It's "sink like a pirate" day!

[Walsingham]

INS Tabar sinks a pirate 'mother ship'. This comes on the back on the Royal Marine commandos killing two pirates the other day and making the rest surrender. I think we can safely say that while a pirate may beat a ninja they get owned by the Navy.

 

Speaking of which, exactly how high do you have to be before you open fire on something like the INS Tabar? That's a 100mm cannon on the bow there, not to mention the missile launchers.

[Hildegard]

I'm glad the Indian navy sunk those pirate ships, they should all be systematically eliminated. But without enough ships and satellite oversight, no deal.

[Deadly_Nightshade]

And here I thought this was going to be about some ISP cracking down on Bittorrent. Anyways, good riddance - I hope more pirates are blown out of the water in the near future.

[Walsingham]

I hear you, Hilde. But so long as Somalia is such a lawless mess, there will just be more of the buggers. Moreover, how long will it be before other poor bastards start getting similar ideas elsewhere? I'm concerned we may see the same explosion in ship hijacking that we've seen in corporate and private kidnapping on land. I personally believe the only way to cope is to make paying ransoms a criminal offence. Although I know that could make it even worse, by discouraging the reporting of incidents.

 

Does anyone know more about this topic? Enoch or Pop seem suspiciously well informed sometimes.

[Hildegard]

Well I'm not especially informed about the whole escalation of piracy in the horn of Africa, but what I do know is that piracy in that region, especially Somalia is booming. Pirate bosses are getting seriously rich in that country and having more and more power. Building luxury homes, improving their ships, making them more mobile, more sophisticated with satellite navigation and other gadgets. And the money is so serious it's being suspected that a number of wealthy individuals in Africa and elsewhere actually invested in those pirates so afterward they split the ransom money. And who actually pays the ransom anyways? If you pay millions for insurance on those big cargo and oil ships, does the insurance company actually pay a certain percentage of the ransom money? If they do, well, it's a an entirely new field of possible insurance fraud.

[Walsingham]

You can get kidnap insurance for people, so I'm sure you can for property. You make an interesting point about insurance fraud. The real fun would happen where someone wants rid of an old crude carrier and decides to sink the bastard rather than pay for it to be scrapped.

[Gfted1]

Under Fire, U.S. Liner Outruns Pirates

Meanwhile, Security Firm Blackwater Meets With Shipping Companies To Discuss Protection Of Vessels

 

(CBS/AP) Pirates near Somalia chased and shot at a U.S. cruise liner with more than 1,000 people on board but failed to hijack the vessel, a maritime official said Tuesday.

 

The liner, carrying 656 international passengers and 399 crew members, was sailing in the Gulf of Aden on Sunday, a maritime corridor patrolled by an international naval coalition, when it encountered six pirates in two speedboats.

 

The ship's captain brought the Nautica up to flank speed (above its full cruising speed of 18.5 knots) and began evasive maneuvers.

 

One boat managed to close within 300 yards and pirates fired upon the passenger liner with rifles, but the liner was able to outrun the smaller boats.

 

Most of the ships hijacked by pirates have been relatively slow freighters or tankers. This attack was on a high-speed cruise ship, and that's what may have saved her, says CBS News correspondent Mark Phillips.

 

Had the pirates been able to capture a ship full of people - and not just people, but wealthy Westerners, a lot of them presumably American - the piracy story in the Gulf of Aden may have been taken to an ominous new level.

 

"It is very fortunate that the liner managed to escape," said Noel Choong who heads the International Maritime Bureau's piracy reporting center in Malaysia. He urged all ships to remain vigilant in the area.

 

The Nautica is owned by Oceania Cruises Inc.

 

The U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet, based in Bahrain, said it was aware of the failed hijacking but did not have further details.

 

The Nautica was on a 32-day cruise from Rome to Singapore, with stops at ports in Italy, Egypt, Oman, Dubai, India, Malaysia and Thailand, the Web site said. Based on that schedule, the liner was headed from Egypt to Oman when it was attacked.

 

International warships patrol the area and have created a security corridor in the pirate-infested waters under a U.S.-led initiative, but the attacks have not abated.

 

The piracy problem is part of the legacy of the situation of the country. This 18 years of civil war is followed by disorder.

 

Nur Hassan Hussein

Prime Minister of SomaliaIn about 100 attacks on ships off the Somali coast this year, 40 vessels have been hijacked, Choong said. Fourteen remain in the hands of pirates along with more than 250 crew members.

 

In two of the most daring attacks, pirates seized a Ukrainian freighter loaded with 33 battle tanks in September, and on Nov. 15, a Saudi oil tanker carrying $100 million worth of crude oil.

 

Ukraine's Foreign Ministry spokesman Vasyl Kyrylych said Monday that negotiations with Somali pirates holding the cargo ship MV Faina are nearly completed, the Interfax news agency reported.

 

A spokesman for the Faina's owner said Sunday that the Somali pirates had agreed on a ransom for the ship and it could be released within days.

 

Somalia has not had a functioning government since 1991, and pirates have taken advantage of the country's lawlessness to launch attacks on foreign shipping from the Somali coast. Around 100 ships have been attacked so far this year.

 

Somali prime minister Nur Hassan Hussein said Tuesday that his country has been torn apart by 18 years of civil war and cannot stop piracy alone.

 

"The piracy problem is part of the legacy of the situation of the country. This 18 years of civil war is followed by disorder," Hussein told The Associated Press in an interview in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi.

 

Stopping piracy is "not something Somalia can do alone. This needs a tremendous effort," he said.

 

Hussein has appealed for international troops, as his government's Ethiopian allies have said they would pull out their forces by the end of the year.

 

The Ethiopians are all that has stood between the shaky administration and Islamic insurgents who have seized control of all of southern Somalia except for the capital and the parliamentary seat of Baidoa.

 

 

Mercenaries Discuss Protection For Shipping Companies

 

Private security contractor Blackwater Worldwide is meeting with shipping and insurance companies this week to describe what the company can do to protect vessels traveling through the volatile Gulf of Aden.

 

Blackwater is holding meetings in London from Tuesday to Thursday. Company spokeswoman Anne Tyrrell said the meeting is being held because at least 70 companies have contacted Blackwater about protection services. However, the Moyock-based firm doesn't have any contracts yet.

 

Blackwater, whose security forces have been employed by the U.S. government in Iraq and elsewhere, has been at the forefront of the debate over the use of contractors in war zones.

 

Capitol Hill lawmakers have described Blackwater guards as mercenaries. Human rights groups have sued the company. And Iraq's government is pushing for more authority to prosecute U.S. contractors in its own courts.

 

Last month it was revealed that federal prosecutors had drafted an indictment against six Blackwater security guards in last year's deadly Baghdad shootings of 17 Iraqi civilians, although it was undecided whether the Justice Department would charge the guards with manslaughter or assault. The company is also being investigated for allegedly making illegal weapons shipments to Iraq.

 

The 20,000 ships that pass through the Gulf of Aden each year travel to and from the Suez Canal. The vessels can't avoid the 1,800 miles of Somali coastline unless they make the costly journey around the entire continent of Africa.

 

Erik Prince, a former Navy SEAL and founder of Blackwater, is a Holland, Mich., native whose family fortune was made in the auto parts industry. His sister, Betsy DeVos, a former chairwoman of the Michigan GOP, is married to **** DeVos, a Republican and Amway Corp. heir who unsuccessfully ran for governor in 2006.

 

Blackwater began offering anti-piracy services in October, joining a number of other security firms in talks for business there. The company is offering to use a 183-foot escort ship and armed crew.

 

I was wondering how long it would take before companies resorted to mercs or armed their own sailors.

[Enoch]

I was wondering how long it would take before companies resorted to mercs or armed their own sailors.

The problem is that, for ships that can't outrun or outmaneuver the pirates' speedboats, there really isn't much that armed guards can do. The pirates are generally armed with RPGs-- all they have to do is get close enough, and they can threaten to put a round in the target ship's hull. A sharpshooter might be able to take out the guy with the RPG before he gets a shot off, but what ship owner is going to want to take that risk?

[Trenitay]

Well then they need to get better armor.

[Volourn]

"I personally believe the only way to cope is to make paying ransoms a criminal offence."

 

That's a horrible way to solve the problem. That's right. Let's make the victim a criminal. L0L

[Gorgon]

The protection racket has a way of creating its own demand. Am I the only one here who thinks the idea of officially sanctioned merc companies is completely reprehensible.

[Gfted1]

I was wondering how long it would take before companies resorted to mercs or armed their own sailors.

The problem is that, for ships that can't outrun or outmaneuver the pirates' speedboats, there really isn't much that armed guards can do. The pirates are generally armed with RPGs-- all they have to do is get close enough, and they can threaten to put a round in the target ship's hull. A sharpshooter might be able to take out the guy with the RPG before he gets a shot off, but what ship owner is going to want to take that risk?

 

 

Good point, it does potentially escalate the risk. Still though, a couple dozen sailors spraying machine gun fire in the general direction of the speedboat might give a few pirates pause.

 

I just hate the "theres nothing we can do" approach to anything, lol.

[Walsingham]

I just hate the "theres nothing we can do" approach to anything, lol.

 

I know that because of this view you and I disagree over drug policy, but believe it or not I am generally the same way. I certainly don't believe that putting up with attacks is tenable. However, I'm not sure there is the political will yet to carry out the necessary action to eliminate the problem. I think we're going to see the phenomenon spread, most likely to Nigeria first. Maybe the LTTE will try it as well.

 

As for criminlaising paying the pirates I don't see your point, Volo. Paying up finances more crime, and more victims. The cycle has to be broken somehow. If it were criminal to pay up, then the owners would be obliged to protect their assets properly.

[Enoch]

For the moment, the solution is to re-route shipping away from the Gulf of Aden and instead around the Cape of Good Hope. The higher transport costs will be at least partially passed on to consumers and should help create the political will to get some international cooperation on pirate smackdowns.