Following is UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s message [delivered] to the Conference on “Global Threat, Regional Responses: Forging a Common Approach to Maritime Piracy”, in Dubai today, 18 April:
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The United Nations system has long supported Somalia in its peace and stability efforts and we are determined to continue. In recent years, piracy has emerged as a new dimension of this challenge. Piracy is not a waterborne disease. It is a symptom of conditions on the ground, including the overall security and political situation in Somalia. Therefore, our response must be holistic and comprehensive, encompassing simultaneous action on three fronts: deterrence; security and the rule of law; and development. We must work with the Somalia authorities, and we must weave our counter-piracy efforts into an overall solution for Somalia.
AP: Somali minister: More piracy help needed
The foreign minister of Somalia urged world powers Monday to do more to fight the root causes of piracy on land rather than trying to tackle the problem on the high seas.
Mohammed Abdullahi Omar told a counter-piracy conference in Dubai that pirates are winning despite the efforts by foreign nations to try to contain them as they shift their operations further from his country's shores. He said the lack of an effective Somali government — and military and police forces to back it up — is at the core of the piracy scourge.
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Somalia's government is ready to act through a "comprehensive strategy" on piracy, Omar said, but it needs international help.
"The immediate goal must be to re-establish the national authority of the Somali state and its security capability to enforce the rule of law," he told foreign dignitaries gathered from more than 50 countries. "We have the will and we have the men and women. You have the resources."
WSJ:
Speaking in Dubai at an antipiracy conference, Mohammed Abdulahi Omar Asharq, foreign minister in Somalia's transitional government, criticized world powers for failing to deal robustly with Somalia's instability even as they mounted interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and the Ivory Coast to address international threats.
"We wait to be convinced that the international community has the will to tackle piracy," Mr. Asharq said.
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He said it was "morally indefensible" that the world had only responded to the threat of piracy with containment while taking more robust action in other countries that posed a threat to stability.
US DOS: U.S. Combats Growing Global Problem of Maritime Piracy
[State Department's assistant secretary for political-military affairs, Andrew] Shapiro outlined several approaches the United States has identified to combat piracy in the near term.-- -- --
"These center on four key areas: pursuing additional mechanisms to prosecute and incarcerate pirates; aggressively targeting those who organize, lead and profit from piracy operations; exploring expanded military options that will not place undue risks or burdens on our armed forces; and intensifying efforts to encourage the shipping industry to employ best-management practices," he said.
Shapiro emphasized the importance of implementing these anti-piracy measures immediately, as he said the problem is rapidly growing worse.
Shabelle Media: Officials, Businessmen discuss reopening Mogadishu biggest market
officials from Somali transitional federal government and Mogadishu businessmen on Monday held key meeting in the capital discussing ways to reopen Bakaara, Mogadishu largest and busiest market.
After the meeting, Abdikarim Yusuf Adam better known as Dhaga-badan, the commander of Somali army said that Somali government and AMISOM allowed the reopening of some of roads leading to main Mogadishu market, Bakaara.
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For his part, Abdullahi Ugas Adam, from Mogadishu businessmen, said the government of Somalia has fully allowed reviving the movements of Bakaara market by opening the roads linking to the market.
IRIN: Mahamud Abdi Omar, "I am not only surviving but thriving"
Mahamud Abdi Omar, 25, is a small businessman in Mogadishu, capital of Somalia, which for years has been a battlefield between government troops and insurgents.-- -- --
Like any other businessman in a war zone, Omar tries to make a living despite the violence. However, for hearing-impaired Omar, surviving in the war-torn city is not only tricky but dangerous.
Omar owns a small shop selling electronics, such as radios and watches, in the middle of Bakara market, the largest open-air market in the country and probably the most dangerous. Omar spoke to IRIN on 19 April about his experience:
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"I live in a city at war, so I have had to learn to read the signs when something is going to happen. It is easy when they use heavy weapons. I can feel the vibrations on the ground. My problem is when I am busy and not looking and they use small arms.
"Last week, for example, I was walking along the street when gunfire erupted and I only became aware of it when I saw a man fall in front of me bleeding; then I ran like everybody else.
"It seems we are always running from one shelter to another. Getting caught up in fighting is something every Mogadishu resident is familiar with but most are not deaf and so are immediately aware of what's going on. For me, and people like me, we have to be vigilant at all times."
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"The shop is doing well - when I can open it [constant fighting often closes the market]. Businesswise I am doing better than when my father was alive. People are used to my being deaf and I give them good service so they like me."
The National: Firms bid for contracts to fight pirates
Eager to capitalise on the rising threat of Somali piracy, private security firms are lining up to win contracts to train maritime forces in Somalia.-- -- --
And while the international community backs the idea of building up Somali forces fight piracy, it is raising eyebrows about the prospect of unregulated training and arming programmes that could later backfire.
Still, over 100 security firms have made pitches for contracts, said Saeed Mohamed Rage, the government minister overseeing counter-piracy for the Somali region of Puntland, where most pirates come from.
Some 20 firms had made offers in two days at an anti-piracy conference that ended here [Tuesday], he said. “Mostly they are European companies, Germans, Americans - a lot.”
Conference participants - including senior UN and government officials and industry executives from 50 countries - acknowledged the need for such a force.
In a statement, they endorsed “the provision of coordinated training as well as material and financial resources to improve land-based security capacity.”
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The many firms eyeing the counter-piracy market needed to be open about their activities, said Col RJ Steed, a senior military adviser with the UN Political Office for Somalia.
“Private security companies must comply with the sanctions monitoring regime and they can only be used in a clear, transparent and open way so that their activities do not destabilise the region,” he said.
“We need to be very careful.”
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The only firm known to have secured a contract in Somalia so far is Saracen International, which, according to media reports, has ties to Blackwater founder Erik Prince and received backing from the UAE.
Mr Rage, the Puntland minister, said that since last June the firm has fulfiled a multi-million dollar contract to train 350 forces in counter-piracy. He said his government had not paid the contract, but declined to say who had.
The Puntland authorities plan to invite the UN to inspect the forces and seek permission to arm them, Mr Rage said. For now the men are waiting without pay.
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“Our diplomats worked with all the usual folks to say, this is really going to create a problem, this is really not something that you want to do,” said Donna Hopkins, counter-piracy coordinator for the US State Department.
Security firms should wait until Somalia passes a law regulating such forces, and ensure that their forces will be sustainable, she said.
“Buying a bunch of boats and sticking guns in the hands of sailors that are half-trained is a backwards way to do it,” she said.
“First you develop the laws, then you build up the structures, then you develop the revenue streams, then you buy the equipment, then you train the people.”
Halliday Finch, a Nairobi-based firm that is seeking funds to build a 1,500-strong maritime police force on behalf of the government in Mogadishu, said it follows such steps.
The company has already trained 500 non-maritime police, said CEO Sam Mattock, and has kept the UN and other organisations abreast of its activities.
“We’ve said, let’s do this properly, let’s make it transparent,” he said. “No secrets.”
The firm has drafted a law for the government to submit to parliament that would regulate maritime police.
To ensure the force is sustainable, the firm aims to spend $52 million in the first year and train up an officer corps within two years. With a Kuwaiti partner, Mr Mattock said, he plans to solicit the funds from the Kuwaiti government.
Shabelle Media: Elders express concern over helicopters hovering over Hobyo
Local elders and intellectuals of Somalia on Saturday expressed a deep concern about helicopters, which come from foreign warships in the Indian Ocean, hovering over the coastal town of Hobyo.-- -- --
One of Hobyo elders told Shabelle Media Network that early Saturday morning they have seen a number of helicopters flying over the town of Hobyo about 500 kilometers (300 miles) northeast of the capital Mogadishu.
Local residents in the town face a dreadful condition and this comes after three days after foreign warships raided a boat in coast of the town.
At least three fishermen were killed and three others including an Iranian citizen was injured in the raid conducted [by] an unknown helicopter.
Latest analysis from Prof. Weinstein: The U.N. Fails to Take Control of the "Transition”
The chapter of Somalia’s political history that has been dominated by the attempt of the United States, working through the United Nations, to manage the “transition” of Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government (T.F.G.) to a permanent set of governing institutions has ended with the collapse of the U.S.-U.N. initiative.
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Denying Mahiga any public support for the Nairobi conference, of which it wanted to wash its hands, the “donor”-power coalition of the U.S. and Western European states left Mahiga alone to dangle on the limb on to which they had pushed him.
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