country (Ethiopia needs a port). In the northeast is Puntland. The south appears to be ruled by the Islamic Courts Union. And it is in the mid section (around Mogadishu) where much of the recent fighting has occurred between the ICU and the “Transitional Federal Government” (which claims all of former Somalia) along with their Ethiopian “peacekeeping” troops/partners.

It is important to note that it is very doubtful the nation of Somalia will ever be reunited, and for good reason. With reunification will come heavy taxation to repay exorbitant loans taken out by previous puppet regimes.

So it is simply easier for the rest of the world to ignore the people, poison the coastline and deplete the coastal waters of Somalia. Allowing the “Volunteer Coast Guard” to assess a toll to pass is a small price to pay, except for the occasional embarrassment.

You might recall that the “Faina”, a Lithuanian freighter was brought into port, on it’s way to Kenya. On board the Faina are 33 T-72 Russian made tanks. This is sort of an embarrassment because Kenya does not now, and never has used Russian made tanks*. Kenya denies that these tanks are on their way to a Sudanese secessionist regime, which does use Russian made tanks. The Faina, after several months, is still being held.

It is easy to get caught up in a hysteria over an American flagged (but Dutch owned) ship being detained by a government that we don’t want to recognize. And hopefully it is hysteria (and not something embarrassing, such as campaign contributions) that caused President Obama to order the attack.

If the US Congress had debated these issues as authorized, then a different outcome might have come about. All of these issues should be in the open. I would love to see democrats and republicans refer to “uranium repatriation” with a straight face.

And we would not be seeing the President thumbing his nose at the US Constitution, which he swore to uphold.

Ethiopia-USA-Somali Pirates’ Cover-Up

By Thomas C. Mountain
Online Journal Contributing Writer
Apr 16, 2009, 00:26
Courtesy Of The Online Journal

ASMARA, Eritrea -- One of the best kept secrets in the international media these days is the link between the USA, Ethiopia and the Somali pirates. First, a little reliable background from someone on the ground in the Horn of Africa.

The Somali pirates operate out of the Ethiopian and USA created enclaves in Somalia calling themselves Somaliland and Puntland. These Ethiopian and USA backed warlord controlled territories have for many years hosted Ethiopian military bases, which have been greatly expanded recently by the addition of thousands of Ethiopian troops who were driven out of southern and central Somali by the Somali resistance to the Ethiopian invasion.

After securing their ransom for the hijacked ships the Somali pirates head directly to their local safe havens, in this case, the Ethiopian military bases, where they make a sizeable contribution to the retirement accounts of the Ethiopian regime headed by Meles Zenawi.

Of course, the international naval forces who are patrolling the Horn of Africa know all too well what is going on for they have at their disposal all sorts of high tech observation platforms, ranging from satellites to unmanned drones with high resolution video cameras that report back in real time.

The French commandos started to pursue the Somali pirates into their lairs last year until the pirates got the word that for the right amount of cash they were more than welcome in the Ethiopian military bases in their local neighborhoods. Ethiopia being the western, mainly USA, Cop on the Beat in East Africa put these bases off limits to the frustrated navies of the world, who are no doubt growling in anger to their USA counterparts about why this is all going on.

Now that the pirates have started attacking USA flagged shipping, something that was until now off limits, it remains to be seen what the Obama administration will do. One thing we in the Horn of Africa have learned all too well, when it comes to Ethiopia, don’t expect anything resembling accurate coverage by the media, especially those who operate under the cloak of “freedom of the press.”

Stay tuned for more on this from the Onlinejournal.com, the only site willing to expose the truth on matters no one else will touch.
Thomas C. Mountain, the last white man living in Eritrea, was in a former life an educator, activist and alternative medicine practitioner in the USA. Email thomascmountain at yahoo.com.

Copyright © 1998-2007 Online Journal

RadioActive Waste In Somalia Shall Be Exposed

RadioActive and Hazardous Waste In Somalia Shall Be Exposed

By Report: Somali Monitor
Video: Aljazeera
Tuesday, Apr 14, 2009
Courtesy Of Axis Of Logic

An investigation into the murder of Ilaria Alpi who was investigating arms trafficking and the illegal disposal of toxic waste off the coasts of Somalia. (Report and Photos below the video)

Somalia’s Secret Dumps Of Toxic Waste Washed Ashore By Tsunami

Source:Timesonline
From Jonathan Clayton in Johannesburg

THE huge waves which battered northern Somalia after the tsunami in December are believed to have stirred up tonnes of nuclear and toxic waste illegally dumped in the war-racked country during the early 1990s.

Apart from killing about 300 people and destroying thousands of homes, the waves broke up rusting barrels and other containers and hazardous waste dumped along the long, remote shoreline, a spokesman for the United Nations Environment Programme (Unep) said.

“Initial reports indicate that the tsunami waves broke open containers full of toxic waste and scattered the contents. We are talking about everything from medical waste to chemical waste products,” Nick Nuttal, the Unep spokesman, told The Times.

“We know this material is on the land and is now being blown around and possibly carried to villages. What we do not know is the full extent of the problem.”

Mr Nuttall said that a UN assessment mission that recently returned from the lawless African country, which has had no government since 1991, reported that several Somalis in the northern areas were ill with diseases consistent with radiation sickness. “We need more information. We need to find out what has been going on there, but there is real cause for concern,” he added. “We now need to urgently send in a multi-agency expert mission, led by Unep, for a full investigation.”

An initial UN report says that many people in the areas around the northeastern towns of Hobbio and Benadir, on the Indian Ocean coast, are suffering from far higher than normal cases of respiratory infections, mouth ulcers and bleeding, abdominal haemorrhages and unusual skin infections.

“The current situation along the Somali coastline poses a very serious environmental hazard not only in Somalia but also in the eastern Africa sub-region,” the report says. Toxic waste was first dumped in Somalia in the late 1980s, but accelerated sharply during the civil war which followed the 1991 overthrow of the late dictator Mohamed Siad Barre.

Local warlords, many of them former ministers in Siad Barre’s last government, received large payments from Swiss and Italian firms for access to their respective fiefdoms.

Most of the waste was simply dumped on remote beaches in containers and leaking disposable barrels.

Somali sources close to the trade say that the dumped materials included radioactive uranium, lead, cadmium, mercury and industrial, hospital, chemical and various other toxic wastes. In 1992, Unep said that European firms were involved in the trade, but because of the high level of insecurity in the country there were never any accurate assessments of the extent of the problem.

In 1997 and 1998, the Italian newspaper Famiglia Cristiana, which jointly investigated the allegations with the Italian branch of Greenpeace, published a series of articles detailing the extent of illegal dumping by a Swiss firm, Achair Partners, and an Italian waste broker, Progresso.

The European Green Party followed up the revelations by presenting to the press and the European Parliament in Strasbourg copies of contracts signed by the two companies and representatives of the then “President” — Ali Mahdi Mohamed — to accept 10 million tonnes of toxic waste in exchange for $80 million (then about £60 million).

Abdullahi Elmi Mohamed, a Somali academic studying in Sweden, told The Times that this worked out at “approximately $8 per tonne, while in Europe the cost for disposal and treatment of toxic waste material could go up to $1,000 per tonne”.

Mr Ali Mahdi, who then controlled north Mogadishu and who worked closely with the UN during its disastrous 1992-95 humanitarian mission to the country, has always refused to discuss the issue even though an Italian parliamentary report subsequently confirmed many of the allegations.

Photos

SOURCE: SOMALIA MONITOR/SOMALIA TALK