Page 2 of 36 FirstFirst 123412 ... LastLast
Results 21 to 40 of 715

Thread: More Piracy Near Somalia

  1. #21
    Council Member Stan's Avatar
    Join Date
    Dec 2006
    Location
    Estonia
    Posts
    3,817

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by davidbfpo View Post
    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.
    If you want to blend in, take the bus

  2. #22
    Council Member carl's Avatar
    Join Date
    Nov 2005
    Location
    Denver on occasion
    Posts
    2,460

    Default

    "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?"
    "We fight, get beat, rise, and fight again." Gen. Nathanael Greene

  3. #23
    Council Member Stan's Avatar
    Join Date
    Dec 2006
    Location
    Estonia
    Posts
    3,817

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by carl View Post
    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.
    If you want to blend in, take the bus

  4. #24
    Council Member Stan's Avatar
    Join Date
    Dec 2006
    Location
    Estonia
    Posts
    3,817

    Default Back on the radar screen

    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.
    If you want to blend in, take the bus

  5. #25
    Moderator Steve Blair's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2005
    Location
    Montana
    Posts
    3,195

    Default 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

  6. #26
    Council Member davidbfpo's Avatar
    Join Date
    Mar 2006
    Location
    UK
    Posts
    13,366

    Default 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

  7. #27
    Council Member AdamG's Avatar
    Join Date
    Dec 2005
    Location
    Hiding from the Dreaded Burrito Gang
    Posts
    3,096

    Default 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.

  8. #28
    Council Member davidbfpo's Avatar
    Join Date
    Mar 2006
    Location
    UK
    Posts
    13,366

    Default 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

  9. #29
    Council Member AdamG's Avatar
    Join Date
    Dec 2005
    Location
    Hiding from the Dreaded Burrito Gang
    Posts
    3,096

    Default 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

  10. #30
    Council Member
    Join Date
    Mar 2008
    Posts
    1,457

    Default

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

  11. #31
    Council Member Stan's Avatar
    Join Date
    Dec 2006
    Location
    Estonia
    Posts
    3,817

    Default 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

  12. #32
    Council Member MattC86's Avatar
    Join Date
    Aug 2007
    Location
    REMFing it up in DC
    Posts
    250

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by davidbfpo View Post
    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
    "Give a good leader very little and he will succeed. Give a mediocrity a great deal and he will fail." - General George C. Marshall

  13. #33
    Council Member AdamG's Avatar
    Join Date
    Dec 2005
    Location
    Hiding from the Dreaded Burrito Gang
    Posts
    3,096

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by MattC86 View Post
    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..

  14. #34
    Council Member Render's Avatar
    Join Date
    Aug 2008
    Posts
    30

    Default

    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

  15. #35
    Council Member
    Join Date
    Aug 2007
    Location
    Montreal
    Posts
    1,602

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by Render View Post
    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.

  16. #36
    Council Member Render's Avatar
    Join Date
    Aug 2008
    Posts
    30

    Default

    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

  17. #37
    Council Member
    Join Date
    Oct 2005
    Posts
    3,099

    Default

    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......

  18. #38
    Council Member sullygoarmy's Avatar
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Fort Stewart
    Posts
    224

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by Jedburgh View Post

    I'm SO looking on e-bay.
    "But the bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet withstanding, go out to meet it."

    -Thucydides

  19. #39
    Council Member wm's Avatar
    Join Date
    Dec 2006
    Location
    On the Lunatic Fringe
    Posts
    1,237

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by sullygoarmy View Post
    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.
    Vir prudens non contra ventum mingit
    The greatest educational dogma is also its greatest fallacy: the belief that what must be learned can necessarily be taught. — Sydney J. Harris

  20. #40
    Council Member Cavguy's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jun 2007
    Location
    Honolulu, Hawaii
    Posts
    1,127

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by sullygoarmy View Post
    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.
    "A Sherman can give you a very nice... edge."- Oddball, Kelly's Heroes
    Who is Cavguy?

Tags for this Thread

Bookmarks

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •