A "win" for Dagalo's Rapid Support Force in the current fighting in Sudan could benefit Wagner - the "mining" mercenaries – to the disadvantage of other African nations – and add to Europe's refugee problems, writes Fidel Amakye Owusu.

Just when some West African states are uncomfortable with the presence of Wagner forces in Mali and most likely, Burkina Faso, the group has become a "major" player in the current crisis. It's also active in some Sudan's neighbouring states such as the Central African Republic and Libya.

The big story of May 2013 was President Obama’s enunciation of his revised UACV policy to National Defense University on May 23rd, the day after the disclosure that four Americans were killed in 2009 by drone strikes. Amid reams of coverage, here’s James Traub for Foreign Policy magazine, eviscerating the Pakistan perspective:

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/05/24/indispensible_weapon_drones_obama

and the New York Times details the new policy guidance:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/23/us/us-acknowledges-killing-4-americans-in-drone-strikes.html?_r=1&

Whether by chance or design, more than half the month elapsed without a single declared UACV strike, writes Elayne Jude of Great North News Services. The pax was broken with a strike in Yemen on May 18th.

Drone Wars November - December  2012 by Elayne Jude, Great North News Service

November 2012 saw a lull in strikes, with one strike in Yemen near the beginning of the month, and one in Pakistan near the end. The tempo increased in both regions throughout December, and the close of the year saw a cluster of killings in Yemen. Also in December, Iran TV accused Israel and Azerbaijan of jointly operating drones to spy in Iranian airspace. An Azeri government spokesman denied the allegations.

This month saw a strike in Arakzai, Pakistan, the country's first outside North and South Waziristan since December 2010, writes Elayne Jude of Great North News Services. In Yemen, a rare strike occurred in in Saada province the north of the country, killing a local AQAP commander, and two Saudis. The area is the locus of fighting between the Houthis, a Shia splinter group, and local Salafist groups, including al Qaeda, allegedly used as proxies by the Sunni Yemeni government.

Yemen remains the most unpredictable of Arab lands, a country with a more tortuous recent history almost any other state in the Arab World. But after ten years of on-off fighting, the last thing author Charlie Pratt would have predicted was that the Huthi movement would be able to effectively conquer Yemen from their mountain stronghold in Sa'dah province. The Huthi, nominally a Shi'a Zaydi revivalist movement, but effectively a coalition of disaffected and marginalized tribes from Sa'dah linked to the al-Huthi family, are organised and effective, but the door they pushed it is an open one; their advance exposing the state machinery of Yemen for the sham it was, and is, and revealing much grimmer prospects for the future than previously anticipated.

Yemen remains the most unpredictable of Arab lands, a country with a more tortuous recent history almost any other state in the Arab World. But after ten years of on-off fighting, the last thing I would have predicted was that the Huthi movement would be able to effectively conquer Yemen from their mountain stronghold in Sa'dah province, writes Charlie Pratt. The Huthi, nominally a Shi'a Zaydi revivalist movement, but effectively a coalition of disaffected and marginalized tribes from Sa'dah linked to the al-Huthi family, are organised and effective, but the door they pushed it is an open one; their advance exposing the state machinery of Yemen for the sham it was, and is, and revealing much grimmer prospects for the future than previously anticipated.

The bad news stories pour out of Yemen. Military action against al-Qa'ida in the South of the country makes slow, painful progress in an area of the country aflame with separatist zeal and anger at the North. Sana'a witness clashes between troops loyal to the vengeful former President 'Ali 'Abdallah Salih, unseated by diktat of the Gulf Cooperation Council, and those of the incumbent. And, more than ever, Yemen seems capable of splitting back into the forms it once inhabited; either a separate North and South Yemen or a patchwork of tiny tribal fiefdoms notionally unified as Yemen. But Charlie Pratt reports a quiet optimism.

A crisis in Yemen is rapidly escalating. A standoff centered on the presidential palace is taking place between security forces in the capital city of Sanaa while embattled President Ali Abdullah Saleh continues to resist stepping down, claiming that the "majority of Yemeni people" support him. While a Western-led military intervention in Libya is dominating the headlines, the crisis in Yemen and its implications for Persian Gulf stability is of greater strategic consequence. Saudi Arabia is already facing the threat of an Iranian destabilization campaign in eastern Arabia and has deployed forces to Bahrain in an effort to prevent Shiite unrest from spreading. With a second front now threatening the Saudi underbelly, the situation in Yemen is becoming one that the Saudis can no longer leave on the backburner.

The turning point in Yemen occurred March 18 after Friday prayers, when tens of thousands of protesters in the streets calling for Saleh's ouster came under a heavy crackdown that reportedly left some 46 people dead and hundreds wounded. It is unclear whether the shootings were ordered by Saleh himself, orchestrated by a member of the Yemeni defense establishment to facilitate Saleh's political exit or simply provoked by tensions in the streets, but it does not really matter. Scores of defections from the ruling party, the prominent Hashid tribe in the north and military old guard followed the March 18 events, both putting Saleh at risk of being removed in a coup and putting the already deeply fractious country at risk of a civil war.

By Raoul Sherrard

Air travel is the most visual aspect of international terrorism. It is one which we see most often in the media and provides the most tangible evidence for the threats that may face UK citizens as they pass through customs. In comparison to most of the work done by counterterrorism forces it is much easier to look at the success rate of packages making onto planes and the ensuing chaos in the aviation industry. In this respect the Yemeni printer cartridge bomb threats have been reported to show how terrorists have adapted and challenged our increased security by utilising unassuming office parcels.

Thankfully the response was quick enough to defuse the bombs before they exploded, with unofficial reports of 17 minutes left circulating as if from a movie scene. The governments involved in defusing the plot have subsequently banned cartridges over 435g, along with cargo from Yemen and Somalia. Yet this is a surreal reaction when one considers that thousands of tonnes are being transported through numerous circulating routes at this moment in time, often stopping, refuelling, and shifting through several dozen trade routes. Do we expect others attempting to replicate this plot to fail to take into account the new weight restrictions? Or that new extra screening will result in increased vigilance throughout these networks?

In the same circumstances x - ray machines which take full 'naked images' in combination with stricter and more invasive body searches are being routinely used to prevent would be hijackers. The inconvenience of this most vivid and public act of security is tolerated in the knowledge that few of us would travel on planes where no security was in place if given the choice. We would rather feel better with some action being taken, no matter the effectiveness, than none at all. Yet in Israel, the long lines of passengers that these searches cause have provided opportunities for terrorists to detonate explosives.

It is difficult to argue that new technology has made passenger travel objectively safer. What we see is described best by Schneier in Beyond Fear and as a mere 'security theatre'. Airport security is for the most part a play, undertaken more for the benefit of the passengers than the security forces. We are encouraged to be involved to make us and those who are responsible for us feel as if they have taken every possible avenue, trading inconvenience for increased safety.
So what is the answer to this problem if current measures are not enough? How much more time, resources and manpower would be needed to stop terrorists with access to a cargo company and an ink jet cartridge from bringing down an aircraft? The truth is that this is largely impossible to gauge given that every year 80 million tonnes of cargo and 4.8 billion passengers make trips around the world.

Security is subjective in the same way that you cannot ask an insurer to protect you against all acts that could ever happen; neither can you make air travel impregnable against terrorist attacks. Furthermore, security measures are inevitably brought in to question after they fail to do their job effectively. Critics would then probably claim that the expense and inconvenience was utterly wasteful and better spent elsewhere.

We cannot ever truly defend against every terrorist plot to attack civil aviation. Instead we manage the risk of what is one of the safest modes of transport by providing a trade off between allowing air travel to flourish at its current levels with increasingly pervasive security measures. The biggest issue is that this will never be a fine art. It is why we often see the cracks of logic that allow hidden drugs routinely making their way onto planes but visible and declared bottled water being stopped.

Those involved in working for civil liberty and defence should be well gauged in the risks posed by the threat of international terrorism. It is important they do not fall for the trap of overreaction, which can be damaging to successful counterterrorism. If we follow the trends of demonising a wide target, creating fear and overreaction you leverage the actual risk of terrorism becoming more powerful than it is.

The work of those who aim to protect aviation should be considered in contrast to the reaction of trying to provide security with measures that only increase workloads. In this example is it truly the right course of action to expect that bomb squads should check every conceivable package with special attention to ink cartridges, instead of following intelligence and reasoning to high security threats? Or should we look to remain composed and focused on credible ways to stop threats before they even make it to the airport scanner?