The good news is, Somali pirates have been ousted from one of their main strongholds. The bad news is, they were ousted by al Qaeda-linked Islamist militants: 

Dozens of fighters from the militant group Hizbul Islam group rolled into Haradhere on Sunday. Pirates piled their big screen TVs into the luxury cars they had bought with ransom payments and drove off, avoiding a clash. At least four hijacked ships anchored near Haradhere moved toward Hobyo, another pirate den, said Haradhere resident Osman Gure.

The head of operations for Hizbul Islam, Sheik Mohamed Abdi Aros, told The Associated Press his fighters have not come across any hostages yet but if that they did the militants would release them along with any hijacked ships. Pirates hold more than 300 hostages taken from ships attacked off East Africa the last several months.

"Hizbul Islam came here to install Islamic sharia law in this region and fight piracy, which we consider un-Islamic," Aros said by phone. "We hope to curb the dirty business."

John McCreary, or rather one of his readers, comments: 

Feedback from one well informed and brilliant Reader noted that the price for ending piracy might be the conversion of Somalia into a haven for international terrorism, in lieu of piracy.

On the other hand, some analysts also suggest that it wouldn't be too surprising if Hizbul Islam managed to come to some sort of working arrangement with the pirates down the road, à la the Afghan Taliban and the opium trade. Piracy is big business on the Somali coast, and after all, most of its targets are Western businesses.

 

In addition to running their own stock exchange, it seems that Somali pirates might be getting into real estate in neighboring countries as well:

Even as housing prices have dropped sharply in the United States, prices in Nairobi have seen two- and three-fold increases the last half decade.

"There is suspicion that some of the money that is being collected in piracy is being laundered by purchase of property in several countries, this one being one of them," said government spokesman Alfred Mutua. "Especially at this time when we are facing global challenges of security such as terrorism and others, it is very important for us to know who is where and who owns what." [...]

Pirates in Somalia say they invest their ransom money outside their war-torn country, including in Kenya. One pirate who gave his name as Osman Afrah said he bought three trucks that transport goods across East Africa. A second pirate, who only gave his name as Abdulle, said he's investing in Kenya in preparation for leaving the pirate trade.

"Pirates have money not only in Nairobi but also other places like Dubai, Djibouti and others," said Abdulle. "I have invested through my brother, who is representing me, in Nairobi. He's got a big shop that sells clothes and general merchandise, so my future lies there, not in the piracy industry."

My colleague Elizabeth Dickinson has argued that pirates' financing is the achilles heel, and by investing in highly visible sectors like real estate, they seem to be sticking that heel pretty far out. Also, the fact that the AP's Tom Odula was able to get not one, but two pirates to tell him about their investment strategies, suggests that these guys might be getting a little overconfident.

Hat tip: Marginal Revolution

Woe to the Maersk Alabama, the U.S.-flagged freighter captured by pirates in April! Today, the U.S. Navy reported, pirates attacked and nearly boarded the same boat again. The New York Times has some pirate commentary on the incident: 

Pirates in Xarardheere, one of their strongholds in Somalia, said Wednesday that some of their colleagues had been killed Tuesday night. "We have been told over the phone today that four of our colleagues were killed and two were injured," said a Somali pirate boss known as Red Teeth. "We will keep attacking on foreign vessels until illegal fishing and toxic dump is stopped," he added.

A few things of note.

First, the pirate activity off the Somali and Kenyan coasts and in the Gulf of Aden is generally chalked up to insecurity in the teetering African state. Pirates steal and murder at sea because of the dearth of opportunities and complete lack of governance at home. I hadn't heard the "illegal fishing and toxic dump" political argument, which sounds like it comes from Greenpeace, not Red Teeth, before.

Second, what strikes me most is the detail that the Maersk Alabama was 600 miles off of the Somali coast at the time of the attack -- the distance the Navy recommends. As ships have fortified and moved off the coast, the number of attacks has not decreased as one would expect (cf. the ICC maps of incidents from 2008 and 2009). The pirates have moved off shore with the boats -- and attacks have become more resource-intensive, dangerous, and difficult for them.

For the last year, one question has been at the core of the piracy debate: Who or what made the Somali pirates into the real, armed, threat that they are? Chaos on land? Opportunity at sea? Poverty all around? Or the latest theory, from an Al Jazeera report: Western defense contractors trained them.

Before piracy spun out of control, Al Jazeera reports, contractors such as the Hart Group trained a Somali Coast Guard force in the semi-autonomous Pundtland region -- where piracy thrives. Those skills, one Somali tells the Al Jazeera reporter, were later helpful in hijacking ships and training others in his newly learned sea-faring ways. 

Sounds like a big "oops" for the contracting world... though any experience helping the "other side" hasn't deterred them much from working to stop the pirates. Remember when Blackwater said they would help fight pirates? Better yet, about how winning a lucrative "ransom and release contract" for handsome $500,000 each.

While I would take any new reports about the hijacking of the Arctic Sea with a heaping barrelful of salt, some of the latest theories are at least interesting.  In an interview with Time this week, the European Union's rapporteur on piracy said Israeli intelligence likely intercepted the ship, which was carrying a secret shipment weapons to the Middle East:

[H]e says only a shipment of missiles could account for Russia's bizarre behavior throughout the monthlong saga. "There is the idea that there were missiles aboard, and one can't explain this situation in any other way," he says. "As a sailor with years of experience, I can tell you that the official versions are not realistic."

Kouts says an Israeli interception of the cargo is the most likely explanation. But this theory, which some Russian analysts put forward in the days after the Arctic Sea was rescued and which Kouts agreed with in his interview with TIME, has been vehemently denied by Russia's envoy to NATO, Dmitri Rogozin, who says Kouts should stop "running his mouth." 

The theory is supported by the fact that Israeli President Shimon Peres made a surpsie visit to Moscow the day after the ship was rescued. 

Not so fast say repoters from Israel's YNet, who find the admiral's theory implausable. According to their anonymous sources, the Arctic Sea made a stop in Kaliningrad -- a Russian military outpost popular with arms dealers -- before picking up its stated cargo of timber in Finland: 

Sources say the Arctic Sea docked in Kaliningrad in June to undergo various repairs. The same sources say a deal was previously struck between Russian and Middle Eastern businessmen, agreeing on the sale of some of the S-300 missiles located at the port.

Some sources claim the Russian military's weapons industry was implicated in the deal and transferred a number of new missiles, including the X-500, to the port to be included in the sale. However the Kremlin was uninvolved, and apparently the deal was carried out in secret between businessmen from the private sector. 

After the deal was executed, an intelligence agency whose identity so far remains unexposed learned of the ship's departure with the weapons in tow towards Algeria, a country located on a regularly used route for the transfer of weapons to Iran and Syria. The intelligence agency then transferred an anonymous tip to the Russian authorities, according to the investigation. 

According to Russian sources the "hijackers", who in actuality were Russian intelligence officers, remained on the ship and reported to their superiors that they had found the missiles on board. On August 12 Russia announced it had sent naval officers to rescue the vessel and its crew.

The sources say the period of time between the hijacking and the Russian rescue mission was due to the Kremlin's desire to capture the ship away from the eyes of the media, in order to avoid an embarrassing incident that may have harmed its relations with Iran and Algeria. 

Again, I'm not endorsing any of these theories, but the story just gets more fascinating.

Ricky LOPEZ/AFP/Getty Images

 

European coast guards are currently investigating the hijacking and disappearance of a ship in what could be the first case of piracy in modern European history. The Independent reports:

The Arctic Sea, a Maltese registered, Latvian-owned ship with a 15-strong Russian crew, vanished with its £1m cargo at the end of July on its way from Finland to Algeria.

British coastguards were the last people known to communicate with the ship on 29 July as it passed along the Channel but it wasn't realised at the time that anything was wrong.

It is now thought that when the UK's Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) was in radio contact with the ship that the person speaking to them was either a hijacker or a member of the crew with a gun pointed at his head.

The circumstances surrounding its likely hijacking are as puzzling as its current whereabouts. Swedish authorities were told by the Finnish shipping line operating the vessel that on 24 July the Arctic Sea had been boarded by eight to 10 heavily-armed men while it sailed through the Baltic Sea. The crew, three of whom were injured, were tied up and the black-clad and masked men, who purported to be narcotics police, searched the ship.

After 12 hours the intruders left and, supposedly, allowed the vessel to continue on its journey having damaged the communications equipment. But after reaching the Portuguese coast, having sailed along the Channel to get to the Atlantic, the Arctic Sea disappeared from the radar and hasn't been seen since. Its destination had been the Algerian port of Bejaia which it was scheduled to reach on 4 August with its valuable cargo of timber.

No one is exactly sure when was the last time a hijacked ship managed to slip through the English Channel. The Swedish, Finnish and Russian coast guard's are all investigating the Arctic Sea's disappearace.

Modern piracy is typically thought of as a crime associated with failed states like Somalia that don't have the resources to patrol their own coasts. It now appears that half a dozen wealthy, stable European countries -- most of whom actively participate in anti-pirate operations in the Gulf of Aden -- allowed a major act of maritime piracy to happen right under their noses. 

The Economix  blog at the New York Times describes a new book on the economics of pirates -- The Invisible Hook: The Hidden Economics of Pirates by Peter Leeson. Who knew such a perfect confluence of the interesting and the awesome existed?

It focuses on the heyday of piracy in the late 17th and early 18th century -- back when the Barbary pirates spurred the young United States to its first military engagement, off the coast of Tripoli. The NYT summarizes: 

During this age, there seem to have been between 2,000 and 3,000 pirates, which is large relative to the Royal Navy (which had 13,000 seamen) but small relative to the number of movies subsequently made about piracy. The pirates were, unsurprisingly, youngish men (generally in their mid-20s) from England or its colonies. The majority of mischief that has been done throughout history has been done by young people with XY chromosomes. Their ships were often quite large, containing crews that could reach 200 souls, and the profession was lucrative. While merchant seamen earned 25 pounds a month (about $6,000 in current currency), a pirate could earn 4,000 from a single conquest. Mr. Leeson reports that some pirates were earning 100 pounds a month.

Admittedly, piracy was dangerous, but so was all seafaring. Maybe my children are showing good sense in their attraction to the piratical lifestyle. Those high wages meant that, unlike the British navy, pirates rarely had to rely on conscription. Although captured pirates often claimed to be serving against their will, in reality, pirate ships rarely had trouble finding voluntary recruits.

And, it turns out Leeson, a professor of capitalism at George Mason, is a pirate expert...lots of interesting studies linked on his (hilarious) website. 

Back in April we asked, are the pirates getting tips? According to the latest reports, the answer is yes...from London.

The Guardian reports today that the Somali pirates have recruited informers with knowledge of the world's shipping schedules to pass that information along. Such knowledge would, if the reports are true, allow the pirates to know exactly what their hijack targets are carrying, who is on board, and where the vessel is headed. Sounds like everything one would need to turn this pirate business into a profit making steal. 

Then again, as many have pointed out before, the Somali pirates wouldn't really need to be as complicated as all that to get the same bits of vital information. How about a simple Lloyd's List subscription -- the service that catalogues most of this information for the industry? 

Either way, this should debunk a bit of the myth of the unorganized, juvenile pirates. Yes, the kidnappers themselves might be kids. But the syndicates pulling the strings are far more devious. 

The pledged $213 million for Somalia from Donors at a Brussels conference yesterday is a little short on details. Actually, it's devoid of details. The $213 million are meant to improve the country's flailing security apparatus, and boost a beleaguered African Union peacekeeping mission, AMISOM, from its current 4,300 personnel to a larger 8,000.

But all this raises some questions in my mind: 

1) How much of the money will actually come? Donors conferences are notorious for over-pledging and under-delivering. Already, $213 million is... peanuts in the scheme of things. For some perspective,  the Iraq war was estimated to cost about that much every DAY back in 2006.

2) Who gets the money? Presumably, the pledges will go through the new government, headed by President Sheikh Sharif. Presumably, tracing money through the bare-bones government created just months ago will be something of a challenge.

3) The money is set to be used to build up the existing Somali security force. But does a Somali Security service even exist? Many soldiers abandoned their posts after Ethiopian troops had trained them (but later failed to pay them) last year. So... how many soldiers are left? And will security -- rather than street-power by gun -- be their priority?

4) The money is also meant to boost an African Union peacekeeping force by another 4,000 or so troops. Sounds great, but where do they plan on finding those personnel? Countries in the region have been understandably loathe about sending their soldiers into a situation that carries a death wish. 

5) And finally, do the donors really care about anything other than pirates? Off the record of the formal conference conversations, it was piracy on the lips of the diplomats. If that's the case, the Somali government will find it hard to do much else with the money. Even something arguably useful like, say, paying their civil servants.

If we're serious about combatting pirates on land, this package looks a bit ridiculous. Unless, of course, there's something I'm missing. Dear Somalia, please help me out and send details.

Check out this video of smiling Somali criminal mastermind malnourished 16-year old Abdul Kadhir Muse arriving in the U.S. to face trial. I counted about 20 guards from the NYPD and FBI escorting him which, I must say, comes across as a bit excessive. 

This makes me worried that the inevitable U.S. media circus around Muse's trial -- the first U.S. piracy prosecution in over a century -- is going to try to paint him as some kind of arch-terrorist of the seas. He's unlikely to fit the bill. Muse's country has been wracked by civil war and anarchy since before he was born and he's quite possibly smiling because he's happy to be out of it and getting enough to eat for once.

Muse should certainly be prosecuted for participating in a criminal act that endangered the lives of U.S. sailors, but it would be unfortunate if too much attention were paid to the trial of one teenage gang member while the hellish situation that produced him continues unabated.

Stephen Chernin/Getty Images

Everyone has an idea about how to go after the pirate avengers on the coast of Somalia these days, but the most unusual by far comes from Texas representative and former presidential candidate Ron Paul.

Fearing that the incidents will expand the militarization of the region and lead to increases in U.S. military spending, Paul, unsurprisingly, wants to privatize the fight.

It's the ships themselves who choose to go into those dangerous waters; why not let them take on the cost of providing security? Let them carry guns and fight back. The U.S. government for its part, Paul suggests, would "arm" the private ships with a different kind of ammunition in the form of Letters of Marque and Reprisal.

The long-dead U.S. foreign policy tool, allows the government to write letters granting private citizens the authority to go after fugitives or others who do them offense. If applicable, the citizens could then collect government-issued bounty for their good work. In short, the letters would put the fight on piracy in the hands of the people. Or sailors.

Paul's idea is not new. In addition to the founding fathers' use against piracy centuries ago, the congressman suggested the Letters of Marque and Reprisal be used as a means to counter terrorism after 9-11 -- allowing private citizens to "hunt down" terrorists on their own. 

Inviting people to play Pirates of the Caribbean is gonna get messy. Although then again, maybe it's not any less organized than what is happening now?

 Ever wish you could watch a reality TV show about something as cool as, say, catching pirates?

Wish granted. Spike TV is set to join the U.S. Navy on the high seas in coming months, with two camera crew tagging along to the U.S. fleet on its patrol of the 1.1 million square miles of pirate-infested ocean. Expect footage for the show by September. 

What does the Navy get out of the deal -- aside from prime time exposure? Recruiting, of course!

If chasing pirates doesn't get you to enlist, I'm not sure what would.

Jon Rasmussen/U.S. Navy via Getty Images

The International Maritime Bureau, a division of the International Chamber of Commerce, keeps up-to-the minute maps of global piracy, with linked data on the attacks. It's definitely worth checking out. 

Above, the purple tags denote "suspicious vessels," the yellow "attempted attacks," and the red "actual attacks."

Parsing the data, I counted that of 45 attempted attacks in the Gulf of Aden, 7 succeeded; in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Somalia, of 31 attempts, 11 succeeded. This implies a pirate strike's more likely in the Gulf, and more likely to succeed in open waters. 

Peter Pham takes a closer look at the technicalities of pirate attacks, and stopping them, today on FP's website. 

(Hat tip: Global Dashboard)

The Guardian reports on a skirmish between French troops and a band of Somali pirates with a hijacked yacht -- one of 18 vessels currently seized, along with more than 250 hostages. The French ultimately recaptured the ship; sadly, one hostage died during the rescue.

The article says the yacht's sailors were repeatedly warned not to pass through the area. 

French officials have privately expressed exasperation at the determination of the Tanit's crew...to persist with their expedition to east Africa despite the parlous security situation in the region.

The American captain of the Maersk Alabama remains a hostage in another flotilla, though the United States has sent in rapporteurs and helicopters.

It's a sorry, sorry state of affairs. And it suggests two things to me.

First, pirate exhaustion looms. (Though we've tested the limits on this blog, and found them boundlessly wide.) At one point, the pirates seemed a welcome distraction. Not so much any more -- people are dying, Somalia is a failed state. Second, as others have suggested, we should stop calling them pirates and start calling them something like "maritime terrorists," to end any remaining romanticization.