FROM SPYING CALLS TO economic POLICIES...

31 October 2013 Last updated at 02:31 GMT

US criticises Germany and China policies

 

The US Treasury has blamed Germany's export-led growth model for dragging down eurozone

The US has criticised Germany's economic policies, saying that its export-led growth model is hurting the eurozone and the wider global economy.

In its biannual report, the US Treasury said that domestic demand growth in Germany had been "anaemic".
It also reiterated its view that the Chinese yuan, continues to remain "significantly undervalued".
The report has criticised Chinese policy before, but criticism of German economic policy is rarer.
"Germany's anaemic pace of domestic demand growth and dependence on exports have hampered rebalancing at a time when many other euro area countries have been under severe pressure to curb demand and compress imports in order to promote adjustment," the Treasury said.
"The net result has been a deflationary bias for the euro area as well as for the world economy."
'Bit strange' Germany is eurozone's largest economy has been one of its key drivers of growth in recent years.

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It is better for eurozone to have a highly concentrated, efficient and skilled export powerhouse in Germany than not have any major engine of growth”

Tony Nash IHS

Its importance to the 17-nation bloc has only increased since the development of the region's debt crisis, which has impacted other bigger economies such as Italy and Spain.

It has been one of Europe's stronger economic performers and its exports prowess is seen as one of its key strengths.
The country narrowly avoided recession earlier this year, but GDP in the second quarter of 2013 was driven up by demand from both consumers and businesses.
Analysts said that while Germany could benefit from boosting domestic demand, the criticism levied on its policies was unfair.
"I think this is a bit strange," Tony Nash, vice president at IHS, told the BBC. "The eurozone has to get growth from somewhere and Germany is the most likely place for that to happen."
"And it is better for eurozone to have a highly concentrated, efficient and skilled export powerhouse in Germany than not have any major engine of growth," he added.
Yuan concerns In recent years, the US and many other economies have alleged that China tries to keep the value of its currency artificially low.
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US Dollar v Chinese Yuan

Last Updated at 31 Oct 2013, 07:06 GMT

$1 buys	change	%
6.0920	- -0.00	- -0.03

They say that, by doing so, Beijing gives an unfair advantage to its exporters as an undervalued currency makes its good cheaper to foreign buyers.

For its part, China has been looking to loosen its grip on the currency as it looks to push for a more global role for the yuan.
But Beijing has maintained that a sudden an sharp appreciation in the value of the yuan will hurt its overall economy.
The yuan has risen nearly 12% against the US dollar since June 2010.
While the Treasury acknowledged that the yuan had been rising, it said the appreciation was "not as fast or by as much as is needed".
"On the other hand, the evidence that China has resumed large-scale purchases of foreign exchange this year, despite having accumulated reserves that are more than sufficient by any measure, is suggestive of actions that are impeding market determination and a currency that is significantly undervalued," it added.
However, the report did not label China as a currency manipulator.

29 October 2013 Last updated at 00:34 GMT

Spying scandal: Will the 'five eyes' club open up?

By Gordon Corera Security correspondent, BBC News

 

 Germany has suggested it may seek a no-spy deal with the US, whose embassy is beside Brandenburg Gate

The 'five eyes' club was born out of Britain and America's tight-knit intelligence partnership in World War II and particularly the work at Bletchley Park, breaking both German and Japanese codes.

Code-breakers realised collaboration helped in overcoming some of the technical challenges and in being able to intercept communications around the world.
Out of this experience came what was first called BRUSA and then rechristened UKUSA - a top secret intelligence-sharing alliance signed in March 1946.
The details of the original agreement were classified for decades but were finally revealed in 2010 when files were released by both countries.
The arrangement is described as "without parallel in the Western intelligence world".
Soon after the beginning of the Cold War, GCHQ and the NSA were born and the alliance formed the basis of their extremely tight co-operation during the Cold War - the real heart of what has been known as "the special relationship".
The club was also expanded to include three other English-speaking countries - Canada, Australia and New Zealand and so became known as the "five eyes".
So how does this club work? It is based on sharing with each other and not spying on each other.
The US and UK human intelligence services (the CIA and MI6) do not run operations inside the other's country without permission, but while the CIA and MI6 do share information they are not nearly as closely intertwined as their counterparts GCHQ and NSA. They deal in what is known as signals intelligence, which deals with communications.
Under UKUSA, they share nearly - but not quite - everything, and do not target each other's nationals without permission.

 

 The White House admits that the recent disclosures about US spying have caused diplomatic tension with America's allies

One document leaked by the fugitive Edward Snowden reveals that the protection extends when intelligence is shared with other countries outside the club (so called "third parties", a "second party" being any other member of the club).

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One general rule about intelligence is that the more a secret is shared, the less secret it becomes”

An agreement between the NSA and Israel published by the Guardian newspaper read that Israel "recognises that the NSA has agreements with Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom that require it to protect information associated with UK persons, Australian persons, Canadian persons and New Zealand persons using procedures and safeguards similar to those applied for US persons".

In a way, Edward Snowden himself shows how close the alliance is.
An American, he had access to thousands of documents belonging to British intelligence. And so GCHQ has, in a strange way, become a victim of the club's intimacy and openness within its wall.
But given America's NSA is the largest partner by some way, it may be careful not to complain too much.
Just because a country is not in the club does not mean there is no co-operation with those inside.
Americans suggest the reason they collect so much data about call-records from countries in Europe is that they are looking for suspected terrorist plots and that they share what they find with national intelligence agencies so they can then follow them up (this is the same justification that the NSA has furthered for collecting some domestic call record data within the US).
"If the French citizens knew exactly what that was about, they would be applauding and popping champagne corks. It's a good thing. It keeps the French safe. It keeps the US safe. It keeps our European allies safe," Congressman Mike Rogers, the chairman of the US House Intelligence Committee, which oversees the NSA, told CNN at the weekend.

 

 GCHQ and NSA share intelligence about communications, using hi-tech versions of Alan Turing's WWII Bombe decryption machine (above)

But of course, while this might explain some of the spying, it does not explain eavesdropping on Angela Merkel's phone or bugging EU offices.
That looks like traditional state-on-state espionage and is what is likely to be most angering European officials (although for public consumption they still need to make angry noises and protests about the collection of their ordinary citizens' call records).
Germany and France have suggested they may seek deals to end this kind of state-on-state espionage activity and one of the interesting questions is the extent to which what they really want is a no-spy deal like the one Britain enjoys, and effective membership of the existing club (or some modified version of it).
However, one general rule about intelligence is that the more a secret is shared, the less secret it becomes.
It is one reason why some are sceptical of sharing too much intelligence with the whole EU - secrets may not stay secret among 28.
Could something be possible with some of the countries though?
Some senior British intelligence officials are understood to be supportive of deepening and broadening the partnership with some European allies, although whether this means going so far as letting then into full membership is another matter.
But with embarrassing revelations likely to continue, the way the club currently operates may well have to change.

Tiananmen crash: China police 'detain suspects'

30 October 2013 Last updated at 12:29 GMT

Tiananmen crash: China police 'detain suspects'

The crash led to the square being evacuated and forced roads to close

Police in China have detained five suspects in connection with Monday's deadly car crash at Beijing's Tiananmen Square, state media report.

Police have described the incident as a "violent terror attack", the Xinhua news agency says, for first time.
All three people in the car had names from the Muslim Uighur minority in the restive western region of Xinjiang.
Two bystanders died and 38 people were injured after the vehicle crashed into a crowd and burst into flames.
The police said that what happened at Tiananmen Square was a "violent terrorist attack" which was "carefully planned and organised", Xinhua says.

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Uighurs and Xinjiang

• Uighurs are ethnically Turkic Muslims
• They make up about 45% of the region's population; 40% are Han Chinese
• China re-established control in 1949 after crushing short-lived state of East Turkestan
• Since then, there was large-scale immigration of Han Chinese
• Uighurs fear erosion of traditional culture

• Q&A: China and the Uighurs

The jeep that crashed into a bridge in front of the Forbidden City was driven by a man who was with his wife and mother, police said in a statement.

All three had names from the Muslim Uighur minority in the Xinjiang region.
The three ignited petrol inside the car, they added.
Police said the vehicle they found on Monday had a container for petrol, two knives and what they describe as a flag with extremist religious slogans on it. They added that the car's number plates were registered in Xinjiang province.
They said they also found more knives and another flag at a location in Beijing.
On Wednesday, a number of news agency reports said a police notice was being circulated among hotels in Beijing, asking information about eight suspects.
Seven have names typical of the Uighur ethnic group and the other, although seemingly from China's majority Han ethnicity, has an address in Xinjiang, reports say.
A tourist from the Philippines and a tourist from Guangdong province were among those killed in the incident. Another 38 people were injured, including three tourists from the Philippines and one from Japan.
Uighur complaints Police shut down the scene of the incident - at the north end of the square at an entrance to the Forbidden City - shortly after it occurred, temporarily closing a subway station and a road.
A BBC crew attempting to record footage at the location were briefly detained, while on Chinese social media some pictures of the scene appeared to be quickly deleted and comments were heavily censored.
Xinjiang is home to the minority Muslim Uighur group, some of whom complain of cultural and religious repression under Beijing's rule. There have been sporadic outbreaks of violence in Xinjiang, including in both Pishan and Shanshan counties. China says it grants the Uighurs wide-ranging freedoms.
In June, riots in Xingjian's Turpan prefecture, which is in Shanshan county, killed 27 people. State media said police opened fire after a mob armed with knives attacked police stations and a local government building.
In April another incident in the city of Kashgar left 21 people dead. The government said the violence was linked to terrorist activity, but local people told the BBC it involved a local family who had a longstanding dispute with officials over religious freedom.

US spy leaks: How intelligence is gathered

Documents leaked by whistleblower Edward Snowden suggest the US government has undertaken mass surveillance operations across the globe - including eavesdropping on US allies.

The claims have led US Senate's intelligence committee to pledge to review the way the country's biggest intelligence organisation - the National Security Agency (NSA) - undertakes surveillance.
According to the leaks, what are the key methods the spy agency uses?
1. Accessing internet company data

In June, the leaked documents revealed how the NSA had backdoor access to major technology companies.
The files showed the agency had access to the servers of nine internet firms, including Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo, in order to track online communication under a surveillance programme known as Prism.
They claimed the project gave the NSA - along with the UK's eavesdropping station GCHQ - access to email, chat logs, stored data, voice traffic, file transfers and social networking data.
However, the companies denied they had offered the agency "direct access" to their servers.
Some experts have also questioned Prism's real power.
Digital forensics professor Peter Sommer told the BBC such access may be more akin to a "catflap" than a "backdoor", with intelligence agencies able to tap into servers only to collect intelligence on a named target.
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What data could Prism possibly access?
Company	What kind of data which could be collected?
	Some Microsoft sites collect email address, name, home or work address, or telephone numbers. Some services require sign-in with email and password. Microsoft also receives information sent by web-browsers on sites visited, together with IP address, referring site address and time of visit. The company also uses cookies to provide more information about pages views
	Yahoo collects personal information when users sign up for products or services including name, address, birth date, post code and occupation. It also records information from users' computers, including IP addresses.
	Personal details are required for sign-up to Google accounts, including name, email address and phone number. Google email - Gmail - stores email contacts and email threads for each account, which have a 10 GB capacity. Search queries, IP addresses, telephone log information and cookies which uniquely identify each account are also stored. Chat conversations are also collected unless a user selects 'off the record' option.
	Facebook requires personal information on sign-up, such as name, email address, date of birth and gender. It also collects status updates, photos or videos shared, wall posts, comments on others posts, messages and chat conversations. Friends' names, and the email details of those friends who have provided addresses on their profiles, are also recorded. Tagging information about users from friends is recorded, and GPS or other location information is also stored.
	Paltalk is an instant chat, voice and video messaging service. Users must provide contact information including email address. The company employs cookies to track user behaviour, with the aim of delivering targeted advertising.
	YouTube is owned by Google and the company applies the same data collection methods. Users logged in via their Google accounts will have their YouTube searches, playlists and subscriptions to other users' accounts recorded.
	Skype is part of Microsoft, and its instant messaging service replaced Microsoft's Messenger this year. Users submit personal data including name, username, address when signing up. Further profile information such as age, gender and preferred language are also recorded as options. Contacts lists are stored, as is location information from mobile devices. Instant messages, voicemail and video messages are generally stored by Skype for between 30 and 90 days, though users can opt to preserve their instant messaging history for longer.
	AOL collects personal information for users signing up or registering for its products and services, but its privacy policy states that users who do not make themselves known to the company by these methods are "generally anonymous."
	Users signing up for Apple ID's - required for services such as iTunes , or to register products - must submit personal data including name, address, email address and phone number. The company also collects information about the people who Apple users share content with, including their names and and email addresses.

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2. Tapping fibre optic cables

In June, further leaked documents from GCHQ published in the Guardian revealed the UK was tapping fibre-optic cables carrying global communications and sharing the data with the NSA, its US counterpart.

The documents claimed GCHQ was able to access 200 fibre-optic cables, giving it the ability to monitor up to 600 million communications every day.
The information on internet and phone use was allegedly stored for up to 30 days in order for it to be sifted and analysed.
GCHQ declined to comment on the claims but said its compliance with the law was "scrupulous".

In October, the Italian weekly L'Espresso published claims that GCHQ and the NSA had targeted three undersea cables with terminals in Italy, intercepting commercial and military data.
The three cables in Sicily were named as SeaMeWe3, SeaMeWe4 and Flag Europe-Asia.
3. Eavesdropping on phones In October, German media reported that the US had bugged German Chancellor Angela Merkel's phone for more than a decade - and that the surveillance only ended a few months ago.
Der Spiegel magazine, again quoting documents leaked by whistleblower Edward Snowden, suggested the US had been spying on Mrs Merkel's mobile phone since 2002.
The documents quoted by the magazine claimed a US listening unit was based inside its Berlin embassy - and similar operations were replicated in 80 locations around the world.
Investigative journalist Duncan Campbell explains in his blog how windowless areas on the outside of official buildings could be "radio windows". These external windows - made of a special material that does not conduct electricity - allow radio signals to pass through and reach collection and analysis equipment inside.

The German press has published claims that the US taps communications from a small windowless room at its embassy in Berlin

Der Spiegel said the nature of the monitoring of Mrs Merkel's mobile phone was not clear from the leaked files.
However, later reports claimed that two of the chancellors phones had been targeted - one unencrypted phone she used for party business as well as her encrypted device used for government work.
According to security experts, standard mobile phone encryption systems can be vulnerable because their scrambling system is, in software terms, separate from the program used to create a message.
It is possible for an eavesdropper to position themselves between the message-making software and the encryption system at either end of a conversation and see information before it is scrambled or after it is unscrambled.
End-to-end encryption, now adopted by many, closes this gap by having the message-making software apply the scrambling directly. In addition, many of these systems run a closed network so messages never travel over the public internet and are only decrypted when they reach their intended recipient.
How encryption systems work

As well as the bugging of the chancellor's phone, there are claims the NSA has monitored millions of telephone calls made by German and French citizens along with the emails and phone calls of the presidents of Mexico and Brazil.
The Guardian later reported that the NSA had monitored the phones of 35 world leaders after being given their numbers by another US government official. Again, Edward Snowden was the source of the report.
4. Targeted spying

Der Spiegel magazine published claims in June that the NSA had also spied on European Union offices in the US and Europe.
The magazine said it had seen documents leaked by Edward Snowden showing that the US had spied on EU internal computer networks in Washington and at the 27-member bloc's UN office in New York.
The files allegedly suggested that the NSA had also conducted an eavesdropping operation in a building in Brussels, where the EU Council of Ministers and the European Council were located.
Then, in July, the Guardian published claims in further leaked documents that a total of 38 embassies and missions had been "targets" of US spying operations.
Countries targeted included France, Italy and Greece, as well as America's non-European allies such as Japan, South Korea and India, the paper said.
EU embassies and missions in New York and Washington were also said to be under surveillance.
The file is said to have detailed "an extraordinary range" of spying methods used to intercept messages. They included bugs, specialised antennae and wire taps.

30 October 2013 Last updated at 11:55 GMT

Germany's Merkel sends intelligence delegation to US

A summary of US spying allegations brought about by Edward Snowden's leak of classified documents

A German delegation of intelligence officials is in Washington for talks at the White House on Wednesday following claims that the US monitored Chancellor Angela Merkel's mobile phone.

The chancellor's foreign policy adviser and Germany's intelligence co-ordinator will hold talks at the White House.
The head of US intelligence has defended the monitoring of foreign leaders as a key goal of operations.
The US is facing growing anger over reports it spied on its allies abroad.
It has also been reported that the National Security Agency (NSA) monitored French diplomats in Washington and at the UN, and that it conducted surveillance on millions of French and Spanish telephone calls, among other operations against US allies.

Analysis

 

Stephen Evans BBC News, Berlin

The measure of how seriously Chancellor Merkel takes the matter is that she has sent two of the most important people in her immediate circle of advisers: her foreign policy adviser, Christoph Heusgen, and the German government's intelligence coordinator, Guenter Heiss.
Next week, the heads of the actual spying agencies go to meet their opposite numbers in Washington.
This week's meetings are more about how to rebuild trust, while next week's agenda will be more about the detail of how the two countries' agencies might or might not work more in harmony.
The US has an agreement to share intelligence with Britain, New Zealand, Australia and Canada. It is not clear if Germany wants to be part of that.
There have been commentators in America saying that Germany is in a different position from the other countries mentioned because its future relationship with China is not clear.
On this argument, Germany's close trade links with China might make it loath to support the US in any future trans-Pacific confrontation.

• Media detects mixed messages

However, NSA director Gen Keith Alexander said "the assertions... that NSA collected tens of millions of phone calls are completely false".

The revelations stem from documents leaked by fugitive ex-US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, who now lives in Russia and is wanted in the US in connection with the unauthorised disclosures.
German media have reported that the US bugged German Chancellor Angela Merkel's phone for more than a decade - and that the surveillance only ended a few months ago.
Germany's delegation includes Christoph Heusgen, Mrs Merkel's foreign policy adviser, and Guenter Heiss, the secret service co-ordinator, said Caitlin Hayden, a spokeswoman for the US National Security Council.
US National Security Adviser Susan Rice, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and Lisa Monaco, assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism, are also expected to take part.
Ms Hayden said the meeting was part of the agreement reached between President Barack Obama and Chancellor Merkel last week to deepen US-German cooperation on intelligence matters.
'Basic tenet' The meeting comes just hours after Mr Clapper and Gen Alexander testified before the intelligence panel of the House of Representatives on Tuesday.

How intelligence is gathered

Gen Alexander said much of the data cited by non-US news outlets was actually collected by European intelligence services and later shared with the NSA.

Meanwhile, Mr Clapper told lawmakers that discerning foreign leaders' intentions was "a basic tenet of what we collect and analyse".
He said that foreign allies spy on US officials and intelligence agencies as a matter of routine.
Mr Clapper said the torrent of disclosures about American surveillance had been extremely damaging and that he anticipated more.
But he said there was no other country that had the magnitude of oversight that the US had, and that any mistakes that had been made were human or technical.
The BBC's Jonny Dymond in Washington says if anyone was expecting apologies or embarrassment from the leaders of America's intelligence community, they were in for a disappointment.

James Clapper said knowing what foreign leaders were thinking was critical to US policymaking

The intelligence pair were not given a tough time by the committee but that sentiment is turning within Congress toward tightening up the reach of American intelligence agencies, our correspondent says.
Meanwhile, the spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin has denied that Moscow used free USB memory sticks and mobile phone charging cables to spy on delegates attending the G20 Summit in St Petersburg last September.
Reports in two Italian newspapers suggested that the USB sticks and cables had bugs on them that could steal data from the delegates.
Spokesman Dmitri Peskov said the reports were an attempt to distract from the problems between European countries and the US.

DR Congo: Cursed by its natural wealth

The Democratic Republic of Congo is potentially one of the richest countries on earth, but colonialism, slavery and corruption have turned it into one of the poorest, writes historian Dan Snow.

The world's bloodiest conflict since World War II is still rumbling on today.
It is a war in which more than five million people have died, millions more have been driven to the brink by starvation and disease and several million women and girls have been raped.
The Great War of Africa, a conflagration that has sucked in soldiers and civilians from nine nations and countless armed rebel groups, has been fought almost entirely inside the borders of one unfortunate country - the Democratic Republic of Congo.

 

Many of the country's mining operations are connected to the waters of the mighty Congo River

It is a place seemingly blessed with every type of mineral, yet consistently rated lowest on the UN Human Development Index, where even the more fortunate live in grinding poverty.
I went to the Congo this summer to find out what it was about the country's past that had delivered it into the hands of unimaginable violence and anarchy.

The journey that I went on, through the Congo's abusive history, while travelling across its war-torn present, was the most disturbing experience of my career.

I met rape victims, rebels, bloated politicians and haunted citizens of a country that has ceased to function - people who struggle to survive in a place cursed by a past that defies description, a history that will not release them from its death-like grip.
The Congo's apocalyptic present is a direct product of decisions and actions taken over the past five centuries.
In the late 15th Century an empire known as the Kingdom of Kongo dominated the western portion of the Congo, and bits of other modern states such as Angola.
It was sophisticated, had its own aristocracy and an impressive civil service.
When Portuguese traders arrived from Europe in the 1480s, they realised they had stumbled upon a land of vast natural wealth, rich in resources - particularly human flesh.
The Congo was home to a seemingly inexhaustible supply of strong, disease-resistant slaves. The Portuguese quickly found this supply would be easier to tap if the interior of the continent was in a state of anarchy.
They did their utmost to destroy any indigenous political force capable of curtailing their slaving or trading interests.
Money and modern weapons were sent to rebels, Kongolese armies were defeated, kings were murdered, elites slaughtered and secession was encouraged.

By the 1600s, the once-mighty kingdom had disintegrated into a leaderless, anarchy of mini-states locked in endemic civil war. Slaves, victims of this fighting, flowed to the coast and were carried to the Americas.
About four million people were forcibly embarked at the mouth of the Congo River. English ships were at the heart of the trade. British cities and merchants grew rich on the back of Congolese resources they would never see.
This first engagement with Europeans set the tone for the rest of the Congo's history.
Development has been stifled, government has been weak and the rule of law non-existent. This was not through any innate fault of the Congolese, but because it has been in the interests of the powerful to destroy, suppress and prevent any strong, stable, legitimate government. That would interfere - as the Kongolese had threatened to interfere before - with the easy extraction of the nation's resources. The Congo has been utterly cursed by its natural wealth.
The Congo is a massive country, the size of Western Europe.

 

 Stanley's expeditions opened up the Congo for exploitation by King Leopold

Limitless water, from the world's second-largest river, the Congo, a benign climate and rich soil make it fertile, beneath the soil abundant deposits of copper, gold, diamonds, cobalt, uranium, coltan and oil are just some of the minerals that should make it one of the world's richest countries.
Instead it is the world's most hopeless.
The interior of the Congo was opened up in the late 19th Century by the British-born explorer Henry Morton Stanley, his dreams of free trading associations with communities he met were shattered by the infamous King of the Belgians, Leopold, who hacked out a vast private empire.

 

 Congo rubber was in high demand after the pneumatic tyre appeared on the market in 1888

The world's largest supply of rubber was found at a time when bicycle and automobile tyres, and electrical insulation, had made it a vital commodity in the West.
The late Victorian bicycle craze was enabled by Congolese rubber collected by slave labourers.
To tap it, Congolese men were rounded up by a brutal Belgian-officered security force, their wives were interned to ensure compliance and were brutalised during their captivity. The men were then forced to go into the jungle and harvest the rubber.
Disobedience or resistance was met by immediate punishment - flogging, severing of hands, and death. Millions perished.
Tribal leaders capable of resisting were murdered, indigenous society decimated, proper education denied.
A culture of rapacious, barbaric rule by a Belgian elite who had absolutely no interest in developing the country or population was created, and it has endured.
In a move supposed to end the brutality, Belgium eventually annexed the Congo outright, but the problems in its former colony remained.
Mining boomed, workers suffered in appalling conditions, producing the materials that fired industrial production in Europe and America.

 

 Uranium used to construct the atomic bomb was sourced from Congo

In World War I men on the Western Front and elsewhere did the dying, but it was Congo's minerals that did the killing.
The brass casings of allied shells fired at Passchendaele and the Somme were 75% Congolese copper.
In World War II, the uranium for the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki came from a mine in south-east Congo.
Western freedoms were defended with Congo's resources while black Congolese were denied the right to vote, or form unions and political associations. They were denied anything beyond the most basic of educations.
They were kept at an infantile level of development that suited the rulers and mine owners but made sure that when independence came there was no home-grown elite who could run the country.
Independence in 1960 was, therefore, predictably disastrous.
Bits of the vast country immediately attempted to break away, the army mutinied against its Belgian officers and within weeks the Belgian elite who ran the state evacuated leaving nobody with the skills to run the government or economy.

Mobutu, pictured with Jacques Chirac, was courted by the West for decades

Of 5,000 government jobs pre-independence, just three were held by Congolese and there was not a single Congolese lawyer, doctor, economist or engineer.
Chaos threatened to engulf the region. The Cold War superpowers moved to prevent the other gaining the upper hand.
Sucked into these rivalries, the struggling Congolese leader, Patrice Lumumba, was horrifically beaten and executed by Western-backed rebels. A military strongman, Joseph-Desire Mobutu, who had a few years before been a sergeant in the colonial police force, took over.
Mobutu became a tyrant. In 1972 he changed his name to Mobutu Sese Seko Nkuku Ngbendu Wa Za Banga, meaning "the all-powerful warrior who, because of his endurance and inflexible will to win, goes from conquest to conquest, leaving fire in his wake".
The West tolerated him as long as the minerals flowed and the Congo was kept out of the Soviet orbit.
He, his family and friends bled the country of billions of dollars, a $100m palace was built in the most remote jungle at Gbadolite, an ultra-long airstrip next to it was designed to take Concorde, which was duly chartered for shopping trips to Paris.

Dan Snow tours Mobutu's former lavish residence at Gbadolite

Dissidents were tortured or bought off, ministers stole entire budgets, government atrophied. The West allowed his regime to borrow billions, which was then stolen and today's Congo is still expected to pay the bill.
In 1997 an alliance of neighbouring African states, led by Rwanda - which was furious Mobutu's Congo was sheltering many of those responsible for the 1994 genocide - invaded, after deciding to get rid of Mobutu.
A Congolese exile, Laurent Kabila, was dredged up in East Africa to act as a figurehead. Mobutu's cash-starved army imploded, its leaders, incompetent cronies of the president, abandoning their men in a mad dash to escape.
Mobutu took off one last time from his jungle Versailles, his aircraft packed with valuables, his own unpaid soldiers firing at the plane as it lumbered into the air.

“Start Quote

The country has collapsed, roads no longer link the main cities, healthcare depends on aid and charity”

Rwanda had effectively conquered its titanic neighbour with spectacular ease. Once installed however, Kabila, Rwanda's puppet, refused to do as he was told.

Again Rwanda invaded, but this time they were just halted by her erstwhile African allies who now turned on each other and plunged Congo into a terrible war.
Foreign armies clashed deep inside the Congo as the paper-thin state collapsed totally and anarchy spread.
Hundreds of armed groups carried out atrocities, millions died.
Ethnic and linguistic differences fanned the ferocity of the violence, while control of Congo's stunning natural wealth added a terrible urgency to the fighting.
Forcibly conscripted child soldiers corralled armies of slaves to dig for minerals such as coltan, a key component in mobile phones, the latest obsession in the developed world, while annihilating enemy communities, raping women and driving survivors into the jungle to die of starvation and disease.

Bags of coltan, used in mobile phones, and manganese are carried at a mine

A deeply flawed, partial peace was patched together a decade ago. In the far east of the Congo, there is once again a shooting war as a complex web of domestic and international rivalries see rebel groups clash with the army and the UN, while tiny community militias add to the general instability.
The country has collapsed, roads no longer link the main cities, healthcare depends on aid and charity. The new regime is as grasping as its predecessors.
I rode on one of the trainloads of copper that go straight from foreign-owned mines to the border, and on to the Far East, rumbling past shanty towns of displaced, poverty-stricken Congolese.
The Portuguese, Belgians, Mobutu and the present government have all deliberately stifled the development of a strong state, army, judiciary and education system, because it interferes with their primary focus, making money from what lies under the Earth.
The billions of pounds those minerals have generated have brought nothing but misery and death to the very people who live on top of them, while enriching a microscopic elite in the Congo and their foreign backers, and underpinning our technological revolution in the developed world.
The Congo is a land far away, yet our histories are so closely linked. We have thrived from a lopsided relationship, yet we are utterly blind to it. The price of that myopia has been human suffering on an unimaginable scale.

30 October 2013 Last updated at 14:14 GMT

DR Congo army 'seizes' Bunagana base from M23 rebels

The military has recaptured a string of towns since the weekend

Government forces in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo have captured Bunagana town, the main base of the M23 rebel group, residents say.

The troops entered the town on the Ugandan border in large numbers as the rebels fled, residents told the BBC.
M23 political leader Bertrand Bisimwa was earlier reported to have crossed the border into Uganda as Congolese troops advanced on his base.
The M23 launched a rebellion in eastern DR Congo in April 2012.
It is made up of army deserters who say they are fighting for the rights of the minority Tutsi ethnic group.
At least 800,000 people have been left homeless since the conflict started.
About 10,000 people fled to Uganda this week, with about half of them arriving on Wednesday, said Lucy Beck, a spokeswoman for the UN refugee agency (UNHCR), the Associated Press (AP) news agency reports.
Heavy shelling On Monday, the UN special envoy to DR Congo, Martin Kobler, said the M23 was all but finished as a military threat in DR Congo.

His comments came after government forces captured five M23-held areas, including Rumangabo where the rebels had a big military training camp.
The government forces have been backed by a UN intervention brigade deployed earlier this year to confront the M23 and other armed groups.
The BBC's Ignatius Bahizi in Uganda says residents in Bunagana told him there was heavy shelling, before the town fell to government forces.
Bunagana, a town of several thousand people and the headquarters of Mr Bisimwa, is on the Uganda-DR Congo border.
Mr Bisimwa had surrendered to Ugandan security operatives after crossing the border in a convoy of two vehicles, Uganda's state-owned New Vision newspaper reported.
He left Bunagana when government and UN forces were about 5km (three miles) away from the town and he was being questioned by Ugandan security operatives, the paper said.
However, M23 officials denied that Mr Bisimwa had fled.
They told our reporter that the M23 political leader had travelled to Uganda to sign a peace accord with the government.
Peace talks hosted by Uganda broke down last week.
The UN and DR Congo government have repeatedly accused Rwanda and Uganda of backing the rebels. They deny the allegation.
Eastern DR Congo has been wracked by conflict since 1994, when Hutu militias fled across the border from Rwanda after carrying out a genocide against Tutsis and moderate Hutus

WHY ELEPHANTS ARE ENDING IN AFRICA???????

Toure speaks out against poaching

Africa

Tuesday 29 October 2013 - 7:21pm

Ivory Coast's Yaya Toure holds a press conference as he was appointed the United Nations Environment Program goodwill ambassador at the UNEP headquarters in the Kenyan capital Nairobi on October 29, 2013. Picture: AFP

NAIROBI - African footballer of the year Yaya Toure, star of Manchester City and Ivory Coast, warned on Tuesday that the slaughter of elephants for their ivory was threatening their very existence.

"Ivory Coast's national team is named 'The Elephants' after these magnificent creatures that are so full of power and grace, yet in my country alone there may be as few as 800 left."

"Poaching threatens the very existence of the African elephant and if we do not act now we could be looking at a future in which this iconic species is wiped out," Toure told reporters, as he was appointed an ambassador for the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).
"Ivory Coast's national team is named 'The Elephants' after these magnificent creatures that are so full of power and grace, yet in my country alone there may be as few as 800 individuals left," Toure added.
Toure, speaking at UNEP headquarters in the Kenyan capital, said he wanted to help combat the illegal ivory trade that sees thousands of elephants poached each year.
Poaching has risen sharply in Africa in recent years and the illegal ivory trade has tripled since 1998, according to UNEP.
Large-scale seizures of ivory destined for Asia have more than doubled since 2009 and reached an all-time high in 2011, UNEP added.
Ivory trade is banned under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).
Africa is now home to an estimated 472,000 elephants, whose survival is threatened by poaching as well as population expansion and increasing urbanisation encroaching on natural habitats.
The illegal ivory trade, estimated to be worth up to $10 billion (R100 billion) a year, is mostly fuelled by demand in Asia and the Middle East.
Elephant tusks are used to make ornaments and rhinoceros horns are used in traditional medicine

M23 UNDER DRC ARMY NOW.....

DRC army take charge against M23

Africa

Wednesday 30 October 2013 - 6:29am

A Congolese army soldier holds a position ahead of an assault in the bush north Goma, in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The illicit mineral trade is fueling armed conflict in the region. Picture: AFP

RUMANGABO - The Congolese army colonel marched triumphantly into town, welcomed by cheering crowds waving palm leaves after his soldiers retook this base in their latest offensive to quash the M23 rebels.
"Congo for the Congolese!" Col. Mamadou Ndala proclaimed in Swahili to applause and adulation, as women threw flowers and shouted out the names of army commanders.
The recapturing of Rumangabo from the M23 rebels, who are allegedly backed by neighbouring Rwanda, is the army's sixth such victory since Saturday.
It is a marked turnaround from a year ago when neither the army nor the UN peacekeepers kept the same rebels from seizing Goma, a city of 1 million people.
With more help than ever from UN forces, Congo's military is now taking advantage of an apparent weakening within the M23 movement that got its start in April 2012.

The movement is unable to control its entire territory and suffers from poor morale and scores of desertions.

 

 

The stepped-up offensive also comes as neighbouring Rwanda faces growing pressure over the rebels. The Rwandan government denies it supports the rebels, despite evidence laid out by a UN group of experts.
One UN diplomat on Monday said the rebels have abandoned nearly all their positions except for a small triangle near the Rwandan border.
John Ging, the director of UN humanitarian operations who just returned from Congo, told a news conference at UN headquarters in New York Tuesday that the country stands "at a crossroads of new opportunity" where there are hopes for a better future.
He cautioned, however, that Congo has been at crossroads in the past and "tragically, until now, each time it has gotten worse."
"People are saying to us they hope that this time it will actually get better," Ging said. "They see some signs, and where the (UN) mission is present, they do point to positive impact."
But he stressed that everyone realises the instability in Congo, the proliferation of armed groups which will take considerable time to disarm, and the difficult geography of the country.
"If these military victories are followed up with serious regional pressure on Rwanda and on M23 to forge some kind of sustainable peace, then this could be a turning point," said Michael Deibert, author of "The Democratic Republic of Congo: Between Hope and Despair."
Deibert added that Congo's army is often accused of human rights abuses and of a lack of accountability and that these need to be addressed to prevent a reversal of fortune.
The M23 rebels say they want to pursue peace talks, though they have repeated failed and stalled over such issues as amnesty. M23 spokesman Amani Kabasha accused the Congolese government of "provoking fighting with the intention of blaming civilian deaths on M23 and justifying once more the UN intervention brigade against our soldiers."
Several Tanzanian peacekeepers have been killed since August. This week the UN troops have been in armored personnel carriers and jeeps with mounted machine guns several kilometers (miles) behind the army forces.
Eastern Congo has been wracked by conflict since the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, after which Hutu extremists crossed over into Congo. M23 is only the latest rebel group to menace the mineral-rich region.
The insurgency was born out of an earlier rebel movement that had signed a 2009 peace deal with the government. The fighters said the Congolese government hadn't held up its end of the deal that called for the rebels to be integrated into the national army, among other things.
With the purported help of Rwanda, M23 quickly grew in strength and briefly held Goma in November 2012 before bowing to international pressure and retreating. In March, M23 leader Bosco Ntaganda turned himself in to face charges at the International Criminal Court, a move that experts say has seriously weakened the rebels.
"The movement is unable to control its entire territory and suffers from poor morale and scores of desertions," a UN group of experts said in a report in late July.
Estimates now put the M23 group at 1,000 fighters. However, residents living in border regions claim that soldiers cross from Rwanda into Congo during M23 fighting which makes it difficult to estimate the group's current size.
Timo Mueller, a Goma-based researcher with the Enough Project, an advocacy group active in eastern Congo, said the M23's retreat from strategically important towns and hills in recent days is surprising.
"That would suggest that they cannot hold ground and confront a very ambitious and more professional Congolese army," he said. "I understand that they're scattering or have scattered. I wouldn't say it's necessarily the military end."
Even if the M23 is defeated, he said, the rebels would need to be disarmed and for them to give up their weapons they would need security guarantees to prevent attacks by the army or angry citizens.

-Sapa-AP

Syrian hackers claim Obama Facebook, Twitter accounts

World

Tuesday 29 October 2013 - 12:53am

Hackers from a group calling itself the Syrian Electronic Army claimed, on Monday, that they had taken control of US President Barack Obama's Twitter and Facebook accounts. Picture: AFP

WASHINGTON - Hackers from a group calling itself the Syrian Electronic Army claimed, on Monday, that they had taken control of US President Barack Obama's Twitter and Facebook accounts.

Thanks to our operation, Twitter now blocks Obama's dangerous propaganda links.

• Syria in conflict

The group, which backs Syria's government and which has previously hacked accounts of The New York Times, Agence France-Presse and other media organizations, published screen shots which it said backed its claims.
"Thanks to our operation, Twitter now blocks Obama's dangerous propaganda links," said a tweet from the Syrian group.
Both accounts appeared to be functioning normally some time after the claim. The White House did not immediately respond to an AFP query on the claim.
A Twitter spokesman said in a tweet that "The @BarackObama Twitter account was not compromised; their link shortener was."
The Syrian group also indicated it took over a Gmail account from Obama's campaign and a page from that website.
"We accessed many Obama campaign emails accounts to assess his terrorism capabilities. They are quite high," the group tweeted.
The SEA has made itself known in recent months, hacking the Twitter account of The Associated Press to put out a false tweet saying Obama had been hurt in two explosions at the White House.
SEA has also targeted the Twitter account of the AFP photo service, as well as social media at the BBC, Al-Jazeera and the Financial Times and Guardian newspapers.
The group alleges bias in the coverage of most media outlets over the unrest in Syria.

IS SYRIA WAR GOING TO BE LIKE SOMALIA????

Syria war could be 'longer and deeper' than Somalia - UN envoy

World

Tuesday 29 October 2013 - 3:02pm

UN-Arab League envoy to Syria Lakhdar Brahimi leaves a meeting with members of Syrian opposition on October 29 Picture: AFP

• Syria in conflict

DAMASCUS - UN-Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi was in Syria on Tuesday on the most sensitive leg of a regional push for peace talks and warned of the "Somalisation" of the war-ravaged country.

 

His grim warning came as fighting prevented chemical weapons inspectors from visiting two sites, although UN chief Ban Ki-moon said the mission to destroy Syria's arsenal by mid-2014 was still on track.

 

Brahimi has been seeking to build on the momentum of last month's US-Russian deal to eradicate Syria's chemical weapons in order to launch the so-called Geneva II peace talks proposed for next month.

 

But the talks have been cast into doubt by the increasingly divided opposition's refusal to attend unless President Bashar al-Assad agrees to step down, a demand rejected by Damascus. 

 

In an interview with a French website published on Monday, Brahimi said Assad could contribute to the transition to a "new" Syria but not as the country's leader.

 

"What history teaches us is that after a crisis like this there is no going back," the Algerian diplomat told the Jeune Afrique website ahead of his first visit to Syria since December, when he angered the regime by insisting that all powers be handed over to a transitional government. 

 

The veteran troubleshooter admitted "the entire world will not be present" at the talks, but said the alternative to a political settlement could be a failed state in the heart of the Middle East.

 

"The real danger is a sort of 'Somalisation,' but even more deep and lasting than what we have seen in Somalia."

 

More than 115,000 people are estimated to have been killed in Syria's 31-month conflict, which erupted after the regime launched a brutal crackdown on peaceful pro-democracy protests.

 

In the latest blow to peace efforts, 19 Islamist rebel groups said Sunday that anyone who attends the Geneva talks would be committing "treason" and could face execution.

 

The warning added to doubts over whether any agreement reached by Syria's external opposition could be implemented on the ground.

 

In recent months rebel groups have clashed among themselves, and several prominent brigades have rejected the National Coalition -- the main Western and Arab backed opposition group -- which is to meet on November 9 to decide whether to take part in the Geneva talks.

Fighting hinders chemical inspectors

 

                  

The intensity of the fighting in Syria has meanwhile slowed the unprecedented international mission to dispose of a vast chemical arsenal in a country torn apart by civil war.

 

The Hague-based Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons said Monday its inspectors had been unable to reach the last two of 23 disclosed chemical weapons sites for "security reasons."

 

Inspectors were supposed to have visited all sites declared by Syria by Sunday as part of their mission to oversee the elimination of the country's chemical weapons by mid-2014.

 

UN chief Ban Ki-moon said the inspectors were still on track to destroy Syria's chemical weapons production equipment by November 1, the first major deadline of a timetable set out by the Security Council.

 

Ban said Damascus has extended "consistent, constructive" support to the mission but warned "the job is far from complete and much important work remains to be done."

 

"Without sustained genuine commitment by the Syrian authorities, the joint mission will not fullfil its objectives," he said.

 

On the battlefield, Kurdish fighters advanced across the northeast after seizing an Iraqi border post from jihadists over the weekend, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based group.

 

It said the Kurds had seized two villages in Hasakeh province and surrounded a rebel brigade that is part of the Western-backed Free Syrian Army, forcing it to surrender a tank, rocket launchers and vehicle-mounted canons and heavy machine guns.

 

As the conflict has grown increasingly muddled, the Kurds have fought both the army and other rebel groups in a bid to carve out an autonomous zone modelled on the Kurdish region of Iraq.

 

Jihadists from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant have meanwhile sought control over the border to facilitate the flow of fighters and arms, as it has launched attacks in both Iraq and Syria.

-AFP

Al-Shabaab rebuilds forces in Somalia

Al-Shabaab rebuilds forces in Somalia as African Union campaign stalls

Extreme Islamist group is now 'an extended hand of al-Qaida', declares Somali president Hassan Sheikh Mohamud

• David Smith in Kismayo
• The Guardian, Monday 28 October 2013 15.34 GMT

One of a number of propaganda photographs published on Somali websites, apparently from al-Shabaab strongholds, showing uniformed men riding on motorbikes.

A Kenyan soldier clambers up to his sentry post and stares out across vast plains of bush, acacia trees and red dust. The savanna is peaceful now, but he knows that when darkness falls the enemy will return, typically a band of 15 to 20 men armed with AK-47 rifles. "Every night they are in front of us," the soldier says. "They shoot and go. They run away."
Along the frontline, the Kenyans have piled clusters of green sandbags to provide cover. Behind them, a military base is protected by high walls crowned with razor wire. About 1,200 troops from Kenya and Sierra Leone are garrisoned in this desolate Somali hinterland. On an average day, green, heavily armoured vehicles set off to patrol the crucial port city of Kismayo, running the gauntlet of roadside bombs, a deadly tactic imported from Afghanistan and Iraq. In punishing heat, soldiers can be seen rolling a surveillance drone across the tarmac of the Italian-built airport.
This is where the war on terror in east Africa is being waged. Troops from the African Union and the fledgling Somali national army are battling al-Shabaab, the extremist Islamist group notorious for carrying out beheadings, recruiting boys to fight and forcing girls into marriage that claimed responsibility for last month's attack on the Westgate mall in Nairobi, which claimed 70 victims.
Some analysts interpreted the Kenyan atrocity as a sign of weakness, the thrashings of a dying animal. But there are signs that al-Shabaab is regrouping and evolving, recruiting members more quickly than it loses them and, in the words of Somalia's president, becoming "an extended hand of al-Qaida". Officials admit that, after forcing al-Shabaab out of the capital, Mogadishu, in 2011 and Kismayo in 2012, the campaign against it has lost momentum and stalled. Military maps show swaths of red labelled "AS infested area", while the African Union force, Amisom, lacks a single helicopter in a country similar in size to Afghanistan.
A series of propaganda photographs published on Somali websites last week, apparently from al-Shabaab strongholds, show uniformed men riding through town on motorbikes and in pickup trucks, with banners celebrating the Westgate attack and, bizarrely, sporting contests such as a tug-of-war and an egg-and-spoon race. Children feature heavily in the images. "This is intended as a message they are still alive," one Somali government official said.
While a UN report in 2011 put al-Shabaab's strength at about 5,000 fighters, a Kenyan military intelligence officer serving with Amisom put the true figure almost three times higher, and probably growing. The group may have lost key urban centres, but it still controls a third of Somalia's total territory, he estimates.
"Al-Shabaab trains its recruits on a daily basis," said the officer, who did not wish to be named. "They train more new troops than are killed, so they could even be increasing. They are powerful and you cannot underestimate them. They are still very active, not in fighting but in moving, especially in areas they control."
The organisation has turned to improvised explosive devices (IEDs) to attack Amisom convoys, already injuring four Kenyans who had to be evacuated home. "They bury them along routes where they expect our troops to go then spring the ambush. We cannot rule out support by al-Qaida," said the officer. "We're not sure they're getting logistical support, but they are getting expertise. Some of the IEDs we come across are not locally assembled; they are assembled with foreign expertise."
The officer added that he had heard unconfirmed reports that the Briton Samantha Lewthwaite, the so-called "white widow" wanted by Interpol, was operating in the mountains of Somalia's Puntland province. He also cast doubt on claims that US-born "jihadist rapper" Omar Hammami had perished last month after falling out with al-Shabaab's leadership: "There is no confirmation he has been killed. They are rumours. I believe he is still around."
Nevertheless, al-Shabaab is understood to be suffering logistical problems, shortages of ammunition and recent internal power struggles, though it appears that the hardline Ahmed Abdi Godane has emerged supreme. Witnesses say that he maintains control over towns such as Barawe with just a handful of armed loyalists, whose presence is enough to instil fear and obedience.
Al-Shabaab (the Youth) first emerged as the radical youth wing of Somalia's now defunct Union of Islamic Courts in 2006. It filled a vacuum, imposing a strict version of sharia law in areas under its control, including stoning to death women accused of adultery and amputating the hands of thieves. It soon nurtured ambitions to join forces with al-Qaida, but was reportedly rebuffed by Osama bin Laden, who warned in a letter that it was causing too many civilian casualties in Mogadishu. Bin Laden's death, however, removed that obstacle and al-Shabaab declared itself an al-Qaida affiliate early last year.

Questions remain over the precise nature of the relationship, but the year-old Somali government believes they are now virtually indistinguishable. "Al-Qaida and al-Shabaab, there's no difference here in Somalia: they are one," President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud told the Guardian in an interview in Mogadishu. "The leadership, the foreigners that are fighting here in Somalia, those who died here in Somalia, all of them were al-Qaida people.

Al-Shabaab forces in pickup trucks drive through a town. "Experts are sent by al-Qaida to train and arm and give all the new techniques of al-Qaida to al-Shabaab. Al-Shabaab is an affiliate, an extended hand of al-Qaida, there's no doubt, there's a lot of proofs of that."
Mohamud said there was no evidence the Westgate mall attack had been planned within Somalia or carried out by operatives from there, suggesting that al-Shabaab had common cause with allies across borders. "Al-Shabaab is an organisation that is based on certain ideologies and the ideology has no citizenship. This is the nature of this organisation: it's not domestic, it's not Somali only, this is an international regional organisation and its crimes have impacted at international and regional level. This is a threat to the region. So what we need as regional countries, within the framework of African Union, is to collaborate in order to uproot these evil forces."
Mohamud admitted that he had no idea of Lewthwaite's whereabouts. "These people move across borders; maybe if yesterday she was in Kenya, today she's somewhere else, maybe she's in Somalia or she's in Tanzania, Uganda or any other place. They can move, they can slip into the porous borders of the African countries."
The loss of ports and businesses has been a financial setback to al-Shabaab and, the president claimed, the government is now close to full control of the financial sector so that it can monitor incoming funds. But the Islamist group is said to run a parallel administration with strict discipline and greater efficiency, including accountants who impose taxes on goods, services and personal incomes.
The illicit trade in elephant ivory, smuggling of charcoal and expropriation of cash intended for respectable Islamic charities are among al-Shabaab's other revenue streams, generating between $70m and $100m a year (£43m-£62m), according to the UN. Some members of the Somali diaspora have also been implicated: two women in Minnesota were jailed after running a teleconference line in which al-Shabaab members openly solicited funds.
Officials fear that, in cities outside its control in Somalia and beyond, al-Shabaab will follow the al-Qaida textbook by diffusing into semi-autonomous cells plotting more attacks like Westgate. Few doubt that the group retains a lethal presence in Mogadishu despite the capital's tentative recovery. On 7 September, a car bomb exploded outside the Village, one of a chain of restaurants owned by British-trained chef Ahmed Jama. As people gathered to help, a suicide bomber in a soldier's uniform blew himself up, killing 15 people and maiming several others. Jama was in his car, having driven away just five minutes earlier.
"It was a big boom, something I never heard before in my life, like a two-tonne explosion," he recalled, pointing to dark scorch marks still visible in the parking bay. "I came back and it was a disaster. There were bodies burning. There was a small shop where a lady had been selling cigarettes and she was burning. Her sister, who had come from London, was screaming and died later in hospital."
Jama, who studied catering in Solihull and owns a restaurant in west London, considered quitting for the first time since he moved back to Somalia five years ago. Then René Redzepi of Danish restaurant Noma and other star chefs from around the world stepped in with a financial donation. "I was really close to the point of closing the restaurants," Jama admitted. "I have a wife and children who don't want to be here. But the world chefs touched me and made me feel like I should continue and not fear al-Shabaab. I was getting demoralised until then but it's given me new energy."
Sometimes the Village stays open until 2am, bringing a nightlife to Mogadishu that was unthinkable three years ago. Jama added: "I'm optimistic. The future is getting better. I came home in 2008 and every year is improving. It takes time. It needs patience." The war is being fought on fronts big and small. Last Friday, before prayers, saboteurs blew up a lamppost on one of Mogadishu's busiest thoroughfares. It seemed to be an attempt to disrupt efforts to make the streets feel safe again for pedestrians in the evening. In addition, one resident suggested, members of al-Shabaab are brainwashed into believing that lampposts have a sinister power and are "waiting for their deaths" so must be destroyed.
As well as highlighting their military prowess, al-Shabaab propaganda photos published on Somali websites also show men involved in tug-of-war games. At Lido beach each Friday there is a festival mood and constant hubbub as thousands of young people gather, kicking a football, performing gymnastics or simply bracing in the sea and letting the surf wash over them. Girls laugh and frolic joyfully in the water, their brightly coloured jilbabs soaking as the tide comes in. "I think it's fantastic, it's vibrant and it's really a testimony that peace is coming back to Mogadishu and Somalia," said human rights activist Farida Simba, sitting in a packed beachside restaurant that opened a few months ago.
Simba's organisation, the African Initiative for Women in Africa, works with the mothers of young men recruited by al-Shabaab. The main reasons they join al-Shabaab, she said, are poverty and lack of education. "The mothers had no choice but to let young men go. The recruiters would go to the families and give them $50. They were poor and had no choice." Recruiters also use physical force, or indoctrination in madrasas, or threaten to kill the families of young men unless they join, she added. "The mothers feel helpless."

Such evidence exposes the limitations of a purely military solution, even as the African Union has called for a "surge" of more than 6,000 troops to take Amisom's strength up to around 23,000. Kismayo may have been liberated, but its 300,000 population suffers deficiencies in food and clean water, medical facilities, basic infrastructure and state schooling. On Tuesday, there was a not a single ship in port.

The absence of a functioning jail means uncertainty over what to do with al-Shabaab members who are captured or who defect. There is no programme for defectors' rehabilitation and reintegration into society.
Most of the Somali population are children or teenagers who have known only conflict and have little prospect of a job. "Al-Shabaab is both an organisation and an idea," a local politician told visiting European ambassadors in Kismayo on Tuesday. "You might be able to defeat the organisation, but the idea is still there. You must invest in education."
Officials express frustration that, despite a number of high-profile conferences, the international community is proving slow to offer practical support. Mohamud, described by critics as weak and lacking political acumen, said: "The world has to focus on one thing and only one: support the Somali government to control its own territory. Blaming, finger-pointing will not help at all.
"Unless that state and its institutions are there and control the territory, we will always have dark holes where al-Shabaab and others can go. Yesterday it was al-Qaida/al-Shabaab, the other day it was the piracy, tomorrow we don't know what will come out, and anything can come out unless there is a functioning Somali state that controls the Somali territory."