Last week the old, stubborn Somali president resigned, clearing the prime minister to sign a peace agreement with moderate Islamists that represents the last chance for the U.S.-back government to hang onto power.

Taking advantage of the political drama, and the accelerating withdrawal of the war-weary Ethiopian army-of-occupation, one of the two main hardline Islamic groups — the Islamic Courts — advanced into Mogadishu and began taking over vacant police stations. “We have to show commitment to do our part in security, we want to help people feel secure,” Abdirahim Issa Adow, an ICU spokesman, told a reporter.

U.S. Africa Command has announced it’s sending cash to pay for a new Somali police force, but that hybrid force — combining the U.S.- and Ethiopian-backed Transitional Federal Government and the moderate Islamists — could wind up competing with the ICU.

To cap off a busy week for Somalia, two kidnapped Western journalists were released. But it’s not all good news: Two other foreign reporters remain in captivity, and one Somali journalist (pictured) was gunned down in a street battle outside Mogadsihu.

Eight years ago New Zealand became the first advanced nation to abandon air combat. In 2001, Wellington canceled plans to buy second-hand F-16s from the U.S. Air Force and put its 34 A-4 Skyhawks and Aermacchi trainers in storage, leaving the New Zealand Air Force with just 50 aircraft, all of them helicopters, transports or maritime patrol planes. New Zealand spends only 1 percent of its Gross Domestic Product on defense, versus 3 or 4 percent for the U.S. and other powers.

Lacking any ability to control its airspace, Wellington is “impotent” to defend against airborne terrorists and other attackers, according to The New Zealand Herald. New Zealanders had a scare in 2005 when a man commandeered a light plane and buzzed Auckland’s Sky Tower on election night. “In many other countries [David] Turnock — who was later sentenced to 27 months in prison — would likely have been shepherded out to sea, then promptly shot down,” The Herald claims. “Instead, a nation waited with bated breath until the 33-year-old ditched his plane close to the shore of a city beach.”

Now there are rumors that the NZAF might bring the Aermacchis, pictured, back into service in order to maintain a modest fast-jet capability. “New Defence Minister Wayne Mapp’s office was asked … if there was a move to restore the Aermacchis to operational service to work with the army and the navy,” The Herald reports. “He responded that a defence white paper due to be completed next year would ‘provide a process to consider whether it is desirable to retain some level of jet training capability.’”

Two years after bloody ethnic fighting wracked one of the world’s youngest countries, East Timor, adjacent to Indonesia, is “at risk of anarchy,” due to corruption, political infighting and a precipitous drop in the oil revenues that account for the country’s main income. This according to a leaked U.N. report reviewed by The Australian.

Despite the efforts of the U.N. and Australia, the country’s fledgling police force remains divided, untrustworthy and lacking in basic skills. The judiciary continues to conduct its business in the old colonial language of Portuguese, instead of a more widely spoken tongue, creating backlogs when interpreters can’t be found.

At the executive level, East Timor “depend[s] on the ‘personal chemistry’ of the four leading state actors: Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao, President Jose Ramos Horta, Fretilin opposition leader Mari Alkatiri and army chief Tuar Matan Ruak.”

Rebels tried to kill Horta earlier this year, months after the first national elections, complete with street battles (pictured), that brought Horta to power.

East Timor is one of the poorest countries in the world.

“In order to solidify the precarious social conditions, the country may need a special massive employment generation project(s), for example in areas of infrastructure building and agriculture,” the report states.

But with oil down 60 percent from its summer high, such a program is unaffordable.

750 Australian troops plus U.N. cops remain in Dili, the capital, as peacekeepers. Australia had hoped to reduce its presence in East Timor, but worsening conditions could put on hold any withdrawal.

(Photo: me)

Related:
Timor security elusive
East Timor’s oil
On patrol with Aussie peacekeepers (plus videos here and here)
Election day (plus video)
Timor’s improvised weapons (plus video)
Street violence!
Timor pics
East Timor series

Kenya won a quiet but significant victory over Somali pirates (pictured) that have waged a devastating campaign against its maritime economy when a judge at the Mombasa federal court formally charged eight Somali pirates with felonies under Kenyan law on Dec. 11. The eight men were captured by the British Royal Navy in November while trying to hijack a Danish merchant ship near the Yemeni coast.

The Dec. 11 hearing was brief. The defense requested more time to prepare, and the case was promptly deferred until January. But the fact that it wasn’t dismissed outright represents a major step forward for authorities struggling to build the institutional tools to combat piracy.

Read the whole story here.

In November, the port of Merka in southern Somalia, previously held by the U.N.-backed Transitional Federal Government (TFG) alliance, was captured without a fight by soldiers of the rival Islamic Courts Union (ICU).

In the aftermath of Merka’s fall, the U.N. worried that the ICU might halt aid shipments to the starving country. Those fears proved premature, but ultimately accurate. Last week, further advances by the Islamic Courts threatened to disrupt incoming food convoys.

Merka’s fall was a watershed event for this nation of 8 million that hasn’t had a functional central government since a brutal civil war beginning in 1991. The ICU had briefly controlled much of Somalia in 2006 before the TFG, with U.S. and Ethiopian reinforcements, routed the Courts in an overwhelming Blitzkreig-style attack.

Now the ICU is back, and inching closer to the TFG’s last strongholds in Mogadishu and the de facto capital of Baidoa.

Read the whole story here.

(Photo: me)

After three weeks talking to victims of Somali piracy, I’m done in Mombasa, Kenya. Next phase of “Axe vs. Pirates” commences in a couple months, when I head out to West Africa to observe U.S. Navy maritime security training. Phase three, an embark with U.S. forces in the Gulf of Aden, is still pending, but should happen in the first half of 2009.

Thanks to readers who donated more than $1,000 to underwrite my travel. Your generosity makes my work possible.

Abdullahi Yusuf, president of the Somali “Transitional Federal Government,” has quit under pressure from the more moderate Prime Minister Nur Hussein Hassan. Funny thing is, just last week Yusuf’s people denied anything was wrong.

Yusuf was seen as an obstacle to the TFG signing a peace agreement with moderate Islamists. The U.S.- and U.N.-back peace plan, anchored by talks in Djibouti, does not include the mainline Islamic Courts or Al-Shabab groups that control a growing swath of southern Somalia. The ICU last week reached within five miles of Mogadishu (pictured). The TFG controls just its de-facto seat in the town of Baidoa plus small portions of Mogadishu.

While a new president is sought, the challenge for Hassan remains the same as when he took power a year ago. To quote my story in World Politics Review:

The … prime minister faces a daunting task — holding together a fragile and unpopular government (based for security reasons in the northern town of Baidoa) while organizing security forces to fight alongside Ethiopian troops that have occupied Mogadishu since routing the hard line Islamic Courts regime [in] December [2006]. 

Add to that the problems with overseeing delicate peace talks that don’t even stand a chance of establishing true peace in Somalia, since the main combatants aren’t even at the table.

(Photo: me)

Two Sundays ago the new European Union naval force deployed to East African waters escorted its first food ship to Somalia from this sweltering port town. The two-day dash by the MV Semlow and the HMS Northumberland marked the beginning of a planned yearlong U.N.-E.U. effort to feed as many as 4 million Somalis. That’s nearly half the country, for those of you counting.

Somalia has depended on U.N. food aid for more than 15 years, ever since the brutal 1991 civil war and a subsequent famine. An unprecedented peacekeeping mission in the early 1990s designed to protect the food distribution effort ended in bloodshed when 18 U.S. troops were killed in a disastrous October 1993 raid, recounted in the book and movie Black Hawk Down.

Today the demand for food is only growing, but without a large military force on the ground to protect distribution. So the U.N. has concentrated its food program on the ports of Merka and Mogadishu, avoiding Somalia’s lawless, bandit-infested roads. Freighters making the run from Mombasa bring in around 12,000 tons of food to these two ports every month.

Things were going swimmingly until pirates began attacking and seizing the food ships. In 2007, the U.N. asked for naval protection. The current E.U. force is the latest chapter in that partnership. No U.N. food ship under naval escort has been successfully attacked by pirates. “We feel secure that the vessel will go safely and come back safely,” said Tariq Farooqi, the caretaker of MV Onega I, the 8,000-ton vessel slated to make the second E.U.-escorted food run Tuesday.

In contrast to the first food run with MV Semlow, this second run will be a true convoy. A second humanitarian ship, hailing from Tanzania, will link up with Onega and her escort, a Greek frigate currently serving as the E.U. flagship, and the three will sail straight into Mogadishu, where a small Ugandan peacekeeping contingent waits to throw up a protective cordon. After unloading, the ships will turn around and backtrack to Mombasa.

The Somalia food circuit is just one facet of the escalating piracy war in East African waters, but it’s easily the most successful. While pirates continue to attack and seize commercial vessels deep in the Indian Ocean, the food ships are safe, as long as the E.U. is riding shotgun. The operation’s success speaks volumes about the viability of World War II-style convoys in today’s piracy war. It’s not for no reason that some Mombasa-based shippers are calling for the various naval contingents to pool their resources, put their heads together and come up with a convoy plan for all shipping in the region.

Captain Tariq Farooqi, 51, pictured, stands on the bridge of the MV Onega I, overseeing the loading of 7,000 tons of food and cooking oil into her cavernous hold. It’s a hot day in Mombasa, as cargo handlers and Onega’s 22-man crew prepare the vessel for her Tuesday run from here to Mogadishu, delivering her cargo to the U.N.-run Somalia aid effort feeding 4 million people.

The waters through which Onega will pass are the most dangerous in the world, teeming with hundreds of pirates armed with AK-47s, RPGs and aluminum ladders. Onega will be escorted by a Greek frigate, and no food ship under escort has ever been successfully attacked by pirates. Still, Farooqi says, even without an escort, he has no fear.

“We have got so much courage because we are living on the sea all the time. [There’s] no piracy [everywhere], but we have seen storms and hurricanes. There is no fear.”

The only thing Farooqi fears, he says, is God.

One time, sailing past the Nigerian coast, another piracy hot-spot, Farooqi ordered his crew to unwind the fire hoses and prepare to hose down anyone attempting to climb aboard. The old hose trick is a favorite of captains defending their ships against pirate assaults. In Farooqi’s case, it wasn’t necessary, but he was prepared all the same.

There’s a mood of genuine panic in Mombasa among those who livelihoods come from the sea. But not among the seafarers working the Somalia food circuit. For a year, every food ship has had a military escort. And escorts work.

Too bad there aren’t enough warships in the world to escort every single ship plying East African waters. But then, imagine the cost if there were …

“The Son of God came to us, accompanied by the bright lights of the stars, closing in on Bethlehem,” Dutch Major General Mart de Kruif told NATO troops in Kandahar:

That little baby taught us during his life on earth that love is stronger than hate, respect more powerful than discrimination and hope superior to evil. That little baby also taught us that it is sometimes necessary to sacrifice in order to make this a better world.

2,000 years later, not much has changed. Although our society has developed and our world at first glance has a different outlook, evil is still here amongst us and will endanger our society if good men and women are not willing to take up the fight and make a stand. That is what we do here in Afghanistan. We fight hate, refuse to accept discrimination and battle evil by bringing our love, respect and hope to Afghanistan.

We pay the price by the sacrifices we make. Some of our comrades even sacrificed their lives. It is upon us to ensure that their sacrifices are not in vain and that we bring light in the hearts of the people of Afghanistan like Jesus did more than 2,000 years ago. 

(Photo: wounded Dutch troops in Uruzgan in 2007; by me)