Hello to arms

Taiwan arms deal sours U.S.-China relations

In a foreign military sales program, the US has sold Taiwan $18.3 billion worth of weapons between 1950 and 2006.

By Jonathan Adams
Christian Science Monitor, Oct. 6, 2008
Terrorism and security update

Washington's approval of nearly $6.5 billion in arms sales to Taiwan Friday drew a relieved "thank you" from the self-governed island nation, but sharp rebukes from Beijing.

The Bush administration on Friday notified Congress of the deal, after an unusually long delay that had led some to question the strength of the US security commitment to Taiwan.

Taiwan has not yet purchased the weapons. But a Congressional notification is the point in the arms sales process that triggers a storm of official Chinese diplomatic protests, said Mark Stokes, a former top Pentagon official dealing with China and Taiwan, in a talk to the Taiwan Foreign Correspondents Club earlier this year.

China typically summons top US diplomats in Beijing and elsewhere for a sharp dressing-down immediately after such notifications, Mr. Stokes said.

According to Xinhua, China's state-controlled news agency, the foreign ministry this time summoned the US embassy's charge d'affaires in Beijing. The report cited a statement on China's foreign ministry website.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said the Chinese government and people firmly opposed this action which seriously damaged China's interests and the Sino-US relations. ...

"It is only natural that this move would stir up strong indignation of the Chinese government and people," he said.

Meanwhile, the Associated Press (AP) reported that Taipei welcomed the news. Taiwan's president, Ma Ying-jeou, took power in May on a platform of improved commercial ties with China. But he also wants to maintain a robust defense in order to counter China's military buildup across the Taiwan Strait.

On Saturday, Taiwan's Presidential Office spokesman Wang Yu-chi thanked the U.S. and said the government wants to maintain a strong defense against any threat from China while seeking improvement in cross-strait relations.

"President Ma Ying-jeou would like to express gratitude to the U.S. for the arms package," said Wang. "A strong defense and peace in the Taiwan Strait are necessary for Taiwan's prosperity."

China views Taiwan as rebel territory and vehemently opposes any US arms sales to the island. The US is bound by domestic law to make available to Taiwan sufficient weapons for its self-defense.

Further complicating the issue, Taiwanese themselves cannot agree on the nature and extent of the threat from China. Their bickering held up Taipei's arms request for several years, amid legislative gridlock.

Some of the arms approved for sale Friday were initially offered by the Bush administration in 2001. Taiwan purchased and received several of those systems, notably four Kidd-class destroyers.

The approved weapons are only about half of what Taiwan requested, in dollar terms.

Washington gave the green light Friday to sales of Apache attack helicopters, Patriot missile batteries and other air defense systems, and fighter jet spare parts. But it reduced the number of Patriot batteries and missiles offered, and continues to sit on a request for Black Hawk helicopters and a submarine feasibility study.

The US also continues to ignore a separate request by Taiwan for 66 advanced F-16 fighter jets. Security analysts say Taiwan urgently needs those jets in order to maintain a balance of air power over the Taiwan Strait. One such analyst was quoted by Singapore's Straits Times in July:

Professor Lin Chong-pin of Tamkang University, who was formerly Taiwan's vice-defence minister, told The Straits Times that with the rapid modernisation of China's People's Liberation Army (PLA), 'Taiwan's last remaining edge in air supremacy would be gone if the F-16s are not coming'.

The weapons cleared for sale Friday represent a massive layout, even if they fell short of Taiwan's wish list. Citing US government statistics, Bloomberg noted that Taiwan received $18.3 billion in weapons under the US Foreign Military Sales program in the entire period of 1950 to 2006.

The arms deal is likely to draw far more attention in China than in the US. Last year, a survey on public attitudes toward US-China relations found that Taiwan was the No. 1 concern for the Chinese public. For Americans, however, the top worry was job losses to China – showing the gap in priorities and perceptions between the two big powers.

Chinese Communist Party propaganda has reinforced popular sentiment that Taiwan is an inalienable part of China that must one day be returned to the "motherland," by force if need be. That reunification is seen as a last bit of unfinished business in China's transformation from humiliated victim of colonial predations to global power.

Meanwhile, Taiwan continues to consolidate its young democracy under the shadow of China's military threat. Numerous polls, including those published by the Election Study Center at Taipei's National Chengchi University show that a solid majority of Taiwanese want to maintain the island's political autonomy.

In August, an opinion piece in The Christian Science Monitor highlighted the high stakes of preserving healthy US-China ties, calling the relationship "the most important bilateral one of our time."

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Pirates v. Warships

Pirates, warships continue tense standoff near Somali coast

The US and Russia fear that on-board weapons could reach Al Qaeda

By Jonathan Adams
Christian Science Monitor, October 02, 2008
Terrorism and Security update

A battle of nerves continued off Somalia's coast today, as the US and Russia turned up the heat on a group of vastly outgunned Somali pirates aboard a hijacked cargo vessel.

Several US warships kept their vigil and blockade of the Ukrainian cargo ship MV Faina. A Russian missile frigate steamed toward Somalia to add its muscle to the standoff. And on Wednesday, the Somali government authorized foreign use of force against the pirates.

That was a formality, since Somalia's weak central government holds little sway over much of its territory, or its pirate-infested waters.

The Washington Post reported that Somalia's president Abdullahi Yusuf on Wednesday urged action against the pirates.

... Yusuf urged Somalis to turn against the pirate gangs.

"I also call on the international community to act quickly on what is happening in Somali waters as well as onshore," he told reporters in the capital, Mogadishu. "We must do everything we can to stop piracy off the coast of Somalia."

The pirates had imposed an "embargo" against Somalia and other countries by preventing trade and food deliveries, he said.

Hijackings by pirates are a near daily occurrence off Somalia, and the international community has to date done little to stop them.

But this ship has garnered more attention. In addition to its 20-member crew, it's carrying 33 Russian-made tanks and ammunition, reportedly bound for southern Sudan via Kenya.

Now, the US fears those tanks could instead end up in the hands of Al Qaeda-linked Islamic militants in Somalia. The militants, particularly al Shabaab, are fighting to wrest control of the country from a weak, US-backed government in Mogadishu.

Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported that those militants have urged the pirates to destroy the ship and its cargo if they do not get the $20 million ransom they are demanding for the release of the cargo and crew.

A spokesman for the militants told AFP they had no links to the pirates, but would gladly use the tanks in their "holy war" against the Somali government if given the chance.

"It is a crime to take commercial ships but hijacking vessels that carry arms for the enemy of Allah is a different matter," added Robow [spokesman for Shabaab], whose movement nearly stamped out piracy when it controlled southern Somalia last year....

"The Ukrainian ship is loaded with military hardware that is very important for our holy war against the enemy of Allah and it would have changed the war in Somalia if that military shipment falls in our hands," he said.

Russia's relations with Washington have turned icy in recent months over its invasion of Georgia and other issues. But Moscow is standing shoulder to shoulder with the US in this fight.

That's undoubtedly far more international attention than this group of Somali pirates bargained for. Such pirates are typically a ragtag bunch – speedboat-borne thugs armed with a few rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns, hardly a match for a modern navy with advanced weaponry.

Meanwhile, the Voice of America (VOA) reported that the 60 pirates onboard the hijacked vessel were squabbling among themselves over how to proceed. It quoted a Mombasa-based maritime official, Andrew Mwangura, who said the tension had erupted into deadly on-board shootouts pitting pirate against pirate.

One reason for the bad blood, says VOA: this pirate group includes members of two rival sub-clans.

"There was a shootout yesterday and the day before yesterday, there was a shootout aboard the ship, whereupon three gunmen were shot dead by their own comrades because this ship is being held captive by two different clans."...

Andrew Mwangura says the enormous ransoms being paid to free captured vessels have prompted many Somali clans to set aside their differences and cooperate in pirate activities.

Somali pirate attacks have more than doubled this year amid a lucrative ransom business, with several pirate dens springing up on the Somali coast to support the industry.

The US Navy already leads a multinational force that patrols international waters off Somalia. But that force has proven impotent against this year's pirate onslaught.

The AP reported that European countries on Wednesday offered to form a maritime security force to better police the area.

Roger Middleton, an Africa researcher at Britain's Chatham House think tank, said Europeans have been planning a maritime security force for some time, but the seizure of heavy weaponry off Somalia's coast "helped move it up their agenda."

A report by Mr. Middleton released Thursday described the Somali piracy surge as a threat to world trade. It warned the international community to act against the pirates before they grow stronger and possibly link up with terrorists.

The international community must be aware of the danger that Somali pirates could become agents of international terrorist networks. Already money from ransoms is helping to pay for the war in Somalia, including funds to the US terror-listed Al-Shabaab.

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Tightening the noose

Sri Lanka claims it's closing in on Tamil Tiger stronghold

Amid fierce fighting in recent days, the military says it will soon take the rebel base and, within months, end one of Asia's longest-running conflicts.

By Jonathan Adams
Christian Science Monitor, Sept. 29, 2008
Terrorism and Security Update

The Sri Lankan government claims it is on the verge of wiping out the Tamil Tigers' last rebel stronghold. If it's right, Sri Lanka could at last see the end of a long-running conflict that has left some 70,000 people dead.

The claims come amid fierce fighting in and near the Tigers' base in Kilinochchi on the northern tip of the island, where government airplanes are pounding rebel positions as ground troops slowly tighten the noose.

Numerous media noted that the military's claims could not be independently verified. Both the government and the rebels often make exaggerated claims, the Associated Press (AP) noted.

A top Sri Lankan military official told the BBC Friday the government had won ground, sea, and air superiority over the rebels, and that victory was at hand.

Said Defense Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa:

"Our numbers are very much greater than theirs, our firepower is much greater. We are very confident we can win and we want to finish this very soon."...

After a ceasefire fighting resumed in earnest in mid-2006 and Sri Lanka's military ejected the Tigers from the East.

Attention then turned to territory controlled in the north by the rebels, who want a separate state for the ethnic Tamil minority.

In recent months troops have advanced rapidly, and Mr Rajapaksa, who is the brother of Sri Lanka's President Mahinda Rajapaksa, said they are now 4.5km (2.8 miles) from the rebel stronghold of Kilinochchi.

The Tigers administer areas under their control from the town.

The government bars most journalists from areas where the fighting is taking place and the military's accounts cannot be independently verified.

The Colombo Page, a Sri Lankan daily, reported that government forces had seized a key road in Kilinochchi after a fierce, seven-hour gun battle. Eighteen Tamil Tigers were killed there and in other fighting Sunday, with many more injured, the paper said.

The paper also reported that Sunday marked the government-set deadline for international relief groups to leave the conflict zone.

United Press International (UPI) reported that the Sri Lankan military claimed it had killed a total of 62 militants and lost three of its own in the weekend's ground battles and airstrikes.

The National Post interviewed Sri Lankan military officials on the front lines of the conflict, who said the Tigers’ days as a serious military threat are numbered.

The Sri Lankan conflict is one of the world's longest-running insurgencies. An entire generation has never lived in times of peace. Newspaper articles about the latest bombings no longer even make the front pages of the country's dailies. "We have to somehow or other sort out this problem," says the general, who has slicked-down black hair, a moustache and three rows of ribbons on his uniform. "That is our aim. We want to finish it altogether."

Another military official interviewed in the article said he expected the Tamil Tigers to be wiped out within a year. However, the official, Lt. Gen. Sarath Fonseka, acknowledged that the going would be tough, and that de-mining Tiger-held areas could take decades.

The guerrillas' central problem is manpower, he says. During the current phase of the civil war, the Sri Lankan forces have killed 8,000 rebel fighters in the north and 2,000 in the East, while another 1,000 have been killed in air strikes, he says.

According to the army's calculations, that leaves the Tigers with no more than 4,000 remaining cadres, while the Sri Lankan forces have 250,000 men and women, and plenty of weaponry.

"So it's a matter of time," Lt.-Gen. Fonseka says.

But the Tigers are well-armed; they have ammunition, artillery, mortars, rocket-propelled grenades, multi-barreled rocket launchers, anti-tank weapons and mines. "Every inch is booby-trapped in the jungle. De-mining those areas will take minimum 20 years," he says.

Suicide bombings – a feature of the Tamil insurgency since its start – also continue. The AP reported that a suspected suicide bomber killed one civilian and wounded eight others in an attack on a police vehicle in a northern Sri Lankan town Sunday.

Rebel officials could not be reached for comment, but the insurgents have made suicide bombings a hallmark of their 25-year struggle against the government to create an independent homeland for ethnic minority Tamils.

The rebels, banned as a terrorist group in the United States and European Union, are said to have carried out more than 240 suicide bombings against military, political, and economic targets.

In its last report on the conflict in February, the International Crisis Group accused both sides of increasing human rights abuses, warned of a looming humanitarian disaster, and questioned whether the Sri Lankan government could solve the problem of Tamil militancy through military means alone.

Even assuming the Tigers can be defeated militarily, it remains unclear how the government would pacify and control the large Tamil-speaking areas in the north that have been under LTTE [Liberation Tigers of Tamil] domination for a decade or more....

The much touted "liberation" of the Eastern Province has failed to bring development or democracy; instead it has been characterised by military rule and rising ethnic tensions.

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France urges pirate cleanup

France leads calls to counter Somali piracy surge

Increasingly brazen attacks jeopardize the delivery of humanitarian aid and inspire calls for tough action.

By Jonathan Adams
Christian Science Monitor
Terrorism and security update
September 23, 2008

The French government is leading calls for more aggressive international action against Somali pirates, amid an alarming surge in hijackings at sea.

Those calls gained more urgency after the latest attack Sunday, when armed bandits in speedboats hijacked a Greek cargo ship and its 19-member crew. That brought the number of such attacks since January to 59, with more than 300 crew and 13 ships remaining in pirates' hands, according to an Associated Press report.

The US Navy leads a coalition whose warships patrol international waters off Somalia. But that force has not been sufficient to deter the pirates, who are carrying out increasingly brazen and frequent hijackings and raking in huge profits from ransom money.

The pirates are threatening maritime trade along key shipping routes in the Gulf of Aden and off Somalia's southern coast. That's caused insurance fees to spike dramatically. It is also complicating the delivery of humanitarian aid to Somalia, a failed state that can neither feed its own people nor assert its authority over rampant thuggery and Islamic insurgents.

The Inquirer, a Filipino daily, reported that French President Nicolas Sarkozy has called for punitive action against the pirates.

"The number of acts of piracy in the Gulf of Aden and off the Somali coast has literally exploded since the beginning of 2008 ... The world can't tolerate this." ...

Sarkozy said the 48,000 ships that pass through the Gulf of Aden every year were 'all potential targets for these pirates who are striking further and further away from the coast.'

The piracy epidemic is of particular concern to the Philippines, which is the largest supplier of seafarers by country. Some 250,000 Filipinos are at sea at any given time, The Inquirer noted. Many Filipino crewmen – including 17 of the 19 crew members on the Greek cargo ship hijacked Sunday – have become hostages in the recent piracy surge.

France has taken the most dramatic action to date against the pirates.

In a daring operation in April, French commandos freed 30 French luxury yacht crew members who were being held in a northeast Somali village. According to TheDaily Telegraph, a British paper, a French sniper in one helicopter blew out the engine of the pirates' vehicle, and three commandos leapt out of another helicopter to capture six of the pirates.

Earlier this month, elite French frogmen stormed a hijacked French luxury yacht to free its two French passengers, killing one pirate and capturing six more, according to TheTimes of London.

The Voice of America (VOA) reported Monday that Somali pirates are threatening to behead any European they capture if France does not immediately release their six comrades captured in that recent operation.

The VOA interviewed by telephone a man who identified himself only as "Bileh," and claimed to speak for a pirate group based in the northern Somali town of Eyl – now a notorious pirate haven. According to the VOA, this group has made $30 million this year in ransom payments.

Bileh insists the money ship owners are paying to free to their vessels and crew is not ransom, but fines and taxes being collected on behalf of the Somali people.

Bileh says the ships are being fined and taxed because they are trespassing on Somali territorial waters. He says in the absence of a functioning central government in Somalia, his group is working hard to collect enough money to form a navy strong enough to protect the Somali coast from foreign exploitation.

Eyewitness reports from Eyl suggest that pirates are using their share of the money to build palatial homes and to buy expensive cars. They are also believed to be purchasing increasingly sophisticated weapons and boats.

A BBC report last week described Eyl as a coastal boomtown enriched by piracy, with an entire local industry geared toward tending to hostages, negotiating ransom payments, and planning and preparing more attacks.

Bloomberg reported last week that international shipowners and a seamen's union had called on the United Nations to take "urgent steps" to improve security in the region's waters, which are among the world's most dangerous.

Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported the piracy epidemic is also jeopardizing food aid shipments from the World Food Program.

With marauding pirates on an unprecedented rampage, delivering much-needed food aid to war-torn Somalia has become impossible without a navy escort.

A Canadian frigate shepherded a World Food Programme cargo ship carrying 4,000 tonnes of basic food goods into Mogadishu port on Thursday.

Other European countries are contributing to antipiracy efforts. According to reports from GMANews.TV, a Filipino news website, Norway dispatched a warship. Reuters reports that Spain has contributed a patrol aircraft.

The Christian Science Monitor reported last month that proceeds from piracy are helping fuel conflict inside Somalia, which hasn't had a fully functioning central government since 1991.

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Mauritania hunts militants

Mauritania hunts Al Qaeda militants

After seizing power in August, the west African country's military government faces its first big security test.

By Jonathan Adams
Christian Science Monitor
Terrorism and Security update
September 19, 2008

The Mauritanian government is on the hunt for militants who attacked a military convoy Monday, hoping to catch them before they sneak across the border into Algeria or Mali.

The cat-and-mouse game across the West African nation's vast desert areas is the first big security test for Mauritania's new military government, which seized power in an Aug. 6 coup that overthrew the country's first democratically elected president.

The Algeria-based Al Qaeda franchise, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, claimed responsibility for Monday's attack, in which militants ambushed soldiers, seizing 12.

The US has offered funds and training to Mauritania to help it fight the Al Qaeda-linked group, but cut such aid after the coup.

Agence France-Presse (AFP) quoted a Mauritanian lawmaker as saying the military was confident it would catch the attackers by blocking desert transit points and using air reconnaissance.

While Mauritanian security sources originally said 12 soldiers had been killed in the ambush, they now say the men are likely hostages, AFP reported the lawmaker as saying:

"The 12 men, including a captain, are in the hands of the criminals who would undoubtedly try to use them as cover in their escape and for possible ransom demands," [the lawmaker] said.

Experts say the attackers are likely only to be able to travel at night and would have needed at least five days to reach the border with Algeria or Mali.

If that's correct, the militants would not be able to reach the border until Saturday at the earliest.

Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb has claimed responsibility for killing 15 Mauritanian soldiers in a 2005 raid, killing four soldiers and four French tourists in December 2007, and attacking the Israeli Embassy in Mauritania last February.

After the Aug. 6 coup, the group called for a full-scale "holy war" to turn Mauritania – seen as a US ally in the global war on terror – into an Islamic state.

Reuters reported that Monday's attack has renewed concerns that the militants could destabilize the region.

The latest ambush has revived fears that Al Qaeda's North Africa branch, which has carried out bloody bomb attacks in the Maghreb, may be extending its operations further southwards into sub-Saharan Africa, which is a source of crude oil to the West.

Western donors like the United States and Europe, which have condemned the coup against Abdallahi, had been supporting the civilian official Mauritanian president in his efforts to tackle what appeared to be a growing threat of Islamic extremist violence.

IRIN, a United Nations information network, reported that the European Union, US government, and The World Bank has cut off or threatened to stop US$500 million in non-humanitarian aid to Mauritania in protest of the Aug. 6 military coup. Some of those funds were earmarked for counterterrorism and military training to help Mauritania fight the militants.

In a commentary in the Middle East Times, Olivier Guitta noted that in Mauritania, American efforts to promote democracy are now at odds with its goal of rolling back Islamic terrorism.

Mr. Guitta argued that the Mauritanian military ousted the country's president, Sheikh Sidi Ould Abdallahi, in part because they saw him as too soft on Islamic terrorists. He wrote that many Mauritanians blamed Abdallahi for allowing the country's security situation to deteriorate from "bad to worse."

One example of Abdallahi's misguided policies: releasing Islamic militants from prison. According to Guitta, several well-known militants freed by Abdallahi were later linked to the December 2007 killings of the four French tourists.

Guitta observed that the US and Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb both condemned the August coup, but for sharply different reasons.

Weirdly enough, at about the same time, the U.S. and France both forcefully condemned the coup, calling the new regime illegitimate and suspended their non-humanitarian help, which actually included financial support to fight the war against radical Islam.

The fact that al-Qaida and some Western nations agree over the new Mauritanian regime should make the U.S. and French diplomacy review their troubling assessment of the situation. This all the more so that North Africa has become a very important battlefield for al-Qaida and that Mauritania, a vast and sparsely populated (three million), has always been the soft underbelly of the region.

In a commentary in TheChristian Science Monitor, Caroline Baxter argued that the US had not given the country's emerging democratic regime enough support.

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