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From: YPFDJ Media & Info (media@youngpfdj.com)
Date: Tue May 17 2011 - 09:55:14 EDT
Caught Red Handed; British Assassins in the Horn of Africa
by Thomas C. Mountain
May 17, 2011
http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2011/05/17/caught-red-handed-british-ass
assins-in-the-horn-of-africa/
In early February of this year, 2011, a six man squad of British mercenaries
were caught red handed in the midst of preparing an attempt to assassinate
the top leadership of the Eritrean government in the port city of Massawa on
the Red Sea.
Of the six, four were apprehended and two managed to escape, abandoning
their mates while blazing out of Massawa Bay into the Red Sea in an
inflatable speed boat, never to be seen again by Eritrean eyes.
A search of the vessel they arrived on uncovered a cache of tools of the
assassin's trade. Included was a small arsenal of automatic weapons, a
sophisticated satellite communications system, state of the art electronic
targetrange finders, and most damning, several sniper rifles.
All of those arrested have since been confirmed as employees of a British
"security" firm akin to the notorious US company Blackwater/Xe. At least two
of the four are former British Special Forces. As in the case of Raymond
Davis, the CIA killer caught in the act in Pakistan, the British Foreign
Office has been claiming Geneva Convention protections for these gun thugs
all but confirming their being on an official mission for the British
Government.
Their arrest took place just a few hundred yards from our Red Sea home in
Massawa, and happened while we were there. In the weeks and months that
followed, each time I have driven by that spot, I have felt a sick feeling
in my stomach, for the salt embankment they were hiding behind has an
unobstructed view of the site where just a few days later all the top
leadership of the Eritrean government would be gathering for the annual
outdoor celebration of the 1990 capture of the Port of Massawa by Eritrean
liberation fighters.
These professional killers were discovered almost by accident by a woman
taking a shortcut home through an adjacent out-of-service salt flat. The
woman noticed, as all good Eritreans should, that sa'ada, white people, were
taking photos (with telephoto lenses) somewhere they were not allowed.
These Brit "diplomats" took their sweet time scoping out their firing points
and parameters of their potential killing field for their discoverer had to
walk almost a mile to the nearest police station to report this and then the
police had to drive the roundabout route to the spot in question.
But for the vigilance of one Eritrean woman, Eritrea might have experienced
an unthinkable disaster, the loss of Eritrea's President and only god knows
how many of Eritrea's top leaders.
This is not the first time I have written about an attempt to assassinate
Eritrea'sleadership. In 2002 and 2003, I wrote of how during the western
backed Ethiopian invasion of Eritrea in 2000, a series of long range
artillery attacks destroyed Eritrean front line command centers within
minutes of President/Commander-in-Chief Issias Aferworki departure. In one
case, there is strong evidence that a missile caused the destruction, and if
this is true, it is almost certain to have been launched by a U.S. Fighter
aircraft at high altitude.
Again, the question must be asked, why would the west want to kill Eritrea's
leaders?
Maybe it's because Eritrea's economy is once again about to don the mantle
of the fastest growing economy in Africa, and this without significant
western aid projects or predatory loans from the IMF and World Bank.
More likely it's the fact Eritrea has long been a thorn in the side of
western attempts to dominate the Horn of Africa, one of the most
strategically important regions in the world. With some 40% of the world
maritime traffic passing Eritrean shores every day, including much of the
world's oil and the entire tradebetween China, Japan and India with the EU,
the Horn of Africa may not be of concern to the average westerner, but those
in power in western capitals know better.
The policy of the USA and its western allies is one of "crisis management"
here in Africa. The west creates a crisis and then manages, or exploits the
war and chaos that follows, to divide and conquer, the better to loot and
plunder the natural and human resources of a region.
Eritrea has been the main obstacle to the western implementation of this
policy in the Horn of Africa, and this explains this desperate attempt to
assassinate Eritrea's leadership.
The saying is "that all roads to peace in the Horn of Africa run through
Asmara [Eritrea]" and I have witnessed firsthand its truth. Peace in Sudan
was born and nurtured here in Asmara, first in Eastern Sudan, then with the
South, and now the ongoing Dafur peace efforts.
A grand attempt was made here in Asmara to reconstitute a new government in
Somalia, though this was sabotaged by the west and its Ethiopian enforcers.
The denizens of the intelligence offices in the west responsible for Africa
remember all too well how, a short two decades ago, it was a rag tag, afro
coifed army of Eritrean guerilla fighters driving captured Ethiopian tanks
that smashed their way across northern Ethiopia, drove the dictator Mengistu
from power, and brought peace to Ethiopia for the first time in 30 years.
This past year I have witnessed a disparate collection of leaders of far
flung ethnic based Ethiopian guerilla fighters gathering here in Asmara,
beginning to build a consensus on how to construct a new, national unity
government to help keep the peace in Ethiopia once the Meles Zenawi regime
is driven from power.
All of this is the main threat to the west's implementing its policy of
"crisis management" in the Horn of Africa.
With its empire in decline, suffering defeat after defeat, unable even to
drive Muammar Gaddafi from power despite the combined airpower of most of
NATO's European members, one would be wise to expect ever more desperate
measures from the western regimes.
The western elite may loudly preach about the rule of law, but reality is
that international law is the law of the jungle where only the strong
survive. Eritrea is not only surviving, but ever so slowly growing stronger
and more influential every day, which should help explain why British
mercenaries brought their assassins tools to Eritrean shores.
Note: Some of the information in this article comes from the
independent.co.uk, including the employment confirmation of the British
mercenaries, their background, and the British Foreign Office claims of
Geneva Convention protections for them. First hand interviews with Eritreans
directly involved are the basis for the rest of the story.
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