Britain has launched a drive for an international accord granting the Royal Navy and Western warships rights to enter Somali territorial waters in pursuit of pirate gangs linked to al-Qa’eda. The Royal Navy is hoping to crack down on pirate activity off the Horn of Africa. Al-Qa'eda is said to dominate the lucrative tradePirate activity has soared off the Horn of Africa this year with the emergence of highly sophisticated gangs that use fast patrol boats, launched from “mother ships” to board cargo vessels in the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean. The lucrative multi-million-dollar kidnap and ransom trade, which is dominated by al-Qa’eda, according to terrorism experts, threatens to disrupt international shipping lanes used to carry cargo from the Far East to Europe.
A meeting in London of the International Maritime Organisation (IMO), the United NationsÂ’ watchdog of the seas, is to consider a resolution today instructing SomaliaÂ’s interim government to drop its legal right to block foreign navies from entering its waters. A declaration would pave the way for Royal Navy vessels to rescue ships held for ransom in Somali coves or pursue pirates involved in attacks on ships in international waters.
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There have been 26 attacks or attempted boardings by pirates so far this year, up from a handful in 2006. Somalia has been plagued by civil war. It has seen a succession of weak, temporary administrations run by warlords or hard-line Islamic factions sympathetic to al-QaÂ’eda, unrecognised by the international community and with little remit on the coastline.
Pirates used the haven provided by Somalia’s lack of leadership to defy 46 warships from 20 countries in the international coalition centred around America’s Bahrain-based 5th fleet. “Piracy has become a lucrative business based on ransom demands and cargo theft inside Somali territory,” said Cdre Keith Winstanley, the deputy commander of the coalition. “It has not been possible to suppress it because vessels pirated, sometimes a long way off the coast, are held somewhere in the vicinity of the Somali coast.”
It is a murky situation and even the figure of 26 reported incidents is thought to vastly underestimate the extent of the problem.
While vast sums of money are involved - ransoms can exceed £500,000 — Cdre Winstanley said that official concern had been expressed over intelligence reports that little of the money filtered down to the Somali regions. “Piracy and terrorism is a difficult picture to build,” he said. “The extent of money diverted to terrorism is not known, but I don’t see evidence that the money is going into houses, schools and jobs onshore.”
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The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees estimates that 200,000 have fled fighting in the last month, many of whom are ready to pay $150 (£75) to be smuggled across the Gulf of Aden.
“It’s very seasonal, depending on the trade winds, but right now conditions are very favourable,” said Peter Kessler, a spokesman for UNHCR. “These vessels loaded with people cross the trade route but don’t even dock in the harbours. They unload the passengers at sea.”
The crowded waters are an ideal haven for al-Qa’eda operatives crossing between training camps on both sides of the Gulf. “The scale of the threat has changed since the physical penetration of the region by al-Qa’eda,” said Rohan Gunaratna, a terrorism expert at Nanyang Technology University in Singapore. “With large Somali communities in Europe, ...
Just dwell on that for a second.
... it is critically important that those on the move through this area are visible to Western intelligence.”
David Nordell, the chief executive of New Global Markets, a specialist consultancy on terrorist financing, said: “Terror in piracy is ultimately aimed at building up to offences like the next USS Cole [a suicide attack off Yemen in 2000] or hitting an oil tanker.”