Maersk Alabama repels Somali pirates in second attack
By Scott Baldauf | 11.18.09
JOHANNESBURG - You know the Somali pirate season is in full swing when the same ship gets attacked twice in a single year.
The US-flagged Maersk Alabama – most recently attacked by pirates seven months ago, and rescued by US Navy Seals – was attacked today by Somali pirates using automatic weapons 350 miles east of the Somali coast. Guards posted on board repelled the attack, and European Union naval patrols swung into action to locate the pirates.
A European Union Naval Force spokesman said that it was not unusual for ships to be attacked twice in the waters off the Somali coast, and credited the presence of armed guards for preventing the pirates from taking control of the ship. “At least this time they had a vessel protection detachment on board who were able to repel the attack,” Captain John Harbour told the Associated Press.
Pirate attacks have been on the upswing for more than a month, now that the monsoon storm season in the Indian Ocean and Arabian Sea has ended. Just this week, pirates have attacked and boarded a North Korean-crewed freight ship, and pirates released a Spanish fishing trawler after payment of a reported $3.3 million. (Editor’s note: This has been corrected from an earlier version that described the ship as “North Korean-flagged.”)
Piracy has been a major problem along the Somali coast for nearly 20 years, since the fall of that country’s last functioning government in 1991, and its descent into anarchy. But as ransoms became more profitable, pirates have gotten more sophisticated, using mother ships and GPS devices to venture as far as the Seychelles Islands to carry out their attacks.
The Maersk Alabama is not the first commercial ship to use armed guards to repel pirate attacks. The Italian flagged MSC Melody – a cruise ship with 1,500 passengers en route from Durban, South Africa to Genoa, Italy – repelled a pirate attack in April 180 miles north of the Seychelles Islands. A skiff with six apparently Somali pirates fired some 200 rounds at the Melody. A team of Israeli armed guards fired into the air, while ship crew members used fire hoses against the pirates attempting to climb aboard the ship.
Some owners have resisted putting armed guards on ships, arguing that pirates will always be better armed and are likely to continue using their weapons on board, increasing the likelihood that crew members will be injured or killed.
In most cases, pirates leave the crew members of hijacked ships unharmed, experts on Somali piracy say, but their tactics could become more brutal if commercial ships start fighting back.
For more on piracy, check out: Pirates, Inc. Inside the booming Somali business
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Russia’s Vladimir Putin invites rappers to Vancouver Olympics
By Julie Masis | 11.17.09
At times, it seems like Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is vying with the guy from that commercial for the title of “most interesting man in the world.” Whether its bare-chested horseback rides across the steppes, fishing in icy streams, diving to the depths of Lake Baikal in a tiny submersible or tranquilizer-darting a 500 pound Siberian tiger for research purposes, there’s little he won’t try.
But last week the powerfully built former judo champion and KGB agent went well outside his comfort zone, clapping along and handing out awards on Russian Muz TV’s “Battle for Respect” contest for Russian rappers, graffiti artists, and break-dancers. (Russia’s Ria Novosti has video of Mr. Putin grooving to Rick James’s “Super Freak.”)
The former Russian president made a surprise appearance on the show to promote a drug-free lifestyle among youth. A visibly stiff Putin seemed out of his element (he was one of few over 20 years old in the room) but smiled as the event wore on. He got a round after round of applause from the crowd – especially after he invited the winners of the rap, graffiti and break-dancing contests to the Olympic games in Vancouver.
But Russian and Western media covered his TV appearance quite differently. When reporters from Western news organizations saw Mr. Putin standing with teenagers, they could not get beyond what he was wearing. Surrounded by long-haired rappers with baggy pants, earrings, and t-shirts, Putin ditched his suit and tie for a turtleneck.
“The Russian prime minister’s latest foray into the unlikely milieu of rap, break dancing and graffiti art has left him looking less than slick,” declared Britain’s Daily Telegraph. “Dressed in a polo-neck jumper and a sports jacket, Mr. Putin, 57, looked distinctly awkward among a crowd of head-bobbling hand-waving teenagers.”
ABC News was similarly blunt about Putin’s attire: “Dressed in a decidedly unhip-hop white turtleneck and zip-up jacket” is how the writer started his second sentence.
Western news organizations, including Reuters, ABC, and the Telegraph, considered the event from the point of view of Putin’s ratings - and their conclusions were negative. ABC News notes that, while still popular, Putin’s approval rating has fallen slightly in the past few months, and says his TV appearance may have been an attempt to boost his sagging ratings.
The Telegraph described the Russian leader as “embarrassed looking” and said he “was doing his best to show he knew what he called ‘mass youth culture.’ ” It quoted a news source that called his appearance on the show “a desperate move.”
But Russian newspapers could not have disagreed more.
The Russian news agency RIA Novosti said that young people greeted Putin with “deafening applause” and quoted the prime minister thanking the audience for “such a warm welcome.” Russian news website MIGnews.com stated that Putin impressed those gathered in the room with his wide knowledge of hip-hop. The Russian government’s Rossiyskaya Gazeta said that Putin “understood the language” of youth. It called his appearance on the show “a mind-blowing success.”
Russian stories did not mention Putin’s popularity ratings, but described in detail the prizes that he bestowed on contest winners – a backpack with spray-paint for the graffiti artist, a boom box for the best break-dancer, and a microphone for the rapper, in addition to invitations to the 2010 Olympic games in Vancouver so they can continue using popular music to promote a drug-free, alcohol-free, and smoke-free lifestyle. These details were absent from Western stories, but were in the tops of several Russian articles.
The Russian press also had a different opinion about Putin’s attire.
MIGNews.com described the prime minister’s turtleneck as “fashionable,” while Komsomolskaya Pravda regretted only that Putin’s jacket did not have a hip-hop-style hood.
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Who is Ignace Murwanashyaka?
By Scott Baldauf | 11.17.09
Ignace Murwanashyaka was arrested Tuesday, Nov. 17 in Karlsruhe, Germany. He was charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Eastern Congo, German prosecutors said.
Murwanashyaka is the 46-year-old self-proclaimed president of the Rwandan Hutu rebel movement, the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (known by its French acronym, the FDLR). The FDLR are made up of former Rwandan army members and members of the radical militia Interahamwe, who are blamed for the 1994 Rwandan genocide, which killed 800,000 Rwandans, most of them members of the Tutsi minority.
Before 2005, Murwanashyaka traveled between Germany – where he had residence with his German wife – and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) city of Lubumbashi, where he served as president of the newly formed FDLR. Travel bans placed on him by the United Nations, for violating arms embargoes into the DRC, prevented Murwanashyaka from traveling back to Germany, although he did manage to return to Germany in 2006 with the help of a newly acquired Ugandan passport.
Rwanda and the United Nations have put pressure on Germany to arrest and extradite Murwanashyaka for years, because of the FDLR’s violent control of vast areas of the eastern regions of the Democratic Republic of Congo, especially in North and South Kivu. German authorities have resisted extraditing Murwanashyaka to Rwanda, arguing that he wouldn’t receive a fair trial. German officials didn’t want to try him in Germany, because there was little evidence linking the FDLR leader to the Rwandan genocide. Murwanashyaka became the FDLR leader in 2001. The Rwandan genocide took place in 1994.
German prosecutors arrested Murwanashyaka Tuesday for crimes allegedly committed between January 2008 and July 2009. “The accused are strongly suspected, as members of the foreign terrorist organization FDLR, of committing crimes against humanity and war crimes,” said German federal prosecutors in a statement.
Human rights activists say the FDLR has carried out a deliberate campaign of terror against Congolese citizens, as a result of a major military operation begun in January to dislodge them from the DRC.
FDLR soldiers – estimated to number around 5,000 at the start of 2009 – have long controlled lucrative mines for tin and coltan, the metal used for cell phones and computer motherboards.
Could Murwanashyaka’s arrest bring an end to the Congo conflict? Click here for a fuller story.
Or check out: Legacy of Rwanda’s genocide: more assertive international justice
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Walking tour traces Czech Velvet Revolution against Communism
By Jacy Meyer | 11.17.09
• A local, slice-of-life story from a Monitor correspondent.
PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC – “I wasn’t nervous, but curious, and I was proud of so many people.”
So begins a walking tour with Vladimir Hanzel, following the route of the historic students’ march in Prague on Nov. 17, 1989, after the fall of the Berlin Wall. This march was the first event of the country’s so-called Velvet Revolution that led to the end of Communism here. Mr. Hanzel, a music journalist by profession at the time, had earlier that year become personal secretary to Václav Havel, who would become the last president of Czechoslovakia. Hanzel had participated in demonstrations before, but this one amazed him – not only in size but for its youthful faces.
About 10,000 people began the rally. Five thousand made the decision to push toward the city center. “Demonstrators were shouting, ‘Czechs, join with us!’ and people in pubs, cafes, even apartments, they could hear it and they really came to us and the number kept growing,” Hanzel said.
People came to windows and balconies to wave and show their support as the mass of people made its way along the Vltava River, past the National Theater, and on to Národní Street, where rows of riot police blocked the way. Students passively met commands to turn around by offering flowers. The police responded with beatings. Nearly 170 people were injured. A short six weeks later, the regime had fallen and playwright Václav Havel was elected by parliament as the new president.
With Communist governments toppling around them, and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev encouraging reform, change was in the air. Hanzel says he believes the regime would have fallen eventually.
Today, just two small plaques commemorate where the march began and finished. And even Hanzel is surprised by details when he reads his diary from that time. He doesn’t think anyone who showed up that Friday night 20 years ago could comprehend how their evening would end. “I don’t think anyone knew that at the end of this march would be the start of the end of the regime.”
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Why Russia is stalling progress on Iran nuclear plant
By Fred Weir | 11.17.09
MOSCOW – Russia may be starting to lose patience with its wayward Middle Eastern partner Iran, with delays mounting in the delivery of long-established contracts to provide sophisticated weaponry and civilian nuclear technology to the Islamic Republic.
“Russia is sympathetic to Iran, but it’s also pragmatic,” says Yevgeny Satanovsky, president of the independent Institute of Near East Studies in Moscow. “Moscow did not agree to be used by the Iranians as an umbrella to protect it from fallout for its irresponsible nuclear policies or its adventurism in other parts of the Middle East. Russia isn’t going to be patient forever.”
Russian Energy Minister Sergei Smatko announced Monday that there will be yet another delay in the completion of Bushehr, a $1-billion civilian atomic power plant that Russia’s state-owed Atomstroyexport has been building in southern Iran since 1995. The contract is regarded in Moscow as an important part of the country’s plan to become a major global supplier of nuclear services.
That latest delay comes on top of Russia’s unexplained refusal to fulfill a two-year-old contract to supply advanced S-300 air defense systems to Iran; Iran claims the first deliveries are now more than six months overdue.
“This is not about politics,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov insisted Tuesday in response to media speculation that the Bushehr delay was calculated to compel Iran to be more agreeable in talks about its alleged drive to obtain nuclear weapons. “Technological issues are being addressed.”
The project has been hit with delays for years now. Moscow began sending nuclear fuel for the plant in 2007 and, following several previous postponements, Russia’s top nuclear official Sergei Kiriyenko pledged last February that Bushehr would open by the end of 2009.
But the Russians are now wringing their hands and suggesting that technical problems at the plant, which was originally designed by the German Siemens company in the 1970s, are multiplying and could force further holdups.
This combined with Moscow’s failure to fulfill the S-300 contract has Iranian leaders fearing that previously reliable Russian trade ties and political support may be evaporating.
“If we wait another 200 years, the Russians will not complete the plant,” news agencies quoted Iranian lawmaker Mahmoud Ahmadi Bighash as saying Tuesday. “The Russians have never told the truth.”
The Iranians appear especially upset over the delivery delays with the S-300, an advanced missile system that can take down high-flying aircraft at a range of nearly 100 miles. Together with the short-range Tor-M1 anti-aircraft missiles that Russia supplied two years ago the new rockets could make Iran feel immune to military threats and therefore more stubborn in its resistance to international pressure over its nuclear program, experts say.
“The S-300 would be used to defend Iranian nuclear sites, and that would greatly complicate the situation,” says Mr. Satanovsky. “So Russia is sending a clear signal to Iran by withholding delivery of these weapons.”
Moscow has long differed with the US over how to deal with Iran. But Russian President Dmitri Medvedev, who had his fourth face-to-face meeting with US President Barack Obama on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Singapore on Sunday, has suggested that Moscow is increasingly unhappy with Iran’s conduct in international negotiations over its nuclear program.
“Over the past few weeks, Iran has shown a lot of obstinacy and intractability and this irritates Russian authorities,” says Vladimir Sazhin, an expert with the official Institute of Oriental Studies in Moscow. “Our president has more than once indicated that Russia could join a tough sanctions regime.”
The Kremlin has often argued that its role as friend and arms supplier affords it unique leverage over Tehran that could make Russia an indispensable mediator between Iran and the West. But some experts wonder whether Russian businesses, including powerful state nuclear and arms-export monopolies, have been letting their commercial interests trump political wisdom.
“I think Russia is at a crossroads where it really wants to join together with the US, because Iranian policies are so unpredictable,” says Alexei Malashenko, an expert with the Carnegie Center in Moscow. “But military cooperation is a big deal and the arms industries are very strong. At this point, President Dmitri Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin may be clinging to Russia’s special position vis à vis Iran mainly as a way of saving face,” he argues.
