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Editorial
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Thursday, 10 December 2009 13:55 |
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If you think that the fight against piracy can be won at sea, think again. Dozens of warships, helicopter gunships and now spy drones will not stop the Somali pirates who have extended their range so far that recent attacks have taken place closer to India than Africa. They now hunt across a million square miles of water from the Gulf of Aden deep into the Indian Ocean. And there is no shortage of desperate young Somali men willing to join the pirate gangs in the hope of earning enough ransom money to escape Somalia’s Hobbesian dystopia.
Even the commander of the European Union anti-piracy force admits that he has an impossible job. “In a piece of ocean that large we will never close down pirates who are determined to operate up to a thousand miles off the coast of Somalia,” Rear-Admiral Peter Hudson said during a recent visit to Nairobi. “We need to be alive to that reality.”
Patrols can work in constrained areas — for example, the Gulf of Aden, where the EU says there have been no hijackings since July — but this has simply pushed the pirates farther out to sea where pickings are just as rich.
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Editorial
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Thursday, 10 December 2009 13:40 |
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The suspect spent twenty years living in the Bronshoj and Rodovre areas of the city in Denmark
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"I think they overreached," Roque said. "It was a big mistake on their part. It is one thing to target AMISOM [African Union Mission in Somalia] and government structures; it is quite another to target innocent civilians."
The population will see the bombing "as senseless killings, which is what terrorists do", she said, adding that Al-Shabab members were no longer seen as "uniting Somali nationalism and Islam".
Shattered hopes
Hawa Siyaad, a mother of six, left her small-scale fuel business on 3 December to attend the graduation ceremony with her eldest son.
"I was happy to participate, because I knew Mohamed [her son] will be going through the same next year," she said. "Mohamed was in his fifth year of medical school, he was there to help with the ceremony. One minute, he was there, the next minute he was gone. He did not do anything wrong. Why would anyone kill innocent students?"
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Travel
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Thursday, 10 December 2009 13:34 |
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ATHENS - The owners of a Greek ship held by Somali pirates for more than six months said on Thursday the company had paid a ransom to the gunmen holding it and were now waiting for the Maltese-flagged Ariana to be freed.
Pirates from Somalia have made tens of millions of dollars in ransoms, seizing commercial shipping in the Indian Ocean and strategic Gulf of Aden, which links Europe to Asia.
A multinational naval deployment in the area seems only to have driven them to hunt further from shore.
"We've paid the ransom and we are waiting for the pirates to release the Ariana," Spyros Minas, head of Alloceans shipping told Reuters, declining to disclose the amount of ransom paid.
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Politics
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Thursday, 10 December 2009 10:48 |
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| Somali President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed |
Somalia's president vowed on Wednesday to intensify his war against insurgents blamed for a suicide bombing at a medical graduation ceremony last week that killed 22 people, including three government ministers.
Sheikh Sharif Ahmed's fragile administration controls only a few districts of Mogadishu and comes under near daily attack by rebels including the hardline al Shabaab group, which Washington says is al Qaeda's proxy in the failed Horn of African state.
Western security agencies say the country has become a safe haven for militants, including foreign jihadists, who are using it to plot attacks across the impoverished region and beyond.
A spokesman for al Shabaab denied the group was responsible for last Thursday's suicide bombing, but few Somalis believed him and the U.N. special envoy to the country said it was "outrageous" to suggest that anyone else was to blame.
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Human Rights
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Thursday, 10 December 2009 10:46 |
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The Al-qaeda linked Islamist rebels Al-shabaab have ordered Somali women in the border town of Dhobley close to Kenya to wear veils or face punishment, the top rebel commander in the town declared late on Wednesday. During a press conference yesterday afternoon, Al shabab’s security chief in the town Sheik Da’ud Hassan Ali said that all women in Dhobley and surrounding villages are told to wear veils and cover all their bodies otherwise they will be punished for neglecting the Islamic orders.
“According to the holly Quran Allah had obligated Muslim women in all over the world to have veils, that is a religious article and any woman who doesn’t obey will be dealt with in accordance with Islamic sharia law” the Islamist official told reporters.
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Travel
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Thursday, 10 December 2009 10:43 |
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Somali pirates hijacked the Pakistani-flagged fishing vessel MV Shahbaig Sunday, the European Union naval force said in a statement.
The ship, with a crew of 29 on board thought to be Pakistani, was seized 320 nautical miles east of Socotra, an island off the Horn of Africa, the EU Navfor force statement issued Wednesday said.
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