America's Africa Corps

by **rain** » Thu Sep 21, 2006 1:05 am

The United States is moving closer to setting up an Africa Command to secure the rear flank of its global "war on terrorism", with eyes trained on vital oil reserves and lawless areas where terrorists have sought safe haven to regroup and strike against its interests. At a Monday briefing on plans to restructure US defense policy, Under Secretary of Defense Eric Edelmen disclosed that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and top military brass were close to a decision over a proposal to anchor US forces on the African continent, creating a new command to encompass all security operations. Analysts said the move would herald a fundamental shift in US policy that champions an active approach toward fledgling states prone to breed extremism, though more tangible needs are also at stake. A Pentagon spokesman tempered the announcement with the caveat that such a move required an official process that would take time and had yet to begin. But one official noted that talks were "intense" and another stressed that internal debate was stronger than it was six months ago and appeared to be on the verge of a positive verdict. The United States at present oversees five separate military commands worldwide, and Africa remains divided among three of them: European Command covers operations spanning 43 countries across North and sub-Saharan Africa; Central Command oversees the restive Horn of Africa; and Pacific Command looks after Madagascar. All three maintain a low-key presence, largely employing elite special operations forces to train, equip and work alongside national militaries. A perceived vulnerability to al-Qaeda and other transnational terrorist organizations, however, has fueled calls for a more aggressive security posture in Africa. "We do have a strategic interest in Africa, and we have been attacked," a leading US government Africa specialist told Asia Times Online on condition of anonymity. "Whether you have 1,000 people or 10,000, what we're doing requires our active presence both from training special forces, coordination and tracking down some of the extremist elements ... That requires really having a physical presence and the ability to deploy." CentCom commander General John Abizaid last March spelled out to the Senate Armed Services Committee the burgeoning security threats facing Horn of Africa and the dire need for robust action. Emblematic of most of the continent at large, they include extreme poverty, corruption, internal conflicts, uncontrolled borders and territorial waters, weak internal security, broken infrastructure and natural disasters, among others. "The combination of these serious challenges," he said, "creates an environment that is ripe for exploitation by extremists and criminal organizations." Just months later, the decision was made to raise the military profile in Africa in what may prove a precursor to an all-encompassing command. Washington has committed to spend US$500 million on the Trans-Saharan Counter-Terrorism Initiative (TSCTI ), an expanded program headed by EuCom that provides military and development aid to nine Saharan countries deemed to be fertile ground for groups - such as the deadly Algeria-based Salafist Group for Call and Combat (GSPC) - looking to establish Afghanistan-style training grounds and carry out other illicit activities. The TSCTI represents a colossal upgrade from the Pan-Sahel Initiative, its $7 million forerunner. But critics counter that military-centric policies could backfire and breed radicalism where it hardly exists by sustaining despotic regimes that usurp funding and military hardware to tighten their grip on power. A report by the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think-tank, said the Saharan region is "not a terrorist hotbed" and warned that certain Saharan governments try to elicit US aid while using the "war on terror" to justify human-rights abuses. CentCom, for its part, operates the Djibouti-based Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa, a discreet hub formed in the aftermath of the August 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam that killed at least 301 people and put Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network on the map. A number of al-Qaeda operatives are said to be hiding in the Horn, Somalia specifically, and they continue to pose a grave threat to US interests in the region, which demands the presence of some 1,800 troops tasked with detecting and disrupting terrorist schemes. US intelligence has also used the base to coordinate activities around the Horn; the Central Intelligence Agency allegedly bankrolled an alliance of warlords that were driven out of the capital, Mogadishu, by Islamist militia this summer. Somalia, a special case, has been without a functioning government for the past 14 years and is known beyond a doubt to have harbored members of al-Qaeda. Still, the unnamed government analyst, who just returned from an extensive fact-finding mission to the failed state, insists that the vast majority of Somalis are not hostile toward the United States despite the infamous Black Hawk Down disaster of 1993 and the recent Islamist takeover. "Somalis are not anti-American by nature, they are pro-West," he said. "Engagement is vital as it helps gather better intelligence, understand people, and it's cheaper." Other observers say that thirst for another kind of security is the driving force behind a probable Africa Command: energy. Nigeria already stands as the fifth-largest supplier of oil to the United States, and energy officials say the Gulf of Guinea will provide a quarter of US crude by 2010, placing the region ahead of Saudi Arabia (other major producers include Equatorial Guinea, Angola, Gabon and the Congo Republic). A surging demand for fossil fuels in Asia and an unpredictable political climate in the Middle East prompted the administration of US President George W Bush four years ago to call West African oil a "strategic national interest" - a designation that reserves the use of force to secure and defend such interests if necessary. The question then arises as to where exactly the new command would be best headquartered. The answer may be Sao Tome and Principe, one of Africa's smallest countries, consisting mainly of two islands at the western bend of the continent. Concerns over fanning anti-Americanism, proximity to oil reserves - some of which are said to be untapped beneath its own waters - and overall security make this the obvious choice, John Pike, director of military studies group GlobalSecurity.org, told Asia Times Online. "This island seems destined to be America's unsinkable aircraft carrier in the Gulf of Guinea, much like Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean and Guam in the Pacific." Military planners like the idea of an offshore presence since its reduces the impression of a neo-colonial maneuver, Pike said, adding that so far there has been a clear preference within EuCom and CentCom to lie low and work through African institutions to train troops and strengthen security. According to Pike, the coup-wary Sao Tome government likes the idea of a US presence, and the two sides have been "playing footsie for a number of years now". The Defense Department declined comment. While odds are against the price of oil ever going back down significantly, today it remains a freely traded commodity on the international market with no strings attached as to who owns concessions. But some experts are convinced this arrangement will come to an end in the not so distant future, making military power and leverage paramount. "We can see how the US would want to move and make preparations for that day when it matters whom states will turn to for protection," Pike said. "When that day comes, the US wants to ensure key states are looking its way." <a href="http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/HI21Aa01.html">www.atimes.com/atimes/Fro...1Aa01.html</a>

by **rain** » Thu Sep 21, 2006 1:25 am

Nun killed in Somalia may be tied to pope MOGADISHU, Somalia, Sept. 17 (UPI) -- Gunmen killed an elderly Italian nun outside a children's hospital in Mogadishu, Somalia Sunday, police said. The attack raised immediate speculation it was tied to Pope Benedict XVI's recent remarks about Islam, which drew strong criticism in Somalia from a radical Muslim cleric, the BBC reported. Sister Leonella Sgorbati of the Missionaries of the Consolation order, based in Nepi, Italy, near Rome, died in an operating room after being hit with three or four bullets in the chest, stomach and back, doctors said. Her bodyguard was also killed in the attack. A Vatican spokesman called the killing "a horrible act," which he hoped would remain isolated, the BBC reported. Police said two people had been arrested. Hardline Somali cleric Sheikh Abubakar Hassan Malin told worshippers at his mosque Friday to hunt down and kill whoever offended the Prophet Mohammed, founder of Islam. The Italian government said the nun had been repeatedly advised to leave Somalia, which was once ruled by Italy. <a href="http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/view.php?StoryID=20060917-111439-3197r">www.upi.com/NewsTrack/vie...1439-3197r</a>

by **rain** » Thu Sep 21, 2006 1:30 am

Somalia's president survives bomb attack BLASTS: Meanwhile, an Italian nun was killed on Sunday at a hospital in an attack that Somalia's foreign minister linked to the assault against the 'whole democratic process' AFP , BAIDOA, SOMALIA Tuesday, Sep 19, 2006,Page 6 At least 11 people, including six alleged assailants, were killed yesterday in an unsuccessful bid to assassinate Somalia's interim president, the foreign minister said. In an attack blamed on those responsible for the weekend murder of an Italian nun in Mogadishu, five members of Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed's entourage and six purported assassins died in powerful blasts that rocked the town of Baidoa, the minister said. Yusuf was unhurt in the incident but his brother, Abdulsalam Yusuf Ahmed, was among those killed, Foreign Minister Ismail Mohamed Hurre told reporters in the Kenyan capital where he is visiting. "Five people were killed from the presidential convoy and three wounded. Six attackers were also killed and two captured," he said, blaming the blasts on the same people who killed the elderly nun at a Mogadishu hospital on Sunday. "Those who were behind the assassination of the Italian nun are also behind this attack, targeting not only the president, but also the whole democratic process," Hurre said. Hurre said security forces were pursuing several attackers who escaped after the blasts in Baidoa, the temporary seat of Somalia's weak transitional government about 250km northwest of Mogadishu. Officials and witnesses said two powerful blasts rocked the town while Yusuf was driving away from the parliament building -- a converted warehouse -- in a convoy, shortly after he delivered a speech. The first came from an apparently remote-controlled detonated car bomb and sent a huge ball of flame into the sky, destroying numerous vehicles parked in front of parliament, they said. "There were screams everywhere," witness Sahad Mohamed Abukar said. A second blast occurred about 15 minutes later, witnesses said and a senior police official said he had seen the bodies of at least four dead people lying in pools of blood at the scene. Suleiman Olad Robleh, a member of parliament, said no one inside the building had been injured and that after the blasts the lawmakers had gone ahead and approved Yusuf's nominations for a new Cabinet. The new slate is hoped to ease fractious government infighting that has left the administration unable to exert control over much of the country and seriously challenged by the rise of Somalia's Islamist movement. The Islamists seized Mogadishu from warlords in June after months of fierce fighting and have since rapidly expanded their territory, enforcing strict Shariah law in what many see as a direct threat to the government. Despite an interim peace accord reached earlier this month between the Islamists and the government, the two sides are deeply divided over several key issues, including the proposed deployment of a regional peacekeeping force. <a href="http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2006/09/19/2003328320">www.taipeitimes.com/News/...2003328320</a>

by **rain** » Thu Sep 21, 2006 2:39 am

Somalia: American CIA Explosive Experts Are Due to Arrive in Somalia in 24 Hours The United States government was quick to respond the Somali transitional government's appeal to find international help over probing the double car bombings that engulfed the lives of at least 11 and injured dozens. The blasts took place in Baidoa town that, temporarily houses government buildings. American Central Intelligence Agency explosive experts are due to arrive in Baidoa, southern Somalia where the general security has been firmly tight following the double suicide bombings that killed president Abdulahi Yusuf's younger sibling. The federal government had, on Tuesday, asked for international expertise to find the perpetrators who were behind the assassination bid that failed. Senior government administrators said they are very positive to discover masterminders of the blasts only with the international bomb experts' assistance, adding it is believed Al-Qaeda might be involved in that highly orchestrated plot, intended to kill president Abdulahi Yusuf. Senior government official, who asked not be identified as he was not entitled to talk to the press over the issue, has confirmed that within 24 hours American explosive experts will show up in Baidoa, adding the American Anti-terror task force based in neighboring Djibouti will send the experts. The federal g government pointed out it would guarantee the security elements for the arrivers. Abdirahman Dinari, the federal government's spokesperson had told Shabelle Radio in Mogadishu on Tuesday that it might be possible CIA experts would fly from Djibouti and land in Baidoa to investigate if a terrorist network was involved in explosions. President Abdulahi Yusuf complimented Ethiopia for its response after the failed attacks. Mr. Yusuf distanced Ethiopia from the incident, saying Ethiopia was a friendly neighbor and had nothing to do with what happened in Baidoa. Ethiopia in turn said on Tuesday it was ready to dispatch troops to Somalia to protect president Yusuf's government if requested. The government, however, said it was anticipating some Ethiopian officers who would arrive in Baidoa to congratulate president Yusuf on his immunity. <a href="http://allafrica.com/stories/200609200514.html">allafrica.com/stories/200609200514.html</a>

by **rain** » Thu Sep 21, 2006 2:44 am

Somalia's weak government sought help on Tuesday in probing the country's first-ever suicide bombing, an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate the interim president that officials pin on al-Qaeda. Authorities boosted security around the government seat of Baidoa where wreckage from two car bombs, at least one of which was driven by a suicide attacker, still littered the street outside parliament. In the aftermath of Monday's blasts and an ensuing gunbattle that killed 11 people and wounded 18 but left President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed unscathed, officials said they were convinced al-Qaeda was behind the attack. And with such accusations flying, tensions soared between the administration in Baidoa and Somalia's powerful hardline Islamist movement that controls much of the south of the country, including the capital Mogadishu. Meanwhile, neighboring Ethi-opia, a strong ally of Yusuf's government that fears the rise of so-called "jihadists" in Somalia, condemned the attack and vowed "to do whatever is necessary" to protect the administration. The UN refugee agency said it was concerned that the assassination bid would prompt a new surge in already rising numbers of Somalis crossing the border into Kenya. Security forces interrogated two presumed attackers captured after Monday's assault, but government spokesman Abdirahman Mohamed Nur Dinari said foreign expertise was needed to investigate the suspected al-Qaeda link. "Our local investigators are already probing the attack, but we really need international help and expertise in the whole exercise," he said in Baidoa, about 250km northwest of Mogadishu. If al-Qaeda was involved, "we really do not have the expertise to uncover the [details of the] attack that was well-organized by the same groups that are carrying out attacks in Iraq and Afghanistan," Dinari said. He said a massive security presence had been deployed in and around Baidoa to search for an unknown number of attackers believed to have escaped in the chaos after the blasts. Officials stopped short of publicly blaming the Islamists for the incident that killed five members of Yusuf's entourage, including his younger brother, and six attackers, but said privately they appeared to be involved. "I am sure the Islamic courts are behind it," one senior government source said on condition of anonymity, adding there had been intelligence information from Mogadishu four days earlier about two explosive-laden cars being driven to Baidoa. "We secured government buildings, but unfortunately we didn't believe that they would hit parliament and target the president," the official said. Somali Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi blamed the attack on "terrorists" organized within the country that has been wracked by anarchy and without a functioning central administration for the past 16 years. Other officials say the attack was carried out by the same group responsible for the weekend murder of an elderly Italian nun in Mogadishu, an ambush amid fury over Pope Benedict XVI's comments about Islam. But in the capital, the Supreme Islamic Council of Somalia (SICS) denied any responsibility for Monday's attack or the nun's slaying, and said they were the work of the "enemies of Somalia." Some senior members of the Islamist movement, notably its supreme leader Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys who is designated a "terrorist" by the US, have been accused of al-Qaeda ties and harboring extremists. They deny the charges but US officials maintain that at least three men who participated in the 1998 al-Qaeda bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania are living in Somalia under the protection of the Islamists. Fears of a Taliban-style takeover of Somalia have been rising since the Islamists seized Mogadishu in June after months of fierce battles with a US-backed alliance of warlords and have since rapidly expanded their territory. Osama bin Laden himself has hailed the activities of Somali Islamists, praising them for driving out US and UN peacekeepers sent to the lawless Horn of Africa nation in the mid-1990s. In July, an audiotape attributed to bin Laden warned the world against sending troops to shore up the government's limited authority, something the administration has repeatedly called for over the objections of the Islamists. <a href="http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2006/09/21/2003328596">www.taipeitimes.com/News/...2003328596</a>

by **rain** » Thu Sep 21, 2006 2:53 am

<img src="http://www.anomalous-images.com/COFFIN3.JPG" style="border:0;"/> http://www.anomalous-images.com/COFFIN3.JPG Kola Boof ? Close, but I think, no cigar ?

by * » Thu Sep 21, 2006 5:13 am

<img src="http://www.corpwatch.org/img/pic/peacekeeping.jpg" style="border:0;"/> <a href="http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=11598">Darfur Diplomacy: Enter the Contractors</a> by Pratap Chatterjee, Special to CorpWatch October 21st, 2004 Rwandan and Nigerian soldiers will arrive in western Sudan this week as the first deployment of a five nation 4,500 strong peacekeeping force dispatched from the African Union headquarters in Addis Ababa to stem the violence in Darfur. Providing logistical support for the mission will be two private contractors from California, both of whom have mixed records carrying out similar enterprises in the past. In Iraq and Afghanistan, it is widely known that the U.S. Army uses contractors like Halliburton to carry out its missions. However, the Sudan contracts are run, not by the military, but by the U.S. State Department, a civilian agency comparable to a foreign ministry in most governments. Lieutenant-Colonel Michael Bittrick, the deputy director of regional and security affairs for Africa at the State Department, flew to Addis two months ago to hammer out an agreement to support African Union troops by committing to provide housing, office equipment, transport, and communications gear. This will be provided via an "indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity" joint contract awarded to Dyncorp Corporation, and Pacific Architects & Engineers (PAE) worth $20.6 million. The two companies are already recruiting new staff to send to the region. A "resourceful retired military officer who has a through understanding of logistics" is being sought for $85,000 a year as well as security chief to lead "40-60 personnel daily" at a salary of $53,750 a year. The State Department has assigned the work to DynCorp even as the same agency officially rebuked the company last week for its employees "aggressive behaviour" doing guard duty for Afghan leader Hamid Karzai and despite PAE's record of allegedly overcharging the United Nations in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The Sudan work is being carried out under a five-year task order issued on May 27th, 2003 by the State Department. The open-ended contract allows the State Department to use the two companies anywhere in Africa. It is identical to the kind of contract that the Pentagon uses to employ Halliburton anywhere in the world from Afghanistan to Iraq, according to Ed Mueller, the director of international programs at the State Department's acquisition division. "The only difference with the Pentagon contracts is that this is a smaller contract," Mueller told CorpWatch. The contract has been used to buy $67 million worth of services from both companies in Burundi, Sudan and Liberia in the past year and is capped at $100 million for each company. "These are cost-plus contracts so the companies get reimbursed for all expenses and can charge a profit that ranges between 5 and 8 percent." Neither Andy Michels, the director of peacekeeping programs for Dyncorp, nor Stacy Rabin, Sudan program director for PAE, agreed to comment on either company's current or future role in Sudan. "We have a clause in our contract that says we are not allowed to talk to the media," said Rabin. Disaster in Darfur The situation in Darfur is grim. More than one million people have fled their homes and up to 50,000 people have been killed as a result of clashes between pro-government nomadic militias and the settled Darfur population. (Both sides are Muslim). The conflict began in the arid and impoverished region of Darfur, which means land of the Fur, over land and grazing rights between the nomads and farmers from the Fur, Massaleet and Zagawa ethnic groups. Early in 2003 two rebel groups, the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), began attacking government targets, claiming that the region was being neglected by the central government in Khartoum. The government reacted by mobilizing "self-defence militias" following rebel attacks but denies any links to the most notorious groups that have attacked the settled farmers - the Janjaweed - who have been accused of trying to "cleanse" large swathes of territory of black Africans. Refugees from Darfur say that following air raids by government aircraft, the Janjaweed ride into villages on horses and camels, slaughtering people and stealing whatever they can find. Women have reported being kidnapped by the Janjaweed and held as sex slaves. Kofi Annan, the United Nations secretary general and Colin Powell, the Secretary of State, are among the many dignitaries who have paraded through the region this summer taking stock of what the U.N. calls the worst current humanitarian crisis on the planet. Some commentators point out that the United States sudden interest in Sudan may also have to do with the fact that the country has vast oil reserves, including in southern Darfur. In the early 1980s Chevron, an oil company from California, was exploring for oil in the country, but abandoned its concessions in 1985 when fighting broke out between government and rebel forces. Sudan turned over the rights to other countries and today the country exports 320,000 barrels of oil per day to China and Pakistan. State Department officials says that PAE is expected to play the main role in the Darfur mission and that the company has already started constructing housing for the troops that will be arriving this week if all goes well (the deployment has already been delayed at least once because of the shortage of housing). "Private companies can do the job more quickly and efficiently in the short term than a government bureaucracy," says Charles Snyder, the director of Sudan programs for the State Department who was formerly National Intelligence Officer for Africa in the Central Intelligence Agency in the early 1990s. "Whether or not they can do better in the long term is situational," he told CorpWatch. PAE already provides staff for a so-called Civilian Protection Monitoring Team (CPMT) which monitors human rights in Sudan under the State Department contract. The CPMT office is run by Brigadier General Frank Toney (retired), who was previously commander of Special Forces for the United States Army and organized covert missions into Iraq and Kuwait in the first Gulf War. Their job is to investigate complaints from the local community about human rights violations and issue independent reports on these matters. Georgette Gagnon, deputy director of the Africa division of Human Rights Watch, who has just returned from a month long trip to Darfur is concerned about the use of private contractors, based on her previous experience of monitoring private contractor human rights abuses in Bosnia. "There is not a lot of transparency about these contracts, we don't know how they vet recruits or what kind of training they get," she says. Unlike a government agency, the private companies are not required to tell the public exactly what they do, often citing "business confidentiality." Military Contractors Working for Peace Dyncorp is already working in Sudan, under the same State Department contract, on the long-standing "North-South" peace negotiations to end the 21-year civil war between the Government of Sudan and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement, the rebel group based in the south. The company provides staff in Washington DC who arrange housing and transportation to the delegates who meet in Nairobi, Kenya. "Why are we using private contractors to do peace negotiations in Sudan? The answer is simple," says a senior United States government official who works on Sudan-related issues who preferred to remain anonymous. "We are not allowed to fund a political party or agenda under United States law, so by using private contractors, we can get around those provisions. Think of this as somewhere between a covert program run by the CIA and an overt program run by the United States Agency for International Development. It is a way to avoid oversight by Congress." DynCorp has dozens of these little contracts all over the world from Afghanistan to the Mexican border, several of which have landed the company in hot water. Most recently French defense minister, Michele Alliot-Marie, who recently visited Afghan president Hamid Karzai in Kabul, was quoted saying that the behavior of Karzai's DynCorp bodyguards "gives a very bad impression" because of the aggressive way they treated visitors. Indeed even Colin Powell's security staff were once reported by the Washington Post as "furious" at the way that DynCorp guards treated them. The State Department rebuked DynCorp last week for the incident. Mike Dickerson, director of communications for Computer Sciences Corporation, DynCorp's parent company, declined to comment on the State Department scolding but pointed out that the government had also stated that DynCorp was providing "outstanding" services in difficult and dangerous circumstances in Afghanistan. But DynCorp's role in another State Department contract also appears designed to circumvent United States law under Plan Colombia. In the Colombian conflict, Washington has supplied more than 70 Black Hawk and Huey helicopters and other military hardware that are maintained and flown by private contractors. Anxious to avoid the "secret wars" conducted by the Pentagon in Laos and Cambodia in the 1960s, Congress limited the number of US personnel that can operate in Colombia to 400 in uniform and 400 civilian contractors at any given time. US law also requires congressional notification before the government can approve the export of military services valued at $50 million or more. By limiting each individual contract to several million dollars; labeling them peace-keeping missions; employing retired CIA and Special Forces personnel working for private contractors as well as foreign nationals (to whom the 400 person ceiling does not apply), Congress does not have to be notified, making the contracts harder to oversee. Gagnon also points out that in the late 1990s, DynCorp contractors in Bosnia were caught trafficking in child sex slaves in Bosnia while working on a peace-keeping mission. "Many of the private contractors didn't have a clue about the local culture or anything about the country so you wonder how effective they can be. Most of them were just ex-military or police officers," she said. PAE's African Past Aside from the risk of unauthorized ventures being run by the executive branch beyond the scrutiny of Congress, there's a more prosaic reason to wonder whether private contractors are the best way for the US to carry out its foreign policy. As in the well documented abuses by Halliburton and the other Iraq contractors, PAE has a history of being accused of overcharging. PAE, which also offers support for oil drilling projects around the world, has been involved in several African peacekeeping missions such as the air and sealift of personnel and supplies, equipment maintenance, and the provision of food fuel and water for the United Nations in Sierra Leone in 2003 and in the Congo in 2001. The company's work in the Congo was investigated by the U.N. auditors because it was so expensive. When they won the contract to support the expanded UN peacekeeping mission in the Congo, PAE had been hired to replace South African Air Force specialists. Instead, when PAE managers arrived in the Congo, they hired away the South African fire-fighters and cargo-handlers for better, dollar-based salaries - but at a higher cost to the U.N.. Allegations of favoritism in the bid award were at first dismissed but when the final costs of the mission exceeded $75 million, despite the fact that the initial contract was capped at $34.2 million an investigation ensued. United Nations auditors subsequently reviewed the contract and presented a report to the General Assembly criticizing the decision to reject the original low bid. The award had been given to PAE on the grounds that Crown Agents, the low bidder which had offered to do the contract for $12 million less, had provided incomplete information. The auditors found that the lowest bidder was "erroneously penalized," and that the information alleged to be lacking (details on equipping and maintaining seven airfields) had in fact been supplied. PAE group executive for government services Barry Wright told a South African journalist that the matter was no longer relevant. "All of the issues were resolved a long time ago," he said. Peter Singer, a fellow at the Brookings Institution and the author of Corporate Warriors is not so sure that the secretive ad-hoc use of private contractors are the best way to support peace-keeping. "A trend seems to be developing that when the US government finally decides to support peacekeeping in Africa --be it in Liberia or now Sudan-- it increasingly avoids a firm political commitment by avoiding using [official] US government means. There are obvious reasons for this, but we need to take the measure of the advantages and disadvantages of this in the policy debate as well." But clearly for the current U.S. administration, the risks of using contractors are outweighed by the benefits. If the peacekeeping mission in Darfur is successful, the government can take credit. If anything goes wrong, as in Bosnia, the contractors can be blamed for the mistakes. <a href="http://www.onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_822.shtml">US covert operations underway in Somalia; resource conflict escalates over Horn of Africa</a> By Larry Chin Online Journal Associate Editor May 22, 2006, 01:03 Email this article Printer friendly page According to a May 16 report in the Washington Post, US analysts of Africa policy and officials of Somalia’s interim government say that the Bush administration is secretly supporting secular Somali warlords, whose groups are battling Islamic groups for control of Mogadishu. While the Bush administration has continued to dodge questions about what appear to be “classic” covert operations (similar to those taking place in Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Colombia, etc.), Somali government spokesman Abdirahman Dinari has unequivocally declared “the US government funded the warlords in the recent battle in Mogadishu, there is no doubt about that. This cooperation . . . only fuels further civil war.” Somalia is considered a "terrorist haven," as well as a potential “hotbed of al Qaeda activity.” It is no surprise that in recent press conferences, new White House spokesman and propaganda mouthpiece (former Fox News pundit) Tony Snow repeatedly referred to “al Qaeda terrorists.” A senior US intelligence official quoted in the Washington Post article (who asked not to be named) says that Somalia presents “a classic ‘enemy of our enemy’ situation” (but “not an al Qaeda safe haven yet”), while former Clinton administration Africa specialist John Prendergast (now a senior advisor for the George Soros-funded International Crisis Group think tank) notes that “the US relies on buying intelligence from warlords and other participants in the Somali conflict, and hoping that the strongest of the warlords can snatch a live suspect or two" [for interrogation or rendition-LC].” Competing Geostrategic and Energy Interests in Somalia Somalia is of geostrategic interest to the Bush administration, and the focus of operations and policy since 2001. This focus is a continuation of long-term policies of both the Clinton administration and the George H.W. Bush administrations. Somalia’s resources have been eyed by Western powers since the days of the British Empire. According to the US Energy Information Administration, Somalia currently has no proven oil reserves, and only 200 billion cubic feet of proven natural gas reserves, and no hydrocarbon production. But this has not dimmed continuing interest in Somalia’s untapped and unexplored potential, and the possibility of an energy bonanza following any resolution of the country’s “internal security problems.” The Somalian regime currently welcomes oil interests. Conoco, Agip, Amoco, Chevron, and Phillips held concessions in the area. Of more immediate logistical and military interest, Somalia is situated on a key corridor between the Middle East and Africa, strategically located on the coast of the Arabian Sea, a short distance from Yemen. As laid bare in the January 1993 report by Mark Fineman of the Los Angeles Times, "The Oil Factor in Somalia," US oil companies, including Conoco, Amoco, Chevron and Phillips were positioned to exploit Somalia’s rich oil reserves during the reign of pro-US President Mohammed Siad Barre. These companies had secured billion-dollar concessions to explore and drill in large portions of the Somali countryside prior to the coup led by warlord Mohammed Farah Aidid that toppled Barre. The US Somalia envoy at the time was CIA operative Robert Oakley, a chief “counter-terrorism” officer during the George H.W. Bush presidency, and veteran of the Afghanistan and Iran-Contra operations of the 1980s. Conoco’s Mogadishu office housed the US embassy and military headquarters. The infamous Somalia military operation of 1993, popularly depicted in the Philadelphia Inquirer series (and subsequent Hollywood film) "Blackhawk Down," was not a humanitarian mission, but an undeclared UN/US war launched by the George H.W. Bush adminstration, and inherited by the Clinton presidency. The operation was spearheaded by Deputy National Security Adviser Jonathan Howe (who remained in charge of the UN operation after Clinton took office), and approved by Colin Powell, then head of the Joint Chiefs. The current Bush administration’s escalation in Somalia is a trip “back to the future.” As noted by William Engdahl, “Yemen fits nicely as an ‘emerging target’ with the other target nearby, Somalia,” both of which are important geostrategic “choke points”: “Washington’s choice of Somalia and Yemen is a matched pair, as a look at a Middle East/Horn of Africa map will confirm. Yemen sits at the oil transit chokepoint of Bab el-Mandap, the narrow point controlling oil flow connecting the Red Sea with the Indian Ocean. Yemen also has oil, although no one yet knows just how much. It could be huge. A US firm, Hunt Oil Co. is pumping 200, 000 barrels a day from there but that is likely only the tip of the find. “A new US cleansing of Somalian ‘tyranny’ would open the door for these US oil companies to map and develop the possibly huge oil potential in Somalia. Yemen and Somalia are two flanks of the same geological configuration, which holds large potential petroleum deposits, as well as being the flanks of the oil chokepoint from the Red Sea.” The US, and US-affiliated oil interests, must, at the very least, find ways to head off the aggressive oil and gas-related operations on the part of China and its oil companies throughout the Horn of Africa region, Kenya, and Ethiopia, and West Africa. The intense uproar over genocide in Darfur, and shrill calls for military intervention, masks intense geostrategic resource conflict being waged between competing superpowers. As Engdahl notes, “Sudan, as noted, has become a major oil supplier to China whose national oil company has invested more than $3 billion since 1999, building oil pipelines from the south to the Red Sea port. The coincidence of this fact with the escalating concern in Washington about genocide and humanitarian disaster in oil-rich Darfur in southern Sudan, is not lost on Beijing. China threatened a UN veto against any intervention against Sudan. The first act of a re-elected [sic] Dick Cheney late last year was to fill his vice presidential jet with UN Security Council members to fly to Nairobi to discuss the humanitarian crisis in Darfur, an eerie reminder of Defense Secretary Cheney’s ‘humanitarian’ concern over Somalia in 1991.” Recently, exploration teams from Australia have been hunting for oil in Somalia’s Puntland. Canadian lawyer Jay Park, “one of the world’s top oil and gas lawyers,” is working with the Somalian government to create a "credible petroleum regime". According to Park, "(Somalia) is one of the poorest countries in the world, but it may be sitting on some of the greatest oil and gas treasures.” With the world facing Peak Oil and Gas, the world’s superpowers are racing to secure every last drop of oil and natural gas from every remaining inch of the planet, with the African continent quickly becoming the stage for new violence and warfare. It is no surprise that Anglo-American oil interests, and the Bush administration’s covert operatives, are working Somalia, and the region, for all it is worth. (many embedded links at original)

by **Gouda** » Thu Sep 21, 2006 9:11 am

Good bad stuff. Somalia, Sudan, Nigeria. Thanks rain and 1 tal. I've got some stuff on Somalia too, just have to look it over and decide if it contributes to the narrative building here.

by * » Fri Sep 22, 2006 9:48 am

"...For many Americans, events in Somalia, Haiti, Rwanda, and now Yugoslavia, East Timor, and Colombia, are the product of local circumstances and conditions—tribal and ethnic hatreds, corrupt governments, out- of- control militaries, drug trafficking, a culture of vengeance, and so on. The present liberal view is that the devolution of states into atavistic violence and genocide requires an armed humanitarian response by the Great Powers on the grounds that "We had to do something." Michel Chossudovsky's very important book, The Globalization of Poverty1 addresses the question, "Who's ‘we'?" He takes us beyond the shell game of world power—"it's the transnational corporations"; "it's G- 7 banks and the IMF"; "it's American hegemony." Chossudovsky confronts head on the links between ever higher levels of civil violence and massacre, and acute social and environmental distress, with the modalities of market expansion. The devolution of some states into heavily militarized bands and privatized security forces, organized gangsterism, secessionist struggles, and "black" economies are part of the rearticulation of the power of other states with the dominant sources of economic power. The best expression of these hybrid forms of power are the international financial institutions, the IFIs. Chossudovsky examines the underlying mechanisms of a global economic system undergoing a deepening crisis, exploring its political dimensions, which, once understood, make piecemeal and purely economic solutions look impossibly naive or disingenuous. The book offers a darker view than most of what is at stake in the upcoming World Trade Organization (WTO) conference. The current system, Chossudovsky argues, is one of "capital creation through destruction." He offers a new perspective that sheds much light on the recent "constitutional" pretensions to sovereignty of the WTO, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, and various binding trade agreements. The IFIs' "liberalization" policies are routinely justified on the grounds they lead to development, local wealth creation, and—at some undetermined future point—the general welfare. On the contrary, says Chossudovsky, in country after country these policies function to increase both urban and rural poverty. Wages and labor costs are regulated on a world level. "Global poverty is an input on the supply side, the global economic system feeds on cheap labor." To perceive the effects of the "new interventionist framework," of macro- economic restructuring in the developing world, the truth is in the details. Fully half the book is a meticulous study of policies implemented by the IFIs in Somalia, Rwanda, India, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, the Russian Federation, and the former Yugoslavia. The author's recent work on Albania and Kosovo, appearing regularly in this magazine, continues his painstaking appraisal of the civil wars, famine, genocide, economic collapse, and the wholesale destruction of entire national societies inextricably linked to the operation of this regulatory regime. Significantly, developments elsewhere in the Third World find their echo in the internal policies of the G- 7 states, dismantling their own domestic economies and casting whole segments of their national populations into increasing marginality and poverty. The chickens most definitely are returning to roost..." <a href="http://72.14.207.104/search?q=cache:JGFrSNGCvQkJ:www.covertaction.org/content/view/79/75/+Somalia+WTO+IMF&hl=en&gl=ca&ct=clnk&cd=7&client=firefox-a">more</a>

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