[eastbay]

no big deal

Unless you happen to be among the dead women and kids. Or their relatives.

[Plantagenet]

US government is creating Al Qaida faster than it is killing them.

That's the same kind of logic that worked so well for Obi Wan Kenobe when he said, "If you strike me down, Darth, I'll become more powerful then you can ever know"

[mattduke]

[Plantagenet]

large photo of dice

[Cid_Yama]

Heavily armed pirates Monday attacked and damaged a huge oil tanker off the Somali coast using machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades, a Malaysian-based maritime watchdog said.

Noel Choong, head of the International Maritime Bureau's (IMB) Piracy Reporting Centre, told AFP that the attack, believed to be by Somali pirates, took place under the cover of darkness at 0230 GMT in the Gulf of Eden.

"Pirates on five speed boats attacked the tanker, the size of a football field. It was a night raid. A missile-like rocket was launched at the ship. Initial reports said the ship suffered some damage," he said.

"I believe the Somali pirates could have used rocket-propelled grenades and machine gun fire on the tanker with the aim to board and possibly hijack her," Choong said.

"But the tanker increased speed and managed to prevent the pirates from boarding and taking control of the oil tanker," he added.

link

[IanC]

Yar-har-har and a bottle 'o crude!!!!

These somali pirates are badasses. They seem to know what's valuale these days. Can you imagine how much they could make selling that stuff on the black market? Provided they could get it to port, pump it out, etc, etc.

[Ferretlover]

Pirates hijack Jordanian ship off Somali coast
High-seas thugs seize commercial sugar cargo; crime rampant along coast
NAIROBI, Kenya - Somali pirates hijacked a Jordanian ship Saturday in the latest in a string of attacks off the lawless Somali coast, the head of a seafarer's association said.
Avast, me hardies

[RSB]

Yar-har-har and a bottle 'o crude!!!!

These somali pirates are badasses. They seem to know what's valuale these days. Can you imagine how much they could make selling that stuff on the black market? Provided they could get it to port, pump it out, etc, etc.

But could they? I mean, isn't it possible to detect where the ship is going and then prepare a welcome party for the pirates?

[Tanada]

Somalia is, for most Americans, known only as the location of the disastrous 1993 Battle of Mogadishu depicted in 2002's Black Hawk Down. But the east African country has also become the site of Washington's latest escalation of the amorphous war on terror.

U.S. airstrikes and boots on the ground have dramatically increased in 2017. This is happening without any public debate, congressional authorization, or the most basic argument from the White House as to how, exactly, this military intervention is obligatory. To all appearances, it is a new theater of war without end or focus, undertaken without due consideration of necessity, unintended consequences, or realistic prospects of conclusion.

As the U.S. is currently fighting at least seven foreign wars, depending on how you count them, a review of the facts may be in order here. Somalia is about half the size of Texas but rather more sparsely populated. It boasts probable untapped oil reserves and the longest coastline on the African continent, a coast strategically valuable for its proximity to Gulf states like Saudi Arabia.

The nation's post-colonial history has been marked by a military dictatorship fostered, as military historian Ret. Col. Andrew Bacevich notes, by Cold War-era "Soviet-American competition for Somali affections." That contest solidified in the form of both superpowers funneling weapons into the fragile state to satisfy the autocrat's lust for firepower. When the dictatorship finally broke down at the Cold War's end, a United Nations coalition intervened in the ensuing internal conflict. That U.S.-led intervention under the Clinton administration reached its tragic climax in the Battle of Mogadishu.

The aftermath of the battle and the public uproar it produced led to drawdowns of American military presence in Somalia, but in retrospect, that change turned out to be more pause than reset. U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) began bombing Somalia in 2007, and independent observers have recorded U.S. strikes on the country in all but two years since.

The last three years have seen a marked increase in reported strikes as local militants began to declare allegiance to the Islamic State. Where from 2007 to 2014 the busiest year had just three bombings, 2015 through 2017 all have seen double digits, peaking at 26 this year to date. That means more than one-third of the United States' entire post-9/11 bombing campaign (62 confirmed strikes) in Somalia happened in 2017. Even if we limit our count to strikes AFRICOM has announced (18 in 2017), we see the same dramatic upward trend on a slightly smaller scale.

And then there are the ground troops. As Politico documented, the "number of U.S. military forces in Somalia has more than doubled this year to over 500 people" — there were just 50 Americans there as recently as early April — "as the Pentagon has quietly posted hundreds of additional special operations personnel to advise local forces in pockets of Islamic militants around the country." The nature of the intervention is reportedly changing, too, with a degree of mission creep setting in as "advise and assist" transforms into battlefield engagement. These 500 troops are the largest U.S. presence in Somalia since the events of Black Hawk Down. While the Pentagon denied to Politico that this tenfold increase could be called a "build-up," it is difficult to see how it could be labeled otherwise.

It is even more difficult to see how this escalation is justified, what concrete benefit it will yield for U.S. security, how much it might cost, or when it will ever end.

President Trump in March designated Somalia a new "area of active hostility," an Obama-era label which The Guardian reported gives military commanders looser rules about civilian casualties and "the same latitude to launch strikes, raids and campaigns … that they possess in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria." The effect is to further formalize executive usurpation of congressional war powers, permitting first Obama and now Trump to quietly wage war — because yes, airstrikes are war — in Somalia without a shred of the formidable public scrutiny to which any such military action ought to be subject before it begins.

AFRICOM claims this approach "helps deny terrorists safe havens from which they could attack U.S. citizens or U.S. interests in the regions or our allies." That has not been demonstrated. Moreover, though it may sound sensible at first blush, closer examination shows this laundry list of aims can and does serve to excuse limitless war without regard for cost or consequence.

Preventing terrorist attacks on U.S. citizens, U.S. interests in Africa and the greater Mideast, and U.S. allies are all desirable goals — but they cannot all be Washington's goals. To defend U.S. citizens is in our government's purview, but applying external military solutions to the internal turmoil of any and every country in which we have a diplomatic outpost is neither prudent nor feasible.

If anything, it exhibits a certain dark irony: Washington has interests in Somalia because of our military intervention there, and the military intervention exists to protect those interests. We are at war in Somalia because we are at war in Somalia; American foreign policy is both the chicken and the egg.

It is worth noting that not a single Somali-born terrorist has committed a lethal terrorist attack on American soil in more than four decades, and that, at any given moment, the Pentagon has about 100 missions active in 20 African countries — missions so little mentioned by Washington that it is difficult to verify basic details like which nations are involved and how many U.S. boots are on the ground. These are the sort of pertinent facts which might come to light had we any real congressional debate or national discussion on the value of putting American troops in harm's way and Somali civilians at risk. Instead, we are saddled with another ill-considered military intervention that may well make Somalia the location of our latest grim disaster.

LINK

[Subjectivist]

Somalia Plans To Accept Exploration Bids From International Oil Companies In Early 2019

https://www.garoweonline.com/en/news/so ... -next-year

[rockdoc123]

well it will be interesting to see where this goes. The same problem exists now as did the last time they tried this. Two areas of northern Somalia decided they were separating into their own state/country a number of years ago...Somaliland and Puntland. Much of the attractive oil and gas acreage is located in these areas as they represent a sort of mirror image of the rift basins in the Yemen. The problem has always been that neither Somaliland or Puntland have been officially recognized as legal entities by major governments in the world. As a consequence any contracts they signed (and they signed a few) are suspect in terms of international law and will almost certainly generate lawsuits from the former right holders who believe they are still in Force Majeure (Somalia had licensed off all of these areas back in the eighties and nineties and then when all the nastiness happened the major companies such as BP declared Force Majeure, arguably that is still in force). So the problem becomes in the eyes of the international community Somalia has jurisdiction over all its lands including those declared independent in Somaliland and Puntland. Not sure any company would want to involve themselves in the mire of jurisdictional arguments, notwithstanding the fact Mogadishu is hardly what I would call an ideal place to negotiate a contract.

[theluckycountry]

Oh Dear! Hundreds of Americans told to shelter in place while President Biden puts a plan into action to rescue them. This is so sad, prayers to all concerned

https://www.cbsnews.com/video/u-s-tells ... -in-place/

But it was only last year the President ordered US forces back in? What could have gone wrong?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national ... us-troops/

[ralfy]

Related:

"In Sudan, U.S. Policies Paved the Way for War"

https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/04/20/su ... gn-policy/

[Plantagenet]

Sudan was ruled by Omar al-Bashir for 30 years. The man was a dictator and a war criminal.

Now two other war criminals are fighting a war to see who gets to be the next dictator in Sudan.

One concern here is that Sudan has a history of Islamic fanatiscism.


Sudan has a history of producing its own Islamic fanatics and also supporting Al Qaeda and other Islamic fanatics.

I think if the army general and war criminal wins in Sudan and takes over the country he'll turn out to be garden variety dictator, but if the militia general wins and takes over he may very well turn out to be Islamist fanatic who will align Sudan with the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

Cheers!