There’s an interesting order of battle listed on this article that you’ll want to check out. Ironic that almost 8yrs to the day after the USS Cole was attacked in the area…the USN and NATO ships are still there, and driven to action.
NATO officials said the seven frigates from a group that were to have taken part in an exercise in the Suez Canal region would arrive off the Somali coast within two weeks in response to a request from the U.N. World Food Programme (WFP).
The decision to send the ships was taken at a meeting of defence ministers from the 26 NATO member states in Budapest, NATO spokesman James Appathurai said.
“Piracy is a serious problem for shipping in that area. It is also an immediate threat to the lives of the people in Somalia,” he said. “Substantially more than 40 percent of the population depend on the food aid being delivered by ship.”
The European Union has agreed to start planning for a joint naval force that could be ready for deployment by the end of the year.
Don’t rush like it is an emergency, NATO. I have no faith in NATO. I feel that if we had fought alone in Afghanistan the war would be over by now. And we would have caught Bin Laden. Wasn’t it NATO who brought so many rules to the battle that there was no battle at all? Wasn’t it NATO that held down a position fighting the Taliban for two years and the marines came in and cleaned out the area in 96 hours?
The Europeans have no stomach for battle. The Germans are there but not to fight. Only to dig up graves and put sculls on their heads as a joke. The French never fight. And the British aren’t too keen on it either. Look at their strategy in Basra for the last few years. We had conquered that area and left the Brits in charge and they let it slip from their hands. Europeans are liberal and therefore pacifists and it shows.
Canadians are the only one who are doing some work in Kandahar. Where are all the rest of NATO?
What took them so long?
Are they sending out one dinghy or two?