Piracy and Islamism in the Horn of Africa
by Tim Sullivan, Small Wars Journal Op-Ed
A Wicked Brew (Full PDF Article)
The recent surge in pirate attacks off the coast of Somalia has again revealed the vulnerability of U.S. and allied interests to transnational, unconventional security threats—and demonstrated just how confounded we remain in determining the appropriate responses to these challenges. Somali piracy has now become more than simply a nuisance: the explosion in attacks has the potential to disrupt international trade (at least one major international shipping firm has announced plans to shift its transit routes), and further destabilize the volatile Horn of Africa region. The audacity of recent hijackings, combined with an uncoordinated and anemic international response, portends a growing threat. In reaction to the news that the pirates had seized the Sirius Star, a Saudi supertanker, 450 miles southeast of Mombasa, Kenya, Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, echoed the sentiments of many analysts and observers when he said that he was "stunned" by the Somali pirates' range of operations.
A more disturbing element of the Somali piracy phenomenon is the apparent connection between the pirates and the country's militant Islamist movement. Though it hasn't been making the front pages, Somalia is in the throes of a protracted insurgency. The country's primary Islamist militant group, al-Shabaab, was recently added to the State Department's list of terrorist organizations affiliated with Al-Qaeda. The group has emerged as the successor (and was the former militia) of Somalia's Islamic Courts Union (ICU), which in the summer of 2006 came close to unseating the country's Transitional Federal Government (TFG); the ICU was eventually defeated by the TFG with the help of the Ethiopian military.
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See my prior comments on SWJ when the topic was
"Manhunting... from the Sea" where some young Navy type was arguing for doing land based COIN from navy ships. I suggested that the Navy work on more traditional sea-fare, piracy.
See here: http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/2008/10/manhuntingfrom-the-sea/
There is no good reason that the Navy can't handle this. It seems simple to me. You drive up along side the ship before it reaches an anchorage and say:
"OK you clowns, surrender and hand over the hostages and we will let you live. If you kill any more or fail to surrender we will board and we will kill the lot of you."
Yes you put hostages at risk, but the pirates who are in control of the ship must make a choice, die fighting or surrender and possibly live.
We will probably lose a crew or two, but if the penalty for taking a ship is death, and it starts to happen each and every time they take a ship and don't surrender, then the motivation for taking a ship will vanish.
You can't do it on just a few occasions, you have to do it every time. We should know of an incident as soon as a ship is hijacked. Either from a crew activated alarm, or from it's change of direction, and when close in from it's AIS transponder.
Crews should be taught to take cover, and if possible have pre-prepared hiddy holes to dive into, with a couple of days of food in them. Then sit tight and wait for the cavalry.
We could also use "Q Ships": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q-ship
While 'Q Ships' are not very good when pitted against submarines, the pirates don't have subs and so I think they would be very effective at this sort of asymmetrical sea warfare.
Especially so if they let no one escape an encounter: No one who could tip of others as to the ships configuration.
a fundamental problem with this article is that its basic assumption is wrong. the islamic courts were in fact opposed to piracy and were trying to eradicate it. i was there in mogadishu with them at the time. they wanted to eradicate piracy for several reasons. they desperately wanted to show that they could provide law and order and attain legitimacy, they were ideologically opposed to piracy, and their tribes did not get along with the tribes involved in piracy. the pirates in fact are linked to elsewhere in somalia, like puntland. you might not like the islamists, for your own ideological reasons, and obviously there are plenty of reasons to dislike the pirates, but its still dangerous to conflate two very unrelated phenomena