After yesterday’s horror in the Indian Ocean — where Somali pirates killed four Americans after seizing their yacht four days earlier — it’s hard to imagine something worse. Alas, there may be something worse. At least some of these pirates have allied themselves with the Somali-based Al Shabaab rebels, a group that professes loyalty to al Qaeda.
According to a Reuters report from the Somali capital of Mogadishu:
Somali militants freed pirate gang leaders detained last week after agreeing on a cut for future ransoms as well as a deal to have hijacked ships anchor at the port town of Haradhere, pirates sources said on Tuesday. The Al Shabaab rebels, who profess loyalty to al Qaeda, said they had settled a multi-million dollar deal to receive a 20 percent cut in all future ransoms paid to the pirates, and opened a marine office at Haradhere to liaise with the pirates.
This means that piracy has gone from a menace to local shipping to an income stream for al Qaeda-linked terrorists who want to destroy the United States.
Beyond funding terror, pirate brutality is on the rise as well. Killing hostages “has now become part of our rules,” a pirate who identified himself as Muse Abdi told the Associated Press. “From now on, anyone who tries to rescue the hostages in our hands will only collect dead bodies.” So far this year, pirates in the region — often operating what the Pentagon calls “pirate action groups” that include “mother ships” that act as floating bases for pirates in smaller boats — have seized 12 vessels and taken 228 crew members hostage. All told, they hold 33 ships and 712 people. The “mother ships” let the pirates extend their reach 1,000 miles or more from Somalia.
Last month, Vice Adm. Mark Fox, who briefed reporters on the Quest tragedy Tuesday from his headquarters in Bahrain, came close to declaring that some of the pirates’ profits were ending up in terrorist purses. “There’s not clear linkage, but I’m loathe to hope or assume that it hasn’t occurred,” he said. “Any time you see millions of dollars being pumped into essentially a lawless society in Somalia, the guys that are putting ladders over the gunnels of merchant ships are getting thousands of dollars in reward. There are millions of dollars of ransom monies that are being paid somewhere.”
Fox, the chief of U.S. Central Command’s naval forces, said during that visit to Washington in late January that the international community must begin treating pirates like terrorists. “In our counter-terrorism world, we say, `We don’t negotiate with terrorists,’” Fox said. The problem is that there are now more than 700 sailors being held hostage by pirates in and around Somalia.
Current policy is “‘Hey, the hostages are the center of gravity,’” Fox said. “And I don’t ever want to be glib about the fact that there’s a human dimension to this. So I’m not advocating that we suddenly just come out with guns blazing…but I would advocate that we use the same techniques that have been successful in our counter-terror that we have not heretofore used in the counter-piracy.” That would include the use of lethal force.
That will require some changes in how naval forces operate. “We don’t have the rules of engagement that will allow us to just go sink a ship,” Fox said. But he said he and the government are trying to come up with new ways to deal with the piracy challenge. “We’ve got to find a way,” he said, “to break this cycle of increasing success on the pirates’ part.”
It’s a safe bet blowing a handful of pirate-laden “mother ships” to the bottom of the Indian Ocean — after broadcasting warnings that such action now constituted a more robust anti-piracy campaign — would dampen the enthusiasm among young Somalis to choose piracy as a career option. The commercial maritime industry has tolerated piracy for years, preferring to pay ransoms for ships and hostages in hopes of keeping insurance rates down and customers satisfied. Now that the pirates are boasting of funding terror and killing innocents, that solution, such as it was, needs to be deep-sixed.
