More Piracy Near Somalia
See here for a quick overview.
Pirates have kidnapped a Western family from a yacht off Yemen and taken them to the breakaway republic of Somaliland, officials there have said.
A Somaliland elder told the BBC that the family was German and that he had visited them.
"On the plains and mountains of the American West, the United States Army had once learned everything there was to learn about hit-and-run tactics and guerrilla warfare."
T.R. Fehrenbach This Kind of War
Not so clear cut?
Taken from: http://www.afrol.com/articles/29528
Four German tourists, including a woman and a child, were kidnapped by pirates as they were sailing off the coast of Somalia's northern region of Puntland on Monday. According to Puntland officials, the tourists were kidnapped near the coastal town of Las Qoray. Earlier this year, Puntland and Somalia clashed over the ownership of the coastal town. The pirates took the tourists hostage and eloped with them into hills around the coastal town. The tourists were abducted after their yacht ran out of fuel. In an effort to free the hostages, local residents have joined Somaliland soldiers to vigorously search for the pirates, Somaliland Vice President, said the Vice President of the self-declared Somaliland, Ahmed Yusuf Yasin.
Slightly different from Reuters: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L24275931.htm
davidbfpo
Derka Derka Yaaaaargh
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2...-pirates_N.htm
U.S. targets Somali pirates
By Donna Leinwand, USA TODAY
The U.S. and international military forces are taking more aggressive action off the African coast as bolder and more violent pirates imperil oil shipments and other trade.
The area is a key shipping route for cargo transported to and from the U.S. and elsewhere. In response to pirate attacks, the U.S. has stepped up its patrols to deter them and sometimes intervened to rescue hostages and ships. It also has increased its intelligence-sharing in the area, says Navy Lt. Nate Christensen, a spokesman for the 5th Fleet in Bahrain, which patrols Middle Eastern and African waters.
The U.S. is "very concerned about the increasing number of acts of piracy and armed robbery" off the Somali coast, he says. Somalia's weak government has admitted it can't control its territorial waters, and Nigeria is fending off a rebel group.
http://www.lloyds.com/News_Centre/Fe...s_21072008.htm
Protecting against the modern-day pirates
Lloyds List
21 July 2008
As levels of piracy rise, so ship owners can expect insurance premiums to go up, with Ken Alston of risk specialist Marsh saying this was an eventuality to be ‘expected’. He added that the scale of the additional premium being charged at the moment is ‘unlikely to have an impact on the consumer’ but if the number of incidences increases, this may change. In May 2008, the Joint War Committee added the Gulf of Aden, located between Somalia and Yemen, to a list of places at high threat of hull war, strikes, terrorism and related perils. It is now comparable to the likes of Iraq in terms of insurance risk, according to the committee.
UN shipping to Somalia
In the last couple of days there was a new item that the UN Food programme is having to reconsider its shipments to Somalia - as the Dutch Navy will soon cease a deployment which has escorted their (chartered) ships. In view of the pirate threat the UN was re-thinking its options.
Will try to locate story later.
davidbfpo
Found it
Pirates 'putting lives at risk'
4 days ago
The lives of millions of Somalians could be in jeopardy as pirates and robbers threaten aid supplies.
That's the stark warning from the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP). It said more than half the population of the troubled African country could need urgent food assistance by the end of the year if naval escorts are not found to protect food ships soon.
France, Denmark and the Netherlands were providing escorts but the WFP has received no further commitment from them since June.
http://ukpress.google.com/article/AL...eFxVmnhLfUy0sg
I'm not sure if this has been posted before, but here you can get some pretty cool maps showing Somalia piracy.
Rank and File among Pirates too
Just finished watching the evening news where Estonian midshipman Ardo Kalle returned home and indicated that the scrawny pirates were ranked by the weapons they carried.
"You could tell who were in charge as they were armed with Russian Kalashnikovs versus those with Chinese-made AKs"
According to Ardo, the 40-day ordeal aboard the German cargo vessel Lehmann Timber ended shy of the one million ransom, as the food on board had long run out, and even the pirates wanted out !
Jeez, go figure
If you want to blend in, take the bus
Why is the UN-sponsored NATO Horn of Africa patrol not taking over the escort of these shipments? Last I checked it was a full strength Surface Action Group on station there. . .Originally Posted by davidbfpo
Regards,
Matt
"Give a good leader very little and he will succeed. Give a mediocrity a great deal and he will fail." - General George C. Marshall
10 ships, lotta ocean?
http://www.canada.com/victoriatimesc...5-53d5c289f765
To deter such crimes, Task Force 150, led by Commodore Bob Davidson, who uses the Iroquois as his flagship, includes a changing cast of warships from the United States, five European countries and Pakistan.
It now maintains a more-or-less permanent naval presence between the Horn of Africa and the Gulf of Aden.
But this is only a small part of the Task Force's area, which covers 2.5 million square miles of ocean from the southern end of the Suez Canal to Kenya's border with Tanzania, east to the Seychelles and then north to Pakistan..
Regarding this ongoing and escalating situation, I'm going to cut-n-paste a comment of mine from Bill Roggio's Long War Journal...
http://www.longwarjournal.org/archiv...rrounds_hi.php
Something I was wondering back when the Russian tug was hijacked...
What are the odds that the MV Iran Deyanat wasn't really hijacked?
It's international crewmembers would have to be kept in the dark or otherwise be part of the operation, but that's not beyond the realm of possibility. The "chemical weapons" story serves as a good cover for keeping less well equipped investigaters from close inspection while the actual cargo, (in this hypothosis light infantry arms and ammo), is unloaded.
Is there any known connection between the group of pirates that took MV Iran Deyanat and the Somali militia that sent 300 to 700 some odd volunteers to Lebanon in 2006?
Is there any known connection between MV Iran Deyanat and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard?
Are these pirates just dumber then the usual 21st century pirate types? Like the taking of the Russian tug, this particular act of piracy just smells odd...
PRIVATEER,
R
Pirates to have day in court?
I know Somali pirates aren't quite the same thing as the Taliban, although I did recently hear the whole to-do with them being compared to an insurgency. Any-hoo, up until now, the big problem has been that the law was unclear on how to prosecute them, and that was at least part of what prevented the gaggle of ships cruising off the coast of Somalia from becoming more "proactive", shall we say, against the pirates. But there may be some progress in that direction. The U.S. and Kenya just signed off on an agreement that will have the Kenyans prosecuting the pirates in their courts. This may be good news. Hopefully.
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsM...50S4ZZ20090129
"Don't discuss yourself, for you are bound to lose; if you belittle yourself, you are believed; if you praise yourself, you are disbelieved." -Michel de Montaigne
"I have this personal rule about not starting flame wars with people who ride around in battleplates." -Schlock Mercenary, May 21, 2003
4 Jan 09 testimony before the Subcommittee on Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee by Peter Chalk of RAND:
Maritime Piracy: Reasons, Dangers and Solutions
Thank you, Mr. Chairman and distinguished Members of the Subcommittee, for the opportunity to testify on this important subject. The rash of pirate attacks off the Horn of Africa and Gulf of Aden in 2008 has cast into sharp light an enduring problem that affects not only this part of the continent but many other areas of the world. This testimony aims to inform and put into context the current debate on piracy by providing an overview of the scope and contributing factors driving armed maritime violence in the contemporary era and the principal dangers associated with this particular manifestation of transnational crime. Given the publicity and unprecedented character of the international response to Somali-based piracy, the testimony also briefly addresses the appropriateness of the measures that have been instituted to deal with armed maritime violence off the Horn of Africa and Gulf of Aden.......
Haven't read it yet, but....
The Pirate Latitudes, by William Langewiesche. Vanity Fair, April 2009.
Haven't read it yet, but the author is excellent, and is a knowledgeable source on the subject having covered piracy and shipping in his book The Outlaw Sea: A World of Freedom, Chaos, and Crime.When the French luxury cruise ship Le Ponant was captured by a raggedy, hopped-up band of Somali pirates last spring, in the Gulf of Aden, it looked as if the bandits had bitten off more than they could chew. But after a week-long standoff, they got what they had come for—a $2.15 million ransom. Describing the terrifying attack, the ordeal of the ship’s epicurean crew, and the tense negotiations, the author examines the ruthless calculus behind a new age of piracy.
Piracy article
The Vanity Fair article is interesting and illustrates the difficulties posed to all parties involved. Attacking a luxury yacht, minus passengers, makes the incident magazine worthy; especially as the yacht often has US passengers aboard. The French military action - after the ransom was paid - is similar to the opening scenes in 'Blackhawk Down', which struck me as odd.
davidbfpo
Pirates make mistake
Somali pirates by mistake attack a German Navy supply vessel, Germans fire back and chase ensues: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090330/...eXORo9.P9vaA8F
I'd speculate this is the first time the German navy has fired shots in anger since 1945.
davidbfpo
Let the pirates go?
Yes, all the international action appears to have overlooked whether any law existed to deal with those detained: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/wo...s-1662947.html
Brilliant.
davidbfpo
The Seven Ways to Stop Piracy
To give a bit of background, Dr. Menkhaus is one of my former professors at Davidson. He is one of the world's foremost experts on the HOA, lived in Somalia for a few years in the late 80s teaching English and working on rural development, then was an adviser to UNOSOM in the 1990s, was there during the Battle of Mogadishu (Black Hawk Down), and since then has been active in political and military affairs in the Horn. He has testified before Congress several times on issues regarding Africa and the Middle East, and has been particularly busy recently traveling back and forth between the US, Europe, and the Horn to do advising. It was during my final semester in the spring of 2007, when I was taking two of his classes, that Somalian insurgent attacks against the occupying Ethiopian forces skyrocketed, and he actually had to cancel classes for an entire week because he had been asked by the Pentagon to fly out to the middle of the Pacific to give a briefing to a Marine Expeditionary Unit that was on its way there. The best compliment I ever got from him was after I had given an oral presentation on my research at the end of the semester, and he told me I had a bright future ahead of me as a military planner. Given what I know of planning processes in the upper echelons and the concept of "death by PowerPoint," I'm not even sure whether that's a compliment or not.And why none of them will work as well as we might hope.
By Ken Menkhaus
Posted April 2009
Now that the rush of excitement has subsided from the made-for-TV drama of the rescue of Captain Phillips, we are left with the more sobering long-term question of what to do about Somali piracy. Whether piracy constitutes a serious national security threat is a subject of debate. But there is no question that piracy off the Somali coast is now an important symbolic political issue for both the Obama administration and its critics. The Obama administration does not want conservative opponents to portray it as weak on defense or unwilling to use force to protect American interests, and so cannot afford to embrace passive policies on piracy. Yet the piracy issue is replete with traps, a seemingly simple problem with seemingly simple solutions, all of which could easily backfire and make things worse.
Indeed, some of the strategies that have the greatest appeal for the American public and punditry are also the most dangerous. And certainly, none of them offers a quick fix.
Let’s look at the standard menu of options being discussed in Washington.....
Last edited by Jedburgh; 04-24-2009 at 03:34 AM.
When I die, I want my last words to have been "Hold my beer and watch this."
Chatham House, Apr 09: Pirates and How to Deal With Them
This briefing note draws on a meeting of a roundtable of experts held at Chatham House on 26 February 2009 by the Africa Programme and the International Law Discussion Group. It brought together lawyers and practitioners from the military, industry and diplomatic services to clarify some of the legal concerns around combating piracy off the Somali coast. The paper draws on presentations by Agustin Blanco-Bazan of the International Maritime Organisation (IMO), Commodore Neil Brown of the Royal Navy and Dr Douglas Guilfoyle from University College London, and on the discussion that followed......
How the navies talk
I seem to recall posting on how the various navies would co-operate dispite politics and the state of diplomatic relations; this helps to explain: http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htt.../20090923.aspx
davidbfpo
Dumb Pirates
Target identification works both ways
Somali Pirates Mistake French Military Vessel for Commercial ShipPARIS — Somali pirates in two skiffs fired on a French navy vessel early Wednesday after apparently mistaking it for a commercial boat, the French military said. The French ship gave chase and captured five suspected pirates.
No one was wounded by the volleys from the Kalashnikov rifles directed at La Somme, a 3,800-ton refueling ship, said Rear Admiral Christophe Prazuck, a military spokesman.
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