The blog of a Swedish MP on board a Swedish Atalanta ship
Member of the Riksdag (the parliament
Swedish), Annicka Engblom (1) chose to spend a few days with the sailors
Swedes engaged off Somalia in the Atalanta anti-piracy operation. A journey facilitated by an old friend
of school, Jon Wikingsson, who is today chief of the HMS Stockholm (one of the committed ships). Arrival early July at
Djibouti, she was "embarked" on board Swedish ships and recounts his experience on sur his blog.
"I wanted to see with my own eyes and hear with my own ears the experiences of the crews" She says. A second visit
"important in the context of the preparation of a possible continuation of the participation of Sweden (in the second phase of Atalanta), to possibly assume the command of
the operation." First observation (already mentioned on this blog): time got the better of the pirates. "The wind has caused piracy on the high seas to
decreases". The monsoon period makes "pirates more dependent on their ship-mother". An interesting notion "to be taken into account for an ME02 operation" (the current operation is indeed called ME01 on the Swedish side, ME as Marinens insats i EUNAVFOR). Le
chnumber of WFP ships surprises her: "LThe loading job is far too inefficient and takes far too long. Everything is
handmade. This takes time. And meanwhile people are starving."
The continuation on blog, in Swedish (but a little
will...)
(1) Born in 1967, she graduated from the naval academy and also worked in the Armed Forces Radio Service (Försvarets radioanstalt), an agency
dependent on the Ministry of Defense in charge of intelligence, radio, satellite and web tapping now also - the equivalent, all things considered, of the American NSA - above all
facing the neighborhood... east). She sits at "Moderate" party by Carl Bildt, the Minister of Foreign Affairs
foreigners.
(photo credit: HMS Stockholm - Annicka's blog)