The hurriedly convened Contact Group meeting in New York yesterday represents an effort by the State Department to piece together a new policy for dealing with Somalia after more than a decade of neglect.
Diplomats are asserting more control over Somalia policy from the CIA, on grounds that courting Somali warlords has been counter-productive.
That reality came into stark relief last week when US-backed warlords fighting a proxy war for the US against Islamists believed to be harboring al-Qaeda operatives were run out of Mogadishu, the capital, by those same Islamists.
For the US, the lawless place that spawned Black Hawk Down was suddenly back, this time as a potent symbol of faltering US counterterrorism efforts.
Somalia has not had an effective central government since 1991, when largely clan-based warlords overthrew the country's dictator, Mohamed Siad Barre, and then turned on one another. An interim government, formed with the support of the UN, has not even been able to get into Mogadishu, and has instead been stuck in Baidoa, about 200km away.
"We need to have legitimate actors inside Somalia with whom we can work," Henry Crumpton, the State Department's top counter-terrorism official, told a Senate committee on Tuesday.
The Philippines yesterday said its coast guard would acquire 40 fast patrol craft from France, with plans to deploy some of them in disputed areas of the South China Sea. The deal is the “largest so far single purchase” in Manila’s ongoing effort to modernize its coast guard, with deliveries set to start in four years, Philippine Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Ronnie Gil Gavan told a news conference. He declined to provide specifications for the vessels, which Manila said would cost 25.8 billion pesos (US$440 million), to be funded by development aid from the French government. He said some of the vessels would
CARGO PLANE VECTOR: Officials said they believe that attacks involving incendiary devices on planes was the work of Russia’s military intelligence agency the GRU Western security officials suspect Russian intelligence was behind a plot to put incendiary devices in packages on cargo planes headed to North America, including one that caught fire at a courier hub in Germany and another that ignited in a warehouse in England. Poland last month said that it had arrested four people suspected to be linked to a foreign intelligence operation that carried out sabotage and was searching for two others. Lithuania’s prosecutor general Nida Grunskiene on Tuesday said that there were an unspecified number of people detained in several countries, offering no elaboration. The events come as Western officials say
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered
Former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said if US President Joe Biden had ended his re-election bid sooner, the Democratic Party could have held a competitive nominating process to choose his replacement. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said in an interview on Thursday published by the New York Times the next day. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” she said. Pelosi said she thought the Democratic candidate, US Vice President Kamala Harris, “would have done