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Putting the 'Pirate' Attack in Context
A US ship, owned by a Pentagon contractor with ‘Top Security’ Clearance, was seized off the Somali coast. Reports say the US crew has retaken the ship. But the question remains: Why are the pirates attacking?
UPDATE: US Crew Tricked Into Giving Over Captain to the Pirates? Meanwhile US Warships head to Scene
Just as it seemed that this drama was coming to an end, the story has taken a very bizarre turn.
The Maersk Alabama container ship which was hijacked by Somali pirates. (AFP/HO) At least one nuclear-powered US warship is reportedly
on its way to the scene of the hijacking off the coast of Somalia of a
vessel owned by a major Pentagon contractor. A US official told the Associated Press
the destroyer USS Bainbridge is en route while another official said
six or seven ships are responding to the takeover of the "Maersk
Alabama," which is part of a fleet of ships owned by Maersk Ltd., a US
subsidiary of a Denmark firm, which does about a half-billion dollars in business with the US government a year.
Just as it seemed that this drama was coming to an end, the story has taken a very bizarre turn. It seems as though the pirates essentially tricked the ship's "all-American" crew into handing over the Alabama's captain, Capt. Richard Phillips.
After reports, based on Pentagon sources, emerged that the ship had been retaken by the US crew, word came from the ship that the captain of the "Alabama" had been taken by the pirates onto a lifeboat. The details of how exactly the four pirates managed to get the captain onto a lifeboat are still sketchy, but it seems a little bit like a scene out of a Marx brothers movie. The ship's second mate Kenn Quinn was interviewed on CNN and described how the crew was essentially tricked into handing the captain over to the pirates. Quinn spoke to CNN's Kyra Phillips:
Quinn: When they board, they sank their boats so the captain talked them into getting off the ship with the lifeboat. But we took one of their pirates hostage and did an exchange. What? Huh? Okay. I've got to go.Phillips: Ken, can you stay with me for just two more seconds?
Quinn: What?
Phillips: Can you tell me about the negotiations, what you've offered these pirates in exchange for your captain?
Quinn: We had one of their hostages. We had a pirate we took and kept him for 12 hours. We tied him up and he was our prisoner.
Phillips: Did you return him?
Quinn: Yeah, we did. But we returned him but they didn't return the captain. So now we're just trying to offer them whatever we can. Food. But it's not working too good."
As TV Newser pointed out, "Later Phillips gave what may be the understatement of the day: ‘It sounds like the pirates did not keep their end of the deal.'"
* * * *
The Somali pirates who took control of the 17,000-ton “Maersk Alabama” cargo-ship in the early hours of Wednesday morning probably were unaware that the ship they were boarding belonged to a US Department of Defense contractor with “top security clearance,” which does a half-billion dollars in annual business with the Pentagon, primarily the Navy. What’s more, the ship was being operated by an “all-American” crew—there were 20 US nationals on the ship. “Every indication is that this is the first time a U.S.-flagged ship has been successfully seized by pirates,” said Lt. Nathan Christensen, a spokesperson for for the U.S. Navy’s Bahrain-based 5th Fleet. The last documented pirate attack of a US vessel by African pirates was reported in 1804, off Libya, according to The Los Angeles Times.
The company, A.P. Moller-Maersk, is a Denmark-based company with a large US subsidiary, Maersk Line, Ltd, that serves US government agencies and contractors. The company, which is based in Norfolk, Virginia, runs the world’s largest fleet of US-flag vessels. The “Alabama” was about 300 miles off the coast of the Puntland region of northern Somalia when it was taken. The US military says the Alabama was not operating on a DoD contract at the time and was said to be delivering food aid.
The closest US warship to the “Alabama” at the time of the seizure was 300 miles away. The US Navy did not say how or if it would respond, but seemed not to rule out intervention. ”It’s fair to say we are closely monitoring the situation, but we will not discuss nor speculate on current and future military operations,” said Navy Cmdr. Jane Campbell.
The seizure of the ship seemed to have been short-lived. At the time of this writing, the Pentagon was reporting that the US crew retook the ship and was holding one of the pirates in custody. At this point, it is unclear if the crew acted alone or had assistance from the military or another security force.
Over the past year, there has been a dramatic uptick in media coverage of the “pirates,” particularly in the Gulf of Aden. Pirates reportedly took in upwards of $150 million in ransoms last year alone. In fact, at the moment the Alabama’s seizure, pirates were already holding 14 other vessels with about 200 crew members, according to the International Maritime Bureau. There have been seven hijackings in the past month alone.
Often, the reporting on pirates centers around the gangsterism of the pirates and the seemingly huge ransoms they demand. Indeed, piracy can be a very profitable business, as the following report from Reuters suggests:
A rough back-of-the-envelope calculation shows that the operation to hijack the Saudi tanker, the Sirius Star, cost no more than $25,000, assuming that the pirates bought new equipment and weapons ($450 apiece for an AK-47 Kalashnikov, $5,000 for an RPG-7 grenade launcher, $15,000 for a speedboat). That contrasts with an initial ransom demand to the tanker’s owner, Saudi Aramco, of $25 million.
“Piracy is an excellent business model if you operate from an impoverished, lawless place like Somalia,” says Patrick Cullen, a security expert at the London School of Economics who has been researching piracy. “The risk-reward ratio is just huge.”
But this type of coverage of the pirates is similar to the false narrative about “tribalism” being the cause of all of Africa’s problems. Of course, there are straight-up gangsters and criminals engaged in these hijackings. Perhaps the pirates who hijacked the Alabama on Wednesday fall into that category. We do not yet know. But that is hardly the whole “pirate” story. Consider what one pirate told The New York Times after he and his men seized a Ukrainian freighter “loaded with tanks, artillery, grenade launchers and ammunition” last year. “We don’t consider ourselves sea bandits,” said Sugule Ali:. “We consider sea bandits those who illegally fish in our seas and dump waste in our seas and carry weapons in our seas. We are simply patrolling our seas. Think of us like a coast guard.” Now, that “coast guard” analogy is a stretch, but his point is an important and widely omitted part of this story. Indeed the Times article was titled, “Somali Pirates Tell Their Side: They Want Only Money.” Yet, The New York Times acknowledged, “the piracy industry started about 10 to 15 years ago… as a response to illegal fishing.”
Take this fact: Over $300 million worth of tuna, shrimp, and lobster are “being stolen every year by illegal trawlers” off Somalia’s coast, forcing the fishing industry there into a state of virtual non-existence.
But it isn’t just the theft of seafood. Nuclear dumping has polluted the environment. “In 1991, the government of Somalia collapsed,” wrote Johann Hari in The Independent. “Its nine million people have been teetering on starvation ever since – and the ugliest forces in the Western world have seen this as a great opportunity to steal the country’s food supply and dump our nuclear waste in their seas.”
According to Hari:
As soon as the [Somali] government was gone, mysterious European ships started appearing off the coast of Somalia, dumping vast barrels into the ocean. The coastal population began to sicken. At first they suffered strange rashes, nausea and malformed babies. Then, after the 2005 tsunami, hundreds of the dumped and leaking barrels washed up on shore. People began to suffer from radiation sickness, and more than 300 died.
…
This is the context in which the “pirates” have emerged. Somalian fishermen took speedboats to try to dissuade the dumpers and trawlers, or at least levy a “tax” on them. They call themselves the Volunteer Coastguard of Somalia – and ordinary Somalis agree. The independent Somalian news site WardheerNews found 70 per cent “strongly supported the piracy as a form of national defence.”
As the media coverage of the pirates has increased, private security companies like Xe/Blackwater have stepped in, seeing profits. A few months ago, Blackwater executives flew to London to meet with shipping company executives about protecting their ships from pirate attacks. In October, the company deployed the MacArthur, its “private sector warship equipped with helicopters” to the Gulf of Aden. “We have been contacted by shipowners who say they need our help in making sure goods get to their destination,” said the company’s executive vice-president, Bill Matthews. “The McArthur can help us accomplish that.”
According to an engineer aboard the MacArthur, the ship, whose crew includes former Navy SEALS, was at one point stationed in an area several hundred miles off the coast of Yemen. “Security teams will escort ships around both horns of Africa, Somalia and Yemen as they head to the Suez Canal… The McArthur will serve as a staging point for the SEALs and their smaller boats.”
All of this is important to keep in context any time you see a short blurb pop up about pirates attacking ships. “Did we expect starving Somalians to stand passively on their beaches, paddling in our toxic waste, and watch us snatch their fish to eat in restaurants in London and Paris and Rome?” Hari asked. “We won’t act on those crimes – the only sane solution to this problem – but when some of the fishermen responded by disrupting the transit-corridor for 20 percent of the world’s oil supply, we swiftly send in the gunboats.”
37 Comments so far
Show AllHaving grown up in the New York metro area, I never thought I'd be Pittsburg fan.
Well, things change.
Now I say: "Let's Go Pirates!"
Maybe the Somalis can take some comfort in knowing that the Somali fish eaten in Paris, London and Rome is probably contaminated by the same nuclear wastes these Europeans dump in Somalia.
One would certainly hope that it is. Give the rich some convulsions and malformed babies. A kind of ironic blowback.
We know where the real pirates are: in their glass towers in New York, Geneva, and London and Tokyo, sucking the wealth of the earth into their coffers with the help of the United States armed forces.
Daz right!
Do read Johann Hari's article in The Independent - it's linked above. It is excellent.
If anyone swallows this absurd "story" they should be in the market for the proverbial bridge.
So which story would you prefer? The MSM version that fits your mental capacity?
Hey dude, how about telling us what is absurd about it, and not merely gratuitously throwing the word 'absurd' at the article?
Yes, I am afraid that anybody can do the latter.
Just because you've never heard it before doesn't mean it's false. I've never heard this kind of story about the pirate attacks, but I have no problem believing that other countries would steal the seafood supply off Somalia's coast...that happens elsewhere too. I would like to see more information about the nuclear dumping, I'll have to check out the parent article tomorrow when I'm more awake.
After all somebody in the progressive community has to transform an RPG toting Somali pirate into the funny, bumbling Captain Jack Sparrow!
Welcome to the New Dark Age.
The Western democracies have to realize the rest of the world is not their own private toilet bowl.
Thanks for the demystification/clarification, Jeremy, that's real journalism....
There's a deal - an HONEST and HONORABLE deal - to be made here. It's going to take a great deal of patience and persistence, but these "pirates" seem to have a valid beef, so this activity will not end simply by destroying a few boats or raiding "pirate havens."
I would hope that those nations who have been quick to send warships and helicopters to "clean out the pirates" would understand that it would take less money, less loss of life and less interruption of shipping schedules if we found a constructive way to deal with this situation.
Just when I was thinking that this was a genuine case of a bunch of American merchantmen kicking butt on the high seas, Jeremy has to go and ruin it with his amazing talent for investigative reporting. Right on Scahill, you're the real deal. This article raises a lot of intriguing questions.
But damn, I wish it was just a simple story of innocent American merchant seamen fighting off the nasty pirates. Why does everything have to be so complicated?
Yep, I've read about this phenom in some of the alternative press. Now why doesn't Xe/Blackwater work both sides of the altercation & make some real money. They could be security for the Somalian fisherpeople and for the polluting motherfuckers dumping toxic waste into the ocean. Then maybe Xe/Blackwater could develope a mediation department within their fascist organization & help to negotiate a fair settlement between the parties. Perhaps they could work in conjunction w/ Greenpeace to patrol the waters so that no more dumping occurs. Hey, why doesn't a corporation start a toxic waste company & employ Somalian people? The company could actually make a bit of chump change bringing in waste, and processing it according to acceptable internation standards. If countries are going through the trouble of transporting waste all the way to those waters, why couldn't they just paddle their little dump boats over to a port, pay several million more, and dispose of the waste properly? Sure, it cost a little bit more, and their bottom line will be severely affected, but we're saving the world for future generations, are we not?
This was informative and I'm sure those mystery boats dumping toxic waste weren't just from Europe -
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/max-blumenthal/lawrence-summers-africa-i_b_141706.html
On December 12, 1991, while serving as chief economist for the World Bank, Summers authored a private memo arguing that the bank should actively encourage the dumping of toxic waste in developing countries, particularly "under populated countries in Africa," which Summers described as "UNDER-polluted." Summers added that public outrage over the heightened rates of prostate cancer caused by his proposed dumping would be mitigated by the fact that poor people in developing countries rarely live long enough to develop prostate cancer.
"Summers authored a private memo arguing that the bank should actively encourage the dumping of toxic waste in developing countries, particularly "under populated countries in Africa," which Summers described as "UNDER-polluted."
Wow! Thanks for that piece of information. This is the guy whose going to save us?
Jeremy Scahill, my thanks go to you for reporting and opening our eyes on yet another instance of trashy behavior courtesy of the Western civilized world, the world that is always so darn eager to teach lessons in proper behavior and human rights to the folks of the "Third World."
Of course, every story has at least two versions. The one most commonly heard is the "corporate press" line, broadcast and printed around the world, primarily to the elites and their captive middle classes. Then there is a "peoples' version", seldom heard outside of the alternative press. The western mind has been colonized and is blinded by a pro-western, pro-corporate version of reality which creates a paralysis, detachment, and disorientation. In that environment, people go about their business in the U.S., "entertaining" themselves with a Hollywood/Wall Street version of the world which makes it all exciting, and, if not clean, at least presumably justifiable. This was the beauty of Muntazer al-Zaidi throwing those two shoes at George Bush on December 14, 2008. It said to the world -- after 5 years of the highest grade U.S. and British government, military, and corporate propaganda -- that regardless of whatever the U.S. populace might think about Iraqi feelings towards the U.S., history will record that in the dying days of the Bush administration George Bush himself had to face the truth in the most glaringly revealing situation. The U.S. populace is a captive population when it comes to information and thinking, exploited by the most powerful and corrupt interests to the everlasting detriment of the planet and the truth.
Thank you Jeremy Scahill, for this and all that you do. Your contributions to our understanding are always so valuable and important.
Wow, Mr. Scahill- do you also claim that raped girls were askling for it? That is the implication of this article. While you accurately and fairly point out that not all pirates are necessarily these aquatic Robin Hoods you postulate, one comes away from your article with the conclusion that piracy is proper retribution for the ills they have suffered. What neither you nor any article mentions is any criminal actually attacked by these maritime Minutemen.
It's entirely possible that criminals are dumping waste off Somalia- though the question of why they would go there, when the open ocean beyond the continental shelf is generally so much closer, with fewer chances of anyone catching you or even finding the dumped trash, makes me question this claim. But whether they do or not, I have not heard any claim that this ship, or any of the others boarded, was doing so. In fact, I have not heard that any ship so accosted was engaged in any illegal activity. (With the possible exception of the anecdotal Ukranian freighter- and even arms trades are not necessarily illegal. Remember Venezuela has made signinficant purchases in the last few years, and none of those was illegal by any standard of which I am aware.)
If the accosted ships were not doing anything illegal, then there is no justification for the attacks. A police officer is not justified randomly arresting innocent people on the street in a bad neighborhood just because he knows that some people in that neighborhood are selling drugs or stealing cars. (The fact that it happens doesn't make it right, any more than the fact that western nations have been habitually exploiting the "third world" for centuries doesn't make it right.)
Assuming that these pirates are acrtually publicly minded private policemen, they are still nothing but vigilantes, no more proper enforcers of the law than the "Minutemen" private border patrol is in the U.S.
The Somali people have suffered at the hands of criminals the world over. Their need for proper legal protection does not justify anyone attacking other innocents whose only crime is to be present off their coasts.
"Their need for proper legal protection does not justify anyone attacking other innocents whose only crime is to be present off their coasts."
Thanks to the pirates who've called attention to the problem, legal protection should be forthcoming.
Legal protection for Somalia? Doubtful.
What goes around comes around. When the EU hires the mafia to dump nuclear waste and other toxins, and when developed countries steal Somali fishing stocks, they shouldn't expect thank-you notes.
Not suggesting they thank any dumpers or fish theives. But I haven't heard any claim that this ship, or any of the otheres seized were doing any of that. So the pirates sole justification under your theory would be, "You look like or are from the same places the people who have wronged us. Therefore we will attack you."
This argument could be reworked to come from an American suburbian; "What goes around comes around. When those blacks/latinos in those poor neighborhoods deal drugs and steal cars, they shouldn't expect the police to send thank-you notes."
Your response is like a kid saying, "I know you are but what am I?". Try to come up with something a little more intelligent rather than being condescending.
I have difficulty seeing how this is an "I know you are but what am I?" argument. I've pointed out that your previous statement, and this article in general, seemed to justify the attacks on ships off Somalia solely condemning them for being western, on the grounds that some western ships had violated the law and injured Somalis. I've pointed out that condemning and punishing one person for being of the same group as another person who happens to be a law-breaker is no different than a policeman arresting a man for "driving while black," on the grounds that since some blacks are criminals, they all must be. (I think we can agree that this is wrong.) Therefore, it is incorrect to justify these pirate attacks as somehow justified. Pirates are every bit as much robbers as the robber barons from Wall Street. It is a difference of degree, not of kind.
This seems neither unintelligent nor condescending to me. Are you certain you were replying to the correct post. (That last sentence, I admit, was a biit condescending.)
I was responding to your post, no mistake on my part. It breaks my heart that the progressive community can be so damn disputatious. At least the right wing nuts seem strongly united, no matter how wrong they can be. Some progressives like yourself like to sound all "grown up" to set yourself apart from others, but I'm not buying it. I'm not justifying piracy for piracy sakes, but sometimes people can be pushed too far; so I wouldn't be so judgemental and self righteous. But that's just me.
Joe Schlesinger reported the same history on CBC Newsworld today. He condemned the Western nations for not dealing with the problem of illegal fishing and toxic waste dumping which gave rise to the formation of these pirates. These "pirates" are made up of what used to be fishermen who started out by trying to police their waters to save their resources for themselves. When their livelihoods collapsed, they resorted to piracy believing they are only getting back the wealth stolen from them originally by the developed nations. Remember, they're operating in a failed state, where the only policing taking place is what they themselves are capable of doing.
Hundreds of large ships have been attacked by these pirates. In all of the accounts including this latest one I have not heard that any crew has used arms to defend themselves. Is there some code that says that ships on the high seas are not allowed to use force. If I were the Captain and a small ship came along side and tried to board I would send a rain of gunfire sinking and killing all of the attackers. A few such incidents and perhaps the fun would not be as great as it is now.
Would you store firearms on an oil tanker?
The pirates storm a tanker with them!
In seriousness, small arms are no serious danger to a tanker. Most don't have the oomph to penetrate anything serious, and even if they did, they probably wouldn't start a fire unless you were using incindiary ammunition. If they did... it depends on how full the tank is. If there's a lot of free oxygen to combust in the tank, you have a problem. If the tank is filled to the brim, the only oxygen the fire can get is coming in trhrough the bullet hole, so you have a small, easily smothered flare coming through the hole.
Please note I don't suggest shooting oil tanks for fun just to see what happens! :-)
The trouble is, you would keep the small arms stored in an arms locker somewhere. When you determined pirates were coming, you would have break them out, issue them, and get to the rails in time to fight the pirates. You can't do that every time a small boat comes near. Of course, commercial shipping could start employing permanently armed guards on their ships, but that would probably double crew size (at least) and certainly change the way commercial shipping is done.
Yeah, you do have good points. But it might be a company regulation that forbids it rather than an international law. After all, to rebut this comment, "The pirates storm a tanker with them!", the pirates aren't the ones who will have to pay for any repairs or replace a tanker that explodes due to shooting, but the company that owns the tanker would...and would likely want to prevent any possibility of that happening.
What you mean by fun? They are not doing this for fun!
This is happening 300 miles off the coast. These small boats have to have support from a tender ship that supplies them with fuel, food, comfort, and ammunition. Why can't we find and either assault or force it to surrender. Plus, a Danish company operating in the U.S. doing a half billion dollars a year in contracts. Jesus, we don't make ships, we don't have companies with ships, we have very few merchantmen working them because of cost, yet we act if this is Tripoli in the 1800's and American interest are directly involved.