I have promised to write more about this hot subject, hot for me, hot for people risking their lives passing the Red Sea into the Gulf of Aden. I think I’ll double the posting, and what I’m writing here, now, will be re-posted on my other site, The Yacht Owner, which is brand new in this form, on a Genesis WordPress platform, the same I wish you all, :).
What I’m going to say here, is backed by BBC, AFP, Times Magazine and of course, the insider, Clay Maitland, Chairman of NAMEPA, and Managing Partner of IRI, organisms spelled in Pirates of the Red Sea and surroundings post. Here will be, I hope, something to provoke you to react, to push the questioning for a solution further than the TV screen. The other reason is to open the subject, a little more than it is. A Canadian wrote a book called, The Pirates of Somalia, a sort of diary on his own adventures there, between the pirates, themselves. I’m also use him as a “source”.
Facts: There are more than these but I just name a few, like the following one. The Somali attacks accounted for 1,016 hostages seized last year. Somali pirates are currently holding 31 ships with more than 700 crew on board. Below, is a map from New York Times, they have a Flash interactive plugin, I just wanted to be useful and show anyway generally, the situation.
Somalian Piracy Threat Map 2010 from Wikipedia
No, I couldn’t fix here the NY Times map, not enough patience, I hope the wikipedia map will do better, it shows a lot of other piracy attacks around the world, not all of them finalized. You have to click on it, to take it out in attachments page, and then to click it again, it is really huge (2 MB) and clear to the last detail.
Another fact is that Jean and Scott Adam, a 17.67m LOA yacht owners pair, were killed along their two crew members, Phyllis Macay and Robert A. Riggle of Seattle, earlier this year, in February, and the reasons are “unclear”. After the International Maritime Bureau’s (IMB) statistics, the claims may be up to $25 million for a tanker. Nobody knows exactly how much the pirates takes, it is known how much the pirates cost the shipping industry and Insurance Companies. The numbers are astounding: between $7 billion to $12 billion.
Mohamed Abdi Hassan (from IRIN)
Pirates operating off the coast of Somalia are being controlled by crime syndicates, including foreigners lured by the multi-million-dollar ransoms, Interpol and other officials said (AFP). “Their weaponry continues to get more sophisticated, their attacks are taking place farther and farther out to sea… as far as 1,200 nautical miles offshore” – says an Interpol official. It is claimed that this is actually an international crime cartel who control the operations, and the pirates have just some ten thousand dollars per hijack, from the multimillion ransom payed. Nothing out of ordinary, with 7 billion, you make Somalia a country again, so it is unfortunately clearer why the “forces” are not intervening, because of the so called, “humanitarian” claims. It is highly profitable. As the Italian Mafia and the American Cosa Nostra were hijacked in their turns by the international bankers, the mob organization taking only percents and all the blame (0f course they help FBI in the “war against terrorism”), the controlling organization of this ultimate modern criminal activity, is controlled by others. My solutions to prevent it, in the former post are for normal people in a normal world, I have to excuse myself for being logical. Also, it seems that the yachts are somehow escorted by US Navy, and who take out of the “official convoy”, is left pray for the pirates. So, one may think that even the “prays” are controlled.
There still are fishing vessels in the area, “illegal” for the rule which forbid the fishing four nautical miles from shore, escorted by warships. There aren’t given names of the companies who can allow a warship to take care of pirates. It became a money game, as everything. With movies like Black Hawk Down, inspired of course by happened events, the public opinion is manipulated to believe that nothing can be done. They call America to intervene, only there is now, Al-Shabab.
Al Shabab is one of Africa’s most fearsome militant Islamist groups. The organization controls much of southern Somalia, and has waged an insurgency against Somalia’s transitional government and its Ethiopian supporters since 2006. Originally the militant wing of the Islamic Courts Union, the group that controlled Somalia prior to the country’s invasion by Ethiopian forces, Shabab leaders have claimed affiliation with Al Qaeda since 2007. According to a recent United Nations report, a number of companies, including Blackwater Worldwide and the South African Saracen International, have entered Somalia with contracts to protect Somali officials, to train African troops, and – interestingly – to “build a combat force to fight armed Somali pirates”. The Pentagon has recently launched strikes by drone aircraft aimed at the Shabab. The Pentagon has advised Congress that it plans to send $45 million in equipment to strengthen the Ugandan and Burundian troops now also engaged in Somalia. “The increasing level of overt and clandestine activities in Somalia continues to focus on Puntland”, a semiautonomous area in northern Somalia, in which Saracen International, referred to above, has contracted to train “a 1,000-member antipiracy militia” according to the New York Times.
According to the above mentioned book, the piracy gained force in the 1990s, after the outbreak of Somalia’s civil war. The first targets, commercial lobster-fishing vessels, were trawling off the coast of Puntland. Because they used steel-pronged drag fishing nets, these foreign trawlers did not bother with nimble explorations of the reefs. Instead, they uprooted them, netting the future livelihoods of the nearby coastal people along with the days’ catch. A small group of aggrieved fishermen, led by a pirate called Boyah, began capturing the trawlers and holding the crews for ransom. But after the commercial fishermen cut deals with southern warlords for protection, Boyah and his fellow pirates switched tactics, indiscriminately assaulting vessels that sailed into the vicinity.
“As Somali piracy increased, resourceful characters like Mohamed Abdi Hassan, known as Afweyne (“Big Mouth”), from the central coastal town of Harardheere, brought a new sophistication to the business. Abdi Hassan raised venture capital for his pirate operations. Criminal gangs like his became highly organized, and the deployment of “motherships” allowed them to operate hundreds of miles from the coast. When a radical fundamentalist movement called the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), seized control of the southern half of Somalia in 2006 and declared war on pirates in its territory, the Puntland operations gained unchallenged supremacy. And dodgy coast guard outfits hired by the Puntland government inadvertently provided on-the-job training to aspiring pirates, familiarizing them with sophisticated weapons, assault tactics and advanced navigation systems.” – the book
In 2009, Puntland’s newly elected president, Abdirahman Farole, a former professor who seemed to abhor the pirates, ended the laissez-faire policies of his predecessors. But while he authorized the arrest and imprisonment of pirates, Farole has proven unwilling to attack their bases. To do so would risk plunging clan-fractured Puntland into civil war. Al-Shabab is ICU’s military wing, with members working clandestinely for the American Government, according to Mr. Maitland. So, it’s complicated.
Thanks a lot to Jay Bahadur, Clay Maitland and others, for being the data sources for this article. I wanted to make it in two, but it wasn’t worth it. I remember how the Turkish series squashed my nerves.
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Copyright © 2011 Rodolfo Grimaldi Blog – Deeper into Somali Pirates Issue
