“…Perdicaris Alive…Raisuni Dead…”
By John Batchelor on April 12, 2009 at 3:35 PM in John Batchelor, Piracy, Somalia
Editor’s Note: DON’T MISS LARRY JOHNSON TONIGHT on the Batchelor show at 10:30 p.m. ET, via KFI 640 AM. Today’s events will be discussed! (Details.)
Early Reports of a Navy Fight and a Rescue.
More details needed about the captors.
The Maersk Alabama crew is still undergoing questioning by the FBI at Mombassa (right), so more details will emerge of the tussle onboard during the capture. No details on the pirates. Who are the pirates? Darod? Hawiye? Who are the so-called elders who were used as intermediaries? Answer those questions, name them and identify their clan and village, and you begin to unravel the story of their op. Was this strike random? Or did they have information about the in-bound to Mombassa Maersk Alabama? If one pirate is now in U.S. custody, detained and interrogated by the New York office of the FBI, we can presume the questions will have answers.
The New York Times reports that although the US may be preparing to take action against the Somali pirates as it did against the Barbary pirates 200 years ago, it now faces a far different enemy. The Times considers whether the US will launch an all-out war against the pirates as it did two centuries ago.
Will this happen in Somalia? Last week – even before a French effort to rescue a family in a separate hijacking ended with the death of one hostage – Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton urged the world to “end the scourge of piracy.” But Somali piracy is not an isolated problem. It’s the latest symptom of what afflicts an utterly failed state – a free-for-all on land that has consumed the country since the central government imploded in 1991. As any warlord there can tell you, the violence is almost always about cash. “We just want the money” is their mantra.
But it (US Navy) still does not have enough of a sea-based, counterinsurgency component to deal with adversaries like Somali pirates and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy. (The latter’s force features speedboats loaded with explosives hidden in the many coves of Iran’s coastline, which could ram ships on suicide missions.)
The Navy has plans to build 55 new Littoral Combat Ships to deal with this deficiency. Yes, these fast, maneuverable ships have low drafts and are thus suited for many different kinds of unorthodox missions close to shore. But the oceans are vast, and ships cannot be in two places at once. Without sufficient numbers of them, it’s hard to believe that they will make much of a difference. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, in his recent budget statement, indicated that only a few of these ships will be built at first, even as he endorsed the whole program…
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, the basis for the Best Motion Picture Nominee (Golden Globes) starring Brad Pitt.
, the novel by John Le Carre, a new motion picture starring Gary Oldman and Colin Firth.
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