The back story to Somali piracy is pretty much as follows: the narrow waters between Yemen and Northern Somalia – The Gulf of Aden – have been the location of numerous piracy incidents – more than anywhere else in the world. Yemeni fishing boats, international cargo ships etc taking the route across the Gulf of Aden to the port of Dubai and all passages south, are easy targets, especially for returning bored Somali seamen who have just dropped off their human cargo somewhere on the Yemen shoreline. Private yachts have been targeted as well as larger vessels such as cruise liners and oil tankers. The story goes even further back to the Arab Israeli war. The Bab Al Mandab – the southern entrance to the Red Sea was managed by the Yemenis to prevent any assistance getting to Israel. It is clear that Yemen and other Arab states, are still sensitive to any Israeli influence in the waters around the Gulf of Aden. How this all connects is revealed later in this blog entry.

People wonder how such large vessels such as the Sirius Star can be hijacked. It’s quite simple. The pirates approach in fast speedboats, armed with RPGS that they threaten to fire into the ship’s bridge or bow. The pirates are allowed to board – the ships crew aren’t paid to put up a fight – and they are then in control. The pirates have been known to claim to be environmental activists

Let’s take a look at the region and see what else has been going on:

1. Pollution and over fishing. It is known that the area of the Somali coast has been used as toxic dumping ground since the 1990s and some of the waste was washed up ashore as a result of the Asian Tsunami in 2004 more here

2. Undoubtedly the Gulf of Aden is a highly strategic area. Navies from the UK, Canada, France, Russia and the USA all have a presence in and around the waters between Yemen and Somalia. more here

3. There is the ongoing crisis of human trafficking between Somalia and Yemen. Around 100 Somalis a day arrive on the Yemen coast between Mukallah and Aden having been ferried across by Somali gangs. more here

4. The area has always had strategic importance. The British occupied Aden in the middle of the 19th century and the entrance to the Red Sea was of importance in the 1973 war with Israel.

Intrigue and Conspiracy:

Back in September the MV Faina, a Ukrainian ship bearing the Belize flag, was hijacked off the coast of Somalia. Recently, this hijacking had gone off the mainstream media’s radar, even before the latest hijacking of the Sirius Star. No other hijacking has triggered more conspiracy theories that the MV Faina.

What we know: the vessel had on board a quantity of Russian tanks and artillery. Who it is for is anybody’s guess:

Weapons for Kenya ? more here

Weapons for Southern Sudan ? more here

Weapons for Yemen ? more here

Ownership of the MV Faina: one intriguing twist in the MV Faina story is the case of who owns the vessel. This report points to an Israeli with links to the Israeli government and intelligence services, as having the vessel registered in his own name.

Control and financing of the Somali pirates. Number of twists here: the BBC included in a report that the Somalians were receiving financing from Dubai based businessmen. The Yemeni President has also claimed that the Somalians were under the instruction of the Israelis as part of a strategy to have Israeli influence in the Bab Al Mandab.

Will all these individual narratives join together? Are the Somalis getting money from Dubai and being helped by the Israelis? Is the EU wanting to have greater control of the Arabian Sea and exert greater influence in the Gulf of Aden with perhaps direct control of the Aden port itself? Is Yemen supplying the Somalians with arms and were the Russian tanks heading to Yemen? Is Somalia inadvertently encouraging a trojan horse in the form of a western, multinational maritime force that will invade and occupy Somalia? a country of significant strategic importance.

What is for certain is that it will take sometime for the threads of the Somali piracy story to weave themselves into a tapestry of foreign affairs we can understand.

Technorati Tags: Somalia piracy, Mv faina, Sirius star, Ship hijacking

Like many others in Yemen on the 4th November, i bought a bag of Qat, and pulled an all nighter watching the US election coverage on TV zapping between BBC, Sky, Fox News, CNN, Al Jazeera and even France 24.

By far the BBC coverage was the most clunky but i think that was because they had a boatload of guests to squeeze in. The Jeremy Vine touchscreen wotsit made me nauseous. Simon Schama the historian was clearly pissed and close to drooling involuntarily all over the desk. It was great to see John Bolton, the ex USA Ambassador to the UN, getting all wound up by a BBC journalist’s line of questioning at a Republican party event. Dimbleby was all excited and chuffed to be anchoring coverage of ’this, a historical and momentous event’. He also provided much comedy with his Gore Vidal interview. Matt Frei was smooth and the Price chap looked absolutely knackered. Clearly he had been deprived of little sleep having to deliver pointless and vacuous blog entries for the BBC website. You cant help but feel the Beeb missed a trick in not letting loose Paxman for some ’97 UK election style attack dog interviews.

CNN had the best coverage, it was very smooth, some good analysis and great use of the touchscreen wotsits, even if the guy using one of them was too small to touch anything at the top of the screen. Anderson Cooper, Wolf Blitzer and John King are absolute pros. Soledad O’Brien was enthusiastic, probably because she had been allowed into the studio and not stuck doing an outside broadcast with a load of undecided voters as she had been during the debates. The most exciting aspects of these elections is the vote count and the reported counties. Hence it seemed that McCain was winning Indiana, but the key Obama leaning counties hadn’t reported their results. John King is the master of drilling down to this level of detail.

Fox was comedy. It was like Britt Hume was commentating on a death whilst having his teeth pulled out. Very subdued, much sighing and a lot of ’if onlys’. Karl Rove was on hand looking slimey and smug as his prediction of Obama breaking 330 electoral votes materialised. Rove is one of those people who like to begin a sentence with ’You probably dont know this, but…’ before launching into some know it all political factoid. Fox had the best totty in the form of Megan Kelly but she was hopeless using the touchscreen wotsit. Interestingly i found their analysis of Obama’s manifesto turn quite positive once it became clear he was going to win. I wonder if Murdoch will be pushing for more favourable editorial seeing as the win for Obama was so convincing.

Sky News from the UK was great. Jeremy Thompson was for some reason located high up in a New York skyscraper which led one guest to make a crack along the lines of ’i know now why it is called Sky News’. Adam Boulton had got himself a haircut after he came on earlier on in the day with a mullet. The Sky Miami White House was, i hope, intentionally tacky and low budget. It provided much amusement in the week leading up to the election. One highlight was the live broadcast of an interview from the sofas of the house with a background view onto a Miami lagoon where a huge boat was slowly making maneuvers to go alongside a pontoon outside. Watching it you didn’t know if someone on board was going to fire a missile into the house or if some huge celebrity was about to get off. As it turned out the boat was going to be used to interview ’floating voters’, boom boom.

Al Jazeera International was a bit boring. As always, you watch it feeling sorry for the presenters who are clearly wondering when they are going to be given the boot.

France 24 was good fun car crash style viewing. Clearly they were desperate to fill space and they had a few odd guests such as historians. I was hoping they would also have wine tasters and cheese makers providing analysis from the studio but it wasnt too be. Naturally most of the guests they had were rooting for Obama and anyone trying with the slightest support for McCain was smacked down. More analysis of TV coverage can be found over here

Technorati Tags: Communications, General, Us election, Tv coverage, Fox news, Cnn, Sky news, Bbc

Arriving back in the UK i am confused and bamboozled by what i am experiencing.

The culprit being the British rail network and i have got a serious beef. Having bought a return ticket to the North of England for the exorbitant price of £88, over the internet, i was faced with the seemingly simple task of collecting it from a ’fast ticket’ machine at Kings Cross. No problems with that, done it quite a few times and it usually works smoothly. I collected all the tickets and waited to board the train. A new system at Kings Cross implemented by National Express, who seem to have taken over the GNER franchise, involved ticket inspectors checking tickets on the platform prior to boarding the train. I handed the wad of tickets spat out by the machine to the inspector so he could find which one was required. The ticket for my outbound journey wasn’t there. What next? I was told i couldn’t board the train. Panic set-in. I had taken all the tickets from the machine. I was instructed to go back to the ticket office, check the machine and speak to someone there.

To cut a long story short, the jobsworths in the office said they could prove the machine wasn’t at fault, i hadn’t counted the tickets and checked the mistake sooner. It was my fault. I had to buy another ticket for £110. £198 in total. A disgrace. It was my word against a machine. The machine couldnt talk, his spokesperson in the Kings Cross ticket office , one of the rudest people you could wish to meet, who finished me off with the line, ’I am not going to talk to you anymore because I have another customer to help’. You could have helped me.

What i cant believe is that there is no system to protect the consumer against what could be an honest mistake – even though i know i took all the tickets provided – of losing a ticket. For all we know it could be a preprogrammed sleight of hand by the operator to make more money. I stress that there was zero comeback for me as a customer. There was literally nothing that could be done. There was also a belief that the computer is 100% accurate, 100% of the time and that by placing a sign that says ’Check Your Tickets’, the operator basically has a get out clause. My tickets WERE checked, they weren’t all there, i had to pay again. So what is the point of saying check all tickets if nothing can be done to replace one if it wasn’t provided?

Once i got on the train i was almost nauseated by the list of instructions / rules / regulations read out by the train manager. No smoking, no mobile phones in the ’quiet carriage’, you cannot travel on this train if you hold the following million different types of ticket, ’extreme weather’ is meaning this train will have to run slow. God, why cant things be simple? This idiocy transcends the entire British transport system. It is caused by unscrupulous profit seeking private companies who, behind a smokescreen of ’cheap tickets’, have weaved a web of profit inducing pseudo ’non-laws’. It has to be stopped.

International reader, trust me on this, the people of Britain are very angry at being ripped off. Britain is not a rich country. The majority of people in Britain are treading the waters of a rising tide of debt, repossession and job losses. A recession is here in all but name. Stupid rules, confusing pricing schemes and rogue ticket machines are just some of the many things sited by unhappy Brits. The list is long.

Thankfully, and i suppose selfishly, i am happy to be returning to Yemen. I will quickly forget about the ticket scam machine. My problems dont compare with some of those facing the average Yemeni. I am blessed with a life of travel and the ability to pay for it. These are things a Yemeni can only dream about, dreams that are somewhat reliant on people like myself investing in Yemen. Lets just hope that people wont stop travelling to Yemen in the wake of the Belgian tourists’ deaths and what could be the start of a potential security crisis.

Brian Barron has a segment within the latest FOOC program on 24/11/07. You can read it / download it

For anyone who just reads or downloads it here’s my smackdown to a story that does nothing but enhance the ’failed state’ image that has plagued Yemen.

Anyone who has spent time in Yemen will know that:

• you can buy good quality footwear for a lot less than $90! Brian, you were in Yemen 40 years ago..you shouldnt be wearing your best brogues!
• there are new laws banning the bearing of weapons for all but those with special permits or the military
• the weapons souks where you used to be able to buy AK47s etc are now closed. If they arent, someone please let me know which are still running because Barron seems to know some info that makes me want to go and get myself a ’customised AK47’!
• the “enormous set of mobile airport steps that had the shakes” dont exist and if they did how the hell would women wearing balto holding children manage to walk down them?!

Not only that, but i also question where Brian Barron gets his evidence for saying that there is an ’ambivalence about Al-Qaeda across Yemen’. Barron goes on to describe ’fit looking military veterans carrying backpacks full of weapons and communications gear’. I have lived here for over a year, with no close protection and the only action men figures i see are wrapped in plastic, made in China and are for sale in Shumaila Hari (a supermarket like WalMart or Tescos)! Brian, this is Sana’a not Baghdad!

Barron goes on to say that Oil revenues are drying up. Er, hold on a minute, hasnt there just been a load of oil blocks awarded to a multitude of companies for drilling, extraction, refining and selling? According to Barron, ’corruption is allegedly on a huge scale’, come on Brian, make the allegations. Tell us what you know. Or maybe it would be better to tell the world what you DO know about how the Yemen Government is looking to fight it. The Yemen government is rapidly and energetically implementing new measures for more transparency in all government business and procurement procedures.

Barron mentions ’the failed states’ of Somalia and Ethiopia in a cute journalistic way to build image association. Somalia is a failed state that occupies its own category. Ethiopia has long shaken its starved, famined image of the 80s. Yemen has nothing in common with either of them. Moreover, Barron builds the negative image of Yemen by making associations with the ’rich neighbours’ of UAE, Saudi etc. And no Brian, i dont see what you mean by Yemen being ’just north of south’.

So, what is there in this article / broadcast that us Yemen-dwellers can relate to?

The suicide bombing of the Spanish tourists in Marib was a terrible event. Thankfully all the protagonists seems to have been captured or even killed. This seems to have been a one off and there has been no kidnappings at all in the last few years. Movement in Yemen is closely monitored by a protective net of checkpoints and the intelligence services have their ear to the ground. Indeed there are concerns about the water supply.

Qat agriculture sees to that. But it is a problem all in Yemen are acutely aware of and are dealing with. The Old City of Sana’a IS a captivating labyrinth of souks. It’s a UNESCO world heritage site. There is also a population explosion which will see the population double in a very shortspace of time and of course the government should be planning to deal with it.

Anyone who spends more than 48 hours in this amazing country will know that they are not in the middle of the hell that is Iraq, the tribal and uncontrollable Afghanistan or the lawless bullet fest that is Somalia. They will also realise that they arent in Jeddha, Dubai or Doha. Yemen’s time will come. And so should anyone else with the slightest interest in pursuing new business opportunities, experiencing a new and exciting tourist destination or to just feel the warm welcome of the unique Yemeni people.

Technorati Tags: General, Our Stories, Yemen