Who are Somalia's pirates?

[BanglaBhoot]

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - – Today's pirates are mainly fighters for Somalia's many warlord factions, who have fought each other for control of the country since the collapse of the Siad Barre government in 1991.

Their motives? A mixture of entrepreneurialism and survival, says Iqbal Jhazbhay, a Somali expert at the University of South Africa in Tshwane, as Pretoria is now called.

"From the evidence so far, these primarily appear to be fighters looking for predatory opportunities," says Mr. Jhazbhay. They operated "roadblocks in the past, which were fleecing people as a form of taxation. Now they've seen the opportunities on the high seas."

Initially, one of the main motives for taking to the seas – working first with local fishermen, and later buying boats and weapons with the proceeds of every ship they captured – was "pure survival," says Jhazbhay, explaining that armed extortion is one of the few opportunities to make a living in lawless Somalia.

"It's spiked more recently because of a spike in food prices," he says.

Now it has become a highly profitable, sophisticated criminal enterprise hauling in millions of dollars in ransom payments.

Whom do they work for?

The pirates mainly work for themselves.

Much of the piracy seems to be based out of the Puntland, a semiautonomous region on the northern shore of Somalia that broke away from Somalia soon after 1991.

Thousands of pirates now operate off Somalia's coast, although there are no accurate numbers on precisely how many there are.

United Nations monitoring reports on arms smuggling in the Horn of Africa have pointed to evidence that pirate gangs have established relations with corrupt officials of the Puntland government. They bribe port officials to allow the pirates to use Eyl and other ports as their bases of operation, and to bring some of their captured ships in for safekeeping while the pirates negotiate ransoms with the ships' owners.

There is also evidence that expatriate Somalis living in Kenya, Saudi Arabia, and throughout the Persian Gulf may be feeding information to the pirates about ships that have docked in those regions and may be heading toward the Gulf of Aden and other pirate-infested areas.

Who benefits from this piracy?

The money seems to be distributed by warlords to their families and friends, and then further outward toward their fellow clan-members, says Jhazbhay.

There have been charges recently that local Islamist groups may be linked to the pirate gangs, and may have begun to use piracy as a source of funds to buy weapons.

Certainly, Islamist groups such as Al Shabab – an insurgent group formed after the Islamic Courts Union lost control of the country last year in the wake of a US-backed invasion by Somalia's neighbor, Ethiopia – have used pirate gangs to smuggle weapons into Somalia, which is currently under international weapons sanctions. But the evidence is thin, as yet, that Islamist groups are using piracy on the high seas as a funding mechanism.

"The last thing the Islamists want to do is give an unnecessary provocation to the major powers, who might come after them in a big way," says Richard Cornwell, a senior analyst at the Institute for Security Studies in Tshwane. "What experience tells us is that if the Islamists did take control of Somalia, piracy would stop overnight. They don't want warlords gaining arms and money outside of their control."

Is there an Al Qaeda connection?

While the CIA's chief, Gen. Michael Hayden, suggested recently that Al Qaeda was beginning to expand its reach in the Horn of Africa, and possibly reaching out to radical local Islamist parties such as Al Shabab in Somalia, there appears to be little evidence of a connection between international Islamist groups such as Al Qaeda and piracy.

"There may be some loose elements among the Islamist groups that have tie-ups with the pirates, because the movement is fractured into six or seven different groups, and each may have its own problems getting funding," says Jhazbhay.

How did they get so good at taking ships?

Practice, practice, practice.

More than 90 ships have been attacked off the coast of Somalia this year. Seventeen ships remain in the hands of Somali pirates. The Saudi owners of the Sirius Star, the oil tanker taken Nov. 15, are reportedly in contact with the pirates, possibly to negotiate the release of the ship, its crew, and the estimated $110 million cargo of crude oil.

"What staggered the mind is that this capture was 400 nautical miles out to sea," says Mr. Cornwell. "That's far deeper water than anything we've seen before. But with a GPS they can hijack to order." Using a mother ship – often an old Russian trawler – to prowl deeper waters for their target, they can offload smaller boats to move in close and overtake the ship, and climb up with hooks and ladders, and submachine guns.

"With a fully laden tanker ship, you have a fairly low free board, so it is easy to get up on board from smaller boats," says Cornwell. "Tankers are an obvious target of opportunity."

How will it affect security and trade?

Somalia is under international weapons sanctions, and warlord groups continue to fight both against the Ethiopian peacekeeping mission and against each other. But an influx of money is likely to mean a further influx of weapons to an already wartorn land.

"Regionally, I think the major problem is that piracy has given some groups the chance to lay their hands on money," says Jhazbhay. "There may be $30 million in ransom money received in recent years. Once they [the various armed groups] get that kind of money, they can buy a ground-to-air missile. Getting [a hold of] arms can affect the struggle for freedom in Somalia, and that affects the whole region."

What's being done to stop them?

Currently, the NATO alliance, the US Navy's Fifth Fleet, and a host of other countries have ships patrolling the coast of Somalia and the Gulf of Aden – an area of approximately 1.1 million square miles – to prevent piracy.

On Nov. 18, an Indian warship sank a suspected pirate mother ship off the coast of Yemen, after the pirates fired on them.

But given the size of the territory, and the amount of shipping traffic that flows past Somalia from the Suez Canal, naval patrolling cannot guarantee the safety of commercial vessels.

"Unless you have a warship in the immediate area, and, crucially, with a helicopter, you've got no chance of stopping them," says Cornwell.

While individual ships can protect themselves with everything from barbed wire around the ship itself to high-pressure hoses, coalition forces can also do more to track and neutralize suspected pirate mother ships. "I can't see why more work isn't being done with satellites to find the mother ships," says Cornwell.

Egypt hosted a Nov. 20 emergency meeting with Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Jordan to try to forge a joint strategy against piracy, which threatens a crucial international trade route through the Suez Canal in the Red Sea – Egypt's key source of revenue.

Who are Somalia's pirates? | csmonitor.com

 

[BanglaBhoot]

Great game of hunting pirates

Under the rubric of the fight against sea piracy, an entirely different template of maritime activity is taking place by interventionist powers. The United States, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and the European Union have stepped out of the European theatre and entered the Indian Ocean, as has India. Russia is seeking a reopening of its Soviet-era naval base in Aden. There is a strong suspicion a great game is unfolding, writes MK Bhadrakumar

‘SIR, you have done India proud.’ That was how the anchorman of a television channel in Delhi addressed the Indian navy chief, Admiral Sureesh Mehta, on the victorious sea battle by warship INS Tabar with would-be hijackers as dusk was falling on Tuesday evening in the Gulf of Aden.

Those words would have made Sir Francis Drake, the 16th-century British navigator and slaver-politician of the Elizabethan era, truly envious. Sir Francis had bigger claims to fame in a life cut short by dysentery while attacking San Juan, Puerto Rico, in 1595.

Unsurprisingly, the patriotic Indian media dutifully expressed its gratitude and confidence once again in the armed forces. The armed forces, too, gained an opportunity to look away from a raging controversy over alleged involvement of servicemen in terrorist activities by Hindu fundamentalists. The Indian navy has seen ‘action’ after a long interlude of 37 years since the Bangladesh war.

A carefully worded navy statement suggested that pirates attacked the Tabar and the latter ‘retaliated in self-defence’ and opened fire on the mother vessel. The pirates ‘made good’ their ‘escape into darkness’ while the Indian warship sunk a pirate boat. The incident received wide international attention. But it also raises some questions.

Sea piracy off the coast of Somalia is looming large on the radar of world opinion. The recent hijacking of the oil tanker Sirius Star – a super-tanker big enough to hold a quarter of Saudi Arabia’s daily production (2 million barrels) – has dramatically highlighted the expanding dimensions of the problem. The barely functioning government of Somalia is unable to curb the pirates who sail from its ports and seize cargo ships that ply past.

The pirates on board the Sirius Star have issued a $25 million ransom demand, and warned of ‘disastrous’ consequences if the money is not paid.

A scourge that was believed to have taken shelter in comic books and movies has come back to haunt. But unlike bygone buccaneers, Somali pirates are well-armed and organised into two or three syndicates. They may halt maritime activity from the Indian Ocean into the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf. Insurance premiums for ships plying between the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula have skyrocketed as much as 10-fold and additional costs could total $400 million annually.

On Thursday, Maersk, the world’s largest shipping company, announced it would no longer put its tankers at risk to pirates off Somalia. Maersk said it would reroute its 50-strong oil tanker fleet via the Cape of Good Hope off the tip of southern Africa – a much longer and more expensive route.

The naval presence by foreign powers cannot solve the problem. There are about 14 warships from various countries including the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation deployed off the Somali coast, whereas over 20,000 ships are estimated to pass through the Persian Gulf annually. Moreover, there are question marks about the legality of the operations by these warships. While NATO secured a request from the United Nations secretary general for undertaking interdiction work in international waters off Somalia, the same cannot be said for Russia or India. Russia claims the Somali government sought its assistance but there is no one really in charge in Mogadishu. It is noteworthy that the Indian navy statement has made it a point to underline that its warship ‘retaliated in self-defence’.

The obvious thing to do is to act under a United Nations mandate, preferably involving the African Union and the littoral states, which may have capabilities or may be assisted to develop capabilities. But this hasn’t happened, lending to strong suspicion that a Great Game is unfolding for control of the sea route in the Indian Ocean between the Strait of Malacca and the Persian Gulf. This sea route is undoubtedly one of the most sensitive waterways for commerce involving cargo such as oil, weapons and manufactured goods moving between Europe and Asia. Actually, the effective regional cooperation in curbing piracy and hijacking at the chokepoint of the Malacca Strait should provide a useful model.

There is some talk that the pirates may provide cover for international terrorist groups. Experts on ‘terrorism’ have already shifted gear and begun speculating about al-Qaeda copying the modus operandi of the Somali pirates. Are we inching toward including sea piracy in the ‘war on terror’?

Which will be a pity since the anarchic conditions prevailing in Somalia are easy to understand. Somalia is a dysfunctional country like Afghanistan which has never been a shining beacon of stability or democracy. But things changed distinctly for the better when the Islamic Courts Union took control in early 2006. The ICU succeeded in restoring law and order in that country torn by clan rivalries and violence.

But, then, the George W Bush administration viewed this as unacceptable. By the perverse September 11, 2001, logic, how could an Islamic government be allowed to be a trailblazer of good governance? The result was the invasion by Christian Ethiopia in 2007, with US backing. The invasion failed to produce decisive results and instead helped only to splinter the ICU, with the radical elements known as shabah (young men) gaining the upper hand.

The result is plain to see. Therefore, there is no question that the problem of piracy is also to be addressed ashore in Somalia. But, problems often enough lend themselves to solution if only soldiers and geo-strategists would step aside for a while. That is, at least, the expert opinion of Katie Stuhldreher. Writing in the Christian Science Monitor recently, she put forth a three-way approach to the Somalia problem. One, the international community should appreciate that the piracy in Somalia has its origin among disgruntled fishermen who had to compete with illegal poaching by foreign commercial vessels in its tuna-rich coastal waters.

This unequal fight created a local impoverished population. Resentment was also caused among the coastal population over the shameless dumping of wastes in Somali waters by foreign ships. The disgruntled local fishermen, who lost out, soon organised to attack foreign fishing vessels and demand compensation. Their campaign succeeded and prompted many young men to ‘hang up their fishing nets in favour of AK-47s.’

Stuhldreher suggested, ‘Making the coastal areas lucrative for local fishermen again could encourage pirates to return to legitimate livelihoods.’ Therefore, she wrote, ‘A fishery protection force will eliminate the pirates’ source of legitimacy.’ This could be done under the auspices of the UN or African Union or a ‘coalition of the willing.’

Most important, ‘An international force sent to protect local industry will achieve the same goal as warships but in a more acceptable way. The principal reason piracy thrives along Somalia’s coast is that there is no coastal authority to protect these waters. Armed foreign ships will still serve to fill that vacuum and deter attacks, but with the explicit mission of serving Somalia’s people – the very people who have chalked up enough reasons to dislike foreign military interventions and are likely to view the presence of warships as intimidation.’

But, will there be any takers for ‘nation-building’ in Africa among the US, NATO and European member countries, Russia or India? Highly unlikely. Ideally, the international community should also commence a reconciliation process involving the residual elements of the ICU. In retrospect, like in Afghanistan in the case with the Taliban, a proper understanding of Islamism would help appreciate the worth of the ICU in stabilising Somalia.

On the contrary, under the broad rubric of the fight against sea piracy, what we are witnessing is an entirely different template of maritime activity by the interventionist powers. The US has established a separate Africa Command in the Pentagon. NATO and the EU have stepped out of the European theatre and entered the Indian Ocean area. Russia is seeking a reopening of its Soviet-era naval base in Aden. India has sought and obtained berthing facilities for its warships in Oman, which is an unprecedented move to establish a permanent naval presence in the Persian Gulf. The Indian Ocean is becoming a new theatre in the Great Game. It seems a matter of time before China appears.

China of course is not a newcomer to the Indian Ocean. In 1405, during the reign of Emperor Yung-lo of the Ming Dynasty, a celebrated Chinese naval commander Ching-Ho visited Ceylon (presently known as Sri Lanka) bearing incense to offer at the renowned shrine of the Buddha in the hill town of Kandy. But he was waylaid by Sinhalese King Wijayo Bahu VI, and he escaped to his ships. To seek revenge, China dispatched Ching-Ho a few years later. He captured the Sinhalese king and his family and took them away as prisoners. But on seeing the prisoners, the Chinese emperor out of compassion ordered them to be sent back on the condition that the ‘wisest of the family should be chosen king.’ The new king, Sri Prakrama Bahu, was given a seal of investiture and made a vassal of the Chinese emperor. That was how Ceylon remained until 1448, paying an annual tribute to China.

Admiral Mehta has a worthy example in front of him, provided he can coax his reluctant country to flex its muscles in Africa for the first time in its ancient history. His best argument would be that unless he took an early lead, Ching-Ho might reappear in the Indian Ocean. But then there is an inherent risk insofar as the pirates who disappeared into the mist on Tuesday evening might also return looking for the INS Tabar.

Asia Times Online, November 22. Ambassador MK Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service.

http://www.newagebd.com/2008/nov/22/oped.html

 

[digitaltiger]

Nice Information..........

 

[su-47]

But then there is an inherent risk insofar as the pirates who disappeared into the mist on Tuesday evening might also return looking for the INS Tabar.

http://www.newagebd.com/2008/nov/22/oped.html

I doubt they'll pick on Tabar or any other warship again. They dont have the firepiwer to sink or board a warship.

 

[Black Stone]

When the warships catches their leader Jack Sparrow, everything would be back to normal.

 

[BanglaBhoot]

Anarchy in Somalia

The lawless Horn

Nov 20th 2008
From The Economist print edition

Pirates are only part of a much bigger problem in east Africa

IT IS tempting to be jaunty about piracy. So what if a few Robin Hoods in skiffs nick the odd tanker off the Horn of Africa? Often enough, the owners pay ransom and nobody gets hurt. Everyone needs a living in these hard times. And if the worst comes to the worst, gunboats can always be dispatched to clean the problem up, just as the British and Americans did off north Africa’s Barbary coast at the turn of the 19th century.

It is tempting, but it is wrong. The Barbary pirates caused immense human and economic damage, and the current spate of piracy in the waters of east Africa is now getting out of hand too. On November 15th pirates operating hundreds of miles from the coast seized the Sirius Star, a supertanker carrying 2m barrels of Saudi oil (see article). A dozen or so other vessels are already held by pirates. One of them—surrounded by American and Russian warships—contains a cargo of 33 T-72 tanks, enough to tip the balance in a small local war.

The last thing the world needs right now is disruption of one of its busiest shipping lanes and a spike in insurance premiums. But the cause of the present surge of piracy is no less worrying than its consequences. What has made the pirates’ audacity possible is the collapse of Somalia. The existence of a vast ungoverned space in Africa’s Horn does not just provide a useful haven from which pirates can hunt their prey at sea. It also threatens to transmit shockwaves through a seam of fragile and strife-torn African states from Sudan to the Congo.

How did this happen, and how can it be resolved? The first question is the easier to answer. About 50,000 peacekeepers are currently deployed under United Nations or African Union auspices in east and central Africa in an effort to dampen down various conflicts. In Somalia in 2006, however, the Bush administration tried something different: war by proxy. It gave a green light for Ethiopia to invade Somalia. The plan was for Ethiopia to squash an Islamist movement and reinstate a Somali government that had lost control of most of its territory.

Two years on, the plan has backfired. Abdullahi Ahmed, Somalia’s increasingly notional president, admitted on November 15th that a variety of Islamist insurgents once again dominate most of the country, leaving only two cities, Mogadishu and Baidoa, in the hands of his increasingly notional government. Neither Ethiopia nor the African Union ever sent enough soldiers to impose order. Worse, the strongest of the insurgent groups, the Shabab, is even more radical than the Islamic Courts movement which the Americans and Ethiopians originally took on. It is suspected of being linked by money to the pirates (who hand over a slice of the ransom in return for protection) and by ideology to al-Qaeda.

So how to resolve the issue? It is not enough just to send more gunboats. Although an Indian warship sunk an alleged pirate vessel this week, and a bigger naval effort could help to keep the sea-lanes a little safer, a long-term solution demands much more. This includes establishing stability inside Somalia itself, depriving the pirates of a sanctuary, and preventing the jihad-tinted anarchy there from spilling over Somalia’s borders. But since there are no serious military forces available to defeat the insurgents, a proper answer will entail reshaping the country’s politics and stepping up attempts to woo the more biddable Islamists—if there are enough left and a deal with them is still possible. Maybe not so jaunty, after all.

The lawless Horn of Africa | The lawless Horn | The Economist

 

[shchinese]

India Navy!

They just blew up that poor Thailand boat and claimed it to be the mother ship.

 

[BanglaBhoot]

Official: Indian navy likely sinks hijacked Thai ship in Gulf


KUALA LUMPUR, Nov. 26 (Xinhua) -- The Indian navy has sunk a ship in the Gulf of Aden earlier this month, which was likely to be the Thai ship hijacked by Somali pirates, an official from the International Maritime Bureau (IMB) said here on Wednesday.

"Based on reports from the crew survivor, the owner and other sources, we confirmed that the ship was most likely to be the Thai ship of the Ekwat Nava 5," said Neol Choong, director of the IBM Piracy Report Center based here.

The Indian navy fired and sank a vessel with some pirates aboard, several hours after a Thai ship was hijacked by Somali pirates there on Nov. 18, Choong told Xinhua.

The vessel was on their way towards Somali when it was sunk by the Indian navy, he said.

One crew member on the vessel that was owned by a Thai was killed, 14 others were missing, but a Cambodian crew escaped and were found alive several days later on the sea, he said.

Choong also said that IMB had disseminated the related information about the hijack to the coalition navy forces in the Gulf of Aden, but he was not sure whether the Indian and Russian navy forces stationed there received the information or not because the navy forces of the two countries were not within "the system".

He urged all navy forces there to strengthen their coordination and information sharing in their operations against pirates.

India reportedly sent its own navy ships to the Gulf of Aden in October this year to protect its own merchant ships.

Earlier this month, reports said that India claimed its navy warship destroyed a Somali pirate vessel.

Official: Indian navy likely sinks hijacked Thai ship in Gulf_English_Xinhua

 

[fatman17]

MIDDLE EAST/AFRICA
Date Posted: 25-Nov-2008

Jane's Defence Weekly

Naval co-operation 'key to Somali anti-piracy effort'

Cassandra Zoro, aboard the HrMS De Ruyter, Somalia coast


Key Points
The hijacking of a Saudi oil tanker marks a shift in pirate tactics and requires a rethinking of deterrence efforts

Some naval officials suggest a judicious use of private security contractors to deter pirates


The audacity with which Somalia-based pirates surrounded, boarded and seized a Saudi-owned super-tanker despite the presence in the Gulf of Aden of some of the world's strongest navies underscores a need for improved co-operation and strengthened rules of engagement for anti-piracy efforts, senior naval officers have said.

"To find a solution to the escalating security situation, we need to first of all make co-operation between all contributing navies more efficient," Commander Peter Reesink, the captain of the Dutch-flagged HrMs De Ruyter , told Jane's on 18 November while on an escort mission for humanitarian aid to the Horn of Africa nation.

"We also need to make sure that all navies can act with similar rules of engagement."

Four NATO ships are patrolling alongside the Dutch frigate, the Indian frigate Tabar and the Russian frigate Neustrashimy on anti-piracy duties in the 2.4 million mile 2 (6.2 million km 2 ) Gulf of Aden, in line with a UN mandate providing "all necessary means" to interdict pirates who have earned more than USD100 million in ransom payments.

For the De Ruyter , which is performing escort duties for food aid being transported for the World Food Programme, this takes the form of a team of special forces who embark on the cargo ship to protect the crew.

"These new piracy events are a signal about the security situation here - if the pirates can go 400 miles out to sea, they can go 600 miles, they can go anywhere," Cdr Reesink said. "So far our presence has been enough to deter any piracy threat [against the humanitarian ships]," he added. "The more eyes you have, the better protected you are."

The NATO ships on piracy detail since early November operate under newly adopted joint rules of engagement that aim to be sensitive to their national commands, which allow navies to board vessels suspected of illegal acts and confiscate illegal weapons. What they do not have, according to NATO spokeswoman Carmen Romero, is the ability to arrest, detain or try people suspected of being pirates.

NATO shares the concerns of those worried about the stepped-up pirate activity and a change in tactics that resulted in the 15 November capture of the MV Sirius Star more than 450 n miles offshore, carrying a cargo of crude oil worth an estimated USD120 million, Romero told Jane's .

"But we only deployed a few weeks ago and can only cover a precise area," she said. "We are there to provide escort and patrolling duties."

International co-operation at sea may not be enough to deter piracy, said Russia's ambassador to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin. "It is up to NATO, Europe and other stakeholders to conduct a coastal operation to eradicate the pirates' bases.

"They operate from the shore and these need to be removed [as their source of support]," he said on the sidelines of a NATO parliamentary meeting on 19 November.

Vessels operating as part of a Bahrain-based coalition led by the US Fifth Fleet in a 1.1 million square-mile zone of the Gulf of Aden are also on anti-piracy duty.

The US Navy insists, however, that it is time for the merchant vessels themselves to become more "proactive" and engage in their own self defence, which can mean contracting private security firms.

"The military and naval forces cannot be the complete solution," Commander Jane Campbell, a spokeswoman for the Fifth Fleet, told Jane's on 18 November.

"In the case of the Sirius Star , [hiring private contractors] may have been the only way to prevent this particular attack, given its distance from shore, the size of its crew and the size of the vessel. We absolutely think it would be a good idea to employ such companies."

US-based Blackwater Worldwide has already offered its services in the form of its own vessel. Company spokeswoman Anne Tyrrell said there have been "initial conversations with 15shipping companies" but there have been no contracts signed.

The risk of engaging private security companies, however, comes in the form of the potential for casualties aboard what are "innocent vessels ... engaged in the peaceful conduct of international trade", said Peter Hinchliffe, the marine director of the International Chamber of Shipping.

International Maritime Bureau (IMB) Manager Cyrus Mody added: "The legalities of the situation do not allow for an armed private security presence.".

This has not stopped some shipping companies from embarking armed security guards, or diverting their ships to circumnavigate the Cape of Good Hope: a decision that can add days and tens of thousands of dollars to the journey.

"I can't blame the ship owners for taking security measures into their own hands, but this isn't the answer," said Cdr Reesink. "We will never have enough warships to protect the whole area - so we need to find a long-term solution that involves more efficient co-operation, designated escort lanes and getting to the mother ships if possible."

On 18 November INS Tabar sank a vessel identified as a mother ship by the IMB after coming under heavy fire from pirates who threatened to destroy the Indian frigate.

Indian Navy spokesman Commander Nirad Sinha said a three-hour firefight ended with the sinking of the mother ship. Two speed boats laden with suspected pirates escaped, one of which, along with its crew, remains at large.

Additional reporting by Lauren Gelfand JDW Middle East/Africa Editor, London ; and Sheila Tahvildari JDW Correspondent, London

 

[PAN-Somalist]

May be the international london conference on somalia held last month has everything to do with piracy problem.