Hunt of the Sea Wolves

M&C:

Zamboanga City, Philippines - Fresh troops arrived Monday on a southern Philippine island to replace marines who engaged Muslim militants in a fierce gunbattle that killed two rebels and wounded 17 soldiers, an official said.

Rear Admiral Emilio Madayag, a regional navy chief in the southern region of Mindanao, said the new marine forces comprising of 500 men will be deployed in three towns in Basilan province, 1,000 kilometres south of Manila.

Madayag said the troops will take over their posts in the towns of Lamitan, Ungkaya Pukan and Tipo-Tipo Central before sundown.

‘We don’t have any intention to put more troops in the area,’ he said. ‘We are just maintaining the same number of forces.’

Union-Tribune:

SAN DIEGO – A federal judge said Friday she won’t decide until Tuesday whether to order San Diego City officials to issue a permit that would allow Blackwater Worldwide to open a training center for the Navy on Otay Mesa.

But U.S. District Court Judge Marilyn L. Huff in questions and comments to lawyers for the city and Blackwater indicated she was inclined to grant the company’s request for a temporary restraining order.

The order could allow Blackwater to begin operating the training center in a former warehouse on Siempre Viva Road near Brown Field as soon as Wednesday.

Inquirer:

ZAMBOANGA CITY, Philippines–The US government is helping Philippine authorities investigate Thursday’s explosion in Barangay Sta. Maria that killed two people and wounded more than 20 others.

“Certainly, [we are extending help],” US Ambassador Kristie Kenney said Friday. “For us, we share any information [we have gathered], and our experts could help look at the crime scene.”

The Philippine Daily Inquirer on Friday saw a number of US soldiers at the explosion site–the Air Materiel Wing Savings and Loan Association building, which is across from Edwin Andrews Air Base and which houses the offices of the US-funded Alliance for Mindanao Off-Grid Renewable Energy (Amore) and of Zamboanga Rep. Ma. Isabel Climaco.

Al-Ahram Weekly:

Galal Nassar:

It is not just government forces, the resistance and sectarian strife that have wrought chaos in Iraq. The US invasion of Iraq and subsequent policies were what triggered the security breakdown and unleashed the chaos. To make matters worse, on the heels of the occupying forces followed thousands of personnel from private firms that offer military services for hire. The corporate mercenary business is a relatively recent phenomenon and this article attempts to probe what function it plays and how it operates in Iraq and elsewhere.

There are now more than 50 private security firms currently operating in Iraq and their number is likely to increase, according to recent reports. Officially their function is to protect vital facilities (from government buildings to oil wells) and important persons (the US ambassador, for example). Some of these companies have special information gathering and analysis departments whose staff has access to state-of-the-art military and security technologies. Global Risks is one such company. Charged with protecting Baghdad International Airport, it has hired for this purpose 500 Nepalese and 500 Fijian soldiers who are apparently the cheapest of the 30 nationalities of mercenaries currently in Iraq.

The existence of these types of firms in Iraq was first brought to public attention by the London Times, which reported in May 2004 that the number of British employees such firms posted to Iraq had doubled to 1,500 since the previous year. Among these employees were former British police, navy and paratrooper officers and soldiers. Iraqi officials at the time admitted to having no idea of how many mercenaries were operating in the country. A year later, former US secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld stated that they were by then in the neighbourhood of 100,000 and that they were needed because coalition forces were unable to supply the number of forces necessary to protect foreign diplomats and businessmen. He added that about $1 billion was paid out annually to such private security firms.

Eagle Speak:

If you want to stop pirate attacks then you have to do more than just wring your hands and take resolutions to the UN. The proactive approach is to set up a convoy system.

It worked in the past:

By the French Revolutionary Wars of the late 18th century, effective naval convoy tactics had been developed to ward off pirates and privateers. Some convoys contained several hundred merchant ships. The most enduring system of convoys were the Spanish treasure fleets, that sailed from the 1520s until 1790.

AFP:

COLOMBO (AFP) — Separatist Tamil fighters launched a pre-dawn attack on Thursday against a naval camp on an island off northern Sri Lanka killing at least 13 sailors, a pro-rebel website said.

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) said its Sea Tiger wing also seized weapons, including a radar, from the camp on Chiraththivu islet, close to the Jaffna peninsula.

“At least 13 Sri Lanka navy personnel were killed and many sailors wounded in the raid carried out by a special marine wing of the Sea Tigers,” the Tamilnet.com reported, quoting the LTTE.

Union-Tribune:

SAN DIEGO – Blackwater Worldwide failed to apply for the proper permits to run a training program for the Navy in Otay Mesa, San Diego city lawyers said in papers filed in federal court Thursday.

The North Carolina-based company never sought the permits needed to turn an entire warehouse on Siempre Viva Road into a vocational school, deputy city attorneys Donald McGrath and Walter C. Chung said in papers filed in U.S. District Court.

City lawyers asked Judge Marilyn L. Huff to reject a motion by Blackwater officials seeking a temporary restraining order that would allow them to begin operating the training center Monday.

AFP:

NAIROBI — Pirates have hijacked two freighters off Somalia, bringing to three the number of vessels seized in the same region this week, a Kenyan maritime official said on Thursday.

MV Arean and MV Lehmann Timber were seized in the Gulf of Aden on Wednesday near a position where another vessel was seized over the weekend, said Andrew Mwangura of the Kenyan branch of the Seafarers’ Assistance Programme.

“We have confirmed that the pirates are onboard the two vessels, but we have not received any demands for ransom,” he told AFP.

CNN:

A Somali official and a spokesman for a Dutch shipping company said Wednesday that the ship MV Amiya Scan had not arrived at shore three days after it was hijacked by pirates.

Abdirahman Saleh Bangeh, the minister of information for Somalia’s semi-autonomous Puntland region, told CNN the MV Amiya Scan was about 18 miles (30 kilometers) south of the city of Bargaal.

Another media report quoting a different official indicated the ship had already docked there.

Bangeh had no other information regarding the ship, which is carrying a crew of four Russians and five Filipinos. He said it was difficult to obtain information from the city, which has no phones.

Houston Chronicle:

MANILA, Philippines — A homemade bomb exploded outside an air force base in the southern Philippines on Thursday, killing two people and wounding 19 others in a possible attack by al-Qaida-linked militants, police said.

The cell phone-detonated bomb was apparently concealed in one of several bags of civilian commuters waiting to hitch a ride on an air force C-130 cargo plane outside Edwin Andrews Air Base in Zamboanga city, police Chief Superintendent Jaime Caringal said.

A man and a woman, both waiting to get on the plane, were killed in the blast, police said.

American troops providing counterterrorism training to Filipino soldiers were encamped at the air base, but none was injured, police said.