Posted on 07/28/2008 8:37:15 AM PDT by DAVEY CROCKETT
One-third of Austrians vote for extreme right in parliamentary elections
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1025189.html
The far right surged to almost a third of the vote in Austria’s
parliamentary election on Sunday, complicating prospects for the biggest
mainstream party, the Social Democrats, to forge a stable governing
coalition.
The far right’s showing heralded political instability in the affluent
Alpine republic since the two main centrist parties will be hard put to
re-establish a broad coalition even if they resolved the feuds that
killed off their last one.
“Terrible,” political analyst Anton Pelinka said of prospects for stable
government in the near future.
“The strength of the far-right parties will make formation of a
coalition incredibly difficult if you don’t bring either into
government,” he told Reuters.
continued.
Doubt Arises in Account of an Attack in China
The New York Times
September 29, 2008
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/29/world/asia/29kashgar.html
By EDWARD WONG
KASHGAR, China — Just days before the Olympic Games began in August, a truck plowed into a large group of paramilitary officers jogging in western China, sending bodies flying, Chinese officials said at the time.
They described the event as a terrorist attack carried out by two ethnic Uighur separatists aimed at disrupting the Olympics. After running over the officers, the men also attacked them with machetes and homemade explosives, officials said. At least 16 officers were killed, they said, in what appeared to be the deadliest assault in China since the 1990s.
continued and it is one wild report.........
Thermobaric Bombs - al Qaeda’s New Weapon of Terror
Submitted by national on Monday, 29 September 2008
Thermobaric bombs, al Qaeda’s new weapon of destruction, raises the stakes in the war on terror.
Investigators now believe the bombing on Sep. 21 that killed dozens and left massive damage at the Islamabad Marriott, including a gaping hole in the ground in front of the building, was a crude form of a device that intensifies and enhances an explosive, a thermobaric bomb.
The bomb was delivered in a truck that contained what investigators believe was aluminum powder in addition to grenades and artillery shells. The aluminum power is believed to have been responsible for the acceleration and expansion of the impact of the bomb.
While barriers around the hotel kept the truck bomb at some distance from the structure, the devastation indicated that there had to be something capable of raising the devastation level considerably
continued.
=== Google News Alert for: hostage ===
Friends support teen charged in Sask. hostage-taking
Canada.com - Don Mills,Ontario,Canada
REGINA - Friends of a teen accused of holding hundreds of students hostage
with a pellet gun at a Regina high school last week are describing him as a
quiet ...
http://www.canada.com/topics/news/national/story.html?id=6959e3bb-e2ed-41da-9944-cfb38cb7c6b2
See all stories on this topic:
http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ncl=http://www.canada.com/topics/news/national/story.html%3Fid%3D6959e3bb-e2ed-41da-9944-cfb38cb7c6b2
Tourists held hostage at Cairo are freed
Kenya Broadcasting Corporation - Nairobi,Kenya
In a statement, the military said the vehicle of the hostage-takers was
full of weapons and documents detailing how the ransom should have been
paid. ...
http://www.kbc.co.ke/story.asp?ID=52816
See all stories on this topic:
http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ncl=http://www.kbc.co.ke/story.asp%3FID%3D52816
Somali pirates reject RP appeal to return body of hostage
Inquirer.net - Philippines
MANILA, Philippines—Somali pirates have rejected a Philippine request to
turn over the body of a Filipino seaman who died when they hijacked a
Malaysian ...
http://globalnation.inquirer.net/news/breakingnews/view/20080929-163654/Somali-pirates-reject-RP-appeal-to-return-body-of-hostage
See all stories on this topic:
http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ncl=http://globalnation.inquirer.net/news/breakingnews/view/20080929-163654/Somali-pirates-reject-RP-appeal-to-return-body-of-hostage
Half of Egypt hostage takers killed
Focus News - Sofia,Bulgaria
MENA said Defence Minister Mohamed Hussein Tantawi told President Hosni
Mubarak that half of the hostage takers had been killed when he briefed him
on the ...
http://www.focus-fen.net/index.php?id=n154328
See all stories on this topic:
http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ncl=http://www.focus-fen.net/index.php%3Fid%3Dn154328
Sahara hostages freed unharmed
TVNZ - New Zealand
The freed hostages arrived in Cairo aboard an Egyptian military plane,
smiling, some holding bouquets of flowers, to be greeted by Egyptian
military and ...
http://tvnz.co.nz/view/page/536641/2146518
See all stories on this topic:
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Today in History:
September 30, 1991 - Haiti
Overthrow of Aristide
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was overthrown by the military and replaced by a military-backed government that the Organization of American States (OAS) declared illegitimate.
September 30, 1966 - Botswana
Independence Day
No information provided.
September 30, (year ?) - Botswana
Botswana Day
No information provided.
Upcoming Significant Events:
October 1, (year unknown) - Indonesia
Pancasila Day
Celebrates the five-point national ideology of the Indonesian state.
October 1, 1949 - China (People’s Republic of)
National Day
Celebrates the founding of the Peoples Republic of China.
October 1, 1960 - Cyprus
Independence Day
No information provided.
October 1, 1960 - Nigeria
Independence Day
No information provided.
October 1, 1961 - Cameroon
Federal Republic Proclaimed
No information provided.
October 1, 1985 - Israel, Tunisia
Bombing of PLO Headquarters
The Israeli air force bombed the headquarters of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) in Tunis.
October 2, 1958 - Guinea
Independence Day
No information provided.
October 3, (year unknown) - Australia
Labor Day
No information provided.
October 3, (year unknown) - Honduras
Birthday of Francisco Morazan
The national hero of Honduras, who was a leader in the unsuccessful effort to keep Central America united.
October 4, 1966 - Lesotho
Independence Day
Moshoeshoe II took the oath of office as king for life.
Mexico drug slayings leave 16 dead in Tijuana
Posted on Monday, September 29, 2008 at 5:19pm
Police found 16 bodies dumped in the seedy Mexican border city of Tijuana on Monday in what the state attorney general’s office said could be a revenge attack for the arrest of a local drug gang hit man. Twelve bodies were left in a heap with plastic bags tied over their heads within view of a primary school in the east of the city. The school was closed for the day but local residents gathered on rooftops of nearby houses to gape at the victims, who had been shot in the head. Full Story
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N29385244.htm
Europe and Eurasia: Belarus: Parliamentary Elections
Sun, 28 Sep 2008 23:00:00 -0500
Press Statement
Sean McCormack
Washington, DC
September 29, 2008
Belarus: Parliamentary Elections
The United States is disappointed that the September 28 parliamentary elections in Belarus fell significantly short of international standards, and that the Government of Belarus failed to uphold pledges for a transparent vote count. According to the preliminary report of the OSCE’s election monitoring mission, the conduct of the parliamentary elections in Belarus did not meet OSCE standards despite minor improvements. The vote count in particular was judged negatively at nearly one-half of the precincts where OSCE observers were present. Problems included election monitors being denied access to the vote count process, discrepancies between the number of voters observed and the number of votes recorded and outright falsification of votes.
The United States commends those individuals and members of political parties who participated fully in the elections. We note that a demonstration was held after the elections in a peaceful and orderly manner.
It is the intention of the United States to maintain our dialogue with the government and people of Belarus. We encourage the authorities to take steps to uphold Belarus’ international commitments to promote democratic freedoms, including holding genuinely competitive elections, and to improving respect for internationally recognized human rights. Such steps are necessary in order for relations between the United States and Belarus to improve significantly.
2008/816
Released on September 29, 2008
from: state.gov
Iran: Minister admits to fake Oxford degree
http://www.adnkronos.com/AKI/English/Politics/?id=3.0.2521626054
Tehran, 30 Sept. (AKI) - Iran’s Minister of the Interior, Ali Kordan,
may not be as qualified as he originally claimed to be after he admitted
he lied about a fake university degree.
Ali Kordan admitted to holding a fake honorary law degree from Britain’s
eminent Oxford University, but he blamed an unnamed university official
for conferring the degree, according to the semi-official Iranian news
agency Fars on Tuesday.
“Over the past eight years, I never doubted the validity of the degree
and that’s why I presented it in the course of the confidence vote,”
wrote Kordan in a letter to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Kordan also said he pressed charges against the unnamed person who
claimed to represent Oxford University in Tehran as soon as he realised
his degree was fake, said Iranian media.
The degree had been issued for his “managerial and executive experience”
and for allegedly submitting a thesis to the university via a person who
had opened an office in Tehran, said Kordan.
He also claimed he could not track down the intermediary and thus filed
a complaint against the unnamed person on 14 September.
Kordan had reportedly been saying for years that he had obtained the
honorary degree.
But since he took office a few months ago, questions have been raised
about Kordan’s claim, and the university issued a statement on 15 August
denying that they ever awarded him a degree .
“The names of the professors at the bottom of the document are people
who have all at some stage held posts at the University of Oxford,” read
the statement in the university’s website.
“However, none of them has worked in the field of Law, and none of them
would have been a signatory of any University of Oxford degree certificate.”
The ministry tried to back up the claim by putting out a copy of the
degree complete with a seal from Oxford.
But the degree contained misspelled words and questions were raised
about whether Kordan’s degree had been produced using computer software
known as Photoshop.
Not even the professors who reportedly ‘signed’ the degree had ever
heard of Kordan.
http://intellibriefs.blogspot.com/2008/09/russian-foreign-intelligence-service.html
19:23 | 29/ 09/ 2008
MOSCOW. (RIA Novosti’s Valery Yarmolenko) - The Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR in Russian abbreviation) has declassified archive materials related to the 1938 Munich Agreement, which triggered the most dramatic events of the 20th century.
Head of the SVR press office Sergei Ivanov allowed Yarmolenko to familiarize himself with the declassified documents.
“The declassified intelligence documents reflect the political processes which took place before and after the Munich Agreement of September 30, 1938, which is also called the ‘Munich conspiracy,’” Ivanov explained.
These documents were kept in the archives as top secret for 70 years. They show that the Soviet political leadership was informed about the preparations for the meeting of Neville Chamberlain and Eduard Daladier, on the one hand, and Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, on the other, and predict its potential military and political consequences for Europe. The papers show what unprecedented pressure Britain and France brought to bear on Czechoslovakia, demanding that it ceded Sudeten to Germany.
“Moscow was receiving secret reports to the effect that the British and French ambassadors in Prague were persuading the Czechoslovak president to give over the Sudeten region to the Germans. Moreover, Prague was offered to cancel mutual assistance pacts with other countries,” Ivanov said.
Memo #8604, which was sent to Moscow by Russian intelligence from Prague several days before the signing of the Munich Agreement reads: “On September 19, British Ambassador Newton and French Ambassador De Lacroix conveyed to Milan Hodza (Czechoslovak prime minister in 1935-1938) the following on behalf of Chamberlain and Daladier, respectfully:
“Guided by the lofty principles of preserving peace in Europe, they consider it necessary for Germany to incorporate the Sudeten region. A system of mutual aid pacts with other countries should be cancelled. Instead, all of Czechoslovakia’s neighbors, plus France and Britain will guarantee the inviolability of its frontiers.”
These actions destroyed the existing elements of the collective resistance system. The Western policymakers did this behind the back of the Soviet Union, which had mutual aid agreements with Czechoslovakia and France.
The 1938 declassified documents also reveal the details of the correspondence between European embassies and their foreign policy departments.
For example, the British ambassador in Warsaw warned the Foreign Office that if Germany invaded Czechoslovakia, the Polish leadership would seize the Tesin region, and that is what exactly happened. Having enlisted Germany’s support, Poland took part in dismembering Czechoslovakia. Later, Poland also fell victim to Germany.
The Finnish ambassador in London reported that if Hitler moved his troops to Czechoslovakia, France would not be able to render it effective military aid.
“The Soviet Union was ready to render such support to Czechoslovakia, but because of the heavy pressure from London and Paris, Prague did not dare address Moscow with such a request,” Ivanov recalled.
Soviet intelligence sources reported that many capitals closely watched the geopolitical situation in Europe after the conclusion of the Munich Agreement as well.
“As early as November 1938, diplomatic missions of a number of countries reported to their departments that Britain and France would not prevent Germany’s eastward expansion,” Ivanov said.
SVR veteran, Maj.-Gen. Lev Sotskov (Ret.), who sorted the archive documents, is confident that the Munich Agreement eventually destroyed the collective security system in Europe and led to the outbreak of WWII.
Sotskov served in the Foreign Intelligence Service since 1956 both abroad and in the central office. Now he is studying the archives on the history of intelligence. He wrote “Operation Tarantella” and “Unknown Separatism,” and took part in the compilation of a collection of documents, entitled “Baltic Countries and Geopolitics.”
Sotskov believes that the declassified documents make it possible to take a new and deeper look at the role the world leaders played in the late 1930s in Europe.
“The documents received after the Munich conspiracy are particularly valuable. They analyze the post-Munich situation in Europe and clearly show that Britain was trying to draw Germany and the Soviet Union into active hostilities,” Sotskov emphasized in an interview with RIA Novosti.
In a memo on December 21, 1938, Lavrenty Beria reported to Stalin about the Soviet-seized documents, which included reports of Finnish envoys to London, Paris, and Warsaw on Germany’s eastward expansion, and the position of the British, French, and Polish governments on this issue.
Thus, Finnish Ambassador in London Grippenberg reported to his Foreign Ministry: “I heard the opinion that German propaganda of colonies is false. As Britons put it, it is a smokescreen to cover the preparations of a plan concerning Soviet Ukraine. Hitler himself told French Ambassador Francois-Poncet that he was not even thinking about any colonies,” the document reads.
Later, on November 25, Grippenberg reported his conversation with a British government member who assured him that Britain and France would not interfere in Germany’s eastward expansion.
“Britain’s position is as follows: let’s wait until Germany and the U.S.S.R. get involved in a big conflict,” the document reads.
Commenting on it, Sotskov explained that despite the circumstances, the Soviet Union was still trying to set up some system for resisting the Nazi aggression. As a result, Britain and France had to send their military missions to Moscow for negotiations.
“Moscow presented very detailed information about the resources which it could use against Hitler’s Germany. In the event of an anti-Hitler agreement with Britain and France, the U.S.S.R. was ready to employ 120 infantry divisions, 16 cavalry divisions, 5,000 tanks and as many aircraft,” Sotskov said.
However, despite this, the talks with Britain and France failed. It became obvious that they were working toward their super goal, he noted.
The documents make it abundantly clear that both Britain and France realized that their position was driving the U.S.S.R. into a corner and that Moscow would have to come to terms with the Germans.
As a result, the U.S.S.R. signed the Nonaggression Pact with Germany, which allowed it to move its border to the West and gain some time for the preparations to repel the aggression, Sotskov explained.
“It became obvious that a policy of appeasing Hitler did not work, and that concessions only encouraged him further. This compelled the Soviet leadership to look for ways of ensuring national security in this foreign policy environment,” he pointed out.
“The Western model of appeasing the aggressor (the Munich Agreement) failed to achieve the desired effect, and the war broke out in the West. France surrendered to Hitler, and the cabinet of ministers changed in Britain. The anti-Hitler coalition took shape later under the pattern suggested by the Soviet Union in 1935: the United States, Britain, the Soviet Union, and later de Gaulle’s France,” Sotskov said.
He believes that Europe should draw conclusions from the events around the Munich Agreement, as well as from the events in the Balkans and the recent crisis in the Caucasus (South Ossetia).
“First of all, appeasing any aggressor, whether big or small, is a flawed policy. The United States wants to dominate the world, and it does not matter whose model, Hitler’s or Bush’s, it is using to achieve this goal,” he said.
Unless aggressive actions are nipped in the bud, the region and probably the entire continent will be in for big trouble, Sotskov believes.
He is convinced that Europe needs a system of collective security, and this is the second lesson. “The bloc system no longer works. However, it transpires that the lesson has not been learned. Instead of curbing Georgia, the aggressor, the United States suggests encircling Russia,” he summed up.
The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s and do not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.
http://frontpagemagazine.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=0F03A69D-2986-4CE8-9158-C986849424D5
Black Racists Recruited to Guide the Jihad
By John Perazzo
FrontPageMagazine.com | 10/1/2008
One of the most remarkable trends taking place at so-called “human rights,” “social justice,” and “peace” rallies in a host of venues—most notably university campuses all across the United States—is the delivery of vicious attacks by Islamic speakers against America, Israel, and the Jewish people. These speakers, many of whom are religious leaders known as Imams, unambiguously condemn the United States as the “Great Satan,” the principal wellspring of evil on earth. By extension, they depict America’s ally Israel as the “Little Satan,” a land whose Jewish inhabitants allegedly have conspired with the U.S. to mistreat Muslims in every part of the globe. The hatred upon which these views are founded finds its expression in clearly enunciated calls for the extermination of Jews, the torture and murder of whites, the destruction of America and Israel by any means necessary, the adulation of Osama bin Laden and Islamic suicide bombers, and the establishment of Islam as the universal faith of all mankind. An unremarked fact is that these imams are often black racists in the mold of Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama’s pastor of more than twenty years.
One notable black racist who, like Rev. Wright, is also connected to Obama, is an orthodox Muslim named Khalid Abdullah Tariq al-Mansour, whose efforts to facilitate Obama’s 1988 admission to Harvard Law School have recently come to light. An attorney by profession, al-Mansour is a black nationalist and an outspoken hater of the United States, Israel, and white people generally. In recent years he has accused the U.S. of plotting a “genocide” designed “to remove 15 million black people, considered disposable, of no relevance, value or benefit to the American society.” He has told fellow blacks that “whatever you do to [white people], they deserve it, God wants you to do it and that’s when you cut out the nose, cut out the ears, take flesh out of their body, don’t worry because God wants you to do it.” Alleging further that Palestinians in Israel “are being brutalized like savages,” he accuses the Jews of “stealing the land the same way the Christians stole the land from the Indians in America.”
Formerly named Donald Warden, al-Mansour in the 1960s was a mentor to Black Panther Party founders Huey Newton and Bobby Seale. When Warden became a Muslim and took his new name, he seamlessly adapted the sadistic hatred that had animated his activities with the Panthers, to the religious bigotry for which his newfound Islamic extremism called.
continues and should be read, lots of hidden links.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=71C07986-EAAF-4B8C-ACA4-7ABFA3ABD7A7
The Resurrection of “The Party”
By Kathy Shaidle
FrontPageMagazine.com | 9/30/2008
When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, certain experts triumphantly proclaimed “the end of history.” But more cynical historians warned that the communist “bear” would simply hibernate for a time, and then re-emerge as a newly refreshed “evil empire” in a different form.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin seems determined to vindicate the cynics. Under Putin’s leadership, Russia has increasingly come to resemble its Soviet self. Like the USSR, today’s Russia is actively courting America’s enemies, such as Venezuela, Cuba and Iran, while undermining sovereign states along its border, as with its recent invasion of Georgia over South Ossetia.
The Soviet parallels are even more striking in Russian domestic politics, where a small but telling development further signals the troubling reincarnation of America’s Cold War foe. According to a September 22 Stratfor dispatch, Putin is planning to tour United Russia Party regional headquarters to “consolidate his control over the country under ‘The Party,’ a concept and term reminiscent of another day and time” when “another Russian party served as the single controlling power in Russian for most of the 20th century.”
Indeed, since the Soviet Union’s fall, Russian heads of state have not headed the political parties that backed them; this would have been a reminder of the one-party rule of the Soviet era. But Putin, who has called the collapse of the Soviet empire “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century,” has broken with precedent. In April, he became head of the ruling United Russia party.
In that capacity, Putin has big goals for United Russia. In the Soviet Union, membership in the Communist Party was required of any educated individual seeking power, influence and precious perks. Substitute United Russia for Communist Party and you get some sense of the scope of Putin’s ambition.
While membership in the new United Party is relatively small, Putin now seems determined to change this at the regional levels. “It is crucial for Russia’s central ruling party to control the regions,” according to Stratfor’s analysts, “since each regional head tends to lord it over whatever national champion or natural resource — oil and natural gas, metals, or diamonds — is found in that region. Most of these local party leaders are already handpicked by Putin…There is no better way” to “clean house and impose control” than by “bringing everyone under the command of The Party.”
Not everyone believes that these developments are terribly alarming, or even likely. Richard Pipes, Professor Emeritus of History at Harvard University and author of Communism: A History (2001) and other definitive studies, dismissed these concerns in an interview with FrontPage. According to Dr. Pipes, the Russians “want to maintain the pretext of the idea that they are democracy, so such a ‘consolidation’ would make no sense.”
A senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, David Satter told FrontPage that Russia will likely evolve into a parliamentary republic with a largely decorative president. Via email, Satter asserted that “United Russia…will not be a party like the Communist Party because it will not control every aspect of life,” adding, “United Russia is not ideological. Its purpose is to solidify the hold of a small group in power.” Satter said that the Russian one-party state will still pose a problem for America because “it can only maintain its hold over the population by generating artificial East-West crises with which we will have to deal.”
Even as the party will fuel political tensions, experts say that United Russia is unlikely to exert the kind of influence that its communist processor did on political sympathizers in the West. Robert Chandler, a former CIA strategist and author of Shadow World: Resurgent Russia, The Global New Left, and Radical Islam, pointed out that there is “no evidence of financial support by the Russians, except in Eastern Europe where Moscow’s energy dollars are being used to buy influence in political parties.”
Going forward, it seems likely that United Russia will play a key role in Putin’s ongoing project to reestablish Russia as a superpower. History, defying the experts, has returned in Russia – and it looks a lot like the Soviet Union.
A blogger since 2000, Kathy Shaidle runs FiveFeetOfFury.com. Her new e-book Acoustic Ladyland has been called a “must read” by Mark Steyn.
[Looks like they found the al-qaeda navy]
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=4AE8301C-F8FE-458A-A3F5-98BCB1959161
Jihad on the High Seas
By Stephen Brown
FrontPageMagazine.com | 9/30/2008
After years of battling al-Qaeda on land, Western forces now face a terrorist war at sea. In a recent communiqué, the Islamist organization claimed responsibility for this year’s surge in pirate attacks in the vital Gulf of Aden off the coast of Somalia. Dozens of vessels from different nations have been seized and held for ransom, shaking the world’s shipping industry. Al-Qaeda calls its maritime campaign “a new strategy which permits the mujahedeen” to hijack shipping, since “fighters who aspire to establish the caliphate must control the seas and the waterways.”
Counterterrorism consultant Olivier Guitta revealed the al-Qaeda connection in his Asia Times column, writing that the terrorist organization “intends to take control of the Gulf of Aden and the southern entrance of the Red Sea.” Guitta called the area “strategic” for the radical Islamic group.
Al-Qaeda’s goal is the removal of Western military bases from the Arabian Peninsula. It believes sea lanes “weakened by acts of piracy,” combined with mujahedeen attacks, will force concessions from Western powers. And while Al-Qaeda has not abandoned its more traditional tactics – it has a presence in both Somalia and Yemen and attacked the American embassy in Yemen this month, killing 16 – the organization is increasingly focusing its terror on the high seas.
Al-Qaeda’s sea war is already having an effect. Piracy attacks have increased so dramatically in the Horn of Africa that a London-based International Maritime Bureau (IMB) spokesman called the waters off Somalia, a Muslim country, the most dangerous in the world. A failed state, Somalia has possessed neither a navy nor a central government since 1991 – factors exploited by criminal organizations and al-Qaeda, sometimes working together. As a result, in the first two weeks of September alone, Somali pirates attacked 17 ships, four more than in all of 2007, and last week captured a Ukrainian ship carrying 33 T-70 tanks. “In my time here, I must say, this is the most concentrated period of destabilizing activity I have seen in the Gulf of Aden,” said Keith Winstanley, a British naval officer patrolling the gulf.
Altogether, piracy accounts for about 60 attacks against oil tankers and cargo vessels in the Gulf of Aden this year. Most scandalous, however, is that these maritime terrorists are currently holding 14 ships and 300 of their crewmen for large ransoms in Eyl, a pirate town in northern Somalia. On Sunday, the terrorists demanded $20 million for the Ukrainian ship alone, although ransoms for most other captive ships are in the $1-3 million range.
The Gulf of Aden is not a sea route ships can avoid. Situated at the southern end of the Arabian Peninsula between Somalia and Yemen, the 2,500-mile waterway is strategic for the world’s economy. It connects Europe and North America with Asia and East Africa via the Suez Canal. About 1,500 ships, ten percent of global shipping traffic, pass through it every month, including four percent of the world’s daily crude oil supply. The only alternative route, around South Africa’s Cape of Good Hope, is thousands of miles longer and much more expensive, considering larger ships cost about $20,000 daily to run.
As it is, the financial costs of piracy in the Gulf of Aden are high enough. The pirates stand to gain an estimated $50 million dollars in ransom money this year. But this sum does not include the losses shipping companies incur for their ships’ inactivity after capture. Increased insurance rates and thousands of dollars in extra fuel consumption costs from ships traversing the gulf at higher than normal speeds to avoid pirates are additional financial burdens facing owners.
The threat that piracy in the Horn of Africa poses to international trade and to freedom of movement is substantial. After two of its vessels were hijacked last month, a major Malaysian shipping company, MISC Berhad, announced that its ships are going to stop using the Gulf of Aden.
World leaders also are waking up to the problem. The United Nations passed a resolution last June giving countries permission to pursue pirates into Somali territorial waters, while French President Nicholas Sarkozy recently sent commandos to wrest an elderly French couple and their yacht from Somali pirates.
The U.S. also has gotten involved. As an anti-piracy measure, the United States in August established a protected shipping corridor in the gulf that Combined Task Force 150, an international naval force under US 5th Fleet command, is patrolling. But although the CTF has thwarted 12 pirate hijackings since then, ships are still being attacked, even in the protected zone, indicating the extent and strength of the piracy problem. Captains are now even being told to traverse the gulf in convoy.
The IMB estimates that about 1,000 pirates are active in the gulf. One sailor, a pirate prisoner for 174 days, said his captors are well-organized in groups of 15-20. Armed with Kalashnikov rifles, rocket-propelled grenades and scaling ladders, they operate hundreds of miles off shore from two or three larger “mother” ships, from which they launch their attacks in speed boats against unsuspecting victims. Naval officer Winstanley said there was a degree of organization in their attacks, “Which is why we are taking action.”
Security experts fear the ransom money the pirates are receiving will allow them to buy better equipment and weapons for larger operations. Another concern focuses on the threat to the world’s energy supply. A Japanese tanker, for example, was hit with a rocket-propelled grenade last year, spilling hundreds of barrels of oil into the gulf. A spate of successful sinking would see sky-rocketing oil prices climb even higher.
Such financial disruption would please al-Qaeda, since it has long targeted the American economy for destruction. It knows the Western world derives its military and cultural strength from its economic power, hence its attack on the World Trade Center. Al-Qaeda also wants to draw America into as many Gulf of Aden-type military sideshows as possible in order to drain American resources.
That may prove a fatal error. A sudden, resolute attack on the pirates’ Somali bases would sink al -Qaeda’s high seas terror war and restore calm to the waters of the vital Gulf of Aden. Before long, the terrorist organization may discover that its chances against American forces are no better on sea than they are on land.
Stephen Brown is a contributing editor at Frontpagemag.com. He has a graduate degree in Russian and Eastern European history. Email him at alsolzh@hotmail.com.
A very interesting google:
[2003 Report on al-Qaeda navy]
http://www.cdi.org/friendlyversion/printversion.cfm?documentID=1644
Terrorism
August 20, 2003
Al Qaeda’s ‘Navy’ - How Much of a Threat?
The dangers of merchant shipping under terrorist control was highlighted for U.S. citizens late last December by a story in the Washington Post saying that U.S. officials had identified about 15 cargo freighters which they believed were being used by al Qaeda for both generating profit and potentially aiding terrorist attacks. The Post story cited the difficulties of tracking the vessels given the constant practice of re-naming, re-painting and re-registering the ships. It was reported that the material for the East African embassy bombings in 1998 had been delivered by a Qaeda-linked freighter. However, much the same problem had been identified as early as September 2001, and reported in December that year by the British Observer newspaper, which said that at least 20 ships were being hunted by allied security services after investigations thought to be led, the newspaper said, by the Norwegian security service. More information began to become available after the November 2002 capture of a Qaeda official reported to be the organization’s maritime strategist and chief of operations for the Persian Gulf.
Since September 2001, the number of suspected Qaeda ships has varied from a low of a dozen to as high as 50, with the latest reference in late May this year being to concerns in western intelligence agencies about the activities of 20 ships whose actions were prompting suspicions that they were under Qaeda control. The situation is immensely complicated by the extensive use of ‘flags of convenience’ by maritime trade, in which ships often owned by Western companies are registered overseas to avoid stringent safety standards and other regulations routinely imposed by the U.S. and Western European countries. While the availability of cheap third world sailors and shipping has cut costs for many companies, the ‘flags of convenience’ issue has raised the potential risks to Western interests. The advent of cut-price competitors from the third world has also hastened the steep downfall in numbers of U.S. flagged merchant ships.
The giants in the ‘flags of convenience’ business are Panama and Liberia, with some 4,680 and 1,432 ships respectively reported on their registers. However, some 24 other states are also so named by the International Transport Workers’ Federation which scrutinizes such activities. One particular state that has repeatedly come to authorities’ attention in the last year is Tonga, which after searches in 2002, announced in June that it would close its registry. This followed a February 2002 incident in which eight Pakistanis jumped ship in Trieste, Italy, from a Tongan-registered ship operated by a shipping company named Nova. They falsely claimed to be crewmembers, and carried large sums of money and fake identification; U.S. officials said that they had been sent there by al Qaeda. Following the announced termination of the Tongan register in June 2002, which was to take effect a year later, another incident occurred in August when evidence was found linking 15 Pakistanis aboard a Nova-owned vessel to al Qaeda; the ship’s captain sent an SOS to Italian authorities saying he had been forced to take the men on board by the ship’s owners, and that the Pakistanis were threatening his crew with guns. Thousands of U.S. dollars, Italian city maps, and false passports and documents were seized from them. Since that point there have been a number of boardings by allied warships of both Tongan and Comoros Islands’ ships in the Mediterranean Sea, though no further illegal activities have been reported.
The most visible effort against these Qaeda ships takes the form of several naval forces authorized under various mandates to monitor and inspect merchant vessels in the Mediterranean Sea, Red Sea, Gulf of Aden, and the Arabian Sea. Two NATO task forces are operating in the Mediterranean, one under Spanish command guarding ships passing through the Straits of Gibraltar under Operation Active Effort, and another in the Eastern Mediterranean - Operation Active Endeavour - monitoring and on some occasions boarding shipping moving up from the Suez Canal. The Eastern Mediterranean group, supplied by the two NATO Standing Naval Forces Atlantic and Mediterranean in rotation, has been conducting the boardings noted above.
On the other side of the Suez Canal, the threat of terrorism in the Red Sea, Gulf of Aden, and the surrounding countries prompted the United States to establish a joint task force, bolstered by other countries’ forces, to pursue the war on terrorism in the area. Combined Joint Task Force Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA) was established in November 2001, with its headquarters afloat aboard the U.S. Navy command ship Mount Whitney. In April 2002, the existence of a multinational naval force, Task Force 150, in the area, working alongside CJTF-HOA to monitor, inspect, board, and stop suspect shipping also became apparent. The group has been under the command of a number of European nations, currently through the multinational European Maritime Force, and consists of a number of European frigates and destroyers, usually with a U.S. escort also attached. It was the Spanish frigate Navarra from this force that intercepted the North Korean vessel Sosan carrying Scud missiles to Yemen on Dec. 9, 2002. Currently the force consists of two German and two French frigates, plus frigates from Spain, Italy, and Britain, as well as a U.S. destroyer and German replenishment tanker.
Further east, since the fall of the Taliban in Afghanistan, naval forces have been patrolling the Arabian Sea and Gulf of Oman to intercept any fleeing members of al Qaeda who might have escaped through the relatively lawless province of Baluchistan in western Pakistan, or through Karachi, to sea heading for Yemen or East Africa. For much of 2002 and 2003, Canada was leading the naval task group in the area which at various times had ships from Canada, France, Italy, Greece, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and Britain under its command. However, the long effort has significantly strained the Canadian navy, and command of the force was handed back to the U.S. Navy in mid-June 2003. The effort will go on, however, with numerous nations continuing to send vessels to sweep the sea lanes.
This summary of the allied naval effort in the Mediterranean and Middle East amply demonstrates that the Qaeda freighter threat is being confronted far from the United States, and also at the greatest distance from Western Europe that the naval forces of the coalition states can provide. However the U.S. Coast Guard is closely monitoring waters closer to America in the Atlantic and Pacific. The Coast Guard, assisted by the Navy in cases, routinely runs counter-drug searches both within and beyond U.S. territorial waters. Perhaps more importantly, it has the right under U.S. law to board any vessel within U.S. territorial waters for any reason.
Added to the web of interagency intelligence relationships all interested bodies maintain, such measures should ensure that no suspect vessels are able to enter any U.S. port before being thoroughly checked, reducing the prospect that any of the suspected vessels will be able to destroy U.S. ports. Thus, despite the dangers inherent in al Qaeda’s control of such shipping, the immediate danger to U.S. port and coastal security appears to be less than initial impressions might suggest.
Sources
CIA World Fact Book
ADI News Agency, “Djibouti: French, German navies take over command of anti-terrorist force,” Jul. 12, 2003 (via www.nexis.com)
Dipesh Gadher, “NATO tracks 20 ‘suspect’ ships,” Sunday Times, May 25, 2003
Martin Bright, Paul Harris, and Nick Walsh, “Hunt for 20 terror ships,” The Observer, Dec. 21, 2001
John Mintz, “15 Freighters Believed to be Linked to Al Qaeda; U.S. fears terrorists at sea; tracking ships is difficult,” Washington Post, Dec.31, 2002
Toby Eckert, “’Flags of Convenience’ Raise Security Concerns,” Copley News Service, Feb. 7, 2003
“The Ships that Died of Shame,” Jan. 14, 2003
CBSNews.com, “Bin Laden’s Navy,” Dec. 31, 2003
Peter Grier & Faye Bowers, “How Al Qaeda Might strike the US by sea,” Christian Science Monitor, May 15, 2003
Author(s): Colin Robinson
http://www.defensetech.org/archives/004444.html
Potential Russian Launch Base in Cuba
cuban-missile-crisis.jpg
Even as a Russian naval task force enters the Caribbean for joint exercises with Venezuelan forces, and a pair of Russian Tu-160 Blackjack strategic bombers fly from a base in the Kola Peninsula to Venezuela, the Russian government is discussing the possibility of a satellite launch facility in Cuba.
Revelation of the interest in Cuba came from Anatoly Perminov, the head of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, in a September statement. This may be the latest move by Russian prime minister (and former president) Vladimir Putin to reestablish Russia as a key “player” on the world political-military scene.
The Russian interest in the Caribbean-South America region is reflected in the high-level Russian delegation visiting the area, led by Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin. Perminov is part of the Sechin delegation.
(Sechin had visited Cuba on 30-31 July of this year for talks with Raul Castro and, possibly, the ailing Fidel Castro.Putin followed up Sechin’s visit with a 5 August announcement that Russia should “restore [its] position in Cuba and other countries.”)
The Soviet Union-Russia was the principal political and economic supporter of Cuba from the early 1960s through the demise of the USSR in December 1991. Indeed, Soviet attempts to establish Cuba as a strategic missile and military base led to the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 when the United States and Soviet union came closer to a nuclear exchange than at any other time during the 45-year Cold War. After the demise of the USSR support for Cuba ended, causing considerable economic hardship in Cuba.
A major satellite launch facility in Cuba would permit placing satellites in certain orbits that cannot be done from Russian launch sites: Easterly launches close to the equator are the most efficient because of the earth’s rotation, maximizing the payload that a launch vehicle can boost into orbit. Such a launch facility and its support infrastructure would be a major source of employment and foreign investment for the Cuban economy.
From the Russian perspective, beyond the political impact of having a major technical facility less than 100 miles from the U.S. coast, it easily enables the reestablishment of a major intelligence collection capability in Cuba. (From the mid-1960s until 2002 the Soviet military intelligence agency — the GRU — operated a massive collection facility at Lourdes, Cuba. At its peak operation it was manned by more than 2,000 technicians, both military and civilian.)
Russia’s interest in the Western Hemisphere far exceeds Cuba and Venezuela, as the Moscow regime seeks to sell arms to other South American countries, gain access to South American resources (which is now subject to major Chinese efforts), and to develop improved commercial ties to an area that many feel has long been ignored by the United States.
While some Americans will see a satellite launch facility in Cuba as a “cover” for the possible use of such launch stands for military missiles, that concern is a non-starter. U.S. satellite surveillance and the presence of numerous American technicians and businessmen in Cuba, as well as visiting educational groups, would make such a clandestine effort impossible.
Further, because of the non-military nature of such a facility — which would take several years to establish — the U.S. government would be hard pressed to claim that it violated the 1962 agreements between Moscow and Washington that prohibited strategic weapons — missiles and bombers — from being installed in Cuba.
As the Russian government reacts to American anger over Russian intervention in Georgia, the continuing expansion of NATO, and U.S. plans to install ballistic missile defense systems in Eastern Europe, a non-military satellite launch installation in Cuba could be considered a valid action by the Moscow regime. Of more concern to American leaders should be the arms sales to Venezuela, especially the expected sale of up to five advanced diesel-electric submarines of the Project 877EKM or Varshavyanka series, known in the West as the improved Kilo class.
These submarines and other arms sales — and joint Russian-indigenous weapon programs — will enhance Russia’s influence and access to resources in South America. And that situation could greatly harm U.S. interests.
— Norman Polmar
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=80FE0988-8FFD-4CA5-89DA-9656FAB12F64
The Secret War on the Dollar
By Oliver North
Fox News | 9/30/2008
Washington — On Wednesday night, President Bush addressed the nation in an effort to convince Congress to pass a bill to “reduce the risk to major financial institutions” and “safeguard American families and businesses.” On Thursday he met with Senators John McCain and Barack Obama and other congressional leaders to build a consensus plan for bailing out our financial system. The potentates on the Potomac are now pondering the price-tag for saving Wall Street. Unfortunately, corrupt officials in other capitals are also hard at work undermining what’s left of the U.S. dollar – by printing and distributing their own versions of American currency.
Counterfeiting another nation’s legal tender is not only a crime – it is also an act of aggression. During World War II, Adolf Hitler produced British bank notes to destabilize England. Mao Tse Tung used phony money to undermine Chaing Kai Shek’s Nationalist government through inflation. The Soviets created passable replicas of African, European and other monetary instruments to damage local economies. But no one has ever engaged in this kind of economic warfare against the United States on a scale – or as effectively – as is now being waged by the regimes in Pyongyang and Tehran.
For more than five years remarkably accurate duplicates of U.S. $100 bills have been circulating overseas. Called “Supernotes” by our Treasury Department, Secret Service and FBI, they are printed on cotton-fiber paper using intaglio printing presses, the same type used by the U.S. Bureau of Printing and Engraving. The source of these nearly flawless notes is hardly a secret.
On January 26, 2006 in a White House press conference, President Bush asserted that, “We are aggressively saying to the North Koreans…don’t counterfeit our money.” A Congressional Research Service Report two months later concluded that, “at least $45 million in such Supernotes of North Korean origin have been detected in circulation, and estimates are that the country earns from $15 to $25 million per year from counterfeiting.” Later that year, Hezbollah – a wholly owned subsidiary of the repressive regime in Tehran – began flooding Lebanon with Supernotes. Thanks to Iran and North Korea there may be billions in “phony Franklins” floating around the world. The bills have also turned up here at home.
Just how some of them arrived on our shores was revealed a few days ago – when former undercover FBI Agent Bob Hamer took the witness stand in the Las Vegas courtroom of U.S. District Court Judge James Mahan. While the so-called mainstream media were preoccupied with presidential politics, the Wall Street meltdown and the O.J. Simpson trial across the street, Hamer – using audio and video recordings – revealed how two Chinese nationals and others plotted to smuggle anti-aircraft missiles, narcotics and counterfeit Supernotes into the United States. On the tapes, the Chinese conspirators describe how the false bills are manufactured in North Korea and distributed through the Russian embassy in Beijing to Chinese organized crime figures. One of them boasts of his ties to North Korea.
During the course of a three-year undercover operation code-named Operation Smoking Dragon, Hamer purchased $2 million of the Supernotes. The sting also netted 36 indictments and shut down a scheme to deliver 200 Chinese-manufactured QW-2 anti-aircraft missiles capable of bringing down commercial airliners. It was, to put it mildly, a stunning success – and completely ignored by those who purport to deliver the “news.’
Full disclosure here: Bob Hamer is a friend – not a word I use loosely. He is also a former U.S. Marine – and a living legend within the FBI. During the time he was risking his life to stop the “importers” of counterfeit currency and surface-to-air missiles, he was also posing as a pedophile targeting the North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA), an underground network of men seeking to justify their sexual attraction to young boys. His book, “The Last Undercover: The True Story of an FBI Agent’s Dangerous Dance with Evil” (Hachette Book Group, USA, 2008) was released the week before he took the stand in the Las Vegas counterfeiting trial. In the book he chronicles his three-year infiltration of NAMBLA and details a dozen other remarkable undercover assignments.
His book is a riveting account of his years spent undercover for the FBI – and the kind of risks that are necessary in a world where criminals and our adversaries will go to any lengths to destroy us. The Smoking Dragon operation against those who were helping to undermine our economy was one of many intrigues in which Bob Hamer proved his mettle in an extraordinary career.
Last week the Chinese conspirator who brought the counterfeit bills into the U.S. was found guilty and now faces up to 25 years in federal prison. The case is still pending against O.J. in a courthouse two blocks away. Congress may yet figure out how to bail out Wall Street without impoverishing the rest of us. Meanwhile if Mahmoud Ahmadinejad shows up in your restaurant for dinner, don’t let him pay in cash.
Oliver North is a nationally syndicated columnist and host of “War Stories” on the Fox News Network.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=0C27C673-A91F-4FFF-B96B-6E88E0DD75D4
How the West Was Lost?
By Jamie Glazov
FrontPageMagazine.com | 9/30/2008
Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Hasan Mahmud, the Director of Sharia Law at the Muslim Canadian Congress. He played a vital role in the successful movement against the Toronto Sharia Court. The court had been established in 1991 (and functioning since then) with the blessing of Ontario law and was banned in 2003 when the Ontario Government enacted a new law banning all faith-courts. He has authored books, debates, docudramas and a DocuMovie on Sharia. He has also spoken on Sharia in various conferences in Europe, North America and Asia.
FP: Hasan Mahmud, welcome to FrontPage Interview.
Mahmud: Thanks and Salam to all. It is sad that we are forced to spend part of our resources and attention to address man-made problems when millions suffer due to natural calamities such as food-shortage, famine, epidemic, unemployment, earthquake, Tsunami and so on.
FP: We’re here today to discuss Sharia Law and your group’s opposition to it. Let’s begin with why you, as a Muslim, oppose Sharia Law.
Mahmud: Sensible Muslims always rejected it for its content and spirit. Many of its laws are against women, non-Muslims, justice, logic and reason. In spirit it is not a benign law-system; it is the malignant inspiration of creating global theocracy. It launched an informal permanent war against the world’s non-Muslims. The Sharia-Gurus know that we are able to prove how deceptive and fraudulent the institution of Sharia Law is. That is why they turn down all our requests of public discussion. By the way, “Guru” (teacher) is a respectable word.
FP: Who are the Sharia-Gurus?
Mahmud: They are self-appointed brokers of God who have no place in Islam. They legitimize violence by divinity and mortgage world-Muslims to psychological imperialism of oil-Sheikhs. They destroy human lives through on-line Sharia-courts, they sit in your state-machines and they are not idle, they control thousands of Islamic organizations and mosques, they breed home-grown piranhas out of innocent youths.
State-Gurus such as OIC including KSA, Pakistan and Egypt are champions of violators of human rights but sit in the HR Commission of the UN. Then there are numerous non-Muslims Sharia-Gurus such as John Esposito, Dalia Mogahed and Noah Feldman. Their flawed and misleading books and articles on Sharia Law are highly frustrating to see.
FP: Why do the Sharia-Gurus want to incorporate Sharia Law in the West? What exactly do they want?
Mahmud: Establishing Sharia-based global Islamic State is their God’s command. For early Muslims, Plan A was military victory that ended with their defeat in France in 732 AD. Plan A failed permanently and now that conquering Muslim majority countries is almost complete, Plan B emerged to incorporate Sharia law in Western countries to turn those into Islamic states, at least partially. It worked well.
FP: Is the West losing badly?
Mahmud: Well, the West has not lost, it is only passing through a phase. True that it is experiencing a deadly Trojan horse, but the West is more than laws. Given that nothing is perfect, the West has tremendous strength in terms of science, technology, knowledge, morality and human rights, all protected by the enormous umbrella of freedom – freedom of thought and expression, freedom to research everything including divinity, freedom to disagree and dispute, freedom to change or leave religion and freedom to offend.
This is diametrically opposite to the spirit of Sharia Law – which has fragmented Muslims forever. No jurist Imam wanted it, nor did they allow their personal research to be enacted as State Law or claimed divinity. Documents tell us who killed Imam Shafi’i, who did not spare even Ka’aba and built four arenas in its four corners for separate prayers of four schools of Sharia Law.
Documents tell us who prohibited marriage between Hanafis and Shafi’is. These documents are not from Dr. Ali Sina or Robert Spencer or Ibn Warraq but from their own. Conspiracy and violence are Sharia’s driving forces.
FP: Tell us why Sharia Law is false and not Islamic.
Mahmud: Proof is everywhere in all Sharia books and in the reality of the past and present. Let’s begin with common sense. Can violence be part of a religion? Can instant divorce by husbands be divine? Can Kisas Law that protects killers of Honor Killing from death sentence and thus encourages Honor Killing be divine? Can the legal requirement of four Muslim male adult witnesses to prove rape be sane? Can a ban on women state heads be divine? Who creates laws to legitimize lying and killing opponents to achieve its goal? Ask yourself, who creates laws to protect criminals of genocide from corporal punishment? Who kills Muslims for having a different view about Islam? Can the sources of the horror of FGM - two Sharia Laws, two Sahi Hadises (Prophet’s Examples) and the list of enormity against Islam (e.g. not doing FGM) be divine?
It is a fake Islam Jamie; it is a devil in Islam’s disguise. When the Taliban destroyed the Buddha-statue in Afghanistan they only followed a Sahi Hadis. When they plan to conquer the West by breeding they simply follow another Sahi Hadis.
All these are fake Hadises. Our Islam says that that even if I don’t beat my wife for her perceived disobedience, or I don’t marry another woman, or I don’t apply my authority of instant divorce, my rights to do so are a criminal violation of her rights and dignity. I’ll show you some evidence and you do the math.
1. The powerful Caliph did something wrong and all palace-clergies supported him. Imam Hanifa scolded the Caliph on his face publicly – (“The Four Imams” by Abu Zahra, a massive famous book on our Jurist Imams).
2. Muslim Caliph kept Imam Hanifa imprisoned for long; broke his bones by beating and ultimately killed him by poison in prison – (Ibid – and other books on the Imam).
3. “Head of Islamic State cannot be charged for murder, theft, adultery, drinking” – (Law # 914 C of Vol 1, Codified Islamic Law - basically Hanafi Law- published in 1998).
4. Same law – (page 188 of Hedaya the Hanafi Law).
Sharia-Gurus want us to believe that for those crimes the Imam prescribed punishments for commoners but protected the Caliphs, the same Caliphs who broke his bones and killed him in prison. The whole Sharia doctrine is full of such nonsense. How this law entered Hanafi Law book, then? Look at the evidence and do the math again. You will find similar info in other Muslim sources.
5. “(Imam Hanifa) wrote little himself, but his disciples preserved his teaching for posterity, while the later jurists, who developed slightly different theories, founded new Madhhabs. - (“Islam, A Short History – Karen Armstrong – page 49).
6. The very first official compilation of Hanafi Fiqh by a ruler was done after one thousand years of the Imam, by Indian monarch Aurungzeb in 17th century – (Preface - Codified Islamic Law Vol 1).
7. All four Sharia laws were shaped by others than the respective Imams, sometimes after centuries. “Musnad Hanbal was compiled after his death….with addition of several thousand traditions”– (“Muslim Jurisprudence and Law of Crimes – Dr. Meer Waliullah - Principal, Law faculty, Peshawar University, and other sources).
Is it acceptable if someone comes up with Shakespeare’s literature long after his death and the political power-conspiracy has every scope and necessity to play with it for centuries? Many Sharia Laws tell us that bogus and corrupt writers constructed the Sharia-palace in the names of Imams. Today it is impossible to know who wrote what. But the bottom-line is many Sharia laws violate Human Rights and punish the victims.
FP: How successful are Islamists in their attempt to impose it on Westerners to date?
Mahmud: Well, let’s tell it like this:
First, they acquired stunning expertise of taking advantage of the Western system to destroy the Western system.
Second, their expertise of using the Western system to silence their opponents including Human Right activists and non-Sharia Muslims like us, is telling.
Third, they succeeded in obtaining support of some religious, political and social organizations and leaders who trust the word “God’s Law” — but have no clue of its content, spirit and devastating impact.
Fourth, they created a massive network of “Islamic” organizations, pressure-groups, lobby-groups, charity, civil-rights, human-rights, women-rights, newspapers, magazines, radio and TV-shows, conferences, seminars, gatherings, sermons and partial social culture of observing Sharia law. The West is yet to match this Tsunami. It needs to find a legal way to stop this invasion.
Fifth, their support of Petro-Dollars cannot be stopped by enacting laws.
Sixth, they avoid discussion and debate with progressive Muslims who can expose their conspiracy. On the other hand, “Dialogue with Jews-Christians” is their successful tactic to buy time.
Seventh, they succeeded in exploiting the West’s Multiculturalism as protection.
Eighth, their birth rate is higher than Westerners and may have some potential impact.
Ninth, the West is yet to develop a system to control local Sharia-supporting Muslims and their immigration.
Tenth, and most important, they succeeded in terrorizing their opponents. People, media, organizations — even governments — were either punished or had to back off because of Islamists’ pressure.
FP: Can you give some examples of threats on our territory?
Mahmud: It is a long list – here are a few from the West. Worse is happening in Sharia-countries. I am only mentioning their strategy of threat; I am not supporting anti-Muslim actions.
* Death threat issued to office bearers of Muslim Canadian Congress for actively resisting Canadian Sharia Court– CBC News 23 March 2007. (The founder of MCC had to quit MCC for a while).
* Man stabbed at Toronto Mosque after refusing to pray. - National Post 10 May 2007.
* Pentagon’s specialist on Islamic law and Islamist extremism Stephen Coughlin fired for being too harsh on Islamists – The Washington Times – 04 January 2008.
* Australian court instructed Critic of Islam to apologize - Washington Times 24 July 2005.
* Dutch film-maker murdered for making film critical to Islam – NY Times 03 November 2004
* Executives of a TV Channel that exposed activities of Sharia-Leaders were marginally saved from prosecution - The Independent 18 August 2007.
* Mark Steyn, a Canadian writer critical to Islamists (read supporters of Sharia Law) sued in Human Rights Commission – MuslimsAgainstSharia 16 December 2007.
* A novel, “The Jewel of Medina”, about the prophet Mohammed and his wife A’isha, got canceled when Random House, the publisher, became scared of getting attacked – NY Observer 08 August 2008.
* The organization Anti-CAIR sued in the USA.
* PBS of the USA had to drop airing the documentary “Islam vs. Islamists” — which documented the threats and intimidation moderate Muslims face at the hands of their extremist co-religionists.
* Belgium - Anti-Sharia demonstration in Brussels on 11 September banned by Brussels Mayor. – The Independent – 16 August 2007.
* In Cologne, Germany, the anti-mosque rally expected 15,000 protesters but only a few dozen came due to threatful presence of 40,000 supporters of the mosque.
FP: In terms of Sharia Law penbetrating the West, what is happening in the U.N?
Mahmud: Let me give two examples:
* UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour voiced concern over “taboos” on discussion in a key U.N. forum of subjects that Islamic countries see as offending their religion – Canada.com 18 June 2008.
* Criticism of Human Rights Violations under Sharia Law Deemed Out of Order and Critics of Islamic Extremism Harassed and Silenced – (Video) - Eye On The Sun - 03 Jul 2008.
FP: Tell us about the developments in Europe.
Mahmud: In Europe, they have already succeeded in incorporating Sharia-elements in German and British law.
* The Muslim Brotherhood in France – The National Interest.
* Scotland - “Do we seriously think it won’t happen in Scotland? Look at their website. It’s happening already” – News.Scotsman.com – 31 August 2008
* Denmark- Danish SIOE leaders “have urged Christians in an Open Letter to oppose introduction of Sharia law in European law” – Pakistan Christian Post 31 August 2008
* Sharia in Holland? - New Europe, 31 August 2008
* Spain - a book on how to beat wife without leaving scars is written by a Spanish imam – Reuters, Yahoo news.
* In Germany, a judge tries to introduce Sharia law into her court.
* One third of British Muslim students say it’s acceptable to kill for Islam – Thisislondon.co.uk - 27 July 2008.
* The Archbishop of Canterbury backed the introduction of Sharia law – 08 February 2008.
* UK’s top judge Okayed Sharia law - Daily Mail - 4 July 2008.
* UK Treasury to Become Sharia-Compliant - The Trumpet.com - 02 May 2007.
* In the UK, Islamic extremists have infiltrated at least four British universities to radicalize Muslim students, The Sunday Times, November 12, 2006.
* “Sharia courts rule on sex lives in Britain” - Canada Free Press - 27 August 2008.
* Religious Hate Law Aimed At Protecting Muslims Passes UK Vote - CNS News – 12 July 2005
* Sharia-Gurus suggested UK-Minister to “totally exempt” Islamic texts from the Religious Hate Law - CNS News – 12 July 2005.
* Muslim ghettos ruled Sharia courts - “Ten currently operate across the country…. 50 to 60 cases every week covering financial, criminal, divorce and marital problems.” – Sunday Express 27 August 2008
* “Muslims are increasingly expecting state-funded mediators to help them find a settlement in keeping with Islamic law” – Birmingham Post – 27 August 2008.
* UK government’s study for provision by universities for Islamic studies for all students. - WorldNetDaily – 20 August 2007.
* King Faisal donated £2m towards the building of the Regent’s Park Mosque, and King Fahd paid for the construction of a new educational and administrative wing in the 1990s. Its director general is a Saudi diplomat – The Independent - 18 August 2007
* Lessons in hate found at leading UK mosques – Times on Line October 30, 2007.
* Steadily growing employment of Sharia Law in Britain’s semi-autonomous Muslim enclaves - London Telegraph – 19 January 2008.
* UK - preachers condemning integration into British society, condemning democracy and praising the Taliban for killing British soldiers.
* King Fahd gave $5-million (U.S.) and an annual grant of $1.5-million to the Islamic Centre in Toronto. (The Islamic Centre of Canada is also housed at ISNA - Globe and Mail November 8, 2005).
* The London Mayors Office in the process of deciding the fate of the proposed £100m to London Masjid - Evening Standard Poll – 29 Jan 2007.
* Muslim Preachers’ messages of hate to Muslim worshippers. They urge by radical clerics to ignore British law - The Observer - January 7, 2007.
FP: How about what is happening in the U.S. and Canada?
Mahmud: Let me give a selected list:
* Blueprint of The American Sharia Court is created in 1989 by The American Muslims.
* The Pentagon sacks an authentic, influential scholar of Islam, Stephen Coughlin, who evidently refused to soften his views on Islamic extremism at the insistence of one Hasham Islam.
* Two Texas daughters are killed for being too Western.
* In Secret, Polygamy Follows Africans to N.Y. – NY Times 23 March 2007
* Muslim Brotherhood School in Minnesota? - Cross Country – 14 June 2008
* USCIRF (United Sates Commission on International Religious Freedom) confirms Material Inciting Violence, Intolerance Remains in Textbooks Used at Saudi Government’s Islamic Saudi Academy – USCIRF Website 11 June 11, 2008.
* ISNA receives $5 million from Saudi sources – Globe and Mail Toronto
* Sharia in Canada? - Global Politician - 11 September 2007.
* Toronto mosque supports Female Genital Mutilation – 03 October 2007
* Canada’s secret world of polygamy - The Toronto Star – 24 May 2008.
* Muslim Association Canada strives to implement Islam as understood by Hassan Al banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood – Globe and Mail - September 15, 2005.
* Sharia in Montreal - The Calgary Sun – 25 March 2007.
FP: How can Islamization be stopped?
Mahmud: Not Islam but Political Islam is the problem and it can be stopped.
Scholars have already identified its strengths and weakness and socio-political forces are working on it. I stress on the most crucial element of this war that we must expose the fraud of the institution of Sharia Law to Islam. We have enormous resource to do this. We need to detach the common good Muslim-mass from Sharia Law.
This is what Islamists are afraid of and cannot survive. Keep the movement of non-political Muslims separate from other parallel movements; otherwise they will mark the water by screaming that it is a conspiracy of non-Muslims against Islam and the gullible Muslim mass will swallow it.
Show the world that a peaceful interpretation of Islam always existed and that majorities Muslims still follow it. There is no eternal state-law, no concept of Islamic State, no intimidation, no hate-preaching and no conspiracy in it. Best of all, it is much more compliant to Islam. A peaceful interpretation can nurture human rights and tolerance. We need to put it to work.
It is a proven strategy. My book, Sharia-movie and Sharia-drama is doing well back home. The drama is here. The West could not imagine that an explosive resistance to the Canadian Sharia Court (1991-2006) would come from none other than Canadian Muslims. Indeed, the Muslim Canadian Congress (MCC), the Canadian Council of Muslim Women (CCMW) along with the International Campaign Against Canadian Sharia Court, a group of highly charged Iranian women, conducted and won this extremely important but unsung socio-cultural battle of recent history.
FP: Hasan Mahmud, thank you for joining us.
Mahmud: Thank you and Salam to all. Two necessities confront us: revamping the West’s foreign policy to Muslim countries and defeating the institution of Sharia Law. Both are possible to achieve.
Jamie Glazov is Frontpage Magazine’s managing editor. He holds a Ph.D. in History with a specialty in U.S. and Canadian foreign policy. He edited and wrote the introduction to David Horowitz’s Left Illusions. He is also the co-editor (with David Horowitz) of The Hate America Left and the author of Canadian Policy Toward Khrushchev’s Soviet Union (McGill-Queens University Press, 2002) and 15 Tips on How to be a Good Leftist. To see his previous symposiums, interviews and articles Click Here. Email him at jglazov@rogers.com.
http://cryptome.org/mcc092208.htm
22 September 2008
[Federal Register: September 22, 2008 (Volume 73, Number 184)]
[Notices]
[Page 54624-54633]
From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
[DOCID:fr22se08-75]
MILLENNIUM CHALLENGE CORPORATION
[MCC 08-13]
Notice of Quarterly Report (April 1, 2008-June 30, 2008)
AGENCY: Millennium Challenge Corporation.
SUMMARY: The Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) is reporting for
the quarter April 1, 2008 through June 30, 2008 respect to both
assistance provided under section 605 of the Millennium Challenge Act
of 2003 (Pub. L. 108-199, Division D (the Act)), and transfers or
allocations of funds to other federal agencies pursuant to section
619(b) of the Act. The following report shall be made available to the
public by means of publication in the Federal Register and on the
Internet Web site of the MCC (http://www.mcc.gov) in accordance with
section 612(b) of the Act.
[Many countries, odd information, money, crops and more.
granny]
2004 report:
Volume 2, Issue 9 (May 06, 2004) | Download PDF Version
Terrorism in Southeast Asia: Keeping Al-Qaeda at Bay
By Zachary Abuza
Southeast Asia has emerged as an important front on the war on terror. The regional al-Qaeda affiliate Jemaah Islamiya has launched two major terrorist attacks since October 2002, and, despite a significant number of arrests, retains the capability for more devastating strikes in the future. There has been tremendous concern that these future attacks could be maritime based. Southeast Asia straddles some of the most critical maritime trade routes in the world, including the Straits of Malacca. Global shipping remains highly vulnerable. Asia owns 40 percent of all cargo ships, is home to some of the largest container ports, and over 25 percent of the world’s cargo and 50 percent of the world’s oil goes through the Straits of Malacca. Any maritime attack there would have a profound impact on the global economy. Moreover, maritime security across the region is appalling. The International Maritime Bureau reported that more than 80 percent of the world’s pirate attacks take place in Southeast Asian waters annually, which leads one to ask: if pirates can act with such impunity, what is stopping terrorists?
Attacks on U.S. Naval Vessels
Al-Qaeda has always maintained an interest in maritime terrorism. While the planned 1999 attack on the USS Sullivans failed, the attack on the USS Cole succeeded in 2000, leaving 17 sailors dead and one of the most advanced naval vessels almost sunk. The head of al-Qaeda’s naval operations, Abdul Rahim Mohammed Hussein al-Nashiri was captured in Yemen in November 2002 en route to Southeast Asia. The architect of the USS Cole and the MT Limburg bombings, al-Nashiri had already dispatched maritime suicide terror squads to Morocco to target U.S. naval vessels passing through the Straits of Gibraltar.
There is evidence of similar plots in Southeast Asia. Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) cells arrested in Singapore between December and January 2002 had marked charts of the Sembawang wharf, where U.S. naval vessels docked, in apparent preparation for a Cole-styled attack. And video footage taken by JI operatives of the Yishun MRT subway station, used by U.S. personnel to travel to the naval facility there, was found in the rubble of Mohammed Atef’s house in Kabul. The approximately 120 annual port visits by U.S. naval vessels in Singapore is only expected to increase with the soon-to-be-completed construction of an aircraft carrier docking facility.
At a January 2000 meeting in Kuala Lumpur, al-Qaeda operatives not only prepared for the September 11th attacks, but also reviewed the failed USS Sullivans operation and planned the attack on the USS Cole. At the time, Khallad bin Attash suggested planning a similar attack on U.S. naval vessels at Port Klang, Malaysia. According to the interrogation of a senior al-Qaeda operative, Omar al Faruq, a Somali member active in Indonesia (named Ghalib) was plotting to attack U.S. naval vessels in the crowded and chaotic port of Surabaya, but was apparently unable to recruit enough personnel. Clearly the intent to target U.S. naval vessels exists, only the operational space to plan and execute such an attack seems lacking.
Maritime Terrorism
Whereas attacking a U.S. naval vessel is currently beyond the reach of al-Qaeda and JI operatives, an attack on commercial vessels is not. Al-Nishiri was found with a 180-page dossier listing maritime targets of opportunity. This information fits with the overall al-Qaeda strategy laid out in an October 2002 broadcast in which Ayman al Zawahiri warned that al-Qaeda “would target the nodes of your [the West’s] economy.” Any attack on commercial shipping would have a devastating impact on the world’s economy. An attack in the congested Straits of Malacca would slow traffic through that important sea lane. The Strait, which is 600 miles long but only 1.5 miles wide at its narrowest, has more than 50,000 large ships traveling through it annually. In 2002, between 40-50 oil tankers (carrying approximately 10 million barrels of oil) and 10-12 liquefied natural gas (LNG) tankers sailed in the Straits each day. These numbers are set to increase greatly as Asian countries, especially China, continue their current rates of economic growth and energy imports surge. As after the October 2002 attack in Yemen, any attack would lead to a spike in maritime insurance rates as well as economic shutdowns, with manufacturers depending more on just-in-time deliveries than before.
As al-Qaeda stated on October 13, 2002, “If a boat that did not cost $1000 managed to devastate an oil tanker of that magnitude, imagine the extent of the danger that threatens the West’s commercial lifeline which is petroleum.” Half the world’s oil and much of its LNG passes through the Straits of Malacca, creating an inviting target in an area already riddled with piracy and poorly policed by Indonesia’s navy. The appalling condition of the Indonesian navy and lack of concern for maritime terrorism has created conditions where terrorists could act with near impunity.
Another scenario that keeps Singaporean security officials awake at night is the hijacking of a vessel, either a LNG or petro-chemical tanker (something carrying chlorine or ammonium nitrate, for example) and its detonation in Singapore harbor. Alarmingly, in late 2003, there were three pirate attacks on chemical vessels. Singaporean authorities have provided naval escorts to some ships in their limited territorial waters, but there is little more they can do.
Southeast Asian pirates have boarded vessels to rob them, hijacked them, and/or bring them to port in order to steal their cargo and repaint them. This raises two questions: First, do terrorists have the capability to hijack ships and sail them into ports? Second, are there repainted vessels, so-called phantom ships, available on the black market for terrorist organizations to purchase and load with explosives?
Container and Port Security
Some 230 million containers move through the world’s ports each year, and some 90 percent of world’s general cargo is in containers. Yet, less than 1 percent of containers are screened annually worldwide. At any given time there are 800 ships and some 150,000 containers in Singapore alone. The ability to inspect a mere fraction of these ships or containers is negligible, even in modern, efficient and trade dependent hubs such as Singapore. Fierce competition between ports and intense pressure to lower costs makes increasing security difficult.
Singapore is one of 20 foreign ports now part of the U.S.-led Container Security Initiative (CSI), designed to use intelligence and data bases to identify potentially dangerous or suspicious cargo, increase sensors on containers, and develop secure containers. Importantly, the screening will be done over-seas before the cargo reaches U.S. ports. Singapore hopes that the U.S. will eventually require all imported cargo to be screened over-seas, thereby giving it a competitive advantage over Malaysia, which has resisted the CSI.
The fact that containers would be the most efficient and effective means to get a weapon of mass destruction (WMD) or dirty bomb into the United States drives the CSI. While there is no evidence that al-Qaeda has WMDs, there is ample evidence of their interest in acquiring them. They have tested poisons and chemical gases, and al-Qaeda’s anthrax production was to be based in Malaysia before its fortuitous shut down.
Finally, attention should be devoted to terrorist recruitment among seafarers. The Philippines and Indonesia are the two largest suppliers of the roughly 1.2 million seafarers in the world. Woeful regulation over international mariners given liberal landing and travel rights should remain a concern.
Flags of Convenience
The intelligence community has identified some 15 cargo ships around the world believed to be owned or controlled by al-Qaeda. However, these vessels, owned by a myriad of shell companies, are constantly renamed and re-registered. Used to move men, materiel and generate revenue through legitimate cargo forwarding and illegitimate practices such as drug, people and gun smuggling, these vessels may well be used as weapons in a terrorist attack.
Cambodia has emerged as the flag of convenience registry of choice, with several cargo vessels believed to have belonged to al-Qaeda in the past registered there. The So San, intercepted by Spanish forces while trying to covertly deliver North Korean missiles to Yemen in 2002, also came from Cambodia.
The Cambodian Registrar, run under license by a shadowy private company in Singapore since 1995, was under intense scrutiny following a series of scandals regarding several of its 1,600 ships. Under U.S., European and Korean pressure, the Cambodian government withdrew the license in August 2002, giving control to another foreign contractor.
Maritime terrorism makes up part of al-Qaeda’s arsenal and a core part of its long-term strategy. Since 9/11, al-Qaeda’s modus operendi has been to encourage its affiliated groups to attack economic targets. Moreover, every attack since 9/11, excluding Madrid, has transpired in moderate Muslim countries allied with the United States. Indonesia and Malaysia clearly fit the bill: important, trade dependent, exporters of oil and natural gas, straddling one of the most important maritime chokepoints in the world.
Find this article at:
http://www.jamestown.org/terrorism/news/article.php?articleid=236669
INSIDE THIS ISSUE:
* Editor’s Note on Special Issue on Maritime Terrorism
* Anti-ship Warfare and Molotov Cocktails at the Siege of Acre, 1190
* Terrorism in Southeast Asia: Keeping Al-Qaeda at Bay
* Plugging the Holes in Maritime Security
* Facing the Terrorist Threat in the Malacca Strait
[2004 report]
Volume 2, Issue 9 (May 06, 2004) | Download PDF Version
Facing the Terrorist Threat in the Malacca Strait
By Eric Watkins
Much of the world’s economy depends on the security of shipping that passes through a narrow body of water in Southeast Asia known as the Strait of Malacca. Situated between the coastline of Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore to the East and the Indonesian island of Sumatra to the West, the Strait of Malacca extends some 900 km from its widest point, about 350 km between northern Sumatra and Thailand, to its narrowest, less than 3 km between southern Sumatra and Singapore. At its shallowest, the Strait of Malacca has a reported depth of just 25 meters. Little wonder, then, that the early Chinese, recognizing its constricted nature, as well as its importance to trade, referred to the Strait of Malacca as “a gullet ... through which the foreigners’ sea and land traffic in either direction must pass.” [1] No less important, as early as 413 AD, a Chinese traveller also complained that seas in the area were “infested with pirates”. [2]
Because of its small size and high volume of traffic, said to be around 50,000 vessels a year, the Strait of Malacca remains one of the most important shipping lanes in world, and that importance is expected to increase - especially in terms of oil transport. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), about 11 million barrels per day (b/d) currently passes through the Strait of Malacca, but that is set to climb as oil consumption in developing Asian nations rises by an estimated average of 3% per annum between now and 2025. China alone will account for one-third of that increase, which will see demand growth doubling to nearly 30 million b/d in 2025 from 14.5 million b/d in 2000. According to the EIA, much of the additional supply will be imported from the Middle East and Africa and “most of this volume would need to pass through the strategic Strait of Malacca.” [3]
The EIA uses a similar metaphor to that of the early Chinese in describing the Malacca Strait as the key maritime “choke point” in Asia, and it also is concerned about piracy in the region. Noting that the narrowest point of this shipping lane is the 1.5-mile wide Phillips Channel, the EIA says “This creates a natural bottleneck, with the potential for a collision, grounding or oil spill (in addition, piracy is a regular occurrence in the Singapore Strait).” [4] If the Strait were closed, nearly half of the world’s fleet would be required to sail nearly 1,000 km further, generating a substantial increase in the requirement for vessel capacity. In fact, the EIA claims, “All excess capacity might be absorbed, with the effects strongest for crude oil shipments and dry bulk such as coal. Closure of the Strait of Malacca would immediately raise freight rates worldwide.” Given these statistics, it is unsurprising then that the Malacca Strait is considered by many to be a prime target for terrorists bent on disrupting international commerce and strategic shipping lanes. Indeed, according to one specialist on terrorism, the al-Qaeda network actually had video footage of Malaysian police patrols along the Strait of Malacca, indicating their potential interest in attacking the waterway. [5]
The ability of al-Qaeda to launch such attacks is well documented. The November 2002 arrest of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, identified as the operational commander for the al-Qaeda terrorist network in the Gulf region and an alleged specialist in maritime operations, underlined the group’s ability to attack shipping targets. Nashiri allegedly played a key role in planning the attacks in Yemeni waters on the USS Cole in October 2000 and the oil tanker Limburg in October 2002. The interrogation of Nashiri, according to one counter-terrorism official, yielded substantial information on al-Qaeda’s specific operational planning for attacks on super-tankers, “particularly their vulnerability to suicide attacks and the economic impact of such operations.” The official told Lebanon’s Daily Star newspaper that al-Qaeda terrorists “actually have a naval manual on this. It tells them the best places on the vessels to hit, how to employ limpet mines, fire rockets or rocket-propelled grenades from high-speed craft and turn liquefied natural gas (LNG) tankers into floating bombs. They are also shown how to use fast craft packed with explosives and the use of trawlers, or ships like that, which can be turned into bombs and detonated beside bigger ships or in ports where there are often petroleum or gas storage areas that could go up as well. They even talk of using underwater scooters for suicide attacks.” [6] No less worrisome are Australian government claims that terrorists could be planning to attack Southeast Asia’s busiest shipping lanes - including the Malacca Strait - with a dirty bomb.
Despite the warnings that continue to mount, no coordinated policy has yet been established that would enable the international community to take any action to prevent a terrorist attack in the Strait of Malacca. Indeed, even countries within the region have yet to work out a common policy for dealing with the threat. To be sure, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Regional Forum members recently agreed to combat international terrorism in transport security, identification and sharing of counter-terror measures as well as technical, legislative, and legal adjustments to enhance coordination in the region. They even focused on the capability of the Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) and other terrorist groups operating in Southeast Asia in mounting attacks on the region’s vital transportation routes and facilities. But William Pope, deputy coordinator for counter-terrorism of the U.S. Department of State, suggested that ASEAN needed to do much more to counter the threats posed by terrorist organizations. In particular, he said, Southeast Asian countries need a region-specific approach to curb potential terrorist attacks, but that ASEAN had yet to develop a “broad cooperative arrangement to combat the endemic piracy that is on the rise, much less terrorism.” [7]
The validity of Pope’s remarks emerged within weeks, when Singapore’s Defence Minister Teo Chee Hean said that security along the Malacca Straits was “not adequate” and that “No single state has the resources to deal effectively with this threat.” [8] Malaysian Foreign Minister Syed Hamid angrily brushed aside Teo’s comments, which were seen as hinting that Malaysia needed U.S. help to safeguard the narrow waterway. “We take strong objection to any suggestions that any third country should be involved in determining the safety or security of the Malacca Straits,” Syed Hamid told a news conference. “I think the prime responsibility is with the littoral states themselves,” he said. “I suggest to him (Teo) that if he has concerns, the best way is to talk to Malaysia, but don’t invite a third country to safeguard something that will endanger Malaysia’s sovereignty.”
Syed Hamid’s reference to sovereignty echoed remarks just a few weeks earlier when Indonesia objected to statements attributed to U.S. Admiral Thomas Fargo, that U.S. forces might be deployed to maintain the security of the Strait of Malacca. Indonesia’s Navy Chief of Staff, Admiral Bernard Kent Sondakh strongly rejected plans by America to deploy its fleet, saying “the Malacca Strait is within the sovereign territory of the Unitary Republic of Indonesia.” [9] In fact, Sondakh even rejected a report by the International Maritime Bureau (IMB) on the extent of piracy and terrorist activity in the area, which had been seen as a justification for the United States to deploy its fleet in the Strait. According to the admiral, there were only four cases a year of piracy in this region, and not the one hundred or more as reported by the IMB. [10] Just days later, another Indonesian admiral made a similar objection to any U.S. military presence in the Strait, saying “We certainly don’t want to have our sovereignty disturbed.” [11] Even Chinese officials expresses similar concerns about sovereignty: “Among China, Japan and India there shouldn’t be the kind of thinking of “pulling another over to one’s side so as to contain the other” or joining hands with a superpower in regions outside Asia to contain or even encircle one of the three countries.” [12]
Thus, even as the United States and other nations develop a variety of technical capabilities aimed at thwarting the abilities of terrorist organizations, the real issue facing the members of the international community is whether they will find it possible to set aside differences such as sovereignty in the interests of a common cause - in this case, mutual protection. Singapore’s Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew has perhaps summed up the need for such cooperation more clearly than anyone else in the region with his observation that “When America and Europe are divided, when Japan is hesitant, the extremists are emboldened and think they can win against a divided group.” In a word, he said, “They intend to divide and conquer.” In so far as a common policy has yet to be worked out for the protection of the Strait of Malacca by the nations around it, as well as those whose ships pass through it, the challenge will be to create the political foundation for operational cooperation based on a common perception of shared threat. Only in unity do we have the best defence.
NOTES:
1. F. Hirth and W.W. Rockhill (eds), Chau Ju-Kua on the Chinese and Arab Trade, (St Petersberg, 1914, reprinted Amsterdam, 1966), p. 60.
2. Jan Rogozinsky, The Wordsworth Dictionary of Pirates, Wordsworth Editions: Ware, 1997. p. 2.
3. See Country Analysis Briefs: “South China Sea” at www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/schina.html.
4. See EIA World Oil Transit Chokepoints: www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/choke.html.
5. See “Al-Qaeda Spying on Malaysian Marine Police in Malacca Straits: Expert”, in New Straits Times, 19 Oct 02.
6. Ed Blanche, “Chokepoints such as the Straits of Malacca, the Suez Canal and the Bab el-Mandeb Straits are high-risk zones for terrorist strikes,” The Daily Star, Beirut, 22 Apr 04.
7. “ASEAN Regional Forum Vows To Combat Terrorism in Transport Security” Xinhua, 31 Mar 04. Just four years earlier, Asia’s first anti-piracy conference ended with no common policy when China objected to joining maritime patrols aimed at curbing piracy. See Miwa Suzuki, “China Refuses To Launch Join Anti-Piracy Patrols”, AFP, 28 Apr 00.
8. Hazlin Hassan, “Malaysia Rejects U.S. Patrols in Malacca Straits, Raps Singapore”, AFP, 27 Apr 04.
9. “Indonesian Navy Rejects U.S. plans for U.S. presence in Malucca Straits”, Jakarta Suara Pembaruan, 14 Apr 04.
10. It is worth noting, however, that the Indonesian authorities had no hesitation in declaring a maritime exclusion zone off Sumatra to prevent attacks by Islamist separatists in Aceh. “ExxonMobil Corp. has been exempted from a decree by Indonesian authorities banning all foreign ships from the 12 mile territorial waters of Aceh, an oil and natural gas-rich province in north Sumatra adjacent to the strategically important Strait of Malacca. ‘To protect security and the legal procedures, Acehnese waters are temporarily closed to all maritime traffic and shipping sailing under foreign flags,’ said Maj. Gen Endang Suwarya, Indonesia’s martial law administrator in Aceh. ‘Firm action will be taken against any vessels violating this decree,’ Suwarya said.” For more, see Eric Watkins, “ExxonMobil exempted from Indonesian foreign ship decree”, Oil & Gas Journal, 04 Jun 03.
11. “U.S. Intention To Help Maintain Security In Malacca Strait Economically Motivated”, Jakarta Antara, 17 Apr 04.
12. “China-Japan-India axis strategy: an all-round economic and political cooperation”, People’s Daily Online 30 Apr 04.
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