Somali Pirates: Extending Their Range

2009 Somali pirate attacks (to date):



Compare to 2008:


An increase in the number and range of attacks in the Indian Ocean.

Maps from here.

Somali Pirates: Pakistani trawler taken

Somali pirates hijack Pakistan-flagged ship:

The spokesman for the European Union's anti-piracy force says Somali pirates have hijacked a Pakistan-flagged fishing vessel.

Cmdr. John Harbour says the pirates seized the MV Shahbaig Tuesday. He says there are 29 crew on board and more details will be available later Wednesday

.

Somali pirates hijack Iranian vessel, hold crew

Reported here:

Iran says pirates off the coast of Somalia have struck to hijack an Iranian vessel, holding its 29 crewmembers onboard hostage.

Deputy Managing Director for Maritime Affairs Saeed Izadian said an Iranian fishing vessel was attacked in free waters by Somali pirates on Sunday.

"A number of armed men off the coast of Somalia hijacked this Iranian vessel," Izadian said Tuesday.

The Iranian official put the number of crewmembers held hostage at 29, explaining further that pirates have not yet asked for a ransom in exchange for the release of the ship and its crew.

"The Somali pirates have currently taken refuge in their hideouts; we have so far received 2 dispatched messages form the pirates [with the help of which] we have tracked them down," Izadian added.

Tuesday Reading

Tomas Sowell on government "job creation":

What does it take to create a job? It takes wealth to pay someone who is hired, not to mention additional wealth to buy the material that person will use.

But government creates no wealth. Ignoring that plain and simple fact enables politicians to claim to be able to do all sorts of miraculous things that they cannot do in fact. Without creating wealth, how can they create jobs? By taking wealth from others, whether by taxation, selling bonds or imposing mandates.

However it is done, transferring wealth is not creating wealth. When government uses transferred wealth to hire people, it is essentially transferring jobs from the private sector, not adding to the net number of jobs in the economy.

If that was all that was involved, it would be a simple verbal fraud, with no gain of jobs and no net loss. In reality, many other things that politicians do reduce the number of jobs.

Politicians who mandate various benefits that employers must provide for workers gain politically by seeming to give people something for nothing. But making workers more expensive means that fewer are likely to be hired.

During an economic recovery, employers can respond to an increased demand for their companies' products by hiring more workers-- creating more jobs-- or they can work their existing employees overtime. Since workers have to be paid time-and-a-half for overtime, it might seem as if it would always be cheaper to hire more workers. But that was before politicians began mandating more benefits per worker.

When you get more hours of work from the existing employees, you don't need to pay for additional mandates, as you would have to when you get more hours of work by hiring new people. For many employers, that makes it cheaper to pay for overtime. The data show that overtime hours have been increasing in the economy while more people have been laid off.

There is another way of reducing the cost of government-imposed mandates. That is by hiring temporary workers, to whom the mandates do not apply.

The number of temporary workers hired has increased for the fourth consecutive month, even though there are millions of unemployed people who could be hired for regular jobs, if it were not for the mandates that politicians have imposed.

Economists have long been saying that there is no free lunch, but politicians get elected by seeming to give free lunches, in one form or another. Yet there are no magic wands in Washington to make costs disappear, whether with workers or with medical care. We just pay in a different way, often a more costly way.

Somali Pirates: Too much media hype?

From here:

Retired Rear Adm. Terence "Terry" McKnight, the past commander of the Combined Maritime Forces (CMF) and Combined Task Force 151 (CTF-151) for counterpiracy operations, spoke last week at lunch time lecture at the National Naval Museum. The admiral surprised the audience by saying that the piracy problem in the Gulf Aden is "over publicized."

"We are fighting wars on two fronts in Iraq and Afghanistan with hundreds of thousands of troops involved. Yet world attention, particularly media attention, is drawn to Somali piracy in the Gulf Aden, which is a very minor problem in the large scheme of things," he said.

Though more than 30,000 ships transit the area annually only 27 attacks have been successful in 2009. The ships that fall prey to the pirates are warned and counseled by the CMF in how to protect themselves. If they follow some simple procedures they can make themselves less attractive to piracy.

"We have set up a registry for ships that are transiting the Gulf so we will know when they will be in the area. They are also provided a checklist of vulnerabilities that the pirates are looking for. If the ships vulnerability checklist suggests they might be a target, the task force will try to protect them," added McKnight.

The admiral said simple things make ships targets; slow moving (less than 10 knots), no lookouts, and easy access from the water. He also said that Somalia piracy is a seasonal event from late fall to early spring.

"And, it usually happens in the morning in a specific 400 mile stretch of the Gulf," he said.

The former task force commander said after a review of the entire history of attacks the CMF identified the area of exposure and that is where they concentrate their protection. The task force is made up of up-to 25 warships from more than 20 nations.

"Every nation is interested in piracy because of the risk to the free flow of commerce and the risk to crews on the targeted ships."

The admiral said there have been some erroneous reports about the sophistication of the piracy operations.

"It depends on what you call sophisticated. Somali pirates are easy to spot," he said. "If they are barefooted in a skiff with grappling hooks, rope ladders, guns and a GPS, they probably aren't fishermen."

Another rumor associated with piracy is that the ransoms are being used to finance terrorism. McKnight reassured the audience that there was no evidence to support a connection with terrorism.

The retired admiral was asked what the best way to stop the pirates was.

"A functional government in Somalia with a rule of law, a court system, prosecutors and law enforcement," he answered.

He's right in many of the right ways.

On the other hand, the pirates are holding a couple of hundred hostages and nearly a dozen ships... and this is a long-running war of sorts with them - with a couple of dozen warships chasing some ragtag youths in small boats who have enough sophistication to nab 27 ships this year so far.

Pearl Harbor 7 December 1941

The 68th commemoration of the Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor:

The 7 December 1941 Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor was one of the great defining moments in history. A single carefully-planned and well-executed stroke removed the United States Navy's battleship force as a possible threat to the Japanese Empire's southward expansion. America, unprepared and now considerably weakened, was abruptly brought into the Second World War as a full combatant.

Eighteen months earlier, President Franklin D. Roosevelt had transferred the United States Fleet to Pearl Harbor as a presumed deterrent to Japanese agression. The Japanese military, deeply engaged in the seemingly endless war it had started against China in mid-1937, badly needed oil and other raw materials. Commercial access to these was gradually curtailed as the conquests continued. In July 1941 the Western powers effectively halted trade with Japan. From then on, as the desperate Japanese schemed to seize the oil and mineral-rich East Indies and Southeast Asia, a Pacific war was virtually inevitable.

By late November 1941, with peace negotiations clearly approaching an end, informed U.S. officials (and they were well-informed, they believed, through an ability to read Japan's diplomatic codes) fully expected a Japanese attack into the Indies, Malaya and probably the Philippines. Completely unanticipated was the prospect that Japan would attack east, as well.

The U.S. Fleet's Pearl Harbor base was reachable by an aircraft carrier force, and the Japanese Navy secretly sent one across the Pacific with greater aerial striking power than had ever been seen on the World's oceans. Its planes hit just before 8AM on 7 December. Within a short time five of eight battleships at Pearl Harbor were sunk or sinking, with the rest

damaged. Several other ships and most Hawaii-based combat planes were also knocked out and over 2400 Americans were dead. Soon after, Japanese planes eliminated much of the American air force in the Philippines, and a Japanese Army was ashore in Malaya.

UPDATE: See here.

If the "'Sea [is] too large to prevent all piracy,' admiral says"--then you have to make the sea smaller...

A Rear Admiral with the EU forces protecting ships off Somalia, says "Sea too large to prevent all piracy":

International naval forces will never be able to completely secure the vast area of ocean where Somali pirates are hijacking ships off East Africa, the commander of the EU Naval Force's counter-piracy efforts said Tuesday.
***
"The news of a few days ago of a 300,000-ton tanker being seized is illustrative of the problems in protecting and policing an area of the world's oceans that amounts to an area of about 1 million square miles," said Hudson, the commander of the EU Naval Force's counter-piracy operations.

Hudson also said the fact that pirates are now attacking ships as far as 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) off the Somali coast presents a large challenge and that the EU force will never fully secure such a large area. The EU Naval Force's strategy in the smaller Gulf of Aden is to lengthen the amount of time it takes pirates to get on board so that a warship or helicopter can be dispatched to the scene.

"The difficulties in an area as large as it is in the Indian Ocean with the short number of assets that we have is that ... the pirate can keep going and keep going and keep going until it's successful in getting on board, because there's nothing there to stop it," he said.

It's a fair point, and one that I've made myself at times. Ignoring for the time being that the only complete answer to Somali piracy lies on the shores of Somalia, we are forced back to a containment policy to control the pirates.

I have discussed containment before here and here:

But complete defeat of pirates may not be the goal. It may make sense to work to minimize the harm they can cause and work on "containing" the pirate problem.

"Containment" in this context means keeping Somali pirate interference with important sea lines of communication to an acceptable level - one in which the cost is not too high in dollars or blood. This makes economic sense, reduces the risk of death to innocent parties and justifies naval piracy patrol operations.

Containment is the alternative to taking over Somalia.
***
Containment involves limiting the damage that can be caused by pirates. This can be carried out by naval patrols, convoys, establishing safe routes and blockades of pirate ports, the very sort of activity we now see by naval units in the area.

In the future, private ship escort "navies" or other techniques may be employed by ship owners to control the safety of their ships. If poor shipping companies can't afford protection, then the pirate targets will be limited to ships that probably can't pay much in the way of ransom. This will affect the pirates' bottom line and screw up their business model.

Containing the level of piracy, while guarding against complete sea line of communication disruption, allows time for something to happen internally in Somalia that may allow that failed nation to regroup and control its own territorial waters and the operational areas of the pirates.

The answer is not to worry about the entire Indian Ocean or the entire Gulf of Aden, but rather to focus on protecting certain defined sea lanes. I discussed this here and, more specifically, here:

How do you thwart these pirates at sea? One possibility, in use in the Gulf of Aden, is to flood the sea lanes with sea policemen or naval forces who serve to deter or stops assaults on shipping in their beat area. Another possibility, especially when you have limited naval assets, and which is also in use in the Gulf of Aden, is to provide escorts to single or multiple ships as they transit the risk areas during periods when the pirates are likely to be active (low winds, day light hours or during periods of a bright moon) or escort ships that have proven to be at risk (low freeboard ships, slow transit speeds).

Put helicopters and UAVs in the air and learn the local fishing patterns to find the "fishing boats" that don't act like the others. Use the helicopters to scout routes ahead of merchant ships.

For the long transit down the eastern coast of Somalia, I propose a small variation on the convoy system. Points A, B and C on Map 5 become Ocean Convoy Collection Points (OCCPs) where ships desiring to transit piracy risk areas can gather for convoying to the other points.

Where do you get more escort ships? Why, I even have a proposal for that. As I wrote here:

We need lots of hulls in the water - tomorrow - not 3 years from now. I have proposed a plan that I think could put 40 - 50 satisfactory platforms at sea in 6 months given the right hard-charging officer in charge and a SecDef/SecNav knife to cut through red tape and bureaucratic nonsense. And my plan, flawed as it may be, won't cost a billion dollars. We even have people trained to do this sort of work, like the Navy Expeditionary Combat Command, U.S. Marines and the U.S. Coast Guard. Heck, lots of work for merchant mariners who want to go into harm's way, too. Use large amphibs as "mother ships" and helicopter repair and readiness depots...

But do something. Now.

The net effect of more ships patrolling "protected sea lanes" for merchant ship transits is to make that big, unmanageable ocean into a smaller, more easily managed area.

Now, I assume that someone out there is doing a "cost/benefit analysis" of the cost of Somali piracy including the operating costs of a force of 20-30 warships, staffs, helicopters, ransoms, insurance rates, lost revenues for the Suez Canal, etc. I don't know what they will use as a factor for the cost of doing nothing...

To contain the pirates, make the sea smaller.

And, "Send the Eagle's Answer - More Ships"

Somali Pirate: Stock Market

Like some sort of weird take-off from Catch-22's Milo Minderbinder, it appears that now "everyone can own a share" of one of the Somali pirate groups, as set out here.:

As for the pirate stock exchange, it seems like just another natural step for Somali communities that increasingly depend on illegal activities for economic subsistence. Somali pirates put a percentage of their ransom money back into their communities to pay for hospitals and public schools. Reuters quotes a woman who contributed a rocket-propelled grenade to one group of pirates and eagerly anticipates the dividends.

Spokesmen for the pirates assert that the demands of investors have caused them to raise ransom rates.

Bet those "margin calls" will be a little tough, though.

Somali Pirates: Tanker repels pirate attack

Tanker repels pirate attack:

Greek authorities say the crew of a Greek tanker carrying oil to China have successfully fought off a pirate attack in the Arabian Sea.

A coast guard statement says the Greek-flagged Sikinos, with a crew of 24, came under automatic gunfire from pirates 800km south-east of Oman on Tuesday. It says the crew fired flares and used high-pressure hoses to repel the attack.

The coast guard said the 16 Filipino and eight Greek seamen on board were unhurt, and the vessel was continuing its course for China.

The Sikinos had set off from Sudan, with a shipment of oil.

Danish Anti-Piracy Fleet

Well, here's a way to put your shipyards to work:
Denmark plans anti-pirate fleet

Denmark is reportedly planning to build a fleet of patrol ships for African coastguards to fight Somali pirates.

The Danish Shipowners’ Association has been talking to a range of East African countries about a plan, Maritime Danmark reported.

The DSA was not available to discuss details with Fairplay today, but the Danish newspaper DR Nyheder reported that the project would be worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The plan would see the fleet built at Danish yards, financed in part with money from the UN’s development aid budget.

Somali Pirates: Supertanker Taken By Pirates

Reported here:

Somali pirates have captured a tanker carrying oil to the US, officials say.

The Greek-owned Maran Centaurus was about 1,300km (800 miles) off Somalia when it was hijacked on Sunday, said the EU Naval task force (Navfor).

The ship was full of oil and is believed to be one of the largest yet seized by Somali pirates. There are 28 crew members on board.

Pirate attacks have been common off the Somali coast and international navies have been deployed to counter them.

A spokesman for the Greek coastguard told Reuters news agency that about nine armed pirates attacked the ship close to the Seychelles.

As it was fully laden, it was moving quite slowly - between 11 and 15 knots (20-27km/h) - when attacked, a Navfor spokesman told the BBC.

The agency reported the Greek defence ministry as saying that a Greek navy frigate which had been involved with the Navfor operation was now shadowing the vessel.

Navfor said the ship, which has a dead weight of some 300,000 tonnes, had been sailing to New Orleans in the US from Jeddah in Saudi Arabia but was now heading towards Somalia.

Its crew is made up of 16 Filipinos, nine Greeks, two Ukrainians and one Romanian.

Maran Tankers Management, which operates the vessel, told Reuters the crew were "well".

More here and here. Low, slow, unprotected and traveling a predictable sea lane = easy pickings.

UPDATE: NY times take.

Holiday Routine: Thanksgiving

Except for the cooks and the watch standers, today is holiday routine. Memories of Thanksgivings past and a gathering of such members of the clan who can work their way to Raleigh.

We have a menu, Navy-style, though we don't quite serve up the quantities:




For those deployed and serving far from home, those at sea and on the shore, from my family to you, "Thanks!"

You are in our thoughts and prayers.

Wednesday Reading

CDR Salamander chats with a private security company head about deterring pirates in RPG’s vs fire hoses: place your bets at the USNI Blog

Fred Fry has Maritime Monday 189 up at gCaptain.com with photos of a "Semester at Sea" and other maritime fun. There is a photo of a person "riding the shaft" but it is safe for work...

Better get lots of wrapping paper ready if you plan to fulfill Boston Maggie's Christmas wish.

Why, yes, I'd give these guys a Captain's mast - a "meritorious mast" along with medals. Next time, there will be a bullet riddled corpse that won't be complaining about a swollen lip. Asymmetric warfare. when will we learn the second word matters?

Pirates Attack Oil Tanker Off Benin

Pirates Attack Oil Tanker Off Benin:

Pirates have attacked a Monrovia-flagged oil tanker off the coast of the West African country of Benin, killing one seaman, officials said Tuesday.

According to Benin's naval forces, the attack on the 230-meter long Cancale Star took place some 18 nautical miles off the country's coast. The vessel's chief engineer, a Ukrainian, was killed in the attack, which also left four other crew members injured.

Local reports indicated that Benin's naval forces has escorted the tanker to the port of Cotonou, where it is currently berthed. It is understood that the crew of the vessel managed to capture one of the pirates and have handed him over to authorities in Benin.

Pirates are believed to be Nigerian.

Cancale Star photo by Prieschka Beentjes from Shipspotting.com and used in accord with Shipspotting terms of use.

Benin's navy? See here.

Why my posts are not so frequent this time of year

Somalia Pirates: A Defense?

Found as The Somali Pirates have the right to Hijack Foreign vessels:

The highest ranking officer in the Somali naval force Admiral Farah Omar Qare, has said in a press conference on Sunday that the foreign war ships stationed over the Somali waters are pretending to be watching over the Pirates who are intending to Hijack the foreign Vessels, but are in mass collecting the Somali sea resources.

“We have been closely following what actually is the so called NATO troops are doing over the Somali waters, and the result we have got out of our assessment is that they are collecting the Somali sea resource in mass, and not scaring off the Pirates, in the first place we clearly know what has forced the Somali pirates to involving themselves in hijacking of foreign vessels while they were ordinary fishermen is because there were armed foreign troops, who used to chase them off cut their fishing nets into pieces, and eventually the fisherman came together and discussed hard about the issue and armed themselves, and after having seen that this is more benefiting than what they have been doing they have left out their nets and fishing boats on the shore and instead came into the sea with Russian made Kalashnikov Assault rifle, and rocket propel grenade, in which they have hijacked more than 100 ships since mission started” said the Admiral Farah Omar Qare the Somali naval commander in a press conference.

The Admiral has urged the international community not to complain about the activities of the Pirates, but should also focus about what the forging vessels are doing in the Somali waters.

We've heard this justification before, see here, here (and here, here). Would it be okay to protect the 200 mile EEZ? Sure and some consideration should be given to helping the Somalis set up a fisheries patrol and a means to protect their waters from illegal dumping.

Attacking ships 300 and more miles at sea? Piracy.

Somali pirates seize Panamanian cargo ship off Yemeni coast

Report says Somali pirates seize Panamanian cargo ship off Yemeni coast:

Yemen's Interior Ministry said Friday that Somali pirates have seized a Panamanian cargo ship off southeast coast of Yemen at the Gulf of Aden.

The ministry said in a statement that the Panamanian-flagged ship called Red Sda Sbirt left Aden port late Thursday and was intercepted by the pirates after sailing about 36 nautical miles off the Yemeni port of Balhaf.

The multinational coalition task force had sent one of its military boats to the specific area where the hijacking took place in an attempt to save the ship, the Yemeni coast guard was quoted by the statement as saying.

The statement mentioned neither the exact time of the attack nor the number of the crew aboard the hijacked ship.

No other reports of this hijacking yet received.

UPDATE 22 November: Reuters says it's the Red Sea Spirit, Greek owned:

Pirates hijacked a Greek-owned bulk carrier on Thursday in the Gulf of Aden near Yemen, a Kenyan maritime official said on Sunday, but Greek officials said the attack may have been unsuccessful.

The vessel was taken 36 nautical miles off the Yemeni port of Balhaf and news of the seizure only emerged on Saturday, said Andrew Mwangura, coordinator of the Kenya-based East African Seafarers' Assistance Programme.

"Red Sea Spirit was taken by gunmen off the Yemeni coast last Thursday. She is flying the Panama flag," Mwangura said. "She is a Greek-owned bulk carrier."

However, a Greek merchant marine ministry spokesman said the managers of the ship, Sekur Holdings, did not confirm the incident. Sekur Holdings were not available for comment.

If that's the right, it's a cement "floating terminal." See here.

UPDATE2: THe shipping company denies the capture of its vessel here:

Greek maritime authorities Sunday denied that a Greek cargo ship had been seized off Yemen, saying the vessel was attacked by pirates but escaped.

Earlier, a Kenyan maritime watchdog reported that the Panama-flagged Red Sea Spirit had been hijacked late Thursday in the Gulf of Aden off Yemen.

But Greek officials said they had spoken to the company which manages the ship, Sekur Holding Inc., and were told it had managed to outrun its attackers..

They also said the attack did not happen on Thursday, but on Monday.

"The cargo ship was attacked on (Monday) November 16 by two speedboats but, by manoeuvring, escaped from the pirates," the authorities said.

Headline of the Day: "Somali pirates waste ransom money on weddings and orgies"

Headline reads "Somali pirates waste ransom money on weddings and orgies". Report is that the $3 million dollar ransom paid for a Spanish fishing trawler has been spent.

According to the journalist’s observations, after Alakrana was released, Harardhere became the center of endless “orgies, money, shooting and sex.”

Yep, those weddings are a waste.

Somali Pirates: Wounded Captain of Hijacked Tanker Dies

Reported as Captain of Hijacked Tanker Dies From Gunshot Wounds :

"The captain of the chemical tanker died last night from gunshot wounds he got during the hijack," a pirate who gave his name as Mohamed said.

"The ship is headed for Haradheere with the dead captain."

The a Virgin-Islands owned chemical tanker MV Theresa VIII was hijacked earlier this week with its 28 North Korean crew members.

Photo of vessel by Foggy from Shipspotting.com and used in accord with Shipspotting terms and conditions.

Somali Pirates : Maersk Alabama Attacked, Fights Back

Reported here:

On the early morning of 18 November 2009, 350 nautical miles east from the Somali coast, pirates attacked MV Maersk Alabama, a US flagged, Danish owned, 155 meter long, Container ship.

Pirates fired automatic weapons on MV Maersk Alabama who responded with fire from an embarked Vessel Protection Detachment. The crew managed to repel the attack and no casualties were reported. The vessel was previously hijacked in April 2009.

An EU NAVFOR Maritime Patrol Aircraft from Djibouti was tasked to investigate the situation and the closest EU NAVFOR naval vessel was tasked to search for the pirate attack group and neutralise the area.

UPDATE: Fixed the photo to represent the right ship. Thanks for the anonymous note calling the error to my attention.