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| Africa Horn |
| What Are Those Warships Doing Off Somalia? |
| 2009-11-19 |
| Pirate-fightin' navies find that parking off the Horn of Africa provides cover for counterterrorism and protects scofflaw fishermen. Navies are expensive, and sending warships to Somalia is a hugely inefficient way to fight pirates, considering that the number of successful attacks off the Somali coast this year -- 35 by mid-November -- is only seven below the total for all of 2008, before NATO and the EU had anti-pirate missions in the region. So why are they there? The short answer is that Western governments don't know what else to do. But the U.S. and Europe also have different self-interested reasons to cruise the Indian Ocean. For most of the European governments involved, the obvious idea is to protect their domestic shipping business. "For these big shipping nations, it's not a big deal," a Horn of Africa expert named E.J. Hogendoorn, at the International Crisis Group in Nairobi, told me in September. "They've got big shiny navies; what the hell are they gonna do with 'em anyway? Might as well park 'em off the coast of Somalia. It's as good a training as any." And defending the sea lanes is more or less what everyone's claiming to do. But America's interest is more complicated. In spite of the dramatic rescue of the U.S.-flagged Maersk Alabama last April, the ocean isn't terribly crowded with American merchant vessels. (Even American shipping lines sail under foreign flags, to save money.) The real draw to this part of the world, for Washington, is counterterrorism. The Navy won't say so. "Piracy's an international problem requiring an international solution," said Lt. Matt Allen, a spokesman for the Fifth Fleet in Bahrain, where the separate U.S.-led counterpiracy coalition (Combined Task Force 151) is based. "Even though a small portion of the [merchant] vessels are U.S.-flagged, a majority are allies and friends. Every nation has a vested interest in insuring the safe passage of the sea lanes." But Washington's military buildup on the Horn of Africa started with the war in Afghanistan, which led to a (still-growing) naval base in Djibouti, just north of Somalia. Officially, the base in Djibouti has nothing to do with pirates. It's lodged inside what the Pentagon calls an "Arc of Instability" stretching from Kenya to Yemen. Al-qaeda and some like-minded groups have civil wars running in Yemen, Somalia and Sudan -- and Somalia, of course, could become "the next Afghanistan" if Islamists like al-Shabaab take over. Washington wants to watch these developments. In September, a small American team killed a long-wanted terrorist named Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan south of Mogadishu, which suggests that the Pentagon has good intelligence in the region. No one in Djibouti, Bahrain or the AFRICOM headquarters in Germany will admit to organizing the raid, but Special Forces from an American warship reportedly helped, which might indicate a measure of support from the Navy's counterpiracy base in Bahrain (since the Djibouti base doesn't send out warships, officially). The Navy's new jet-sized surveillance drones based in the Seychelles -- officially to watch pirates -- also have more than enough range to glide over Somalia and the rest of the Pentagon's "Arc of Instability." But there's a third interest at stake in the fish-rich Indian Ocean. Some European fishing boats wander down from the Mediterranean (and away from hated EU regulations) to trawl the lawless coast of Somalia for tuna, lobster, shrimp and shark. "It is particularly ironic that many of the nations that are presently contributing warships to the anti-piracy flotillas patrolling, or set to patrol, the waters off the Horn of Africa, are themselves directly linked to the foreign fishing vessels that are busily plundering Somalia's offshore resources," Clive Schofield, an Australian research fellow at the University of Wollongong and author of a paper called Plundered Waters: Somalia's Maritime Resource Insecurity, has written. Namely: France and Spain. Hogendoorn, at the International Crisis Group, singled out Spain. "I've spoken to diplomats in Europe who've made it quite clear that Spain has been very active in the piracy issue because of its own national interests," he said, "which can only be interpreted to mean that they have fishing vessels making lots of money off of fishing in Somali waters." Decimation of Somali fishing is a major complaint of the pirates themselves. The notion of a Somali fisherman hijacking a cargo ship because of collapsing fish populations is over-simple -- piracy is organized crime -- but the complaints about systematic decimation of African fish is real. Many Somalis, in fact, think the warships they see from their beaches have arrived to make the seas safe for foreign boats. Aboard a NATO frigate in September, a British officer, Lt. Cmdr. Graham Bennett, noticed the lack of fishermen out on a calm, sunny day. It was the start of fishing season in the Gulf of Aden -- the monsoons had just ended -- but Somali fishermen seemed to be staying home. "We need to get the word out that we're not here to arrest everyone," he told me. "We got on Somali TV the other day [and] said we really do want to protect the fishermen themselves from piracy. But some of the Somali people thought we were just here to protect the European fishing trawlers. That surprised us a little." |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #10 OOOOOPPSIES, forgot SAME > SOMALI PIRATES EXPAND RANGE OF OPERATIONS, STRAIN ON NAVAL PATROLS. For some mysteri reason I'm reminded of CAPT JACK SPARROW + his burning BONFIRE OF RUM. |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2009-11-19 23:48 |
| #9 TOPIX > UK WARSHIP WATCHED AS PIRATES TOOK TWO BRITONS. versus SAME > IRAN SENDING WARSHIPS TO YEMEN. |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2009-11-19 23:45 |
| #8 WMF > US PLANS TO SEEL AEGIS-FITTED LITTORAL COMBAT SHIPS TO UAE AND OTHER GULF NATIONS. |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2009-11-19 23:14 |
| #7 I'm very comfortable, if not downright approving of european fishing boats looting the somalian waters (better for the spanish to do that there than in french waters and provoke a clash with the remnants of the french fishing industry as they did years ago), anyway, it's a great "in yer face" to those... nice productive, sensitive somalians, I guess, who bring happiness and order wherever they venture... BUT, I'm not happy, not happy at all with toxic wastes being dumped in that very same sea. What are you thinking? People will eat that fish! I might eat that fish! Guys, let's get organized. Loot the somali halieutic booty. Dump the green glowing waste IN THE SOMALI MAINLAND, dammit. Let's starve them from that sweet brain-noursishing fish, and give them cancer, it's not like everyone cares (or should care, for that matter, sucks to be a failed state all by your own fault). |
| Posted by: anonymous5089 2009-11-19 15:01 |
| #6 The Navy's new jet-sized surveillance drones based in the Seychelles ... Really? I didn't know that. |
| Posted by: Steve White 2009-11-19 10:53 |
| #5 What Are Those Warships Doing Off Somalia? The 21st Century version of a yachting regatta. Show the flag, but do nothing serious. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2009-11-19 09:20 |
| #4 This is one of the European's dirty little secrets. They are in it to essentially pirate the fish off the East coast of Africa. However, a problem evolved when the Italian Mafia also took the opportunity to start illegally dumping toxic waste of the East coast of Africa. The two goals are mutually exclusive. It doesn't do any good to steal someone's fish if you poison it first. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2009-11-19 08:34 |
| #3 I still say that if you give merchant ships a few good flame throwers, the pirates go away. |
| Posted by: crosspatch 2009-11-19 02:54 |
| #2 Uh, uh, "APOCALYPSE NOW" COL. ROBERT DUVALL > "Thats nice, soldier, BUT YOU EITHER SURF, OR YOU FIGHT"! Gut nuthin. |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2009-11-19 00:39 |
| #1 Pirate-fightin' navies? Who, exactly, has been fighting the pirates? If there was any fighting, there would be shore landings by Marines to eliminate the pirate nests. |
| Posted by: gromky 2009-11-19 00:21 |