Posted on Monday, January 12, 2009 - 5:06 pm:

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I am a conservative, I don't care to understand the criminal mind, just to see justice done.

Posted on Monday, January 12, 2009 - 11:01 pm:

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Yet while the fate of the pirates and their loot might be seen as just deserts, the ending of the the Sirius Star's hijacking through paying a large ransom underscores just how little the international community is able to do when ships fall victim to pirates. The Saudi tanker was released just as the U.S. announced it would form a new international force off the coast of Somalia to fight against a piracy industry that extracted an estimated $180 million in ransom payments during 2008, an all-time high, according to Andrew Mwangura, head of the East African Seafarers Assistance Program. Ships from Canada, China, India, Russia and even Iran are now patrolling those waters.

The new force, however, will have no expanded mandate to attack the pirates, who have exploited gray areas in international law and the absence of any rule of law onshore in Somalia. The news release last week from the U.S. Fifth Fleet in Bahrain announcing the formation of task force CTF-151 was short on details, saying that piracy is a problem that "begins ashore and is an international problem that requires an international solution."

The problem facing foreign navies' efforts to interdict pirates, says Mwangura, is their failure to address both the anarchy that prevails in Somalia and grievances over illegal fishing and toxic-waste-dumping in their waters that has prompted many local fishermen to sign up with pirate crews.

"When we talk about pirates, we need also to talk about illegal fishing and toxic dumping," Mwangura said. "But if we just talk about piracy, piracy, piracy, we are just going to stop it for a while; that's not a long-term solution."

By Mwangura's account, piracy is a profitable business not just for the pirates: of last year's ransom tally of $180 million, just $30 million went to the pirates themselves, the rest going to negotiators, middlemen and other more shadowy players in the onshore chaos of Somalia.

But the pirates are undeterred by the U.S.'s mustering naval allies or the tough talk of the Kenyans and others. In Somalia, young men are lining up to join the ranks of the pirates, regardless of what may happen to them. "We have heard of the risks, but the profit is too great," one former pirate, Mohammed Farah, from the city of Garowe in the semiautonomous region of Puntland, told TIME.

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For Somalia, it was just another long weekend of mayhem. Shortly after midnight on Friday, Nov. 7, pirates seized a Danish cargo ship in the Gulf of Aden; on Saturday night an aid worker was shot and killed as he walked home from evening prayers in a village 270 miles (435 km) from Mogadishu; on Sunday, fighting between insurgents and African Union peacekeepers left at least seven dead in the capital, and a senior government official was killed in the south of the country; and in the early hours of Monday, bandits crossed the border into Kenya, where they kidnapped two Italian nuns. Somalia is not so much a failed state as a didn't-even-try one.

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...at a weekend security conference organized by the International Institute for Strategic Studies in Bahrain, headquarters to the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet, opinion appeared unanimous: to fix the pirates, fix Somalia. "We haven't been as involved in Somalia as we should have been," Britain's Defence Secretary John Hutton told the BBC. "This is the consequence."

All these things are the consequences of non-existent government. All of them can only really be tackled properly when Somalia has a government that is both good and strong. As the French commander of his country's anti-piracy force in the Gulf, Vice-Admiral Gerard Valin, told Agence-France Presse in Bahrain: "We will not end this phenomenon unless we have a Somali government that has the means to act on its territory to fight piracy."

The long-term fix is to build a new Somalia. Nation-building is something the Bush administration initially shied away from in Afghanistan, allowing the Taliban to regroup, and came round to in Iraq, with mixed and frequently bloody results. China provides a better model for nation-building in Africa, focusing almost wholly on the continent's commercial potential — and, as a byproduct, the stabilizing effects of poverty alleviation — by pumping billions into infrastructure in war-torn territories such as Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Angola is now stable, if horribly corrupt; Congo is still at war, but the Chinese investment there has just begun, and the country at least now has an incentive for peace. China, of course, gets a good return on its investment. Angola is now its leading oil supplier globally, while Congo is opening up its mineral riches in return for new roads, railways, hospitals and universities from Beijing. Then again, as the Somali pirates have demonstrated, it often takes an injection of self-interest for the world to want to act.

Posted on Monday, January 12, 2009 - 11:12 pm:

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"Other pirates on the shore wanted a tip from the pirates on the Sirius Star, so they started to fire in the air as our people approached the land," Libaan Jaama told CNN. "When our pirates heard the shots, they thought they would be robbed, so they tried to return to the tanker. In that quick turn the boat capsized."

Posted on Thursday, January 15, 2009 - 10:25 pm:

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Piracy off the coast of Somalia can't be stopped until there is some authority to bring pirates to justice, according to the commander of the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet, based in Bahrain.

Because there is no working government in Somalia and no country is willing to take captured pirates, bring them to trial and detain them, there is no deterrent for pirates to stop attacking ships, Vice Admiral William Gortney said at a Pentagon briefing Thursday.

"The problem is there's not a way to -- until we have a mechanism [to hold them] accountable and try them for their actions, there's no way to -- to finish the problem," Gortney said.

The United States is making a deal with a country in the eastern Africa region to hold and try pirates captured by the U.S.-led Combined Task Force 151, a new maritime anti-piracy mission started earlier this month.

Posted on Thursday, January 29, 2009 - 7:46 pm:

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More than a dozen warships from countries including Britain, France, Germany, Iran, China and the United States now patrol Somali waters to protect vessels. But the warships were not near the Longchamp when it was taken, said Lt. Nathan Christensen, a Bahrain-based spokesman for the U.S. 5th Fleet...

Robin Phillips, deputy director of the Bahamas maritime authority in London, said the Longchamp had been traveling in a corridor secured by EU military forces when it sent a distress signal before dawn.

"Ships and helicopters were dispatched, but they arrived too late," said Phillips, adding that gunshots could be heard over the radio.

He said the ship later set a course for Somalia, to the south.Noel Choong, who heads the International Maritime Bureau's piracy reporting center, said Thursday's hijacking was the first attack since Jan. 14. For the past two weeks, strong winds have made it difficult for pirates to launch their small boats, but the weather has now improved, Choong said.

There have been 15 attacks so far this year, and three ships seized, he said.

Cyrus Mody of the International Maritime Bureau said 166 crew on nine ships were still being held off the coast of Somalia, not including the Longchamp. Six other hijacked ships have been released this month, including an oil tanker freed for a reported $3 million ransom.

Posted on Thursday, January 29, 2009 - 8:44 pm:

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Hold and try them? Where?

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BOSSASO, Somalia, Jan. 29 (Xinhua) -- The French navy taking part in the international naval force patrolling the Somali waters on Thursday handed over nine suspected Somali pirates to the authorities in the northeastern semiautonomous Somali region of Puntland.

"The suspects will be held until they are brought before a court and convicted of any crimes they may have committed," Abdulahi Saeed Samatar, regional Minister for Security, said.

The suspects were taken from the French ships at the port of Bossaso, the commercial capital of Puntland, and will be remained in the central prison in the city where dozens of other pirates are held.

The French navy has previously handed over several batches of pirates to local authorities who tried them in especial courts in the region which has been a hotbed for piracy and hostage taking.

The authorities said that they have signed an agreement with the French navy regarding the handing over of any apprehended for being involved in piracy off the Somali waters which has become one of the most dangerous water ways in the world.

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Kenya has agreed to prosecute Somali pirates captured by the U.S. Navy, allowing U.S. forces to begin taking piracy suspects into custody on the high seas, the Pentagon said on Thursday.

U.S. and Kenyan officials signed a bilateral agreement on January 16 that calls for suspects to be tried in Kenyan courts, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said.

The pact removes a major obstacle that prevented the U.S. Navy from capturing pirates that have vexed international shipping off the African coasts for months and driven shipping insurance rates sky high.

Posted on Thursday, February 05, 2009 - 9:40 pm:

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The US navy said a ransom appeared to have been dispatched on Wednesday and Mikhail Voitenko, said to be a spokesman for ship owner Vadim Alperin, later said that the pirates were "counting the haul".

The MV Faina was the highest-profile vessel held by pirates. The intended destination of its cargo was disputed.

The Kenyan government says the tanks, rocket launchers and small arms on board belong to it, but the manifest suggests the arms were heading for South Sudan.

Once the ship is under way, the focus is likely to shift to its cargo of weapons and its final destination, says the BBC's Peter Greste in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi.

The Kenyan government would be highly embarrassed to be found supplying arms to South Sudan, analysts say.

It was Kenya that helped broker an end to the civil war between South Sudan and the government in Khartoum in 2005.

Posted on Monday, February 09, 2009 - 1:25 pm:

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Andrew Mwangura has the underground world of African piracy wired. Somali pirates trust him. Warlords respect him. And human-rights activists admire him for putting his neck on the line to keep sailors safe on the lawless high seas. “Andrew gets vital first-hand intelligence,” says Cyrus Mody, who runs the London-based Maritime Bureau of the International Chamber of Commerce. “If a ship is running low on food or there’s been some disaster, he often knows about it first.”

Unfortunately for Mwangura, an ex-journalist who lives in a shack without running water on the beach in Mombasa, the Kenyan government doesn’t see him as a hero. On February 4, prosecutors put the 45-year-old Mwangura on trial for exposing the secret of a Ukrainian freighter that was hijacked last fall while carrying $30 million in Russian arms. Although the shipment was part of a secret, back-channel deal to arm Sudan in violation of a United Nations arms embargo, Mwangura is the one accused of breaking the law. The government has charged him with releasing “alarming information.” Says the activist, “They have no evidence. What I said was the truth.”

In an exclusive interview with The Daily Beast, Mwangura revealed how much worse things can get for sailors in the Gulf—and for him.

The pirates paint themselves as Robin Hoods, hijacking ships that are responsible for stealing through overfishing, and then redistributing the profits through the ransoms they collect. Is that how you see them?

When we started, things were very quiet. We made our job to tell the world what was going on in this part of the country. So the warlords came to us and talked about what was happening in Somalia—the foreign ships that were overfishing and dumping toxic wastes. And they said, “We are not the pirates. We are not the enemies.”

But we came to get a real picture of them. One of the groups in Somalia, the Kismayu group, is known as National Volunteer Coast Guard and focuses on small boats close to the shore. They do not use the word “ransom.” They call what they collect a “fine” for illegal acts. The Merkah group has fishing boats with longer-range fire power. And the most sophisticated groups have names like the Central Regional Coast Guards, Ocean Salvation Corps and the Somali Marines. They have a capacity to operate at greater distances off the coast. We believe they are responsible for 80 percent of the attacks in 2008.

In the beginning, we went to the shipping companies and said, “Please don’t give them money.” But the ship owners did not understand and kept giving them money. Back then it was less than $100,000. Now they’re taking big money. And we cannot stop them.

How do the locals react to these pirates?

They used to be the common man, like you and me. But nowadays they wear bling-bling. They drive four-wheel-drive cars and live in really good houses. Everyone wants to be like them. We don’t have factories or anything to provide for our community. So when the ships are hijacked, the villagers are happy. They know when the ship is taken [to the waters outside] their village, they are going to get something.

Usually someone from the village goes to the pirates and says, “We want to talk on your behalf.” So elders come in and start talking [to intermediaries], start making negotiations. They know that in the end they'll get something for their time. In Arabic, we call it baksheesh. Baksheesh is like a thank you. If the pirates get $100, you get $1.

But most of that money does not stay in Somalia. These young men carrying guns are just foot soldiers. Their leaders are in Kenya, Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom and Canada. It is not easy for a common man in Africa to afford a motorboat with an 80-horsepower engine. It takes people out of Somalia to finance these activities.

Posted on Monday, February 09, 2009 - 9:37 pm:

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The idea for Bucky's character came from a friend's Siamese who seemed to hate Darby no matter what he did. Darby drew several versions of Bucky with his ears up, until he hit on drawing Bucky with his ears constantly pinned down. Conley was intrigued by the idea of a cat who was so unrelentingly hostile that his ears were permanently flattened against his skull, and the unique look of Bucky was born.

Posted on Monday, February 16, 2009 - 1:12 pm:

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MOSCOW, February 16 (RIA Novosti) - At least $2 million paid to Somali pirates to free a Ukrainian cargo ship was provided by "unknown Ukrainians" headed by the president, and not the ship's owners, a Russian newspaper reported on Monday.

Without the help of the Ukrainian government, the ship owners wouldn't have been able to do anything, and the Faina would still be in the pirates' hands without any guarantee of being released for a long time," said the editor of Sovfracht Maritime Bulletin, Mikhail Voitenko, who took part in the negotiations with the Somali pirates.

Voitenko said that it was not the ship owners, but "Ukraine that paid the Britons who until January were acting as moderators."

Kiev denied accusations that it had paid a ransom. "The government cannot finance terrorism," the daily quoted the Ukrainian Security Council's deputy secretary, Stepan Gavrish, as saying. "If Ukraine had paid the pirates, then that would have disrupted international society."

Ukrainian President Victor Yushchenko said last week that negotiations on the ransom were near completion, but were twice disrupted because of outside interference. Because of that, it was decided to decrease the number of people who were informed on the operation. The daily reported Yushchenko as saying that the third phase of the operation was handled by its foreign intelligence service.

According to the daily, the decision to make the operation top secret was made in mid-January, after which the foreign intelligence service stopped passing information on to the Security Council's Crisis Committee and other government bodies. That would explain why Ukraine's Foreign Ministry for a long time said it knew nothing about the ransom money being paid to the pirates, the daily reported.

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While the western media has often focused its attention on Somali pirates, the international community has paid a blind eye to the ravaging of Somali seas by foreign vessels that either fish illegally or dump toxic material, including nuclear waste in Somali territorial waters in flagrant violation of the national sovereignty and territorial integrity of the beleaguered East-African nation.

Sugunle Ali, a spokesman for the pirates on the just released MV Faina, once told the New York Times that in the eyes of the world, the pirates had been misunderstood.

"We don´t consider ourselves sea bandits," he said. "We consider sea bandits those who illegally fish in our seas and dump waste in our seas and carry weapons in our seas. We are simply patrolling our seas. Think of us like a coast guard." In Somalia, pirates claim that they only impose heavy "fines" as opposed to claiming "ransom" when seizing ships that illegally enter Somali seas.

After the collapse of the Somali state, there were no patrols along the shoreline and Somalia´s tuna-rich waters were soon plundered by commercial fishing fleets from around the world. Somali fishermen armed themselves and turned into vigilantes by confronting illegal fishing boats and demanding that they pay a tax.

However, things later got out of hand as the vigilantes in the high seas quickly transformed themselves into pirates hijacking any vessels they could catch.

But unknown to most in the rest of the world, Somali pirates are not the only ones benefiting from this high stakes industry. Last month, the BBC reported that the hijacking of ships off the coast of Somalia has created a mini-industry for a business entity based in the UK. An investigation by Simon Cox, a BBC reporter, on how ransom is paid ,has revealed that money trails lead to one destination: London.

According to Cox, securing the release of hijacked ships and crew members is "the responsibility of a hidden mini-industry of lawyers, negotiators and security teams based nearly 7,000km away, in London, UK, the business capital of the world's maritime industry".

Simon Beale, a marine underwriter, says that all these specialist services don't come cheap in the UK. He adds that by factoring in the cost of lawyers, risk consultants, security advisers, as well as the fixed overheads, and delivering the money to the pirates , all these "can lead to doubling the ransom amount."

Cox adds that this hidden mini-industry thrives because paying a ransom is not illegal under British law unless it is paid to terrorists. It has long been established that piracy in Somalia does not constitute a politically motivated act as pirates simply hold vessels for ransom. As such, they are treated as criminal gangs in the high seas, not terrorists.

Cox notes that last year, Somali pirates pocketed an estimated $50m. "Not all of this is going to British lawyers, negotiators and security teams but a fair chunk of it will be". Says Cox. "This has led to some criticism, particularly in Spain, that London is profiting from crime".

Posted on Wednesday, February 25, 2009 - 12:56 pm:

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The most tangible sign that the Northumberland has made a difference during its three months with the EU anti-piracy taskforce has been its success escorting ships carrying food aid into Somali ports.

It has had rather less joy catching pirates or stepping into prevent attacks. On three occasions, the most latest being the case of the MV Saldanha this weekend, the frigate has arrived just too late.

Whether because they were too far away - or because no alarm was raised - the crew has three times had the frustrating experience of watching a hijacked ship sail off over the horizon.

Several people have emailed to ask why the taskforce is not mandated to retake captured ships. There are several reasons.

First, it is an operational one - the Northumberland's captain Martin Simpson was at pains to stress that he would need a much more robust force - including two helicopters - to ensure that his crew were not at risk. Boosting the force would increase the costs - and yet still in such a large area it would be impossible to ensure everyone was protected.

Secondly and most importantly, it is not what the shipping community want. If a merchant vessel is transporting $100m (£69m) of oil and 23 crew, its owners would much rather pay a ransom than risk a bloodbath and the loss of the cargo.

The taskforce stress that they act as a deterrent and are focusing their patrolling on narrow corridors in the Gulf of Aden.

But the brazen theft of the Saldanha just 60 miles (97km) from the Northumberland on Sunday illustrates the inevitable weaknesses that still exist when a handful of warships attempt to cover a million square miles of water.

With Somalia in ruins the lure of piracy is unlikely to diminish anytime soon.

The question then for the countries with warships in the region is this: Do they have the long-term commitment to keep funding a force that is at best a sticking plaster for the problem?

Posted on Sunday, March 29, 2009 - 9:48 pm:

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WASHINGTON--(ENEWSPF)--March 27, 2009 – Two ship seizures in the Indian Ocean in recent days appear to indicate that pirates have broadened their focus beyond the heavily patrolled Gulf of Aden.
Pirates hijacked two chemical tankers: the Bahamian-flagged, Norwegian-owned vessel Bowasir on March 25 and the Panamanian-flagged, Greek-owned Nipayia yesterday, a Navy spokesman confirmed.

Bowasir and its 23-member crew were operating more than 380 nautical miles southeast of Kismayo, Somalia. Nipayia and its 19 merchant mariners were pirated 490 nautical miles east of Mogadishu, the official said.

The latest hijackings expand the pirates’ operating area, creating what the official called “a monumental challenge” to those working to prevent piracy.

“To put the challenge into geographic perspective, the area involved off the coast of Somalia and Kenya as well as the Gulf of Aden equals more than 1.1 million square miles,” he said. “That is roughly four times the size of the U.S. state of Texas, or the size of the Mediterranean and Red Seas combined.”