“I came here with my friends. They had a gun and were immediately recruited and joined companies. But I’ve never had a gun so, after a fairly long process, I was told to take part in training for a month and now I can join,” he told Reuters by phone from the coastal, pirate haven of Haradheere.
The new 20-year-old recruit is just one of hundreds of youths in Haradheere desperate to sign up in the hope of earning a tiny slice of hijack ransoms worth millions of dollars.
The steady stream of new recruits suggests that patrols by European Union warships since December 2008 to deter hijackings and arrest the seaborne gunmen have done little to dent the enthusiasm for piracy in the failed Horn of Africa nation.
*****
Pirate training? So now pirate training companies have popped up in order to help job seekers to get a position with the pirate companies? Boy, something has to be done in order to make this less attractive. We can start by making it illegal to pay ransoms and we can also mandate that companies use security on their boats. This should be a start, but we have to do a lot more than that in order to destroy this industry. Or at least make it highly unprofitable and risky for these clowns.
As to the pirates themselves, the only thing I can come up with that makes sense is that you must create an industry to fight this industry. The money from ransoms is what is driving the pirate industry, and the counter industry would be one that takes the pirate’s assets or one that bounties are given for each pirate that is captured or killed. But you need a legal system set up to prosecute these guys. As it stands now, all we have is a catch and release program or kill the bastards during their assault on the boat. Pffft.
Now we could continue with these massive naval shows of force, but if you remember, the new rules of war are now being exhibited quite well by the Somali pirates. Here they are:
Rule 1: “Many and Small” Beats “Few and Large.”–Pirates armed with AK’s and RPG’s, cruising in small motor boats versus destroyers, jets and aircraft carriers?
Rule 2: Finding Matters More Than Flanking. –Pirates hiding in captured friendly vessels, blending in with other civilian craft, in the massive expanse of the ocean.
Rule 3: Swarming Is the New Surging. –1000’s of pirates swarming on vessels, gambling that one or two will make it in for the take down.
Not to mention that even a top admiral is saying that today’s navies cannot continue their operations indefinitely and that shipping should consider armed guards. What happened to the Master and Commander music? lol
Perhaps it is time to reconsider another strategy. A hybrid strategy that involves private industry, and aggressive legal system to prosecute pirates, and the good work of professional navies. If we did go down that path, the Letter of Marque will be an essential tool for governments. I will end this with a quote below from the last LoM paper I posted. Something to think about.-Matt
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This “Golden Age of Piracy” peaked around 1720 and reached an abrupt end in 1725. More than anyone else, the man responsible for bringing this age of piracy to an end was Woodes Rogers.
In an early example of the “revolving door” between the private and public sector employment, Rogers was a privateer before being appointed as the Governor of Bahamas, then the pirate capital of the Americas. In order to reform this territory, Rogers dispersed the pirates of the Caribbean with privateers.
The piracy problem during this era was solved through a combination of tactics:
(1) the British Parliament passed legislation allowing overseas piracy trials, rather than requiring suspected pirates to be brought to England;
(2) captured pirates were publicly tried and executed;
(3) pirates who turned themselves in were pardoned;
(4) naval patrols were increased;
(5) rewards or bounties were promised for the capture of pirates; and
(6) private ships were licensed to attack and capture pirates.
Of these methods, the last is the most relevant here.
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Somalia pirates undaunted by navy patrols
By Mohamed AhmedFriday, April 16, 2010
MOGDISHU (Reuters) – Adam Shine waited months for the chance to join one of Somalia’s growth industries. He has now completed his training and is ready to use his boat-handling and global-positioning skills to hijack ships.
“I came here with my friends. They had a gun and were immediately recruited and joined companies. But I’ve never had a gun so, after a fairly long process, I was told to take part in training for a month and now I can join,” he told Reuters by phone from the coastal, pirate haven of Haradheere.
The new 20-year-old recruit is just one of hundreds of youths in Haradheere desperate to sign up in the hope of earning a tiny slice of hijack ransoms worth millions of dollars.
The steady stream of new recruits suggests that patrols by European Union warships since December 2008 to deter hijackings and arrest the seaborne gunmen have done little to dent the enthusiasm for piracy in the failed Horn of Africa nation.
The pirate gang masters are also confident their business model will survive and are only too keen to hire more manpower as they have ambitious plans to increase attacks on ships beyond Somali waters and — hopefully — the reach of foreign patrols.
“So far, most of our sea operations have been organized within our country’s water basin, besides four successful pilot operations outside Somali waters,” said Mohamed, a pirate militia leader in Haradheere who is recruiting youths. “Now, we are strengthening this route to double such operations.”
“We took account of the fact we would face danger one day and we have been thinking a lot about changing the tactics of our hijacking operations. We are financially strong enough to have access and continue our normal business in the sea.”
RECORD RANSOMS
According to the International Maritime Bureau, Somali pirates accounted for more than half the reported piracy incidents worldwide in 2009 and nearly all of the hijackings, with 47 successful captures.
Andrew Mwangura, head of the Kenyan-based East African Seafarers’ Assistance Programme, said more than $60 million was paid in ransoms last year to Somali gangs — up from $55 million in 2008 — and they have kept up the pace this year.
Pirates got the largest ransom on record for a Greek-flagged oil tanker in January, a payout of between $5.5 to $7 million. A supertanker carrying as much as $170 million of oil from Iraq to the United States was seized this month.
“What became clear in 2008 and 2009, and continued in 2010, is that Somali maritime piracy is big business,” Mwangura said.
He said there are about 1,500 pirates working for seven syndicates and a smaller number of “bosses” who control separate but linked enterprises, largely financed and brokered from Kenya, Dubai, Lebanon, Somalia and other countries.
According to Mwangura, Somali pirates seized 26 vessels between December 29 and April 7 and are now holding 20 ocean-going vessels and 242 crew members as hostages.
Senior shipping executives also worry that Somali piracy is still on the rise. Jan Kopernicki, president of the UK Chamber of Shipping Industry Association, told Reuters a new generation of well-organized Somali pirates was emerging.
He said the impression in the shipping industry was that money earned by this second generation of pirates was flowing out of Somalia to criminal elements, rather than helping to pay for services in Somali villages as some had done in the past.
“BRAIN-WASHED YOUTH”
Mohamed said different pirate gangs were working together more and more, with groups from Haradheere, for example, coordinating with gangs from the semi-autonomous northern region of Puntland to pull off long-range hijackings.
There have been a number of hijackings near the Seychelles archipelago hundreds of miles from Somalia and U.S. officials say there have been attacks near India and in the Mozambique Channel, putting the whole Indian Ocean at risk.
The pirates use so-called motherships to sail great distances out to sea and then launch attacks from small skiffs with high-powered outboard motors. Sometimes vessels are hijacked just to be used as motherships.
Foreign navies have become far more robust in dealing with pirates, detaining gunmen, destroying skiffs and seizing weapons when they come across suspects.
But with huge sums coming from the ransoms, the pirates are ready to reinvest in new equipment — and the dealers in Somalia who sell boats and weapons are rubbing their hands.
A weapons dealer in the Bakara Market of the capital Mogadishu told Reuters there had been heavy pirate demand for weapons since December and there are no signs of it abating.
Khaled Ibrahim, a broker who sells boats, said increased demand was driving up the prices. A small mothership and two skiffs used to sell for $13,000. Now they cost $18,000.
A luxury car dealer who used to loan vehicles to pirates told Reuters he had given up his business and now invests cash directly in the pirate companies to generate bigger returns when the ransoms are eventually dished out.
An elder in Haradheere, Haji Ali Mohamud, lamented the draw of piracy, but said there was little they could do to stop youths joining up as long as shipping companies continued to pay for their vessels to be freed.
“Nobody feels worried about going to sea,” he told Reuters.
“The brain-washed youth are begging to be recruited as pirates, but how can we advise them when they are rewarded with multi-million dollar ransoms?”
(Additional reporting and editing by David Clarke and Ralph Boulton)
Story here.
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Navies struggle with ‘swarming’ pirates
April 1, 2010
By Nick Childs
BBC News
The British admiral in charge of the EU naval force countering the Somali pirate threat off the east coast of Africa has said there has been a huge surge in activity by pirates in recent weeks to try to flood the area.
Rear Adm Peter Hudson told the BBC that the priority for international navies now was to increase co-operation and concentrate forces to counter this new strategy.
But the EU acknowledges that the pirate threat in the region is “an expanding phenomenon”, both in terms of level of activity and range.
The EU naval force (Navfor) says the rate of pirate activity it saw in March was double that of the three months from September to November 2009 – the last calm period between monsoons when pirates mostly operate.
Swarm tactics
The main area of concern is now the southern part of what is known as the Somali basin – the Indian Ocean off the Somali coast.
And the navies are also having to contend with new pirate tactics.
“What we’ve seen in the last month in the southern part of the Indian Ocean, the Somali basin, is almost swarm tactics by some of the pirates who try to flood the area with action groups,” said Adm Hudson.
But the admiral insisted that the international naval forces are able to make a difference.
And the navies believe they are reducing the number of successful attacks.
“By correctly positioning our aircraft, putting our ships in the right area, we’ve managed to break up, dismantle, disrupt over 20 of those groups,” he said.
Adm Hudson also said that the number of suspected pirates in jail facing prosecution in Kenya and the Seychelles had risen significantly.
Kenya, however, has announced it will no longer take any new pirate suspects, saying it has taken more than its fair share of the “burden”.
Still, there were nine hijackings in March.
And Adm Hudson acknowledged that the level of activity showed there was still “a big appetite to go and see ships”.
He suggested there could be “a handful of thousands” of people involved in the different aspects of the area’s piracy operations.
There has been growing international concern over the scale of piracy coming from Somalia.
Motor boats
From makeshift camps, the pirates put to sea with launches acting as mother ships, accompanied by smaller skiffs for actual attacks.
They also hijack dhows for longer-range missions.
Currently, there are eight vessels being held by Somali pirates, with roughly 160 hostages on board.
But the EU puts the increased range at which the pirates are operating in part down to its own success in forcing them to operate further afield.
Five years ago, the maximum range of attacks was 287km (165 nautical miles).
Recently a ship was hijacked 2,037km (1,100 nautical miles) from the Somali coast – and only 926km (500 miles) from the coast of India.
The main focus for international navies, and their main area of success, has been in the Gulf of Aden, where there is a massive concentration of ship movements – 30,000 a year.
For the EU, there is also the major mission of escorting World Food Programme ships carrying aid to Somalia.
But that has left warships thinly spread to cover the rest of the region.
The navies operating off Somalia have to contend with the question of why, with such sophisticated capabilities, they cannot stamp out a threat based essentially on men in motor boats.
But, according to Adm Hudson, there are altogether about 20 warships to cover an area 10 times larger than Germany.
However, he said international co-operation had increased.
And, according to him, the priority will be for the allies to act more closely together to reduce the risk in key areas.
“What we will do,” he said, “is use our intelligence assets, our maritime patrol aircraft, the dialogue we have with the region… as well as our partners, India and China… to make sure that we can concentrate [our efforts]… in a… more sophisticated manner.”
But he also acknowledged that the naval forces will not be able to stop the piracy problem completely.
“In the long term, it’s ashore that this problem will be solved, not at sea.
“Until then, we need to try and keep the risk as low as we can.”
Story here.