Bad Times For Bad Guys

une 4, 2010:  In Mogadishu, Transitional Government (TG) and peacekeeper troops have been fighting al Shabaab for the last two weeks, leaving over a hundred dead and several hundred wounded. Al Shabaab feels a sense of urgency, as the TG was receiving more and soldiers trained by Western specialists, and able to defeat the fanatic Islamic warriors. Al Shabaab had moved closer and closer to parts of the city where government officials lived, or roads that were essential to supply peacekeeper bases. This triggered the successful government counter-offensive. In the last month, over 15,000 civilians have fled this fighting. The government has been warned by the UN and Western nations supplying money and military trainers, that if the newly trained troops are not paid regularly, and otherwise well looked after, they will desert. The military aid program will go away as well. This appears to have motivated the rapacious militia and tribal leaders that comprise the TG leadership. The renewed TG strength has encouraged anti-Islamic radical militias throughout Somalia. Thus both al Shabaab and Hizbul Islam find their control challenged all over the place. Meanwhile, the Kenyan border is becoming a more dangerous place, as bandits and Islamic militiamen increasingly engage in smuggling, and raids on Kenyan border villages (which are looted.)
The anti-piracy patrol has adopted more aggressive tactics against the pirates. Mother ships are sought and captured, often a thousand or more kilometers from the coast. Even though the pirates are disarmed and returned to the beach, it temporally puts a team of pirates out of action and costs them a lot of money (mother ships are sunk at sea). Other warships are seizing mother ships as they leave the Somali coastal villages, which is forcing the pirates to be more resourceful in avoiding detection. That has become very difficult, as the anti-piracy patrol has more maritime patrol aircraft, and has collected a lot of information about routes pirates use to get from which coastal villages. The pirates have no such intelligence analysis capability, although the dozen or so pirate gangs appear to be sharing more information about the patrols. What the pirates are facing is an unofficial blockade of the Somali coast, a measure that naval commanders have long suggested. The anti-piracy effort has sharply reduced piracy in the heavily trafficked Gulf of Aden (gateway to the Red Sea and Suez Canal). Last year there were about 30 pirate attacks a month in the Gulf, but this year there are less than five attacks a month.
June 3, 2010: Thousands of residents of Bulahawo, two kilometers from the Kenyan border, are fleeing their homes as local militias and TG soldiers prepare to fight for control of the town.