THE UNREPORTED FRONT OF THE ‘WAR ON TERROR’
by Ben Snook
Bits of News
Tuesday, 23 September 2008
In the seas off the Horn of Africa, a multinational naval task force
is engaged in regular firefights with pirates seeking to disrupt
shipping in the Gulf of Aden. Our reporter asks if a link between
the dramatic rise in piratical activity with Islamic insurgents in
Somalia has led to the opening of a new front of the ‘War on Terror’.
On balance, the Gulf of Aden, despite being one of the world’s most
strategically important waterways, is not a very nice place to be. As
well as summer temperatures regularly soaring well into the 40s,
the area is known for its unpredictable weather which can close in
at a moment’s notice. Furthermore, Somalia’s lack of any efficient,
centralised government has meant that her unpoliced territorial waters
have become rife with illegal fishing, dredging and the discharging of
toxic materials. Somalia’s once diverse coastline is rapidly becoming
an ecological disaster which, thanks to the very considerable dangers
involved in going there, has gone largely unreported and unmonitored.
Weather and illegal fishing, though, ought to be the least of your
worries, should you happen to find yourself cruising through these
busy straits, for the Gulf of Aden boasts more recorded piratical
activity than almost any other seaway in the world. Pirates operating
out of Somalia, where the country’s lawless coastal wildernesses
and unregulated cities provide ample cover for the small skiffs
favoured by the pirates, have come to terrorise this area in recent
years. Initially, these freebooters seemed to work independently as
little more than opportunistic maritime muggers; recently, though,
there has been a sharp rise in attacks. More alarmingly, there is some
reason to believe that the extremist Islamist militants who have come
to dominate large parts of Somalia may now have a hand in promoting
this activity.
In 2005, there were only two serious attacks in the Gulf of Aden. Even
though one of them involved an ambitious and mercifully unsuccessful
attack on a cruise liner with rocket propelled grenades, this activity
kept to the general pattern that had emerged over the preceding decade:
sporadic, opportunistic attacks on soft targets by disorganised,
poorly-equipped and disparate bands of pirates. In 2006, the same
was true. A handful of largely unsuccessful attacks were launched
by different bands in different areas of the Gulf. On the whole,
their targets were yachts and freighters but, on one occasion, two
US warships received fire in an engagement which did not end well
for the pirates.
Generally speaking, these bands of pirates were Somali fishermen
angry at the illegal fishing activity that was damaging their
livelihood. Amongst them, certainly, were more hardened career
criminals but, on the whole, piracy off Somalia in the earlier
years of the first decade of the twenty-first century was a limited,
local affair which, in most cases, was motivated simply by a desire
to protect the dwindling fish stocks off the Somali coast on which
the fishermen relied. The small boats used by the fishermen could
never hope to compete with the industrial trawlers that had arrived
illegally in Somali waters; the only form of redress available to
the Somalis was force.
In 2006, the brutal Islamic Courts Union took power in Somalia and
piratical activity subsided considerably. Despite being driven by a
violent ideology of extremist Islam, the Islamic Courts Union took
action against the warlords who had torn the country apart in years
of internecine conflict and attempted to rebuild some of Somalia’s
shattered infrastructure. An important element in this campaign was
the prevention of piracy and the disbanding of the pirate crews that
had sprung up around the coast. When ICU troops captured Haradhere –
a major hideout of Somali pirates – in August, 2006, piratical activity
in the Gulf of Aden almost subsided to nothing.
The Islamic Courts Union, however, did not last long. In December 2006,
Ethiopia (certainly sponsored and encouraged by the United States)
invaded Somalia and overthrew the ICU, replacing them, in theory,
with a more moderate transitional government. In effect, Somalia
was returned to a state of petty fueding and guerrilla warfare
as the remnants of the ICU began to wage a fierce paramilitary
campaign against the Ethiopians and forces loyal to the transitional
government. It is under these conditions that piracy in the Gulf of
Aden has, once again, begun to flourish.
Piracy of any kind is distressing in such a busy shipping lane, but
is not unusual: West Africa, the Caribbean, the Indonesian archipeligo
and the Philippines are all areas that suffer from similar patterns of
activity. In 2007, though, in the vacuum left by the removal of the
ICU, the pattern of attacks suddenly began to change. Better-armed
groups of pirates using faster, better-equipped ships started
attacking soft targets such as pleasure yachts and freighters far
more frequently. Before, these sorts of attacks had been relatively
rare, attacks on fishing trawlers being far more common. Now, though,
it seemed that the pirates’ aims had changed. No longer were these
fishermen defending their livelihood; now, heavily-armed militiamen
began to take hostages, demand ransoms and steal goods. Piracy was
no longer a defensive operation, but a financial one.
So far, in 2008, there have been at least 9 serious attacks reported,
the most recent being on September 2nd when a French couple sailing
through the Gulf were kidnapped from their luxury yacht only to be
rescued shortly afterwards by French commandos operating from the
frigate Courbet. This sudden and alarming increase in pirate activity
in the Gulf has alarmed the international community and there have
been calls to strengthen the multinational ‘Combined task force 150’
that has been charged with combating the problem.
More alarming still, though, is that what used to be a limited
operation against piracy has now been turned into a front of ‘the
War on Terror’. US forces operating as part of the touchingly-named
‘Operation Enduring Freedom – Horn of Africa’ have regularly engaged
pirates and have started to consider combating pirate activity as part
of their regular brief. Suddenly, suspicion is rife that proceeds from
piracy off the Horn of Africa are funding the Islamist insurgency in
Somalia. This is a controversial suggestion, but the change in targets
and the increased frequency of attacks might seem to support it.
If it is the case that the Islamist insurgency in the country has
resorted to piracy then it would fit a long-established pattern. Ever
since the 1980s, elements with a strong Islamic fundamentalist
motivation have hijacked conflicts already in progress as proving
grounds for their recruits, and testing areas for newly devised
tactics. In the wars in Nagorno-Karabakh, Chechnya and Bosnia,
extremist Islamic forces sometimes sponsored by groups linked to Al
Qaeda entered wars that were already in progress, often as much for
the sake of propaganda as anything else. Thus, secular conflicts
over ethnicity or resources suddenly became religiously charged
and highly unstable as a result. Another favourite tactic has been
to attack soft, economic targets: from the 9/11 attacks, to the
London and Madrid bombings to the attacks on oil pipelines in Iraq,
insurgents have long appreciated the value of disrupting economic
and financial infrastructures. As such, the Gulf of AdenEurope to
the east via the Suez Canal. Even the threat of piracy has caused
insurance and equipment costs for ships using this sea lane to rocket;
a successful attack can prove infinitely more lucrative.
The extent to which the new generation of Somali pirates can be
linked to the country’s ‘Islamic insurgents’ is open to debate, of
course. Thinking at the highest levels, though, seems to make that
link, albeit tentatively. Perhaps what we are seeing in the Gulf
of Aden is a conflict that is about to be hijacked by a cause with
which it has never previously been associated. How NATO acts over
the next few months will be vital: storming in, all guns blazing
and attempting to destroy the pirate networks by force will not
prove successful. Besides, memories of the last time US troops were
engaged in Somalia still run deep in the States and no president, not
least a new one, will risk a repeat of the Mogadishu debacle. This
problem has to be treated with sensitivity and respect. If the
international community can unite to protect Somali waters from
the many illegal fishing, dredging and disposal operations that are
destroying the legitimate livelihoods of many of the country’s coastal
communities, they may find themselves with an unlikely ally against
the pirates. Otherwise, the dark spectre of a naval Iraq represents
an important, untapped resource: a seaway up and down which hundreds
of unprotected cargo ships and cruise liners travel each week linking
looms large.