Bandaiding Won't Work in Somalia

The "Somali Government," which I shall now and for probably a long time refer to only with sneer quotes, has requested a big chunk of international funding to create a Navy. How quaint.

There are probably a lot of folks in the international community that would like to throw some money at this problem and be assured that it will go away. It won't. And anybody that thinks it will is a fool looking to throw money away.

Somalia is in anarchy. Its government exists only by name--it has no influence. It was propped up briefly by the Ethiopians with the support of the West, but as soon as the Ethiopians left, Mogadishu was overrun by the Union of Islamic Courts, a group that the Ethiopians thought they had finished off a few years ago.Some work has been done to regain some bit of administrative control over some of Somalia by the Western-supported government, but to the south, Islamic militants reign. Puntland and Somaliland to the north are essentially autonomous. And the small swath of land administered by the Somali government is one that is highly unstable, highly variable, and full of citizens with very little national identification or loyalty.

Frankly, how can money create a competent Navy? It takes much more than steel, guns, and technology to get a Navy working in a way that can fight piracy. If a Navy is to fight an internal menace, then some internal control is necessary. Some internal intelligence is critical. And even if that is achieved, years of training are necessary to create well-trianed sailors that can competently hunt and destroy the pirates.

It might probably even be cheaper to send a UN-approved force to whack the Somali pirates in their dens, then to throw a bunch of money at a Somali Navy that will not exist for a very long time, if at all. Trying to outsource this problem is a fool's errand.

Hijacking Update: Getting the Captain Back

Pentagon reports were a bit premature, and lacked a few key details about the hijacking. I think I've managed to piece most of them together.

When the crew overpowered the pirates and took one of them into custody, the pirates managed to take the captain of the vessel hostage. The crew tried to negotiate for the captain with the last pirate, but the trade never happened, and the other pirates escaped on a lifeboat. The USS Bainbridge, a missile destroyer, has arrived on scene with FBI hostage negotiators to seek his release. The Mearsk Alabama is on its way, under armed guard, to Kenya to deliver the aid supplies.

I'll try to keep you updated on the fate of the captain, as well as that of the pirates.

American Crew Retakes Hijacked Ship

Within the last day the Mearsk Alabama, with a 20-person American crew, was hijacked off the coast of Somalia while carrying aid supplies from Denmark to Kenya. This marked the first time since 1800 that an American crew had been successfully taken by pirates. The hijacking was tough--the four pirates chased the vessel for 5 hours, and were repeatedly knocked away by powerful water hoses.

The shipping company had pirate insurance (this exists), and was ready to pay to get the ordeal over with. But they didn't get the time to negotiate.

The 20 American crewmen overpowered the four pirates, taking one into custody on the ship. Pentagon reports have confirmed that the ship is back under American control. Watching the story unfold, I was wondering whether the US Navy would try to bail the crew out, and it appeared that they had been asked to back off by the ship's owner, who was ready to pay up (or, alternatively, knew what his crew was capable of).

If word of the incident spreads, Somali pirates may come better-armed in the future, but they would then risk escalating the problem to the point that it becomes less costly to the rest of the world to simply hunt and kill the pirates, rather than patrol and pay ransoms.

But Americans don't react passively these days to being hijacked, and probably won't ever again. Somali pirates may be better about doing their homework on their target in the future.

India Takes Pirate Problems Into Own Hands

The Indians have had enough of Somali pirate hubris. After having a ship almost hijacked last week (among a slough of others), the INS Tabar, confronted a pirate "mothership," and told the men on board that the ship was going to be searched. Now if you've ever seen Waterworld, think of the undead Exxon Valdez, but all the crew have RPGs.

When the Indians tell these guys they're going to be searched, they start firing their RPGs and light arms. Now I don't know if you've ever seen a missile frigate, but if you did, I bet you would know better than trying to scare it off with light arms. They're not only armed to the teeth with surface-to-surface missiles, but have a bow and stern cannons and heavy machine guns bristling from all corners.

The Tabar was pleased to have an excuse to open fire. The details are few, but it likely tossed off a few SS missiles and hit a few weapons caches, and the "mothership" went down. A few speedboats ran off, but they likely lost their supplies and leadership.

Of course, there are many pirate factions in Somalia. The Mogadishu government is mostly... nonexistent. The Indians, Russians, Americans, Brits, and Saudis will have to start policing the waters themselves, and continue this kind of anti-pirate offensive--if they do, Somali thieves may decide the occasional oil tanker isn't worth the risk of taking SS missiles in the face.

Updates on African Hostage-Taking

While the stock market may be captivating our attention, we may have missed some recent hostage crises in Africa that are almost over, but have some interesting implications.

The first is an Egyptian hostage crisis, in which European tourists and Egyptian guides were kidnapped by African kidnappers that were demanding a ransom. They were let go (story from the hostages here) recently, but with some odd international events. There are rumors that the Italian government paid a ransom for the hostages' release, but the Italian government denies this, saying that they and Egyptian commandos freed the hostages in a raid; the hostages claim they know nothing of any raid, that they were simply told to go.

This is not necessarily a contradiction--it could be that the hostages were let go while the raid was coming (and the kidnappers had advance warning), and then the shootout happened. It's unlikely that no shootout happened at all, but if the commandos didn't find any hostages, one would think that they'd mention it in their reports about the alleged raid. Something is fishy here, but it may simply be an overly-optimistic PR campaign by the involved governments, trying to repeat the success of Columbia/US against FARC a few months back. Sadly, if it turns out there are inaccuracies here, it may have backlash PR repercussions against counter-terror campaigns.

The second interesting piece comes from Somalia: a Ukrainian ship full of Russian tanks was hijacked for a $20 million ransom off the coast of Eastern Africa. The US and Russians both sent ships, and have surrounded the ship. In short, it looks like the standoff is close to being over--shots have been heard on the ship, and three of the pirates are dead. This shows a clear breakdown of leadership on the vessel--some pirates are probably trying to hedge their bets and get out now, while others want to play brinksmanship. The fighting means that pressure is mounting for the pirates, and that they are unlikely to hold together.

But internationally, it shows the Russian and American navies working together in the interest of arms control--something that will go a long way towards healing the rifts from the Georgian invasion. Russia's PR game continues with this latest deployment of ships, and people are likely to calm down about Russia in the future if they continue such cooperative measures.