Pirates seize ship carrying tanks, ammo

A clear sense of urgency for there fellow countrymen being held prisoner.

 

I thought that the Russian ship was on its way to the ship being held. Not playing wargames.

 

LOL! Undoubtedly, the Russian Navy is somewhat shorthanded at the moment with it's other two "presentable" ships off in the Caribbean impressing tinpot dictators. So the Neustrashimy is probably having to do double duty and make courtesy port calls on the way to Somalia.

Seriously, the Russians clearly aren't anxious to get involved in this caper, no matter how many Russians might be in danger. As for the pirates sinking the Faina, they did not anticipate no one being interested in recovering the ship and it's cargo, and are trying to create some sense of urgency in someone in order to get their ransom.

Now that the US has UN permission to use force and "take any steps necessary", it would be interesting to see what would happen if we told the Russians they had 24 hours to do something, otherwise we were going to send the pirates, the crew, the tanks, and the Faina to the bottom.

 

Why should we waist good ammunition. The pirates said they'll do it for us. Then we can just cut them up with the 20 and 30mm guns. That ammo is cheaper

 

I meant I would like to see the Russians reaction; whether they speed up the rate of advance for their "rescue" ship, or what. It would be worth it to see Putin get apoplectic at a news conference, LOL!

We could let the pirates blow up the ship, then shoot up their boats as they try to get away; doesn't matter how we do it. The cost of a couple of Hellfire missiles is nothing compared to what we've already spent just sitting and watching the bastards.

 

South Korea considers Somalia pirate fight
afrol News, 7 October - The government of South Korea is considering to bolster the fight against pirates in Somalian waters, foreign minister Yu Myung-hwan said.
During an inspection of foreign ministry by lawmakers, the minister said consultations among related ministers have been taking place on the dispatching of a destroyer to Somalian waters.

Last month, a South Korean ship carrying eight South Koreans and 13 Mynmar citizens were held hostage by pirates off the coast of Somalia.

Foreign minister assured that negotiations for rescue of the abductees have advanced and that his government was upbeat that the case would soon be resolved.

Local media reports said the South Korean government would likely dispatch the Yi Sun-shin class destroyer to Somalian waters. The navy ship's dispatch is now awaiting approval from the national assembly.

In a separate development, South Korean president said it was about time that his country's navy "play a greater role in the fight against terrorism and piracy."

President Lee Myung-bak, who made the remarks at an international fleet review in the southeastern port city of Busan, said in compliance with the country's enhanced international status, the South Korean navy should "reinforce its role in international efforts to remove common threats to the world."

He expressed the government's resolve to extend full support to beef up the country's military. His comments came after he had brainstormed with navy generals and political leaders on how to eradicate Somali pirates.

Attacks on South Korean crew off the coast of Somalia had been common since 2006.

afrol News - South Korea considers Somalia pirate fight

 

Sounds like a job for the Spetsnaz.

 

Yeah, but let's hope they don't have to hitch a ride with the Russian Navy to get there. They would probably end up sightseeing in Italy!

 

They would probably do the same awesome kind of job as they did back in Iraq when Putin was supposed to have sent them to "Hunt" down the killers of the 4 Russian diplomats in 2006 .

 

Geez! This is the most boring international crisis I've ever heard of! The pirates could die of old age before the Russian Navy arrives to rescue the crew.

Even the media seems to have forgotten about it.

 

Not forgotten -- just not as newsworthy when the economy is doing what it is doing. Now that we haver reached the end of the week, it is getting a bit more play and lo and behold there are ten nations now with ships in the area or sending them there. Here is the story about the policing of pirates.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081016/ap_on_re_af/af_somalia_fighting_pirates

 

Not really. What is happening right now is a good example of what is called "news development" or "news treatment." When an evolving event slows down, it's relegated to the back burner while a breaking news event gets the "special treatment." But the events are still being watched, albeit not really being told yet. And when and if fireworks do happen involving the pirates, you'll see a blow-by-blow account of what's happening then a few hours later, you'll see articles and reports of what on in the background.
It's in the lull or slow news day that reporters, researchers and editors prepare and continually update the still unreported background article.

 

The article is not really about the Faina or the current crisis involving that ship; it is a general article about piracy on the Somali coast.

Reading it, the problem, and the solution, should become obvious. The UN, of course, is useless as usual because the international coimmunity does not have the will to do anything. If anything gets done it will have to be the US, once again that does it.

Unfortunately, the US is somewhat overextended this time and probably won't intervene. If the case of Denmark is instructive, the EU doesn't have the guts to take the necessary steps to be effective. Looks like it's up to Russia (except most of the Russian Navy appears to be currently committed in the Caribbean) or maybe China to take action.

The action that needs to be taken involves using military force to impose order in Somalia and the associated states around the Horn of Africa. That inevitably means a major commitment and things like killing an inevitable number of civilians. Because the people who will oppose such military force will use the cilvilian population as cover, just as they do in Afghanistan and Pakistan. What country is willing to make such a committment, incur the cost in blood, and take the heat when women and children die as a result?

 

And yet another .

Somalia smolders as pirates seize another freighter

Friday, October 17, 2008 3:22 AM EDT

Associated Press

NAIROBI, Kenya — U.S. warships watched a hijacked vessel laden with tanks while other gunboats patrolled the dangerous waters off Somalia, but pirates still seized another freighter this week — and now hold about a dozen despite the international effort to protect a major shipping lane.

Military vessels from 10 nations are now converging on the world’s most dangerous waters, but analysts and a Somali government official say the campaign won’t halt piracy unless it also confronts the quagmire that is Somalia.

“World powers have neglected Somalia for years on end, and now its problems are touching the world, they have started on the wrong footing,” said Bile Mohamoud Qabowsade, adviser to the president of Puntland, the semi-autonomous Somali region that is the pirates’ base.

The continued seizures of vessels — despite the presence of U.S. warships — highlights the difficulties of patrolling the waters off Somalia. The chief concern is that the brazen attacks could fuel terrorism and make one of the world’s major shipping routes too dangerous and expensive to traverse.

The area in question is the Gulf of Aden, a 920- by 300-mile basin separating the Arabian coast from the Horn of Africa. It is used by about 250 ships a day, said a U.S. Navy spokeswoman, Lt. Stephanie Murdock.

The area was the scene of the deadly al-Qaida attack on the USS Cole off Yemen. And it is a hive of illegal activity, including gunrunning as well as people- and drug-smuggling.

Ships slow down off Somalia’s northern coast waiting to enter the Red Sea en route to Arab refineries and the Suez Canal — a route used to transport more than 10 percent of the world’s petroleum and Asian goods to Europe and North America.

Roger Middleton, an expert on the region, said the dangers include the high cost if ships avoid the Gulf of Aden and go around Africa’s southern tip instead and the “nightmare scenario” of pirates becoming tools of terrorists.

“A large ship sunk in the approach to the Suez Canal would have a devastating impact on international trade,” Middleton said in a paper published by Chatham House, a London think tank.

Already some ransom piracy proceeds are believed to go to al-Shabab, a Somali militia that the U.S. accuses of harboring the terrorists who attacked U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.

Somalia’s pirates have become bolder, more heavily armed and more sophisticated as they have raked in millions in ransoms from shipping companies and possibly governments unwilling to risk fatalities.

The booty has paid for global positioning systems, satellite telephones and weapons, including 20 mm cannons, Brown said.

http://nhregister.com/articles/2008/10/17/news/c3-somalia3rd.txt

 

This is reminiscent of the days of the Barbary Pirates. Time to take the Constitution back across the Atlantic!

 

LOL It seems so. If all those ships that are there to do something about them actually did then they might think twice. Obviously just sending ships means nothing to the pirates.

 

Very good point. The problem, of course, is that patrolling the sea lanes is like putting a bandage on a rattlesnake bite. The mess in Somalia has to be cleared up and order established ashore, so that the pirates have no base and no place to hide. Who wants that job? The UN? The EU? The US?

Why, when it is a Russian crew involved, and a Russian citizen has died, has the Russian Navy ducked for cover? Where is the Ukrainian military? It's a Ukrainian ship with, supposedly a Ukrainian cargo, and partially manned by Ukrainians; aren't they interested in protecting their commerce? Apparently not. This whole thing stinks to high Heaven; nobody wants to get involved, even to the extent of rescuing the crew, let alone recovering the ship, and valuable (and dangerous) cargo.

In order to solve this problem it's going to take some genuine cooperation on the part of the entire world community, but that doesn't seem to be forthcoming. The US tried, and got very little support from anybody else, now it's time for some other country to step up to the plate and spend some serious blood and treasure.

 

From Strategypage today:

October 19, 2008: With over three million Somalis in danger of starvation, the UN and other NGOs have responded with a food and medical aid program. But very few foreign medical personnel remain in Somalia, because of the risk of kidnapping, and violence in general. The food aid program is falling apart because of attacks on the program workers (nearly all Somalis) and hijacking of the food. The trucks are either taken by armed bandits, or mobs of hungry people (450 tons was taken from trucks in Mogadishu earlier this month.) Even foreign journalists are at great risk, and foreign media must rely on Somali free lancers for stories, and pictures, about the violence and starvation.
The fighting in Mogadishu has caused over 60,000 to flee the city so far this year. Over half the population has fled in the past year, as Ethiopian and Somali gunmen fight to prevent Islamic Courts and native (to Mogadishu) clan gunmen regain control of the city.
In the north, the ransom money (perhaps as much as $30 million so far this year) has created a new upper class in Puntland. Not all that cash has hit the local economy. Ransom brokers from the Persian Gulf take their cut, and some of it is stashed in off shore banks by the more prudent pirate chieftains. But at least half of it appears to have come ashore, and been spread around to buy local support, or just to have a good time.
The pirates are media savvy, and are pushing the line that they are simply patriots, getting payback for the foreigners who illegally fish in Somali waters (common) and dump toxic wastes off the coast (rare, but makes for great headlines). There are over a thousand gunmen attached to pirate gangs in the north. Most of the 32 ships seized so far this year were taken closer to the Yemeni coast, thus showing that the entire Gulf of Aden (between Yemen and Somalia, with the Indian ocean to the east and the entrance to the Red Sea to the west) is subject to pirate attacks. Despite the scary headlines this has generated, world trade, or even traffic to the Suez Canal (at the north end of the Red Sea) is not threatened. While ten percent of world shipping traffic goes through the Gulf of Aden each year, most of it is in ships too fast for the pirates to catch, and too large for them to easily get aboard. These ships pay higher fuel costs (for the high speed transit), higher insurance premiums, and two days of "danger pay" for their unionized crews, and that's it. This increases the annual operating costs of these ships by a fraction of one percent. But for smaller, and slower, freighters, mostly serving local customers, the pirates remain a problem. These ships tend to be owned by African and Arab companies, and manned by African and Arab crews.
There will soon be more than twenty foreign warships off the coast, mainly in the Gulf of Aden. NATO says it has a plan to deal with the pirates, but details, if they exist at all, have not been released. Basically it comes down to this. You have three main choices. You can do what is currently being done, which is patrolling the Gulf of Aden and shooting only when you see speedboats full of gunmen threatening a merchant ship. The rule appears to be that you fire lots of warning shots, and rarely fire at the pirates themselves. This approach has saved a few ships from capture, and the more warships you get into the Gulf, the more pirate attacks you can foil. But it won't stop the pirates from capturing ships. A second approach is to be more aggressive. That is, your ships and helicopters shoot (pirates) on sight and shoot to kill. Naturally, the pirates will hide their weapons (until they are in the act of taking a ship), but it will still be obvious what a speedboat full of "unarmed" men are up to. You could take a chance (of dead civilians and bad publicity) and shoot up any suspicious speedboat. Some of the pirates would probably resort to taking some women and children with them. Using human shields is an old custom, and usually works against Westerners. More pirate attacks will be thwarted with this approach, but the attacks will continue, and NATO will be painted as murderous bullies in the media. The third option is to go ashore and kill or capture all the pirates, or at least as many as you can identify. Destroy pirate boats and weapons. This is very dangerous, because innocent civilians will be killed or injured, and the property of non-pirates will be damaged. The anti-piracy forces will be condemned in some quarters for committing atrocities. There might even be indictments for war crimes. There will be bad publicity. NATO will most likely avoid this option too.
Those Somalis that can, try and get out of the country. Over a million have fled in the past decade or so. Kenya alone has over 200,000 Somali refugees. So far this year, about 22,000 have made the trip across the Gulf of Aden to Yemen. But this is dangerous, because the smugglers will force their passengers into the water if they fear the coast guard is about to catch them. In the past week, the bodies of over a hundred such refugee victims washed up on Yemeni beaches. Many of the bodies had been chewed up by sharks, which are common in these waters.

October 18, 2008: Pirates freed two ships after ransom was paid. One was a Thai ship that had been seized on August 12th, the other a South Korean vessel taken on September 10th.

October 17, 2008: In the south, a senior official of the World Food Program, was shot to death while leaving a Mosque. The victim, Abdi Naser Aden Musse, was a Somali. Most foreign aid workers have fled, to avoid kidnappers and bandits who see foreigners as valuable for their potential ransom. The Somali officials that replace the foreigners are vulnerable to threats from warlords, who want to steal aid for resale, or simply kidnap the officials and extract a large ransom from the aid agency.​

 

This whole thing is a huge joke. But the joke is on NATO and the US who spend billions of $ to maintain fleets and aircraft standing by and making a fool out of themselves.

A UN resolution allows the engagement against pirate vessels, even into Somali waters. The US and NATO plus others are able to get themselves into an Iraq and Afghanistan scenario but are too dumb to kick some pirates a..s.

Operation Enduring Freedom for who? Enduring Freedom for terrorists and pirates?

What a sick world, scr..w those politicians and the whole UN mob.

Regards
Kruska

 

WOW!!! Try to keep on topic! This isn't about NATO or the US and there is no need to use this thread to slam them. You can slam the UN all you want though.