Somalia’s pirates

NAIROBI — When Somali pirates hijacked the 17,000-ton Maersk Alabama container ship yesterday it marked the first time in centuries that a U.S.-flagged ship was attacked by pirates.

The crew didn’t give in: The 20 American crew members on board fought back and forced the four armed men from the ship. But the pirates kidnapped the ship’s captain.

By Thursday morning the U.S.S. Bainbridge — a 510-foot destroyer armed with tomahawk missiles — had caught up, and sat alongside the Maersk Alabama off the coast of Africa as a tense stand-off ensued.

This was the sixth successful pirate attack in as many days, despite the deployment of dozens of ships from the U.S., the European Union, China, India, Japan, Russia and elsewhere as part of a multinational navy force aiming to protect one of the world’s busiest shipping routes.

An attack on a U.S. ship with an American crew will surely get the attention of U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton expressed her concern, saying, “We think the world must come together to end the scourge of piracy.”

To a large extent, the world already has come together, as evidenced by cooperation between nations on anti-piracy control. But piracy nonetheless continues — last year it resulted in more than $30 million in ransom payments.

According to experts from the United Nations Monitoring Group on Somalia, which tracks violations of the international arms embargo, “piracy attacks have become the most lucrative economic activity in Somalia.”

Somalia (see map below)  is the world’s most spectacularly failed state, a deadly maelstrom into which few foreign journalists, aid workers or analysts dare step. Information is hard to come by and harder still to verify. Reporters who venture into Somalia rarely emerge unscathed: Many have been killed; others narrowly escaped death; some have been kidnapped and ransomed; others are still being held.

Meanwhile, 18 years of civil war has left an estimated 2.5 million people facing starvation, armed militias and government forces.

Analysts say the headline-grabbing piracy on the high seas is a symptom of this land-based catastrophe. “The naval taskforce is incapable of stopping piracy,” said Rashid Abdi, Somalia analyst at the International Crisis Group in Nairobi. “Unless you make Somalia work you cannot tackle piracy. The focus should be on a political solution to the Somali crisis.”

Today the pirate groups are well organized and disciplined. But it wasn’t always so.

The pirates emerged out of coastal fishing communities, which watched for years as illegal foreign trawlers plundered Somalia’s fish-stocked waters and foreign ships dumped toxic waste where no one would stop them. The early pirate attacks were aimed at exacting an ad hoc tax from the illegal trawlers. Later, the pirates discovered the more lucrative business of kidnapping.

The pirates are clan-based militias with fluid memberships backed by onshore financiers, often clan leaders and government officials. Many of these leaders come from Puntland, the northern Somali region that abuts the Gulf of Aden and has become the epicenter of piracy.

The financiers front the money for salaries, speedboats, engines, fuel, guns, ammunition, satellite phones, handheld global positioning systems, portable radar equipment, binoculars, grappling hooks and ladders. Teams of between four and eight pirates then set off.

Every year, 20,000 ships in route to and from the Suez Canal sail through a channel only 200 miles across at its widest point. They are within easy reach of the pirate networks based in the towns of Bosaaso, Eyl, Hobyo, Harardheere and Mogadishu.

Eyewitnesses describe the transformation of dusty, sleepy fishing villages into pirate havens, where expensive Land Cruisers ply the unpaved roads, beachside villas replace tin-roofed shacks and successful pirates celebrate by taking new wives in lavish ceremonies.

Attacks are launched either from these towns or, increasingly, from “mother ships” — often stolen trawlers — allowing the pirates to extend their range ever further into the Indian Ocean. The Maersk Alabama, for example, was attacked 340 miles out to sea.

The International Maritime Bureau’s Piracy Reporting Center (see live piracy map) says there have been 41 attempted attacks off the Somali coast so far in 2009, one in seven of which succeeded. The huge naval presence may be helping: Last year, one in three of 111 reported attacks was successful.

Nevertheless, IMB Director Pottengal Mukundan warned, “This recent surge of activity is worrying … principally because attacks have taken place many hundreds of miles off the country’s coastline. The problem of Somali piracy has now spilled over to neighboring countries.”

Invariably ship owners pay the ransom, usually around $1 million. According to sources in the pirate town of Eyl, half of this money goes to the financiers and sponsors of the mission. The pirates themselves then share about $300,000, and the rest is distributed among land-based gunmen and the local community.

It is said that the first pirate to board a ship is rewarded for his bravery with a double share, or a vehicle, and that compensation is paid to the family of a pirate who dies.

Pirates are estimated to have earned tens of millions of dollars in the last year alone. But these sums are dwarfed by legitimate remittances sent home from the Somali diaspora, estimated at about $1 billion a year. Abdi describes as “hogwash” the idea that pirates are exporting their cash to Somali communities abroad.

A debate is raging over whether pirate cash might help fund Islamic extremists, known as al-Shabaab, who control large parts of Somalia and have links to Al Qaeda. But so far pirates have shown more interest in money than ideology.

The fact that Somali imams have forbidden piracy and that attacks plummeted during the brief reign of the Islamic Courts Union in 2006 suggests that far from funding Islamists, the Islamists might be the answer to stopping piracy.

Read more about Somalia and piracy:

Is there a solution for Somalia?

Democracy wins in Ghana

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