Somali Pirates Fire On US Navy Ship-Lose

Note to Somali pirates: If you wish to have a long and lucrative career in the buccaneer business, better learn the difference between a merchant ship and a naval warship.

A group of pirates launched a midnight attack against what they thought was a merchant ship west of the Seychelles Islands Thursday.

Unfortunately for them the ship they picked on was one that had more than enough firepower and capability to hit them back hard, the guided missile frigate USS Nicholas.

The USS Nicholas saw combat in the first Gulf War, and quickly chased down and fired back at the pirate skiff, disabling it. A boarding team from the Nicholas then captured and detained its three man crew before sinking the skiff.

The Nicholas then captured the nearby mothership the sunken skiff was operating from and detained two more pirates.

While this was a success for the international naval force battling piracy off the Somali coast, it still faces the daunting task of monitoring 3000 miles of Somali coastline in addition to a million square miles of ocean.

The pirates have also shifted tactics in reaction to the increased international naval presence, and now attack ships hundreds of miles from their Somali home waters.

The reality is that if they want to eradicate piracy in Somalia, they'll have to eventually strike at the shore bases and ports that supply the motherships and skiffs.

Somali Pirates Snatch US Flagged Ship

I wrote last month about the menace of Somali based pirates attacking shipping off the Horn of Africa. In addition to it becoming a lucrative multimillion dollar endeavor for the Somali buccaneers, piracy is becoming an increasing problem in the waters off the Nigerian coast and Niger River delta region as well.

The pirates have become even more brazen. A pirate group based in Nigeria attacked the Equatorial Guinea presidential palace in its island capital of Malabo in February but was driven off by security forces.

The Somali pirates have attacked 66 ships since January and are holding another 14 for ransom. Despite some recent successes earlier this year by the multinational naval task force in beating back some recent pirate attacks, after a lull they spiked up again in addition to changing tactics and hitting ships further out to sea.

For the first time since the Barbary Pirates attacked a US ship off the coast of Libya in 1804, a US flagged vessel was attacked and successfully seized by African based pirates. This was also the first American vessel to be seized in this current wave of pirate attacks off Somalia.

The US flagged ship Maersk Alabama was transporting food aid destined for Somalia, Uganda and Kenya to the port of Mombasa when it was captured by pirates 200 miles southeast of Eyl off the Somali coast.

But that historical footnote was short lived. The ship had already been disabled before the pirates boarded and the second in command's father teaches an anti piracy course at the Merchant Marine Academy.

Hours later the 20 man crew of the Maersk Alabama bumrushed and overwhelmed the four heavily armed pirates, retook the ship and captured one while the others took captain Richard Phillips hostage and fled in a lifeboat.

The USS Bainbridge has arrived on the scene to assist with efforts to return the captain safely.

But it speaks to the fact that the piracy problem is getting out of hand to the point where long term solutions to deal with it will have to be implemented.

Pirates Of The Indian Ocean

Most of us have seen the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy of movies in which the adventures of Jack Sparrow were chronicled or heard the stories about 18th and early 19th century pirates such as Blackbeard and others.

NFL football fans know the nickname of the Tampa Bay franchise is the Buccaneers and Texans have heard the stories of pirate Jean Lafitte whose base of operations in 1817 was Galveston Island.

But pirates, far from being a colorful part of world history, are making a comeback. They prowled the waters of Southeast Asia jacking some of the 50,000 ships a year that traverse the shipping lanes passing through the Malacca Strait. Buccaneers are also getting increasingly active in the Gulf of Guinea waters off West Africa as well.

But the ones that have gotten the most attention are the pirates operating from bases on the lawless Somali coast in the wake of Somalia's ongoing civil war that started in 1991.

Somali fisherman using traditional methods began losing their livelihoods to the flood of massive fishing trawlers illegally raiding Somali territorial waters due to the lack of central governmental authority. They turned to piracy as a way to get paid.

Because modern ships don't require large crews to operate them, it's fairly easy for an armed group of pirates to overrun a vessel and hold its crew for ransom. Rather than lose the valuable sailors and cargo, the shipping companies just pay the ransoms, which n recent years have escalated to several millions of dollars.

The modern day pirates have three components. The brains of the operation are the ex-fisherman who have the maritime expertise and seafaring skills. The muscle is provided by ex-militiamen who have experience with weaponry as fighters for the various Somali clan warlords over the duration of the 17 year civil war. The technogeeks operate the hi-tech equipment needed to coordinate the piracy operations such as satellite phones, GPS systems and military hardware.

They initially began hijacking ships off the southern Somali coast but in 2007 started moving north to the Gulf of Aden, the Gulf of Oman and the Red Sea. They have now expanded their operations to the Arabian Sea and western Indian Ocean as far south as the Kenyan port of Mombasa.

They got the world's attention in November 1995 when the cruise ship Seabourn Spirit was attacked but escaped by sinking one pirate ship by running over it and deploying a long range acoustic device to drive off the other attackers.

A multinational combined naval task force was formed to combat the rising pirate threat but would either arrive too late to stop an attack, would have to watch helplessly as pirate ships attacked vessels in Somali territorial waters or while in pursuit of them had to back off after the pirates slipped inside the 12 nautical mile territorial limit they had no authorization to enter.

In the meantime the pirates are getting even more brazen. On November 15, 2008 they seized the supertanker MV Sirius Star 450 nautical miles southeast of Mombasa. It was headed to the United States via the Cape of Good Hope and was carrying 25 crew members and a full load of oil worth $100 million. It was not only the largest ship the Somali based pirates had captured to date, it marked the farthest point south that they had hijacked a ship.

The capture of that Saudi owned ship caused a major spike in the world crude oil markets and was released after paying a $15 million ransom.

They have also attacked additional cruise ships and fired at warships as well. On March 10, 2006 the USS Cape St. George and USS Gonzalez after having its boarding parties repulsed by small arms fire and being attacked by pirates firing RPG's at it, returned fired with naval guns. The first US naval gun battle of the 21st century resulted in the pirate vessel being set ablaze. On November 19, 2008 the INS Tabar sunk a pirate-captured Thai vessel after pirates fired on the Indian naval ship which was there on a mission to protect Indian and other foreign vessels transiting the Gulf of Aden.

The Russian nuclear powered heavy missile cruiser Peter The Great recently broke up a pirate attack last month and captured ten buccaneers closing in on an Iranian flagged fishing trawler.

It's an example of the increasing successes of the Combined Task Force in stopping many pirate attacks, and more seafaring nations such as Japan are sending warships to join the CTF effort.

But the CTF can't be everywhere. Even with the Somali authorities giving authorization to increasing numbers of nations to enter their territorial waters to eradicate piracy, the CTF has the daunting task of patrolling a million square miles of ocean.

It also has the problem of plenty of willing volunteers in Puntland joining the pirate ranks in a country with few attractive economic options, alleged government complicity and whole towns experiencing economic booms because of pirates lavishly spending their booty on supplies and goods.

It's going to take a while before the nations alarmed and fed up with the latest piracy scourge finally get the upper hand on the Somali pirates brazenly attacking their ships off the Horn of Africa.