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Africa Horn
Mandate Keeps NATO From Hijacked Tanker
2008-11-19
BRUSSELS, Belgium - NATO has no plans to intercept the Saudi supertanker hijacked by Somali pirates since its warships in the area have no mandate to board captured merchant vessels by force, a spokesman said Tuesday.
Ohfergawdsakes ...
NATO officials have said the hijacking of the 318,000-ton UAE-owned MV Sirius Star on Saturday took place in a part of the Indian Ocean far removed from the area where an alliance flotilla has been operating since last month.

The four-ship contingent was dispatched to the region under a U.N. mandate to escort vessels chartered by the WFP to Somali ports, and to conduct patrols designed to deter pirates from attacking merchant ships transiting through the Gulf of Aden. Two warships - the Greek frigate HS Themistokles and the Italian destroyer ITS Durand - are escorting cargo ships chartered by the World Food Program to carry food aid from Mombasa to Mogadishu. A Turkish frigate, the TOG Gokova, and the British frigate HMS Cumberland are conducting deterrence patrols in the Gulf of Aden, where they engaged in a firefight last week with pirates attempting to hijack a Danish ship.

The area where the Sirius Star was attacked, located about 520 miles (833 kilometers) southeast of Kenya - closer to Tanzania than Yemen - is far outside the range in which Somali pirates are normally considered a threat. "This attack took place a thousand miles away from where one would normally expect this type of attack to take place," Alliance spokesman James Appathurai told The Associated Press. "The NATO ships could have intervened to prevent the seizure had they been there ... but what they don't have the mandate to do is to board ships that have already been hijacked to free the crew."
So, just what would it take to change the mandate?
"NATO's mandate is not related to interception of hijacked ships outside the patrol area," Appathurai said. "I'm not aware that there's any intention by NATO to try and intercept this ship."

Attacks on the 20,000 commercial vessels sailing around the Horn of Africa are up 70 percent this year. The pirates are reported to use some of the $100 million they received in ransom payments to acquire better and faster boats, global positioning systems and satellite phones that help them in locating the merchant ships.
Reinvesting in the business, as it were ...
A number of shipping companies are said to be considering rerouting their vessels from transiting through the Gulf of Aden and the Suez Canal, and instead sending them around the Cape of Good Hope. Experts say this is a much longer journey that would add 12-15 days to the trip at a cost of btw $20,000-$30,000 a day to the cost of the journey.
Posted by:Steve White

#14  No expert here, but there's no need for a special UN mandate or anything of the sort for a naval vessel to take action against piracy directed against any ship on the high seas, is there? I'ma thinking this is probably the oldest, most settled, and among the most practical examples of what people breezily refer to as "international law".

Again, I don't know, but I can't imagine any UN or NATO authorization is required to take action against pirates in international waters. Seems to me a broad and very heavy offensive against these dipshits is in order. Hit them hard, on land and sea, kill as many as possible. Funny, that always seems to work, yet must "re-discovered" every time good guys confront bad guys.
Posted by: Verlaine   2008-11-19 23:11  

#13  Screw that, let the oil ticks rescue their own damn ship.
Posted by: mojo   2008-11-19 15:16  

#12  The proposed solution of a perpetual mandate is as frightening as the pirates:

The U.N.'s Big Power Grab
By Frank J. Gaffney Jr.
The Washington Times | 10/3/2007

If Americans have learned anything about the United Nations over the last 50 years, it is that this "world body" is, at best, riddled with corruption and incompetence. At worst, its bureaucracy, agencies and members are overwhelmingly hostile to the United States and other freedom-loving nations, most especially Israel.

So why on earth would the United States Senate possibly consider putting the U.N. on steroids by assenting to its control of seven-tenths of the world's surface?....Nonetheless, the predictable effect of U.S. accession to the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea — better known as the Law of the Sea Treaty (or LOST) — would be to transform the U.N. from a nuisance and laughingstock into a world government: The United States would confer upon a U.N. agency called the International Seabed Authority (IA) the right to dictate what is done on, in and under the world's oceans. Doing so, America would become party to surrender of immense resources of the seas and what lies beneath them to the dictates of unaccountable, nontransparent multinational organizations, tribunals and bureaucrats.

LOST's most determined proponents have always been the one-worlders — members of the World Federalists Association (now dubbed Citizens for Global Solutions) and like-minded advocates of supranational government. They have made no secret of their ambition to use the Law of the Sea Treaty as a kind of "constitution of the oceans" and prototype for what they want to do on land, as well.

Specifically, the transnationalists (or Transies) understand LOST would set a precedent for diminishing, and ultimately eliminating, sovereign nations. It would establish the superiority of international mechanisms for managing not just "the common heritage of mankind," but everything that could affect it.

In the case of LOST, such a supranational arrangement is particularly enabled by the treaty's sweeping environmental obligations. State parties promise to "protect and preserve the marine environment." Since ashore activities — from air pollution to runoff that makes its way into a given nation's internal waters — can ultimately affect the oceans, however, the U.N.'s big power grab would also allow it to exercise authority over land-based actions of heretofore sovereign nations....Scarcely more appetizing is LOST's empowering of a U.N. agency to impose what amount to international taxes. To provide such an entity with a self-financing mechanism and the authority to distribute the ocean's wealth in ways that suit the majority of its members and its international bureaucracy is a formula for unaccountability and corruption on an unprecedented scale.

To date, the full malevolent potential of the Law of the Sea Treaty has been more in prospect than in evidence. If the United States accedes to LOST, however, it is predictable that the treaty's agencies will: wield their powers in ways that will prove very harmful to American interests; intensify the web of sovereignty-sapping obligations and regulations promulgated by this and other U.N. entities; and advance inexorably the emergence of supranational world government.
Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. is the founder, president, and CEO of The Center for Security Policy. During the Reagan administration, Gaffney was the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear Forces and Arms Control Policy, and a Professional Staff Member on the Senate Armed Services Committee, chaired by Senator John Tower (R-Texas). He is a columnist for The Washington Times, Jewish World Review, and Townhall.com and has also contributed to The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The New Republic, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Christian Science Monitor, The Los Angeles Times, and Newsday.
Posted by: Thealing Borgia 122   2008-11-19 15:04  

#11  The US has its own shipping? Not since every shipping company went Panamanian or Liberian. Re-flagging the flag-of-convenience clowns sounds like it might be in the wind.

But don't be surprised if the flag is Indian.
Posted by: Mitch H.   2008-11-19 08:44  

#10  I believe the SA Navy is critically short of technically qualified people and getting worse. So much so that all their subs have been tied to the pier.
Posted by: ed   2008-11-19 08:14  

#9  don't worry we have the Indian navy out there not afraid to shoot
Posted by: chris   2008-11-19 08:05  

#8  you hit the nail on the head with sorry arss, they're still celebrating Mandelas release
Posted by: chris   2008-11-19 08:02  

#7  South Africa has a navy. Why has the "international community" told them to get off their sorry arss and lend a hand?
Posted by: Besoeker   2008-11-19 07:40  

#6  It's because they've been in charge for a while that the situation has escalated, NS.
Posted by: lotp   2008-11-19 06:04  

#5  From the Times:

Roger Middleton, a Horn of Africa specialist at the Chatham House think-tank, said that the capture was a crucial escalation. “Now that they have shown they are able to seize an enormous ship like this, it is beyond a military solution. You won’t fix this without a political solution.”

The inmates are truly in charge.
Posted by: Nimble Spemble   2008-11-19 04:15  

#4  "Any pirate threatening U.S. shipping should be the walking dead."

Well, there is the option of putting all shipping in the area under the US flag. We have done that before in the Persian Gulf during the Iran/Iraq war when Iran was threatening oil shipping to Kuwait.
Posted by: crosspatch   2008-11-19 01:09  

#3  No mandate to do what you need to do. NATO is teats on a boar hog useless.
Posted by: Alaska Paul   2008-11-19 00:50  

#2  Any pirate threatening U.S. shipping should be the walking dead.

I see no reason to risk any American lives or incur any costs or risks on behalf of the Saudis. In fact, there are very few countries we should help.
Posted by: DoDo   2008-11-19 00:33  

#1  Hmm, seems to me the UN should provide a perpetual mandate for any warship at sea to render assistance in the case of piracy. It should be a crime NOT to intercept a vessel in such a case.
Posted by: crosspatch   2008-11-19 00:20  

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