It is the often the nature of a national security challenge that a government does not have the luxury to prepare specifically for the event that causes the crisis to escalate. But the hostage drama in the Horn of Africa was particularly jarring, coming as it did on the heels of President Obama's breathtaking charm offensive through Europe, Turkey and Iraq. The president was barely airborne, heading home in time for Easter, when Africa managed to stealth its way to the top of the national security agenda. And yet, while he was gone, General Scott Gration visited Darfur to report the absolutely grim truth about Sudan's deteriorating humanitarian situation. A recruitment tape from the Somali extremist group Al-Shabab surfaced this week starring a blue-eyed American jihadist, Abu-Mansur al-Amriki, calling on mothers to send their boys to fight Muslim holy war. Also in the last week, were six armed attacks by pirates whose workplace is the million square miles of open sea beyond the Horn of Africa. Problems in Africa were on a slow simmer this week when finally, they boiled over on the Maersk Alabama.
There is much still to be learned about the taking of the American ship. But it was likely just a matter of time before our number came up in the Indian Ocean's vast shipping lanes. and in Africa. And perhaps inevitable that the "scourge" of piracy would become more so as it became America's problem, too. It is Captain Phillips' misfortune that it came on his able watch. It is also more terrible luck for the millions of recipients of urgent food aid, for whom the cargo of the Alabama was headed. More hunger, more hopelessness and very likely, more piracy. What else is there for them?
This crisis off Somalia will further test new paradigms in diplomacy and international relations. Like terrorists, the pirates are non-state actors, free agents with their own -- probably not political -- agenda. Whom are the FBI interlocutors negotiating with? Do we drop a sack of money on the lifeboat, and hope that Capt. Phillips is returned unharmed, while a couple of pirates return happy and rich to shore or their mother ship and prepare to strike again somewhere else -- tomorrow? What kind of leverage and guarantees do we have in such negotiations? There is no government in Somalia to speak of, and the pirates are self-governing anyway. It is dramatic, challenging - a surprising and odd place for a test of America's strength in the post-Bush world. President Obama wisely kept the details -- if not yet worked out, certainly ongoing -- from the questioning media. If there is a plan in place, it is likely to change -- these negotiations will not be traditional or predictable.
Many interviews over the last days have pointed to the need for stability in Somalia. The State Department's Jun Banda stated in February, "There is no durable solution to the piracy problem off the coast of Somalia without a political solution in Somalia. The lack of security and stability in Somalia is the root cause of the piracy problem." To restore order to Somalia is a huge job, and our attempts to do just that in 2006 largely brought about conditions leading to today's deterioration and lawlessness in the country. Regardless of the national security implications, you have to be deeply optimistic to believe that a failed state can be made whole again. But optimism is our stock-in-trade, so AFRICOM, the US Navy and America's partners in the area are ever hopeful, and mindful of the long, arduous road ahead.
Not only in Somalia. The West coast is more stable politically than the East Coast, though sorely limited in what the Pentagon calls "capacity" (which AFRICOM's mission is to help build). But last year, Nigeria overtook Indonesia for the first time ever in pirate attacks, almost doubling the number from 2007, giving it the second-place spot behind Somalia. It's been almost a month since the last reported pirate attack against one of Nigeria's 3,500 energy installations (most of them of Western companies), but another one will inevitably come. In the Gulf of Guinea, the tactics are frequently the same as off Somalia if the motives are not: fast little skiffs, high-powered weapons, hostage taking and negotiation. But most of the so-called pirate attacks take place in the country's territorial waters or even onshore in the estimated 30,000 square-mile Niger Delta, center of Nigeria's energy-based economy and one of the world's largest and most polluted ecosystems. Militants are fighting for greater regional share in oil revenues, using more violent tactics than pirates on the other coast. But with oil production cut by OPEC and the precipitous drop in the world price of crude oil, human security will worsen, while creating hungrier, more determined, more entrepreneurial and better armed pirates.
Piracy is one of the loudest and most aggressive tactics of the frustrated and disenfranchised, but it is highly lucrative. It will be hard for companies and governments to continue paying these ransoms, and it is risky to retaliate. But the fact that piracy this week finally moved Africa almost to the top of the United States' national security agenda means more broadly that problems there are not as far away as they seem. Darfur, jihadists, piracy, to say nothing of HIV/AIDS, drought and poverty. We ignore Africa's problems at our peril. The question is, diplomatically, where do we start? And then what? The next few days will bring some answers.
They haven't had a function government since 1991...and it does seem a little strange that the MSM is quite conveniently leaving out any historical background on the pirating story, but then again, maybe not; there are some interesting [and apparently forgotten] facts about US & involvement in Somalia in the Wiki article on the Somali civil war:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somali_Civil_War
From the article:
"The incident later became the basis for the book and movie Black Hawk Down. The UN withdrew on March 3, 1995, having suffered more significant casualties. Order in Somalia still had not been restored."
Given that historical refresher, it becomes quite obvious why the US MSM doesn't want to look at this issue beyond the aspect of piracy and what is to be done about it....
I'm still waiting...
The people of North Africa (descendants of the Phoenicians) had controlled the shipping lanes on the west coast of Africa since before the Roman Empire.
We (Jefferson) shelled them because they were attacking our slave trade, in the shipping lanes of West Africa. They had this habit of taking the crews of slave ships and making them into "Barbary" galley slaves. How Barbaric.
Conflating this with international terrorism is a tactic designed to heighten its excitement profile and give the military and the media a chance to look like hollywood heroes.
That isn't to say that others who have a different objective might not adopt the tactic of hijacking ships; only that this particular situation is an anomaly and unlikely to be repeated, at least against ships that are clearly identified as American instead of flying another country's flag.
One destroyer could easily escort 25 or 30 ships in a convoy through Somali waters.
But no one talks about this because it would cost ship owners money - time, fuel, etc waiting for convoys to form up.
Maybe if the ship owners weren't so cheap they wouldn't have to run the risk of losing their vessels.
I'm not excusing them, but I wonder what lengths I might go to if my children were starving.
Get ready........as the world population grows and our resources decline there will be fierce battles over who survives.
"Amanda Lindhout, a Canadian journalist who was abducted by habar-gidir .. hawiye al-shabaab wing gunmen in the Somali capital Mogadishu about eight months ago is reportedly pregnant after she was apparently raped by her abductors, Sources say the Canadian journalist Amanda and an Australian photojournalist are being held by the militia in the northeastern neighbourhood of Suqa Holaha habar-girir hawye Terrorist neighborhood in Mogadishu."
Keep telling your lame, pacifist selves that this is about dead fish.
http://terrorfreesomalia.blogspot.com/2009/04/hawiye-terrorist-kidnap-canadian.html
Because your only response is to address the symptoms of this problem with violent suppression, which will solve nothing, and will cost a great deal.
Yes, piracy is a bad thing, but like terrorism if you merely address the offending acts and not the root cause you automatically commit yourself to a perpetual state of war against an enemy that cannot be defeated in the conventional "kill'em all" mode of operation that you are so fond of....
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7650415.stm
They pull up to a ship and attach an explosive charge at the waterline with a cell phone detonator (or something similar) attached.
No more boarding the vessel or playing at hostage with the crew.