Free Republic

(English-language translation) Over 400 Puerto Rico National Guard troops left yesterday for Fort Lewis in Washington, where they will receive training to accomplish their mission in the Horn of Africa. Puerto Rico National Guard Adjutant General Antonio J. Vicéns said that, following the month-long training, the 65th Infantry Battalion will head to Africa to support a security mission. "This is the first 65th Infantry Battalion of National Guardsmen from all states that will perform a mission in the Horn of Africa," Vicéns stated. The soldiers departed in the morning from Luis Muñoz Marín Airport, where Vicéns and their relatives bid...

May 16, 2009 SNIPPET: "There have been a number of reports of foreign fighters, with possible links to al-Qaeda, fighting alongside hardline Islamists of al-Shabaab and Hisbul-Islam, said Mr Carson, the US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs. "We're extremely worried about the reports." "There seem to be fairly serious and creditable reports that al Shabaab does have, amongst its fighters, a number of individuals of South Asian and Chechen origin," said Mr Carson. "This is a very disturbing situation and reflects the seriousness of the problem in Somalia." Mr Carson also expressed concern about flights from Eritrea were...

FORT LAUDERDALE, Florida (Reuters) – The U.S. Coast Guard will require U.S.-flagged ships sailing around the Horn of Africa to post guards and ship owners to submit anti-piracy security plans for approval, a Coast Guard official said on Tuesday. The new requirements, which respond to a surge of piracy off the coast of Somalia, allow ship owners to decide whether to use armed or unarmed guards, Coast Guard Rear Admiral James Watson told shipping industry representatives at a maritime security meeting in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The revised Maritime Security Directive, highly anticipated by the shipping industry, was signed on Monday...

Piracy never really disappeared; it plagues maritime commerce as much today as it did in the Caribbean in the 18th century and on the Barbary Coast in the 19th century. But until recently, modern-day pirates mostly rustled some cargo and let their captives continue, leaving the crew unharmed. That's changed. Pirates in the waters off Somalia, and from the Gulf of Aden to south of the equator, are no longer simply interested in seizing ships and cargo. Now they are out for the multimillion dollar ransoms paid by ship operators to rescue their crews. They've come up with a good...

CAMP LEMONIER, Djibouti, April 13, 2009 – For U.S. Africa Command’s new deputy director of operations and logistics, the words “I can’t do it” won’t cut it. Not from his soldiers, not from the people he serves with, and certainly not from himself. And this Army National Guardsman, Brig. Gen. Roosevelt “Rose” Barfield, knows what it means to be able to “do it.” Barfield was encouraged by a friend to enlist in the Army National Guard fresh out of high school at the age of 17. He served for five years as a soldier in the Kansas Guard while...

Scouring the deserts and highlands of present and future terrorists in the troubled, war-torn region that comprises Yemen, the Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti, and Somalia demands urgent, skillful, measures that are as much social, economic, and political as they must be military. Al Qaeda operatives and sleepers in this region are few, but dangerous. Additionally, there are cells linked both loosely and more tightly to Al Qaeda throughout the region, and beyond into Kenya, Tanzania, and the Comoros. Those cells need to be found and eradicated through concerted diplomatic, intelligence, law enforcement, and military means. Since internal conflict is a...

Note: The following text is a quote: http://www.fbi.gov/congress/congress09/mueller032509.htm Congressional Testimony Robert S. Mueller, III Director Federal Bureau of Investigation Statement Before the Senate Judiciary Committee March 25, 2009 Good morning Chairman Leahy, Senator Specter, and Members of the Committee. I am pleased to be here today. As you know, we in the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) have undergone unprecedented transformation in recent years, from developing the intelligence capabilities necessary to address emerging terrorist and criminal threats, to creating the administrative and technological structure necessary to meet our new mission as a national security service. Today, the FBI is a...

WASHINGTON -- Authorities monitored a rush of intelligence leads Tuesday at the largest security operation in presidential inauguration history, including a possible threat from an East Africa radical Islamic terrorist group. Law enforcement and intelligence officials received information that people associated with a Somalia-based group, al-Shabaab, might try to travel to the U.S. with plans to disrupt the inauguration, according to a joint FBI/Homeland Security bulletin issued Monday night. The information had limited specificity and uncertain credibility, said Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke. U.S. counter-terror officials have grown concerned in recent months about the threat posed by the militant al-Shabaab...

On the same day Somali gunmen seized two more ships, the U.N. Security Council voted unanimously Tuesday to authorize nations to conduct land and air attacks on pirate bases on the coast of the Horn of Africa country. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was on hand to push through the resolution, one of President George W. Bush's last major foreign policy initiatives. Rice said the resolution will have a significant impact, especially since "pirates are adapting to the naval presence in the Gulf of Aden by traveling further" into sea lanes not guarded by warships sent by the U.S. and...

5 EYEWITNESS NEWS has learned that federal law enforcement sources believe that a Twin Cities man blew himself up in a suicide bombing in Northern Somalia last month. The FBI and Homeland Security are investigating whether Shirwa Ahmed had developed a terrorist recruiting network in the area. 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS learned that Ahmed came to the Twin Cities in 1996 and graduated from Roosevelt High School in Minneapolis. He was a naturalized U.S. citizen. More than a dozen young men of Somali descent, mostly in their 20s, from the Minneapolis area have recently disappeared, U.S. law enforcement officials tell 5...

"Sir, you have done India proud." That was how the anchorman of a television channel in Delhi addressed the Indian navy chief, Admiral Sureesh Mehta, on the victorious sea battle by warship INS Tabar with would-be hijackers as dusk was falling on Tuesday evening in the Gulf of Aden. Those words would have made Sir Francis Drake, the 16th-century British navigator and slaver-politician of the Elizabethan era, truly envious. Sir Francis had bigger claims to fame in a life cut short by dysentery while attacking San Juan, Puerto Rico, in 1595. Unsurprisingly, the patriotic Indian media dutifully expressed its gratitude...

"For Odinga it was a PR triumph of the first order. The rock star’s glitter rubbed off on his putative cousin by the bucket. Nor did Obama limit his role to boosting Odinga’s image. The senator also criticized the incumbent Kenyan president. Mike Flannery, political editor for CBS2 in Nairobi, reported that Obama had accused the Kibaki government (Odinga’s opponent) of corruption “almost every day since he arrived.” The political temperature grew hotter than the Nairobi summer. Dr. Alfred Matua, a government spokesman, accused Odinga of “using Obama as his stooge, as his puppet.” Matua added, “Sen. Obama has to...

ON THE DJIBOUTIAN-ERITREAN BORDER — The distance between the rival armies is shorter than the barrel of a gun. Hundreds of opposing troops are lined up on the border, staring each other down, from just inches away. On one side are the Djiboutians, a relatively well-equipped African military with combat boots, CamelBak strap-on water bottles and the occasional buttery croissant in the field. On the other side are skinny Eritrean soldiers, covered in dust and wearing plastic sandals, camped out in thatch-roofed huts that look like fortified tropical bungalows. < > “No pictures, no pictures,” one Eritrean soldier yelled....

Soldiers become American citizens in Africa DJIBOUTI (March 16, 2008) — Seven Soldiers supporting the Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa mission became U.S. citizens during a Military Naturalization Ceremony at the U.S. Embassy March 13. After enlisting in the Army and serving the United States, Four Soldiers assigned to 1st Battalion, 294th Infantry (Light), Delta Company, and three Soldiers from 1st Battalion, 3rd Infantry Regiment, Delta Company, raised their right hands and said the Oath of Allegiance. During the ceremony, Ambassador W. Stuart Symington, U.S. Ambassador to Djibouti and keynote speaker, addressed the candidates reminding them about the oath...

Somali pirates threaten to kill tanker crew By Laura Clout and agencies Last Updated: 12:32pm GMT 11/12/2007 A tense standoff has developed off the Somali coast between US warships and pirates who have hijacked a tanker packed with explosive chemicals. Somali pirates are able to operate with relative impunity off the volatile Horn of Africa. Under seige from the US navy, the pirates have now threatened to kill all 22 crew members of the Japanese Golden Nori unless a $1 million ransom is paid. The tanker, carrying up to 40,000 tons of inflammable benzene, was captured as it was sailing...

Somali pirates left two boats they had hijacked in the waters off the Horn of Africa, and the newly liberated vessels — and their crew of 24 — were under U.S. Navy escort on Sunday. A U.S. Navy ship and helicopter were guiding the Tanzanian-flagged boats Mavuno 1 and 2 further out to sea, where naval personnel will later board the vessels and treat crew members, said Cmdr. Lydia Robertson of the U.S. Fifth Fleet in Bahrain. The Navy is in radio contact with pirates aboard three other ships in the region, encouraging them also to leave those ships and...

Ethiopia's 'secret war' forces thousands to flee By David Blair in Gode Last Updated: 2:32am BST 09/10/2007 Ethiopian troops have been deployed to crush Somali rebels from the Ogaden National Liberation Front Few places are more desolate than southern Ethiopia, where the barren plains suffer hunger and poverty even when the rains fall. Yet one of Britain's closest African allies is waging a brutal military campaign in this bleak region, burning villages and forcing thousands to flee their homes. Ethiopia, the recipient of £130 million of British aid this year, is fighting a virtually unknown guerilla war on the borderlands...

<p>NAIROBI -- A North Korean-flagged freighter has gone missing off the Horn of Africa coastline after last being spotted seven weeks ago, a Kenyan maritime official said Friday.</p> <p>The MV Sea Prince was last seen loading cargo in Djibouti port in May, Andrew Mwangura, of the Kenyan branch of the Seafarers' Assistance Program, said.</p>

A few years ago, with little fanfare, the United States opened a base in the horn of Africa to kill or capture Al Qaeda fighters. By 2012, the Pentagon will have two dozen such forts. The story of Africa Command, the American military's new frontier outpost. The word came down suddenly in early January to the fifty or so U.S. troops stationed inside Camp Simba, a Kenyan naval base located on that country's sandy coast: Drop everything and pull everyone back inside the compound wire. Then they were instructed to immediately clear a couple acres of dense forest. Task Force...

Eight foreign Muslim fighters have been killed during fighting with government forces in Puntland, a remote, mountainous northeastern Somali area, according to a senior official. Hassan Dahir Mohamoud, Puntland's vice-president, said on Saturday that there were no civilian casualties because the area is uninhabited. At least one US warship late on Friday shelled the area where the fighters had set up a base after they clashed with government forces. Speaking from Garowe, Puntland's capital, Mohamoud said security forces are pursuing another five foreign Muslim fighters. He said the government knew the nationalities of five of the foreigners: Britain, Eritrea, Sweden,...