Feral Jundi

Well this was a no brainer, but at least folks are talking about it now. So if Yemeni and Somali jihadists are working together, and Al Shabab is taking a 20 percent cut in piracy ransoms, then I wonder what the Yemeni cuts are? I mean that is a lot of shoreline now that a pirate could call home, if they were backed by the jihadists. If they did not have the support of the jihadists, then I would imagine they would come up against some problems.

The other way to look at this deal is the drug trade in Latin America. If you are a drug dealer in Central or South America, do you think you can set up your own shop and not get hassled by any of the large cartels? Of course not. If you did not cut them in, they would kill you. Or they would kill your family, and then tell you to sell more drugs for them! lol

So if Al Qaeda moves to control this corridor called the Gulf of Aden, then why wouldn’t they want to control these pirates? They could make money off of operations and they would disrupt western and middle eastern interest (oil flow, commerce). Jihadist privateering is a logical conclusion.

Now on to solutions, besides just putting armed guards on boats or squaring away those countries on land. I personally like the Q-ship idea. It is the ultimate zheng and qi strategy, and it would be one that pirates would have a very difficult time countering. The basic scheme is that you use a tanker or whatever boat as bait, and make it look like an unarmed vessel. You could even make it look like it is in distress. Then if it attracts a pirate crew and they go into attack mode and show their guns, an anti-piracy force outflanks that pirate crew and takes them down. You would have a force on the ship open up with the big guns, and a force on water that could attack. Whatever a team wants to use to get the job done. The cool thing is that there is no terrain for a pirate to hide behind, and you actually want the pirates to attack.

This idea though, would need a license by whatever country the vessel is flagged under, and there must be rules identified for killing and capturing pirates. There must be incentive as well, because if you want everyone to get involved with destroying piracy, you need to make it a venture or offense industry that ships would want to get involved with. Ideally, you would also want to capture the pirates and collect information from those detainees so networks can be studied and dismantled. So there must be a mechanism that supports the legal capture of pirates, if possible. Especially if an anti-piracy team wounds some pirates and those poor fools are in a sinking vessel. Do we let them die, or do we have a responsibility to capture them and care for them until those individuals are delivered to a detention center.

I believe all of these details could be hashed out in a Letter of Marque, much like they were in the past. As it stands now, we have armed security teams on boats that are great at repelling the assault, but they have no authorization from anyone to capture/detain or even care for wounded pirates?  What sense does it make to have shoot out’s with these guys, but have no means of legally detaining them and taking that pirate crew out of the system?

Now of course this tactic would have multiple legal issues to overcome before it would ever be considered. But honestly, something has to be done because the problem is only getting bigger and it is morphing into an animal that is certainly a threat to the global economies and innocent people. I also fear the day that pirates decide to capture a vessel and outright hand it over to Al Qaeda. Something like ramming a natural gas tanker into a heavily populated port or sinking the thing in gut of the Straits of Hormuz is a frightening thought. Believe me, if you can think it up, the other side has probably thought of it too.-Matt

Closer ties between Somali and Yemeni jihadists threatens oil through Aden Gulf
Monday, 18 July 2011
By JAMES M. DORSEY
Affiliates of Al Qaeda operating on opposite shores of key oil-export routes through the Gulf of Aden have forged closer ties in what could emerge as a substantial threat by a group that has been dealt severe body blows by the Arab revolt sweeping the Middle East and North Africa and the killing in May of Osama Bin Laden by US Navy Seals. ?The closer ties between Yemen-based Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and Al Shabaab in war-shattered Somalia is sparking concern among intelligence and counter-terrorism officials who suggest that AQAP may be the driving force behind closer cooperation between the two groups.

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