By Jacob LaksinFrontPageMagazine.com 4/10/2009
It was a scene that spoke volumes about the world’s impotence in the face of modern piracy. On Thursday, the USS Bainbridge – the 510-foot destroyer armed with Tomahawk cruise missiles – stood idly by as a ragtag band of Somali pirates drifted along in a lifeboat, holding hostage the captain of the U.S.-flagged cargo ship they had hijacked, with brief success, only hours earlier. Though 20 of the Danish-owned Maersk Alabama’s crew had repelled the pirates, a premier-class warship in the world’s mightiest Navy was now powerless to intervene as they made their slow, floating getaway.
The Bainbridge's inaction was not entirely unjustified. As negotiations continue for the safe release of the pirates’ hostage, Capt. Richard Phillips, a military maneuver is temporarily out of the question. Nonetheless, the hijacking and standoff 300-miles off Somalia’s coast, the first in recent history in which an American crew was captured, points to a larger problem: the persistent inability of the international community to stem the scourge of piracy in Somalia’s surrounding waters.
The sheer volume of pirate attacks is daunting. According to United Nations’ estimates, Somali pirates staged at least 120 attacks last year, including 42 successful seizures. Contrary to some reports, moreover, there has been no decline in the rate of attacks in 2009. The International Maritime Bureau reports that there have been 66 attacks since January, including 15 attacks in March. In the past week alone, six ships have been seized by pirates. This high-seas assault has netted an impressive haul of plunder, with the pirates currently holding some 14 ships and as many as 260 crew members – hostages to be bargained away for million-dollar ransoms.
With crews and cargo in constant danger, governments have been forced to act. In December, thanks to the Bush administration’s initiative, the United Nations Security Council passed resolution 1851, which provided added powers for countries to interdict pirates off of Somalia’s coast by deploying naval vessels and military aircraft; seizing pirate boats and arms; and even pursuing pirates on the ground inside the country. Since then, territorial waters have become a hub for patrol ships and planes. Altogether, more than a dozen countries have deployed warships, including China, Russia, India, the EU, and the US. The USS Bainbridge, for instance, was one of several U.S. ships that had been on patrol in the region when the Maersk Alabama came under attack.
Unfortunately, the surging naval presence around Somalia has not been the deterrent that many had hoped. Indeed, it has failed to cut down significantly on piracy. There are three main reasons for that.
First, the area of pirate operations is simply too large to be monitored effectively by the still-modest number of ships patrolling the region. The U.S. Navy points out that it would take 61 ships just to patrol the Gulf of Aden, the coveted shipping route between the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula that has more than earned its mariners’ nickname of “Pirate Alley.” That’s a far cry from the approximately 16 international ships that currently patrol the area. The Gulf, moreover, is a mere speck on the pirates’ map. Taking full advantage of local geography, pirates carry out attacks along over 2,500 miles of coastline and around more than 1.1 million square miles of water. Absent a substantial influx in ships, there is simply too much territory to patrol.
Naval patrols also miss the source of the problem. While piracy takes place on the water, the pirates themselves operate from land, where they have turned dirt-poor port towns into thriving lairs built from booty and collected ransom. In the fisherman’s village of Hobyo, for instance, pirates have set up a makeshift social security system bankrolled entirely by ransom earnings.
Yet, attacks on pirate bases remain rare. (A daring helicopter raid last April by French commandos, in which they seized the pirates who days earlier had released the captured crew of a luxury yacht, was one notable exception.) In part, this reflects the lack of international will to meddle in the affairs of a failed state that has become a magnet for Islamic terrorists. Occasionally, too, a bureaucratic impasse is to blame. The U.S. naval anti-piracy group Joint Task Force 151, for example, has operated in the Gulf of Aden, but is powerless to intervene in Somalia because its jurisdiction is under U.S. Central Command, while Somalia falls under Africa Command. Whatever the explanation offered, the net effect is that pirates can act with impunity on Somalia’s shore – no small hurdle to thwarting pirate attacks decisively. It was no coincidence, after all, that American Marines stormed the pirate stronghold of Derne, Tripoli, when fighting the Barbary corsairs two hundred years ago.
But the biggest reason that naval patrols have not curbed piracy is that it remains a lucrative trade, especially by local standards. On ransom demands ranging from $1 million and $8 million, pirates are estimated to have made some $150 million in 2008. The Ukrainian arms ship MV Faina yielded a $3.2 million payoff when it was released by pirates this February, while the Saudi supertanker Sirius Star went for $3 million – considerably less than the $25 million that the pirates initially demanded but a colossal fortune in a country where 73 percent of the population lives on less than $2 per day. So long as shipping companies continue to pay out charitable ransoms, Somalia’s pirates will remain in business.
For the shipping industry, piracy is a nuisance, albeit a formidable one. For Somalia, though, it is more devastating still. The very ships that the pirates target are often the country’s sole source of humanitarian aid. When it was hijacked this week, the Maersk Alabama was carrying food staples from the UN to refugees in Somalia, Uganda and Kenya. It’s doubtful if they will ever see those supplies now.
The politics of piracy have been similarly destructive. Just as they have destabilized international shipping lanes, the pirates, a law onto themselves, have undermined Somalia’s already weak transitional government. Piracy has paid well for its practitioners, but it has left Somalia dangerously adrift.
It was a scene that spoke volumes about the world’s impotence in the face of modern piracy. On Thursday, the USS Bainbridge – the 510-foot destroyer armed with Tomahawk cruise missiles – stood idly by as a ragtag band of Somali pirates drifted along in a lifeboat, holding hostage the captain of the U.S.-flagged cargo ship they had hijacked, with brief success, only hours earlier. Though 20 of the Danish-owned Maersk Alabama’s crew had repelled the pirates, a premier-class warship in the world’s mightiest Navy was now powerless to intervene as they made their slow, floating getaway.
The Bainbridge's inaction was not entirely unjustified. As negotiations continue for the safe release of the pirates’ hostage, Capt. Richard Phillips, a military maneuver is temporarily out of the question. Nonetheless, the hijacking and standoff 300-miles off Somalia’s coast, the first in recent history in which an American crew was captured, points to a larger problem: the persistent inability of the international community to stem the scourge of piracy in Somalia’s surrounding waters.
The sheer volume of pirate attacks is daunting. According to United Nations’ estimates, Somali pirates staged at least 120 attacks last year, including 42 successful seizures. Contrary to some reports, moreover, there has been no decline in the rate of attacks in 2009. The International Maritime Bureau reports that there have been 66 attacks since January, including 15 attacks in March. In the past week alone, six ships have been seized by pirates. This high-seas assault has netted an impressive haul of plunder, with the pirates currently holding some 14 ships and as many as 260 crew members – hostages to be bargained away for million-dollar ransoms.
With crews and cargo in constant danger, governments have been forced to act. In December, thanks to the Bush administration’s initiative, the United Nations Security Council passed resolution 1851, which provided added powers for countries to interdict pirates off of Somalia’s coast by deploying naval vessels and military aircraft; seizing pirate boats and arms; and even pursuing pirates on the ground inside the country. Since then, territorial waters have become a hub for patrol ships and planes. Altogether, more than a dozen countries have deployed warships, including China, Russia, India, the EU, and the US. The USS Bainbridge, for instance, was one of several U.S. ships that had been on patrol in the region when the Maersk Alabama came under attack.
Unfortunately, the surging naval presence around Somalia has not been the deterrent that many had hoped. Indeed, it has failed to cut down significantly on piracy. There are three main reasons for that.
First, the area of pirate operations is simply too large to be monitored effectively by the still-modest number of ships patrolling the region. The U.S. Navy points out that it would take 61 ships just to patrol the Gulf of Aden, the coveted shipping route between the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula that has more than earned its mariners’ nickname of “Pirate Alley.” That’s a far cry from the approximately 16 international ships that currently patrol the area. The Gulf, moreover, is a mere speck on the pirates’ map. Taking full advantage of local geography, pirates carry out attacks along over 2,500 miles of coastline and around more than 1.1 million square miles of water. Absent a substantial influx in ships, there is simply too much territory to patrol.
Naval patrols also miss the source of the problem. While piracy takes place on the water, the pirates themselves operate from land, where they have turned dirt-poor port towns into thriving lairs built from booty and collected ransom. In the fisherman’s village of Hobyo, for instance, pirates have set up a makeshift social security system bankrolled entirely by ransom earnings.
Yet, attacks on pirate bases remain rare. (A daring helicopter raid last April by French commandos, in which they seized the pirates who days earlier had released the captured crew of a luxury yacht, was one notable exception.) In part, this reflects the lack of international will to meddle in the affairs of a failed state that has become a magnet for Islamic terrorists. Occasionally, too, a bureaucratic impasse is to blame. The U.S. naval anti-piracy group Joint Task Force 151, for example, has operated in the Gulf of Aden, but is powerless to intervene in Somalia because its jurisdiction is under U.S. Central Command, while Somalia falls under Africa Command. Whatever the explanation offered, the net effect is that pirates can act with impunity on Somalia’s shore – no small hurdle to thwarting pirate attacks decisively. It was no coincidence, after all, that American Marines stormed the pirate stronghold of Derne, Tripoli, when fighting the Barbary corsairs two hundred years ago.
But the biggest reason that naval patrols have not curbed piracy is that it remains a lucrative trade, especially by local standards. On ransom demands ranging from $1 million and $8 million, pirates are estimated to have made some $150 million in 2008. The Ukrainian arms ship MV Faina yielded a $3.2 million payoff when it was released by pirates this February, while the Saudi supertanker Sirius Star went for $3 million – considerably less than the $25 million that the pirates initially demanded but a colossal fortune in a country where 73 percent of the population lives on less than $2 per day. So long as shipping companies continue to pay out charitable ransoms, Somalia’s pirates will remain in business.
For the shipping industry, piracy is a nuisance, albeit a formidable one. For Somalia, though, it is more devastating still. The very ships that the pirates target are often the country’s sole source of humanitarian aid. When it was hijacked this week, the Maersk Alabama was carrying food staples from the UN to refugees in Somalia, Uganda and Kenya. It’s doubtful if they will ever see those supplies now.
The politics of piracy have been similarly destructive. Just as they have destabilized international shipping lanes, the pirates, a law onto themselves, have undermined Somalia’s already weak transitional government. Piracy has paid well for its practitioners, but it has left Somalia dangerously adrift.
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