More Piracy Near Somalia

[Stan]

Stan,

One wonders if the new Spanish cabinet with its majority of female ministers, one being defence minister, has made a difference. I doubt if rescuing a trawler was on her list of things to achieve.

davidbfpo

Good points, David ! Well, she is just slightly pregnant, but then, managed a trip to Afghanistan !

Kinda wondering where that Naval Frigate is... should've caught up with a tuna boat by now.


Spain seeks NATO, US help in hostage crisis

The defence ministry said a Spanish military frigate was heading to the area off east Africa, where the pirates have demanded money for the release of the crew, a day after storming the vessel armed with grenade launchers.

It said the ship would arrive in 24 to 36 hours. Deputy Prime Minister Maria Teresa Fernandez de la Vega chaired a meeting of senior cabinet members, including Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos and Defence Minister Carme Chacon, to discuss the crisis.

“We have sought the help of France and the United States,” two countries with a military presence in the area, a Spanish government spokesman said.

[carl]

"A quick trip to the International Maritime Bureau's site however has come up with an ingenuous device to keep those pesky pirates at bay... with 9,000 volts

Quote:
Secure-Ship is the most recent and effective innovation in the fight against piracy. It is a non-lethal, electrifying fence surrounding the whole ship, which has been specially adapted for maritime use. The fence uses 9,000-volt pulse to deter boarding attempts. An intruder coming in contact with the fence will receive an unpleasant non-lethal shock that will result in the intruder abandoning the attempted boarding. At the same time an alarm will go off, activating floodlights and a very loud siren. The IMB strongly recommends ship owners to install this device on board their ships."

I would not want to be the salesman for this device when he is asked to answer the question "What do I do if they tell me to turn it off or they will continue to shoot up the ship?"

[Stan]

I would not want to be the salesman for this device when he is asked to answer the question "What do I do if they tell me to turn it off or they will continue to shoot up the ship?"

Hmmm, I'd have to say hunker down (behind some steel) and hope the power source for the fence keeps up during the cooking process and they eventually run out of grenades

Looks like Somalia's Puntland region has had enough and took matters into their own hands.

The men from the semi-autonomous region defeated the pirates after "brief fighting", the mayor of the region's Bosasso port told Reuters news agency.

Seven pirates were arrested in the incident a day after the Al-Khaleej was hijacked, local officials said.

At least three people were wounded in the incident, although the ship's crew were unhurt, local reports said.

[Stan]

Caught up in all the other world's problems ?

The folks at Danger Room have found the Pirates Map (of all places) off the shores of Somalia

Pirates have been attacking ships off the coast of Somalia for years. This map, from the United Nations satellite imagery team, plots all the strikes in 2007. There are no big red Xs to mark the treasure spots, I'm afraid. But it does note the last known whereabouts of the pirate "mother ship." Which is still pretty cool.

Troubled waters no more as the United Nations pulls the plug on tub toys

The UN has authorised foreign countries to send warships into Somali waters to combat rampant piracy on a busy shipping route linking Europe and Asia.

The security council resolution, backed by Somalia's weak interim government, authorises navies to use force to stop hijackings at sea over the next six months.

The resolution was sponsored by the US, Panama and France, whose military obtained special permission from Somalia's government in March to pursue and arrest some of the pirates that had hijacked the luxury yacht. Initial resistance to the bill from Indonesia, which has its own problems with piracy, fell away after guarantees that it would not set a precedent for foreign intervention elsewhere in the world.

[Steve Blair]

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.

[davidbfpo]

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

[AdamG]

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.

[davidbfpo]

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

[AdamG]

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

[Entropy]

I'm not sure if this has been posted before, but here you can get some pretty cool maps showing Somalia piracy.

[Stan]

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

[MattC86]

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

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. . .

Regards,

Matt

[AdamG]

Last I checked it was a full strength Surface Action Group on station there. . .

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..

[Render]

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

[Rex Brynen]

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?

While I know "information" to this effect is reported in the October 2006 UN Monitoring Group report on Somalia, I'm aware of no credible evidence that it took place. Largely numbers of armed Somalis operating in Lebanon would have stuck out like a sore thumb (in fact, for those who know Lebanon its a rather comical image), and done Hizbullah far more harm than good.

[Render]

Rex:

Good point, but...

Wouldn't that depend on how and where those Somalians where used/located (assuming they existed)?

If all they did was briefly rotate through a Hiz training camp in the northern Bekaa without ever seeing any action on the border, then the thumb never got sore enough to stick out.

Do the Ethiopian refugees serving in the IDF stick out like a sore thumb? Did they have a deterent morale value on the Somali Hiz volunteers, (assuming they existed)?

I tend to believe that they did exist in small numbers, but that their numbers were inflated by both sides for propaganda purposes.

MORE THAN
MEETS THE EYE,
R

[Jedburgh]

BBC, 26 Sep 08: Somali Pirates 'Seize 30 Tanks'

Pirates off the coast of Somalia have seized a Ukrainian ship carrying T-72 tanks, an official has said.

Ukraine's foreign ministry said the ship had a crew of 21 and was sailing under a Belize flag to the Kenyan port of Mombasa.

A report from Russia's Interfax news agency said earlier that the ship had a cargo of about 30 tanks, as well as spare parts for armoured vehicles......

[sullygoarmy]

BBC, 26 Sep 08: Somali Pirates 'Seize 30 Tanks'

I'm SO looking on e-bay.

[wm]

I'm SO looking on e-bay.

Even if you catch a break in the auction and get one at a low price, shipping costs could be a little steep.

[Cavguy]

I'm SO looking on e-bay.

In all seriousness, why isn't the US Navy out there cracking down on the Pirates? I've seen more action out of the Dutch/French than the USN, which strikes me as odd.

We're the largest, and the Royal Navy ended lots of piracy in the 1600's/1700's.

While the navy is contributing in Iraq, it's pretty hard to send a AGEIS crusier up the Tigris, so what are they doing to end this threat to one of their core tasks (freedom of the seas)?

Seems to me a couple of sunk pirates would make some good examples, even if the economic driver is strong.