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Jonathan Paris Discusses Syrian Crisis with France 24
Jonathan Paris, nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council's South Asia Center, appeared on France 24 to discuss Russia's support for the Assad regime and what it means for a possible UN resolution against Syria.
Damon Wilson US Senate Testimony: Ukraine at a Crossroads
On February 1, Atlantic Council executive vice president Damon Wilson testified at a hearing of the US Senate Committe on Foreign Relations on the topic: "Ukraine at a Crossroads: What's at Stake for the US and Europe?"
Michele Dunne on US-Egypt Relations for NPR's Morning Edition
Relations between the US and Egypt have taken a downturn since Egyptian authorities raided the offices of seventeen nongovernmental organizations in December - three of them US-funded. Michele Dunne, director of the Atlantic Council's Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East, spoke on NPR's Morning Edition about the situation and what it means for US aid to Egypt.
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Somali Pirates Strike Again
Peter Cassata | November 18, 2008Somali pirates struck again over the weekend in the Gulf of Aden, this time seizing a Saudi oil tanker in a major escalation of the piracy threat. FT writes:
Pirates operating off the coast of east Africa have hijacked a Saudi supertanker fully laden with an estimated 2m barrels of oil in an attack that marks a significant escalation in the scope of banditry in the region.
The pirates, believed to be from lawless Somalia, seized control of the Sirius Star, which is owned by Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest oil company, on Saturday, 450 nautical miles south-east of the Kenyan Indian Ocean port of Mombasa.
It is estimated that the tanker was holding more than a quarter of the daily exports from Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil exporter. The oil would have been worth about $100m (€79m, £66.5m) at Monday’s market price but is probably of little interest to the pirates.
WSJ calls the attack the "first significant disruption of crude shipments." The Times reports that the crew of 25 is made up of two UK nationals as well as workers from Saudi Arabia, the Philippines, Croatia, and Poland, adding that the tanker "is not only the largest ship to be captured but the farthest from the Somali shoreline."
According to the WSJ, "Pirates off the Somalia coast have attacked 26 vessels and taken hostage 537 crew members in the three months ended Sept. 30, according to the International Maritime Bureau (IMB), a maritime-crimes watchdog." (See Tags: Somali Pirates, The Challenge of Somali Piracy.) However, according to the Guardian,
The U.S. Navy said that shipping firms were partly to blame for the hijackings. Vice Admiral Bill Gortney, commander of the Combined Maritime Forces, said that 10 out of 15 of the most recent attacks around Somalia involved ships that had ignored the IMB's advice to stay about 250 miles away from the coast or had failed to employ security guards on board.
This incident is important for a couple reasons. First, ships must follow the IMB's suggestions; this should be a no-brainer. Second, the hijacking will perhaps give impetus to the new anti-piracy force created by NATO, which now has citizens of its own member states being held hostage.
