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| EU
ships deploying for anti-piracy mission BRUSSELS - A European Union flotilla is deploying five days early to waters off the Horn of Africa, determined to combat piracy amid growing alarm over attacks on international shipping. On Dec. 15, four EU warships and two maritime reconnaissance aircraft will replace the four-vessel NATO flotilla that has been conducting anti-piracy patrols off the Somali coast, EU foreign ministers announced yesterday during their monthly meeting. EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana called it "a very important mission . . . in a place in the world that everybody's looking at because of the problems related to piracy." The EU has conducted 20 peacekeeping operations so far, but this is its first naval endeavour. The task force, code named Operation Atalanta, will have the same duties as the NATO mission, including escorting ships carrying relief aid to Somalia, protecting merchant ships and deterring pirate attacks. An initial EU force will start patrolling today in the Gulf of Aden. It will be increased shortly by another aircraft and one or two more ships, officials said. Britain, France, Greece, Sweden, Spain, Belgium, and the Netherlands have agreed to contribute at least 10 warships and three reconnaissance aircraft to the one-year mission. The contingents will be rotated every three months, and at least four vessels will be on duty at all times. The vessels will be based at the Red Sea port of Djibouti and in Kenya. |
 Airborne
heroes' museum opens 09 December 2008Airborne Assault formally opened by HRH The Prince of Wales. Airborne Assault formally opened by HRH The Prince
of Wales.
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| Under
Fire, U.S. Liner Outruns Pirates Meanwhile, Security Firm Blackwater Meets With Shipping Companies To Discuss Protection Of Vesssels The cruise ship M/S Nautica, owned by Oceania Cruises, was fired upon by pirates in the Gulf of Aden, off Somalia's coast, on Sunday, Nov. 30, 2008. The liner took evasive action at flank speed and outran the pirates pursuing in two skiffs. (CBS) (CBS/AP) Pirates near Somalia chased and shot at a U.S. cruise liner with more than 1,000 people on board but failed to hijack the vessel, a maritime official said Tuesday. The liner, carrying 656 international passengers and 399 crew members, was sailing in the Gulf of Aden on Sunday, a maritime corridor patrolled by an international naval coalition, when it encountered six pirates in two speedboats. The ship's captain brought the Nautica up to flank speed (above its full cruising speed of 18.5 knots) and began evasive maneuvers. One boat managed to close within 300 yards and pirates fired upon the passenger liner with rifles, but the liner was able to outrun the smaller boats. Most of the ships hijacked by pirates have been relatively slow freighters or tankers. This attack was on a high-speed cruise ship, and that's what may have saved her, says CBS News correspondent Mark Phillips. Had the pirates been able to capture a ship full of people - and not just people, but wealthy Westerners, a lot of them presumably American - the piracy story in the Gulf of Aden may have been taken to an ominous new level. "It is very fortunate that the liner managed to escape," said Noel Choong who heads the International Maritime Bureau's piracy reporting center in Malaysia. He urged all ships to remain vigilant in the area. The Nautica is owned by Oceania Cruises Inc. The U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet, based in Bahrain, said it was aware of the failed hijacking but did not have further details. The Nautica was on a 32-day cruise from Rome to Singapore, with stops at ports in Italy, Egypt, Oman, Dubai, India, Malaysia and Thailand, the Web site said. Based on that schedule, the liner was headed from Egypt to Oman when it was attacked. International warships patrol the area and have created a security corridor in the pirate-infested waters under a U.S.-led initiative, but the attacks have not abated. The piracy problem is part of the legacy of the situation of the country. This 18 years of civil war is followed by disorder. Nur Hassan Hussein
- Prime Minister of Somalia |
| Contractors
Law WASHINGTON — The thousands of American contractors in Iraq who have been above Iraqi law since the war began are suddenly facing a new era in which their United States passports will no longer protect them from arrest and imprisonment. When the Iraqi government ratified an agreement last week setting new terms for a continued American presence in Iraq, private contractors working for the Pentagon faced the inevitability that they would be stripped of their immunity from Iraqi law. That immunity had been granted by the Coalition Provisional Authority before a postwar Iraqi government was established. Now that the contractors’ legal protection is to lapse, officials in the defense contracting industry are trying to come to grips with how their operations will change in Iraq, how many of their American employees will be sent home, and whether the weak and often corrupt Iraqi judicial system will become an impediment to recruiting Western workers. If it is approved by Iraq’s Presidency Council, as expected, the agreement will go into effect on Jan. 1. So far, no major company working in Iraq has announced plans to withdraw from the country. Some industry experts said that while the corporations would stay, they would be forced to rely much more on Iraqi employees, rather than on Americans and other foreigners who might fear working without legal protection. Spokesmen for many of the major contracting companies declined to comment on the change in legal status in Iraq, while others said it was premature to predict the impact. Some said Americans working in Iraq would be watching how the Iraqi government dealt with its new power, and would wait and see whether there were arbitrary arrests or court rulings tainted by corruption before deciding whether to stay. “I think the question of what this means for recruiting American employees is complicated,” said one official close to the contracting industry who was not authorized to speak on the record about the issue. “I think it will depend on the first case, and whether it is handled in a responsible fashion, or whether someone is left in an Iraqi jail without recourse. If that happens, word will get around, and that could have a chilling effect on recruiting.” More than 170,000 contractors now work for the military and other American agencies in Iraq, more than the total number of American troops in the country. Only about 17 percent of the contractors are Americans, according to administration figures; about half are Iraqis, and one-third are workers from third countries. The proportion of Americans could drop quickly with the loss of legal immunity. One of the biggest concerns for contractors is the lack of details on how the security agreement with Iraq will work. The legal immunity for contractors was eliminated in negotiations between the Bush administration and the Iraqi government on the agreement, which set the terms for the continued American military presence while also establishing a withdrawal date. Contractors were not involved in the talks. A major question is whether under the pact the Iraqi government will be able to prosecute Americans for past crimes. The Iraqi government’s insistence on an end to legal immunity for contractors was fueled largely by the shootings of Iraqi citizens by guards working for private security firms, including Blackwater Worldwide, which has a contract to protect United States diplomats in Baghdad. In September 2007, Blackwater security guards were involved in a shooting in downtown Baghdad in which at least 17 Iraqis were killed. After the shooting, the Iraqi government demanded that Blackwater be expelled from the country and that its guards be held accountable. Despite the protests, the State Department has continued to use Blackwater in Baghdad, although the Justice Department has been conducting a criminal investigation of the shooting. The fact that Blackwater continued to operate in Iraq contributed to the Iraqi government’s hard-line stance on the legal immunity issue in the negotiations. Whether the Iraqi government will now begin its own criminal investigation of the Blackwater shooting is unclear, administration officials and contracting industry executives said. |
 Pentagon
hires British scientist to help build robot soldiers that 'won't commit
war crimes'The American military is planning to build robot soldiers that will not be able to commit war crimes like their human comrades in arms. The Pentagon aims to develop 'ethical' robot soldiers, unlike the indiscriminate T-800 killers from the Terminator films The US Army and Navy have both hired experts in the ethics of building machines to prevent the creation of an amoral Terminator-style killing machine that murders indiscriminately. By 2010 the US will have invested $4 billion in a research programme into "autonomous systems", the military jargon for robots, on the basis that they would not succumb to fear or the desire for vengeance that afflicts frontline soldiers. A British robotics expert has been recruited by the US Navy to advise them on building robots that do not violate the Geneva Conventions. Colin Allen, a scientific philosopher at Indiana University's has just published a book summarising his views entitled Moral Machines: Teaching Robots Right From Wrong. He told The Daily Telegraph: "The question they want answered is whether we can build automated weapons that would conform to the laws of war. Can we use ethical theory to help design these machines?" Pentagon chiefs are concerned by studies of combat stress in Iraq that show high proportions of frontline troops supporting torture and retribution against enemy combatants. Ronald Arkin, a computer scientist at Georgia Tech university, who is working on software for the US Army has written a report which concludes robots, while not "perfectly ethical in the battlefield" can "perform more ethically than human soldiers." He says that robots "do not need to protect themselves" and "they can be designed without emotions that cloud their judgment or result in anger and frustration with ongoing battlefield events". Airborne drones are already used in Iraq and Afghanistan to launch air strikes against militant targets and robotic vehicles are used to disable roadside bombs and other improvised explosive devices. Last month the US Army took delivery of a new robot built by an American subsidiary of the British defence company QinetiQ, which can fire everything from bean bags and pepper spray to high-explosive grenades and a 7.62mm machine gun. But this generation of robots are all remotely operated by humans. Researchers are now working on "soldier bots" which would be able to identify targets, weapons and distinguish between enemy forces like tanks or armed men and soft targets like ambulances or civilians. Their software would be embedded with rules of engagement conforming with the Geneva Conventions to tell the robot when to open fire. Dr Allen applauded the decision to tackle the ethical dilemmas at an early stage. "It's time we started thinking about the issues of how to take ethical theory and build it into the software that will ensure robots act correctly rather than wait until it's too late," he said. "We already have computers out there that are making decisions that affect people's lives but they do it in an ethically blind way. Computers decide on credit card approvals without any human involvement and we're seeing it in some situations regarding medical care for the elderly," a reference to hospitals in the US that use computer programmes to help decide which patients should not be resuscitated if they fall unconscious. Dr Allen said the US military wants fully autonomous robots because they currently use highly trained manpower to operate them. "The really expensive robots are under the most human control because they can't afford to lose them," he said. "It takes six people to operate a Predator drone round the clock. I know the Air Force has developed software, which they claim is to train Predator operators. But if the computer can train the human it could also ultimately fly the drone itself." Some are concerned that it will be impossible to devise robots that avoid mistakes, conjuring up visions of machines killing indiscriminately when they malfunction, like the robot in the film Robocop. Noel Sharkey, a computer scientist at Sheffield University, best known for his involvement with the cult television show Robot Wars, is the leading critic of the US plans. He says: "It sends a cold shiver down my spine. I have worked in artificial intelligence for decades, and the idea of a robot making decisions about human termination is terrifying." |
| Taliban
chief dressed as woman shot US-led coalition troops killed a Taliban commander dressed as a woman during a raid in southern Afghanistan, the military said. Soldiers killed four Taliban fighters in Friday's operation, including the Taliban commander named Haji Yakub who was dressed as a woman to evade capture, the US military said. Yakub directed roadside bomb and suicide attacks against Afghanistan's government and coalition forces in Ghazni province, according to the US statement. Meanwhile, Afghan and coalition forces killed 33 militants when their patrol came under attack in southern Helmand province, a military said. The troops responded to the attack with small-arms fire and air support. In the Ghazni raid, the US said coalition forces discovered Yakub as they questioned a group of women and children inside a compound. The Taliban commander was dressed in a burqa, a traditional robe that covers the entire body. He was killed when he "attempted to engage the force", the statement said. |
 Britons
escape from hijacked shipWarships from various countries patrol the Gulf of Aden to help out in international anti-piracy efforts. Somali pirates hijacked a chemical tanker with dozens of Indian crew members on board, and three British security guards were rescued by helicopter after jumping into the sea, officials said. A warship on patrol nearby had sent helicopters to intervene in the attack, but they arrived after pirates had taken control of the Liberian-flagged ship, diplomatic officials said. Still on board were 25 Indian and two Bangladeshi crew members, after the British security guards escaped by jumping into the water, the diplomats said. It was the 97th vessel to be attacked this year off Somalia, where an Islamic insurgency and lack of effective government have helped facilitate an increase in pirate attacks in the Gulf of Aden. The ship was being operated out of Singapore, according to Noel Choong, head of the International Maritime Bureau's piracy reporting centre in Malaysia. The ship master had sent a distress call to the centre, which relayed the alert to international forces that have been policing Somali waters this year, Choong said. There were no immediate details about how the pirates attacked or the condition of the crew. Pirates have become increasingly brazen in the Gulf, a major international shipping lane through which some 20 tankers sail daily. So far this year, 97 ships have been attacked and 40 hijacked, including the seizure of a Saudi supertanker loaded with 100 million dollars worth of crude oil earlier this month. Pirates demanding multimillion-dollar ransoms are currently holding 15 ships, with nearly 300 crew, Choong said. Warships from Denmark, India, Malaysia, Russia, the US and Nato have started patrolling the vast maritime corridor, escorting some merchant ships and responding to distress calls. |
| Marines
killed in Afghanistan Two Royal Marines have been killed by insurgents in Afghanistan, the Ministry of Defence has said. The servicemen, from 42 Commando Royal Marines, were taking part in a foot patrol north-west of the town of Lashkar Gah in the southern area of the Helmand province when they came under sustained enemy fire. Next of kin have been informed and have asked for a period of grace before more details are released. Commander Paula Rowe, spokeswoman for Task Force Helmand, said: "The loss of these two Royal Marines has come as a bitter and tragic blow to everyone in Task Force Helmand. "While words cannot ease their devastation, our heartfelt condolences go out to their families, friends and comrades at this most painful time." The incident comes just three days after another Marine, Alexander Lucas, 24, from Arbroath-based 45 Commando, was killed by a roadside bomb in the Kajaki area of Helmand. On November 12 two other Marines, Robert McKibben and Neil Dunstan, died during a patrol in Garmsir district of Southern Helmand. Their vehicle was hit by an explosive device as they patrolled with Afghan security forces. Thursday's attack brings the total number of British service personnel killed in Afghanistan since the start of operations in 2001 to 128. |
