A couple of piracy links. Thomas Wiegold (German link) reports that India is very angry indeed about a group of Italian security men protecting a ship who fired on a fishing boat, thinking she was a pirate skiff, killing several people. Of course, the Indian Navy has form here, having destroyed a Thai trawler in…
Read More Pirate LinksA good old fashioned gun-running story! With Antonovs, exports from Tuzla, and Bender/Bosasso in Somalia. Fascinating further details.
Read More a short story with AntonovsRemember those Tuareg uranium guerrillas? Back in the summer of 2007, just before the crash, they were busy raiding Chinese prospectors and intriguing with both the French and the Nigerien government. And blogging, ISTR, on their Thuraya satphones. Now look what’s happened: they’ve been recruited by the Algerians to fight Al-Qa’ida, or more specificially the…
Read More making an arrestMeanwhile, this is good news. As more and more ships from various parts of the world – like China and Iran – arrive in pirate country, somebody’s made vaguely sensible arrangements to put them on trial in Kenya, which is what has been done with the ones captured by Northumberland. This is a much better…
Read More business in great watersPacker vs. Kilcullen in the New Yorker. Here’s the key paragraph: Police are another main issue. We have built the Afghan police into a less well-armed, less well-trained version of the Army and launched them into operations against the insurgents. Meanwhile, nobody is doing the job of actual policing—rule of law, keeping the population safe…
Read More a network of friendly militiasAn interesting document was turned up in the course of the row about John Brennan, the CIA officer who was the Obama team’s original choice as intelligence chief before he was dropped as being insufficiently opposed to torture, under a volley of criticism from the blogosphere. (“Opposition was mostly confined to liberal blogs,” said the…
Read More Is this the CIA? Is this the IRA? Is this the UDA? No, it’s the Grauniad…I was wondering what might be going on in Somalia; we’re getting a surprising number of lifts a day from the UAE to Puntland/Somaliland (Hargeisa and Berbera) with Tenir AL and British Gulf International Company (not BGIA) call signs. And then this hits the wires via Reuters DeathWatch: BAIDOA, Somalia, Feb 24 (Reuters) – Heavily…
Read More Surveillance: More Il-76s in SomaliaThe latest UN Monitoring Group report on Somalia is out. BBC News reports that Eritrea is accused of sending the ex-ICU large quantities of weapons aboard a chartered Boeing 707. Looking up the report, it turns out to be 9G-OAL, serial no. 19350, registered to a Ghanaian firm, Aerogem Aviation. Aerogem was contacted by the…
Read More Ex-Viktor Bout Aircraft Running Guns to SomaliaNo beheadings in this story, though. Congolese radio station aims to give a microphone to those whose voices have never been heard before. I liked this line: The show’s technicians – after getting caught in Army-militia crossfire twice – finally managed to put up antennas in the region’s more remote rain forest areas. So now…
Read More Just to make a living and help out the CongoleseNot at all sure what to make of this UN Expert Panel report on Somalia. Some things are clear enough, for example that Ethiopia is supporting the old not-government and Eritrea the Islamic Courts in order to piss off the Ethiopians. But what is all this James Bond stuff about Iranians trading arms for uranium?…
Read More The what and the why