By John Batchelor
closeAuthor: John Batchelor
Name: John Batchelor
Email: susanunpc@gmail.com
Site: http://johnbatchelorshow.com/
About: See Authors Posts (507) on April 11, 2009 at 11:00 PM in "Blackhawk Down", Piracy, President Barack Obama, Somalia
Pirates Hold At Least 200 Captives.
The International Maritime Bureau reports on piracy worldwide and now updates daily (weekly is no longer enough) to track the threats along the Somalia and Tanzania coast. The high stakes Obama administration drama with the Maersk Alabama Captain Richard Phillips is just a small piece of the gigantic map. (Maersk Alabama arriving in Mombassa today without its captain, right.) At least two hundred sailors from all nations are now missing and presumed in captivity, and at least a dozen ships are held along the coast. Examples from the last days:
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09.04.2009: 0210 UTC: Posn: 06:44.85S – 039:20.06E: Dar es Salaam anchorage, Tanzania. [Editor's NOTE: Click on question mark to see "live piracy report.")
While the crew kept a vigilant anti piracy watch onboard a container ship, robbers boarded her and succeeded in throwing one life raft into the sea. The crew raised alarm, mustered and reported to the authorities. Vessel did not attempt to recover the life raft due to the large number of robbers.
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09.04.2009: 0020 UTC: Posn: 13:08N – 049:13E: Gulf of Aden.
Pirates in a skiff chased and fired upon a bulk carrier underway. The vessel commenced evasive manoeuvres and contacted the coalition naval forces for assistance. A military helicopter arrived and upon sighting the aircraft, the pirates aborted the attempt.
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American Task Force.
The USS Bainbridge is now joined by Halyburton and soon by the Wasp-class anti-pirate flagship Boxer (right) (an amphibious assault ship that resembles a small aircraft carrier) in a face-off with four pirates in a lifeboat. There are unconfirmed reports of more pirate vessels in-bound to aid the captors. There are unconfirmed reports of troubled, incomplete negotiations between the pirates, the U.S. Navy, and so-called Somalia elders representing the pirates. The pirates are armed and there are multiple reports of firing from the lifeboat. There are reports of other Americans taken off an Italian-flagged tugboat in the Gulf of Aden: From Bloomberg:
In a separate incident, an Italian tugboat was hijacked by pirates in the Gulf of Aden. The Buccaneer, a tugboat with a crew of 16, was seized as it was towing two barges, said Shona Lowe, a spokeswoman for NATO’s Northwood Maritime Command Center near London. Ten of the crew are Italian nationals, she said.
The U.S. container ship Alabama is the first U.S.-flagged vessel hijacked since a maritime protection corridor was set up in the region in August, according to the U.S. Navy. Pirates have taken more ships this past week than in the first three months of the year, according to U.S. and French navy data. They’re operating outside their usual hunting grounds in the Gulf of Aden, one of the world’s most-traveled trade routes, to avoid naval patrols.
“The United States is deeply concerned about the unprecedented level of piracy” and the impact on commercial shipping and the safety of mariners, Laura Tischler, a spokeswoman for the U.S. State Department, said in a telephone interview in Washington.
Long Since Out of Control.
The pirates are not aimless fools in skiffs who drift around for plunder. They are sent by two masterful clans from the Somalia coast, the Hawiye around Haradhere and the Darod around Eyl. My best signals source reports there are long standing jihadist links through Sudanese contacts who use the coast for gun-running. The whole of the Somalia coast is Sharia; the word of the jihadists is armed medieval absolutism. There is no indication the four pirates who have Phillips are jihad; however the clan chiefs and their sub commanders on the coast are all informed by the jihadists, depend upon the jihadists like great lords from afar, and by now the Phillips drama is a useful confrontation with the US. Note the incomplete reports of negotiations, with the Americans insisting upon arrests, the pirates demanding freedom, the return of their comrades, cash.
Pentagon spokesman Major Stewart Upton said he had no information about an agreement to release Phillips. The New York Times quoted Somali officials as saying negotiations had broken down after U.S. officials insisted that the pirates be arrested and a group of Somali elders representing the pirates balked at that demand.
“It is possible to say the talks may break down hour by hour because the Americans are afraid of losing their captain and in turn we suspect they may arrest my colleagues after they get their man,” said the pirate, who identifies himself only as Da’ud, in an interview
American policy has failed along this coast since at least 1992. But now the clans have found the weakness — maritime security — are are exploiting it with sophistication and cunning. Three American warships with air cover — enough to dominate a city — are now paralyzed by the hostage standoff by four pirates in a borrowed lifeboat. The jihadist websites have another lesson to preach: America is a pitiful, helpless giant.
What Would TR Do?
I reviewed John Milius’s 1975 “Wind and the Lion,” and found reasons why the film found resonance at the time. Gerald Ford had inherited from the disgraced Richard Nixon and the country was feeling betrayed. Ford then ordered the bugging out from Saigon which meant the triumph of the fascist Hanoi regime. Cambodia was a well known nightmare that America refused to acknowledge, and what followed was the decade long genocide of Pol Pot. There there was the considerable fact of the 1973-75 OPEC triggered recession that sent unemployment soaring just as young professional women were coming into the economy in great numbers. In sum, America was in despair, feeling defeated and cheated and unappreciated, the usual mood of a misunderstood and clumsy hero. Milius’s movie writing altered and re-imagined everything about TR, Pedicaris (who was male, not the slim, gorgeous Candace Bergen) and the Berber cuthroat chief Raisuni – who is portrayed as “the last of the Barbary pirates.” What it did get right was the sense of great joy in America conducting itself outrageously in order to get what it wanted. Milius’s TR (Brian Keith, above, never better) declares the the American grizzly bear should be the national mascot, not the bald eagle — “a dandified vulture.” And when the Marines, aiming to right the wrong of the Pedicaris abduction for ransom, storm Morocco regime’s palace, the movie and the music are light opera, high romance, goony up-lifting fun. Easter Sunday 2009, we look to have reached another such moment of despair, defeatism, self-conscious pride in American foreign policy. In 1804, Tom Jefferson finessed his Barbary problem with a task force, a hasty, operatic gunfight and a legend. The Marine’s hum the hymn. In 1904, TR finessed his problem with a superb cablegram: “We want Pedicaris alive or Raisuni dead,” and a task force with bayonet-tipped Marines (below from “Wind and the Lion”). The new Barbary Coast is Somalia. Blackhawk Down was a Bush and Clinton failure. This is a second chance. Will the Obama administration give the order and find a way to win?
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