National political leaders, including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), hosted a community forum Wednesday in Minneapolis—which has a large Somali community—to chart the relief efforts spearheaded by the U.S. government and whip up support for humanitarian aid spending.

“Famine isn’t defined as drought or defined as food access, it’s a definition of children dying,” USAID Administrator Raj Shah told the crowd, made up mostly of people from the University of Minnesota and Somali-American communities. “That number is likely go up significantly if we’re unable to dramatically expand our access to care for vulnerable populations in Somalia.”

USAID Administrator Raj Shah speaks to the crowd.

Shah announced another $23 million in grants and aid to provide some famine relief in Somalia and the surrounding region. The U.S. has already spent more than $580 million this year to combat the famine in East Africa, which Rah said accounts for half the funds being donated internationally to the effort.

The drought has also impacted Kenya and Ethiopia. In the entire region, up to 12 million people could be at risk, Shah said.

Much of the effort spearheaded by USAID focuses not just on food convoys, which have been hijacked in Somalia in the past, but on longer-term projects to develop drought-resistant crops and sustainable agriculture, Shah said. Relief efforts have also focused on medical care that can prevent children deaths, like cholera treatment centers.

But despite the urgency of the situation, lawmakers on the panel admitted they could run into roadblocks in attempting to fund more relief in a Congress fixated on budgetary issues. U.S. Rep. Tim Walz (D-Minn.) said the most common constituent call to his office demanded an end to foreign aid.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.)

Pelosi said security and humanitarian issues were related.

“Some in Congress believe that if people are starving in areas controlled by al-Shabab, that they should not be provided with food assistance,” Pelosi said, referring to the Islamic militant movement that still controls vast stretches of the country. ”Alleviation of poverty, eradication of disease, providing opportunity lessen the fury of despair, which is a recruiting ground for trouble, for violence.”

U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) said the United States’ history in the region, including the 1993 killings of 18 American soldiers in Mogadishu, gave some Americans pause about interacting with the region. But the international neglect of Somalia has led to a number of problems, from piracy to the famine to the al-Shabab movement, he said.

“The crisis in the horn [of Africa] and Somalia is all of our business,” Ellison said, calling for constituent pressure for humanitarian aid. “This world of ours can take care of its people but we have to have the political will to make it that way.”

But a lack of financial aid represents just one difficulty in staving off famine in East Africa. Complications in the region have led groups to approach the issue differently than past relief projects, with groups like the American Refugee Committee (ARC) working with the Somali-American community to help get aid to people who need it.

“I want to tell you with absolute certainty that the money you give, the support you put in, is and can be translated into lifesaving programs and it’s happening right now as we sit here,” said Daniel Wordsworth of ARC.

U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.)

The Somali-American community has been very active in organizing and supporting relief efforts, Wordsworth said.

“We want the Somali-American community, the American-Somali community to know how much we value your contributions to our country, your country, all of our country,” Pelosi told the audience. “I hope you know how deeply concerned we are on this issue that challenges the conscience of all humanity, and we must get the job done.”

Zainab Hassan said the forum was the sort of discussion the community needs to have to help spread peace and stability throughout the region.

“As world citizens we have to be involved in these issues and look at it in a positive and comprehensive way in terms of how do our policies impact other people in the region,” Hassan said. “How can we hold accountable our politicians to do the right thing and to adopt policies that would benefit not only Minnesotans but also internationally?”

Hassan said it didn’t seem that most Minnesotans were aware of what was going on in Somalia, but that programs like ARC’s Neighbors Initiative were changing that.

“A lot of effort is going on in Minnesota to bring together Minnesotan communities regardless of race, culture, countries of origin,” she said.

Ayan Abdinur said most people of Somali origin knew about the famine, but that other issues have sometimes distracted the broader community from learning about famine relief efforts.

“When you hear Somalia, it’s about the pirates, it’s still al-Shabab, there’s so much negative media that we really forget the issue that’s happening right now,” Abdinur said. “Yes, there is a security issue, but there is a bigger issue than al-Shabab and the pirates and anything that’s going on, but I wish that people would step away from that and open their heart to the people who are dying.”

Abdinur said she was proud to see how many people showed up for the forum.

“It was a really great way to show that Somali-Americans, other Americans, that everybody cares about the issues going on in Somalia and that we come together as a community and try to make an effort to help the people in Somalia,” Abdinur said. ”I was really happy, touched, by how the community could come together for one issue outside our country.”

Luitingh used to work for an apartheid era government agency called South Africa’s Civil Cooperation Bureau. That agency was an internal security agency tied to the deaths of government opponents.

While the cooperation between the two agencies itself is not big news, the bigger question of ‘why Somalia?’ is. Here’s how the Times explains it:

With its barely functional government and a fierce hostility to foreign armies since the hasty American withdrawal from Mogadishu in the early 1990s, Somalia is a country where Western militaries have long feared to tread. This has created an opportunity for private security companies like Saracen to fill the security vacuum created by years of civil war.

The country has become a source for piracy as well as a source for Al Qaeda recruits and activities. In fact, as the Times points out, the country is mostly controlled by the Shabab.

An African Union memo from Jan. 12 indicates Prince “is at the top of the management chain of Saracen and provided seed money for the Saracen contract.”

The State Department has expressed concerns about Saracen International because of its lack of transparency.

As for Prince, a native of Holland, he is living in Abu Dhabi in part to prevent the numerous lawsuits against Blackwater from reaching into his personal fortune.

But there was more. “We will not rest until we find all who were involved and hold them accountable,” Obama said. While investigations into Abdulmutallab’s ties to al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, based in Yemen, continue — even after the group itself claimed involvement in the attempted attack — Obama said that extremists “must know that the U.S. will do more than strengthen our defenses.” That means going after them in Afghanistan, Pakistan, “Yemen, or Somalia, or anywhere else.”

For the first time in connection with Yemen and Somalia, Obama used the “disrupt, dismantle and defeat” construction his Afghanistan strategy employs to describe U.S. aims against al-Qaeda. Whether that means more airstrikes in Yemen remains to be seen — Obama said vaguely that the U.S. will use all its national power against the extremist threat — but, you know, it’s not a bad bet.

Here’s the announcement, with the names of the detainees, which had previously been withheld:

As directed by the President’s Jan. 22, 2009 Executive Order, the interagency Guantanamo Review Task Force conducted a comprehensive review of each of these cases. As a result of that review, which examined a number of factors, including potential threat, mitigation measures and the likelihood of success in habeas litigation, the detainees were approved for transfer. In accordance with Congressionally-mandated reporting requirements, the Administration informed Congress of its intent to transfer the detainees at least 15 days before their transfer.

Over the weekend, four Afghan detainees, Abdul Hafiz, Sharifullah, Mohamed Rahim and Mohammed Hashim, were transferred to the Government of Afghanistan. In addition, two Somali detainees, Mohammed Soliman Barre and Ismael Arale, were transferred to regional authorities in Somaliland. Finally, six Yemeni detainees, Jamal Muhammad Alawi Mari, Farouq Ali Ahmed, Ayman Saeed Abdullah Batarfi, Muhammaed Yasir Ahmed Taher, Fayad Yahya Ahmed al Rami and Riyad Atiq Ali Abdu al Haf, were transferred to the Government of Yemen.

These transfers were carried out under individual arrangements between the United States and relevant foreign authorities to ensure the transfers took place under appropriate security measures. Consultations with foreign authorities regarding these individuals will continue.

Since 2002, more than 560 detainees have departed Guantanamo Bay for other destinations, including Albania, Algeria, Afghanistan, Australia, Bangladesh, Bahrain, Belgium, Bermuda, Chad, Denmark, Egypt, France, Hungary Iran, Iraq, Ireland, Italy, Jordan, Kuwait, Libya, Maldives, Mauritania, Morocco, Pakistan, Palau, Portugal, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Sweden, Sudan, Tajikistan, Turkey, Uganda, United Kingdom and Yemen.

McChrystal, who headed the hunt for individual terrorists in his old Joint Special Operations Command job, observed that “terrorists and insurgents do best in undergoverned and ungoverned areas,” prompting his strategy of hardening areas to insurgent groups through stronger Afghan governance and other direct means to meeting Afghans’ material needs. “Outside Afghanistan, the same applies. We see terrorists move to places like Somalia and Yemen,” he continued. “Our best bet is to partner with those governments” to bolster that governance, aided in some cases by “precision strikes” on individual terrorists as necessary and appropriate.

“There’s no single answer,” McChrystal said. “It’s security, governance, development, precision strikes.” But Klein still wondered about what to do in the event of terrorist dispersal. “The best way is very extensive intelligence sharing with our partners and then following them,” McChrystal said. “It’s like following a criminal gang around.” What? Comparing terrorists to criminals? Call Fox News!

He called setting the July 2011 date for transfer “critical,” and “similar to what we did in Iraq” by “providing overwatch.” (Gee, where’d you read that already?) “We will not repeat the mistakes of 1989, when we abandoned the country,” Gates said, and shifts to reassuring Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) that the U.S. military will emphasize training Afghan troops. He added the U.S. will emphasize “essential ministries” and work with sub-national and provincial entities. (Again, you read it here first.) This is an “extended surge” (the hat trick!) of 18 to 24 months for U.S. troops, along with 5000 to 7000 troops from NATO allies.

“It does not begin to approach the scale of violence that consumed Iraq” in 2007, Gates said, meaning there is still a chance for “real and meaningful progress over the next 18 to 24 months.”

Illustration by: Matt Mahurin

Twenty-four-year-old Amir Meshal, the son of Muslim immigrants from Egypt, was a lifelong resident of New Jersey when, after living briefly in Cairo with extended family members, in 2006 he decided to go to Somalia to study Islam and experience living under Islamic law. The country appeared to have stabilized and a new Islamic government was on good terms with the United States.

But Somalia wasn’t as stable as Meshal had thought, and as violence erupted there again in January 2007, Meshal fled, along with many Somali civilians. He was arrested in a joint U.S.-Kenyan-Ethiopian operation along the border of Kenya.

[Law1]During the next four months, Meshal says, he was detained and interrogated in three different African countries without charge, denied the right to speak to a lawyer or family member, and refused the right to even appear before a judicial officer. Although a lifelong U.S. citizen with two U.S. citizen parents, Meshal was repeatedly threatened with torture, rendition to another country where he would be tortured, and forced disappearance. And he believes that U.S. officials, who interrogated him more than 30 times during this process, directed his arrest and treatment.

Those claims are the subject of a new lawsuit being filed Tuesday by the American Civil Liberties Union in Washington. Although it’s not the first lawsuit against U.S. officials seeking damages for torture and other mistreatment abroad, Meshal is only the second U.S. citizen to sue for U.S.-sponsored torture. That and a few other distinctive facts in this case may give him some advantages over those that have been dismissed.

“This is a U.S. citizen who was caught in hostilities abroad, and instead of helping him return, U.S. officials abused him and mistreated him and never charged him with a crime,” said Nusrat Choudhury, one of the lead lawyers from the ACLU representing Meshal. “Should they be allowed to do that without helping a U.S. citizen get home, and instead, denying him access to lawyers?”

That’s the question that will face judges in this case. In the past, the government has managed to convince courts to dismiss torture victims’ cases by saying that government officials are entitled to qualified immunity, or that the case would reveal state secrets, or that courts should not imply a right to sue government officials for constitutional violations when the case involves national security and foreign policy. But will courts be so willing to dismiss a case brought by a U.S. citizen, born to U.S. citizen parents, allegedly tortured directly by U.S. officials, and who has never even been charged with doing anything wrong?

American University Law Professor Stephen Vladeck, an expert on constitutional and national security law, says that although doctrinally the cases are not very different, the fact that Meshal is a U.S. citizen “practically, could make a difference to judges,” he said. “It would just highlight how wrong those other decisions are,” he said.

One of those decisions is Rasul v. Rumsfeld, decided by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals last year. In that case, the court dismissed the claims of four British men who’d been detained and allegedly abused at Guantanamo Bay because, the court reasoned, the federal officials were entitled to “qualified immunity” because it was not clear that Guantanamo detainees had rights under the U.S. Constitution at the time of their alleged abuse.

In that case, though, which is still on appeal (the Supreme Court remanded it back to the D.C. Circuit for reconsideration in light of intervening Supreme Court precedents), the court’s reasoning was based in part on the fact that the plaintiffs were all “aliens” — none were lawful U.S. citizens or residents.

Meshal’s U.S. citizenship may make his case more difficult to dismiss. “Mr. Meshal alleges there needs to be discovery in this case to determine whether what those officers did was objectively reasonable,” said Choudury, his lawyer. “Should an FBI officer think it’s objectively reasonable to threaten a U.S. citizen to send him to place where he will be tortured?”

Interestingly, recently released documents produced in the ACLU’s Freedom of Information Act case against the government have revealed memos written by FBI interrogation specialists in 2002 and sent to Defense Department officials specifically explaining that threatening a detainee with torture, death or disappearance is a violation of the U.S. Constitution and the anti-torture law. That could weaken the government’s argument that FBI officials reasonably thought it was legal to threaten Meshal in 2007.

The most recent case decided that presents similar facts is the case of Maher Arar, dismissed this month for the second time by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. Arar, a Canadian citizen, was arrested by U.S. authorities while he was changing planes at JFK airport in New York in 2002. Arar was held briefly in the states, denied access to a lawyer, then rendered to Syria where he was held in a grave-like cell and interrogated under torture, he says, for almost a year. He was finally released without charge; Syrian authorities acknowledged that they had no evidence against him.

Arar sued the U.S. government for complicity in his treatment abroad. The court last week ruled that he has no right to sue under the U.S. Constitution in this case because the claims would “have the natural tendency to affect diplomacy, foreign policy, and the security of the nation.” As for his claims under the Torture Victims Protection Act, enacted to protect victims of torture in other countries, Arar could not claim compensation from U.S. authorities because it was the Syrians who tortured him, even if U.S. officials knew that he was likely to be tortured when they sent him to Syria, the court ruled.

In addition to the fact that Meshal is a U.S. citizen, his case may stand a better chance because he is suing the actual FBI officials who he claims conducted his interrogation and threatened him with torture, forced disappearance and execution to coerce him into confessing to associations with al-Qaeda that he says he does not have.

“It was a Kenyan jail, but he is alleging that U.S. officials were complicit with those officials in keeping him detained in secret,” said Choudhury. “During interrogations, U.S. government officials threatened to send him to Israel, where they would make him disappear.”

Meshal’s constitutional claims may also fare better because there appears to be nowhere else to bring them — an important factor courts consider. The government claimed that Arar, as a Canadian, could have objected to his rendition before U.S. immigration authorities. (Arar’s lawyers disputed that.)

In this case, there appears to be no alternative means for redress. Meshal has declined to speak to reporters about his ordeal, but according to his legal complaint, while he was in Kenya, Meshal repeatedly asked to speak to a lawyer, to his father, and to the international Committee of the Red Cross; his requests were denied. He was allowed to speak once to a U.S. consular official in Kenya who said he would help Meshal.

Before the consular official could do anything, though, Meshal was handcuffed, hooded and flown to Somalia, where he feared he would be killed, he says. Meshal was deposited in an excruciatingly hot 25-foot-square cave, without windows or toilets. When guards opened the door of the cell, Meshal “noticed that enormous cockroaches were clustered in the corners of the cell and large black millipedes were all over the walls,” the legal complaint charges. Meshal says he was left there, handcuffed in the dark, for two days.

He was then moved to a storage tent where he was given one meal a day of biscuits, marmalade and water. He was left there for about four days until he was transferred to Ethiopia for further interrogation.

The government could still argue that the “state secrets privilege” should doom the case. In many cases charging government wrongdoing in the national security arena, the Justice Department has argued that allowing a lawsuit to go forward would reveal sensitive state secrets and endanger national security. The government’s frequent invocation of the state secrets privilege has become something of a political embarrassment, however. In February, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) introduced a bill, which now has nine co-sponsors, that would severely limit the government’s ability to dismiss cases on that ground. Shortly after, Attorney General Eric Holder in September announced a new policy on state secrets, pledging to use the privilege more sparingly and according to strict new rules. However, he has continued to assert it in situations where advocates say the case should move forward, with the judge simply reviewing any sensitive evidence behind closed doors.

“It seems unlikely the government wouldn’t invoke state secrets again,” said David Luban, a law professor at Georgetown University and expert on legal ethics and international law. In this case, Luban said, the government would likely claim that allowing the cases to move forward would expose sensitive information about the United States’ relationships or agreements with the other countries that Meshal was rendered to. And “if the action is being shut off because of state secrets,” he said, “I don’t think you can get around that.”

“The government can raise that in the course of litigation,” Choudhury agreed. “But that’s not a reason for this case not to go forward.” The government would still have to convince a court that national security would be put at risk simply by responding to requests about the FBI’s treatment of one individual and its role in his rendition and alleged torture. Some courts have been skeptical about that argument, although in the case of German citizen Khaled Al-Masri, a lawsuit filed by a rendition victim against U.S. authorities, a federal judge in Virginia did dismiss the case on state secrets grounds.

And the court could still decide to dismiss the case based on its broader national security implications, as it did in Arar. “What’s been so disturbing is how judges have bent backwards to say this is a new kind of claim,” said Vladeck. In the Arar case, for example, the court cast his claim for compensation for extraordinary rendition as a new kind of constitutional claim that would require the court essentially to create a new right to sue. The court then could easily decline to create that new right, citing the “special factors” involved — in particular, the potential impact on national security and foreign policy. “What’s so distressing about Arar was that the Second Circuit endorsed such a limitless view of special factors,” said Vladeck. “If Arar’s rendition case can’t prevail, then I’m pressed to see what kind of case can win.”

Still, one case has survived dismissal so far. That’s the case of Jose Padilla, a U.S. citizen deemed an “enemy combatant”, who is now suing John Yoo, the former lawyer at the Justice Department who justified torture and Padilla says personally helped to devise his illegal treatment. Although the Obama administration, representing Yoo, tried to have the case dismissed, a federal court in California refused, in part because there was no other way for a U.S. citizen to hold U.S. officials accountable.

Padilla was also the only U.S. citizen to have sued a U.S. official for torture. Until now. Choudhury hopes, at least, that Meshal’s U.S. citizenship might also make some difference. But the outcome is hard to predict. Judges and courts are sharply divided on when a victim of abusive federal government policies should have a right to bring their claims to court.

When the full Second Circuit court ruled in Arar’s case last week, the decision included four powerful dissents.

“The majority would immunize official misconduct by invoking the separation of powers and the executive’s responsibility for foreign affairs and national security,” wrote Judge Barrington Parker, in one of them. “Its approach distorts the system of checks and balances essential to the rule of law, and it trivilializes the judiciary’s role in these arenas,” he continued. The executive’s powers in foreign policy and national security “are not limitless” and their “bounds in both wartime and peacetime are fixed by the same Constitution,” he wrote. The court’s refusal to allow Arar a remedy, he continued, “immunizes official conduct directly at odds with the express will of Congress and the most basic guarantees of liberty contained in the Constitution. By doing so, the majority risks a government that can interpret the law to suits its own ends, without scrutiny.”

From what I’ve seen, initial demands tend to be about 10 times the previous publicized ransom, is this a rule of thumb?

We know that we won’t get our initial demands, but we use it as a starting point and negotiate downwards to our eventual target.  But as a rule, yes, that’s about right.

It works well, except when Navy SEALs shoot your face off. Here’s a cool-looking picture from the U.S. Naval Institute’s blog of Gen. David Petraeus visiting the crew of the USS Bainbridge, which helped free Capt. Richard Philips earlier this year.

At most, arming the crew should be only one component of a comprehensive plan and approach to combat piracy. To the extent we go forward in this direction, it would be my personal preference that only the four most senior ranking officers aboard the vessel have access to effective weaponry and that these individuals receive special training on a regular basis. I realize that even this limited approach to arming the crew opens up a very thorny set of issues. I’ll let others sort out the legal and liability issues but we all must understand that having weapons on board merchant ships fundamentally changes the model of commercial shipping and we must be very cautious about how it is done. Nevertheless, I do believe that arming the crew, as part of an overall strategy, could provide an effective deterrent under certain circumstances and I believe that a measured capability in this respect should be part of the overall debate about how to defend ourselves against criminals on the sea.

Philips went on to say that he wonders about the breakdown in command that could result if a protection force was placed aboard a commercial shipping vessel in the event of a pirate attack. “In the heat of an attack, there can be only one final decision maker,” he said.

“I don’t know any SEALs,” said Sarosdy, 81, speaking by phone from his home in Pensacola, Fla. “I have no idea who transmitted that.”

Sarosdy said he received the e-mail from a friend – he thinks it was another retired military officer – a few days after the stand-off ended, he said. He thought it was interesting, so he forwarded it to a couple dozen other people.

And so another hoax email about Barack Obama was born.