PIRACY STUDIES. British ex-servicemen battling to protect international shipping from Somali pirates. By Charlotte Eagar UPDATED: 14:49 GMT, 20 December 2011 Frenchwoman Evelyne Colombo being held hostage in a pirate skiff on September 10, prior to her rescue.
Arguably the greatest threat to world security at the moment is the epidemic in piracy off the Horn of Africa As the sun beat down on the deck, the four ex-SAS marine-security guards nervously scanned the Gulf of Aden. The rusty grain carrier they were protecting had almost completed its perilous short hop from Oman to Djibouti. Minutes earlier, the Djibouti police had boarded the ship to take charge of their AK-47s, because they were in Djibouti waters without the correct permits. ‘Fifteen minutes after the Djibouti police took our weapons, over the horizon came a whole load of fishing boats,’ says Matt, who served in the SAS before leaving 20 years ago to work in the highly secretive – and lucrative – ex-special-forces industry known as ‘The Circuit’.
‘About 25 of them: a flotilla. ‘Frankly it was just pure luck,’ says Matt. Al-Qaeda switching tactics, CSIS warns. As many as 60 Canadians have journeyed abroad to train as al-Qaeda terrorists, this country’s spy chief revealed as he sounded a warning over the group’s shift to a much harder to detect “lone-wolf” style of attack.
Richard Fadden, director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, also acknowledged Monday that al-Qaeda’s switch to a sole-actor approach to inflicting damage is presenting a problem for Western anti-terrorist agencies. “This really makes things very complicated for us,” he told a Senate committee. He said this lone-wolf approach tends to attract individuals driven by ideology as well as “serious personal problems,” a combination that makes them more unpredictable.
Mr. Fadden was speaking in favour of a new Harper government bill that aims to thwart budding Canadian terrorists who wish to visit foreign training camps. He said he’s worried about the consequences for Canada if these would-be terrorists return home after acquiring the skills needed to cause havoc. Mr. Mr. Inside the Navy SEALs' Hunt For Al Qaeda. As the dust settled in the wake of 9/11, the only thing clear was that the United States was facing a new type of combat, and that our nation’s enemies were hiding out in the remote mountains of Afghanistan.
Into this new climate, Brandon Webb and his fellow Navy SEALs embarked on one of the most critical missions in the War on Terror. By January 2002, Webb and company had penetrated deep into enemy territory, where they found a terror camp unlike any seen before. Inside the hunt for Al Qaeda. From The Red Circle: My Life in the Navy SEAL Sniper Corps and How I Trained America’s Deadliest Marksmen, by Brandon Webb | Licensed to Alpha Media Group 2012 Shortly after New Year’s Day 2002, my fellow SEALs and I learned we would be going on a mission to the province of Khost in Afghanistan, a few hundred miles northeast of Kandahar and nestled in the mountains right up against the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.