International flotilla to fight Somali pirates

updated 6:16 p.m. ET Oct. 16, 2008

NAIROBI, Kenya - With U.S. warships surrounding a hijacked vessel laden with tanks, and a half dozen other gunboats patrolling the dangerous waters off Somalia, pirates seized a Philippine cargo ship this week — flouting the international effort to protect a major shipping lane.

Military vessels from 10 nations are now converging on the world's most dangerous waters, but analysts and a Somali government official say the campaign won't halt piracy unless it also confronts with the quagmire that is Somalia.

"World powers have neglected Somalia for years on end, and now its problems are touching the world, they have started on the wrong footing," said Bile Mohamoud Qabowsade, adviser to the president of Puntland, the semi-autonomous Somali region that is the pirates' base.

South Africa's Business Day newspaper issued a similar warning. "A lawless state, that sunk as the world watched and gave up, is now threatening international commerce," it said of the chaotic Horn of Africa country that has resisted intervention, including a disastrous U.S. mission in 1996.

A dozen ships being held for ransom
The pirates are holding a dozen ships for ransom. The continued seizures — despite the presence of U.S. warships — highlight the difficulties of patrolling the waters off Somalia. The chief concern is that the brazen attacks could fuel terrorism and make one of the world's major shipping routes too dangerous and expensive to traverse.

The area in question is the Gulf of Aden, a 920- by 300-mile basin separating the Arabian coast from the Horn of Africa. It is used by about 250 ships a day, said a U.S. Navy spokeswoman, Lt. Stephanie Murdock.

The area was the scene of the deadly al-Qaida attack on the USS Cole off Yemen. And it is a hive of illegal activity, including gunrunning as well as people- and drug-smuggling.

Ships slow down off Somalia's northern coast waiting to enter the Red Sea en route to Arab refineries and the Suez Canal — a route used to transport more than 10 percent of the world's petroleum and Asian goods to Europe and North America.

Roger Middleton, an expert on the region, said the dangers include the high cost if ships avoid the Gulf of Aden and go around Africa's southern tip instead and the "nightmare scenario" of pirates becoming tools of terrorists.

"A large ship sunk in the approach to the Suez Canal would have a devastating impact on international trade," Middleton said in a paper published by Chatham House, a London think tank.

Ransom proceeds may go to Somali militia
Already some ransom piracy proceeds are believed to go to al-Shabab, a Somali militia that the U.S. accuses of harboring the terrorists who attacked U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.

The Navy said that U.S. and coalition vessels and aircraft have thwarted 15 pirate attacks since they set up a "maritime security patrol area" in the Gulf of Aden on Aug. 22.

That was with six or seven ships patrolling 2.4 million square miles of water — an area including the Gulf of Oman, the Arabian Sea, the Red Sea and the African coast of Djibouti, Somalia and Kenya under a coalition set up in 2001 to fight terrorism.

"It's a large water space that takes a certain amount of time to transit so, while we would want to assist all mariners, a logistics factor comes into play as to how fast we can get there," said Murdock, the Navy spokeswoman.

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