The Latest Shift in Strategy Towards Piracy - Ecoterra 106th Press Release Update
Dr. Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis
January 12, 2009
While pushing toward this development, the Bush administration avoided to appear at the forefront; leaving the task to others may at times be the most successful policy.
While the choices of the forthcoming Obama administration with respect to the Somali piracy phenomenon remain unclear – to say the least –, changes in the military attitude have already been detected. Ecoterra 106th Press Release Update sheds more light thereon.
106th Update 2009-01-11 19h35:28 UTC
Ecoterra Intl. - Stay Calm & Solve it Peaceful & Fast !
Ecoterra International – Update & Media Release on the stand-off concerning the Ukrainian weapons-ship hi-jacked by Somali pirates and related news.
We also can make sea-piracy in Somalia an issue of the past - with empathy and strength and through coastal and marine development as well as protection!
New EA Seafarers Assistance Programme Emergency Helpline: +254-738-497979
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Day 109 - 2597 hours into the MV FAINA Crisis - Update Summary
Efforts for a peaceful release continued, but the now over three and a half months long stand-off concerning Ukrainian MV FAINA is not yet solved finally, though negotiations through middlemen are said to have continued.
Information directly from the MV FAINA case indicates that things are not going well and most communications are still coming from sideline negotiators and informers rather than from the real sources.
Six Russian warships, led by the Pyotr Veliky nuclear-powered missile cruiser, will participate in a joint naval exercise with the Indian navy this month, the chief of the Russian General Staff said on Sunday. INDRA is a biennial Russian-Indian exercise aimed at practicing cooperation in enforcing maritime law and countering piracy, terrorism and drug smuggling. INDRA-2009 is the fourth such exercise since 2003 and will involve a number of live-fire drills. "The exercise will be held in the Arabian Sea at the end of January. Russia will be represented by six ships, including the Pyotr Veliky nuclear-powered missile cruiser", General of the Army Nikolai Makarov said. The Northern Fleet's Pyotr Veliky missile cruiser is currently anchored 10 miles off the coast of South Africa, taking food and water supplies and awaiting the permission to dock in Cape Town on the way to the Indian Ocean and coming from joint exercises with the Venezuelan navy in the Caribbean. The Pyotr Veliky will join up with warships from the Pacific Fleet for the INDRA-2009 exercise. The Admiral Vinogradov, an Udaloy class destroyer, a tugboat and two fuel tankers are already in the Indian Ocean, having left Russia's Far East a month ago. Following the exercise, the Admiral Vinogradov will replace the Neustrashimy (Fearless) missile frigate from Russia's Baltic Fleet in the Gulf of Aden protecting commercial shipping from pirate attacks off the Somali coast.
The new year in Russia has begun with yet another gas war, only it went farther this time, cutting off both Ukraine's supplies and exports to Europe across Ukraine's territory. The outcome of the move is dramatic: Ukraine is deprived of the natural gas it needs, while Russia has lost an important export channel. Both are rapidly losing their international reputations, because Europe is freezing and won't bother figuring out exactly whose fault it is. Russia and the European Union already signed a deal Saturday on the deployment of EU observers to monitor the flow of natural gas across Ukraine, clearing the way for restarting Russian gas supplies to a freezing Europe. Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek, whose country holds the rotating European Union presidency, was returning to the Ukrainian capital later Saturday to get Ukraine's approval.
Russia accused Ukraine of siphoning its gas intended for Europe, and finally on the Orthodox New Year's day, Wednesday, turned off the taps on all gas shipped through Ukraine, ending or reducing gas supplies to more than a dozen European nations. Russian energy giant Gazprom says a deal to re-start gas supplies to Europe via Ukraine will be delayed as it has not received a copy of the agreement, according to the BBC. "This is delaying our work and the start of monitors' work at the facilities", said Gazprom spokesman Sergei Kupriyanov. Once gas starts to flow, it will still take at least 36 hours for it to reach hundreds of thousands of consumers in countries like Bulgaria, Serbia and Bosnia, in the grip of severe winter weather. Just like Somali pirates cannot help attacking ships, Ukraine can't help stealing gas. Which means Russia will be the one to blame in any case, said a political analyst close to the Kremlin, according to Moskovsky Komsomolets. Ukraine, which has obviously gone out of hand and beyond all bounds shamelessly stealing gas instead of paying, is a natural and perfect target to siphon off the accumulated public indignation and anxiety [in Russia], writes Vedomosti.
Ukraine in July 2008 blamed Soviet leaders for a famine that killed millions of people in 1932-33 and published documents it said "unequivocally" proved its case -- part of its campaign to get the tragedy recognized as genocide. The national security service published archive documents it said proved that Soviet leader Josef Stalin and his subordinates were responsible for the famine. The scale of the death toll is contested -- some historians believe 3.5 million perished in what is known in Ukraine as "Holodomor", or "death by hunger", while the country's leaders say up to 10 million died. The issue has become a sore point in Ukraine's uneasy relations with Russia, which has not officially commented the findings. Earlier, in April, the lower house of the Ukrainian parliament passed a pre-emptive resolution saying the famine should not be considered genocide. But with the new documentation this resolution might have to be revoked.
Ecoterra Intl. repeats it's call to solve the FAINA case now with absolute top priority and peaceful in order to avert a human and environmental disasters at the Somali coast. Anybody encouraging hot-headed and concerning such difficult situations inexperienced and untrained gunmen or those, who believe they would be capable to try an attempt of a military solution, must be held fully responsible for the surely resulting disaster. The saga and secrecy surrounding MV FAINA must not - like in the MS ESTONIA case, which is the worst naval disaster in Europe since WWII - become the shroud for its 20 seafarers.
Clearing-house:
News from other abducted or newly attacked ships
Games Crazy People Play: Kidnapping, Pirating, and War - Naval War-games to protect Fish-piracy and to cover the real agenda !
Vela International, while confirming for the first time that the pirates had released the Sirius Star and its 25-man crew, refused to comment on whether a ransom had been paid. "We are very relieved to know that all the crew members are safe and I am glad to say that they are all in good health and high spirits", Vela's chief executive Saleh K'aki said in a statement. "This has been a very trying time for them and certainly for their families. We are very happy to report to their families that they will be on their way home soon", he added. The ship is believed to be worth around 150 million dollars and its cargo was valued at the time of the hijacking at 100 million dollars. Saudi Arabia´s oil supertanker Sirius Star is sailing back to Dammam, the Saudi Gazette reported, citing an unidentified official at the kingdom´s Oil Ministry. There was no time estimate for when the vessel will arrive in the kingdom´s Persian Gulf port of Dammam. The Vela International Ltd.-owned tanker, which was hijacked Nov. 15 about 420 nautical miles (780 kilometres) off Somalia, was the largest ship and the farthest from shore of over 50 cases of vessels that Somali pirates seized last year.
Also the spokesman of the Foreign Ministry, Piotr Paszkowski has confirmed that Somali pirates freed a Saudi super tanker with two Poles among the crew which had been seized in the world's biggest ship hijacking for a 3 million USD ransom. According to Paszkowski, the information received indicates that the Poles were feeling well and that the crew should return home within two days. The Sirius Star was seized in mid November and among her 25 crew members were two Poles.
The body of a Somali pirate who drowned just after receiving a huge ransom washed onshore with $153,000 in cash, a resident said Sunday. Five pirates drowned Friday when their small boat capsized after they received a reported $3 million ransom for releasing a Saudi oil tanker. According to AP local resident Omar Abdi Hassan said one of the bodies had been found on a beach near the coastal town of Haradhere and relatives were searching for the other four. "One of them was discovered and they are still looking for the other ones. He had $153,000 in a plastic bag in his pocket", he said Sunday to AP. Three other pirates survived but also lost their share of the ransom, AP said. Other sources confirmed the find of the dead pirate with money on him, but said that already three bodies were found and four people had survived the accident.
The newly elected president of the northeastern Somali state of Puntland Sunday vowed to make fighting the rampant piracy off the region's coast a top priority for his administration as he was officially inaugurated in Garowe, the state's capital. Abdurahman Mohamed Faroole was elected Thursday as the fourth president of the regional state by its 66-member parliament after defeating several other candidates including the outgoing president. Faroole said, after the inauguration attended by the former president Adde Muse Hirsi, piracy has eroded "the good name of the state". Pirates have wrecked havoc in the seas of the regional state where most of the criminal groups are based. Puntland authorities says they are unable to control the piracy activities off it's coast. The small port town of Eyl, in the southern Puntland region of Nugaal, is a major base for pirates as the pirate groups, thanks to the hefty ransom payouts they receive, are better trained and armed than the local security forces. Other port towns in the region, such as Hobyo and Haradheere, are also used by Somali pirates as bases. However, since international navy patrols took off in the waters off Somalia, piracy incidents have decreased with several pirate boats seized and suspects captured by international naval ships that were deployed after the authorization of the UN Security Council last year. Dozens of pirates remain imprisoned in the jails in Puntland as many are awaiting trials after more than 20 pirates captured by foreign warships were handed over to the authorities in the state. A number of pirates previously escaped from local prisons after allegedly paying bribes to prison guards.
With the latest captures and releases now still at least 15 foreign vessels with a total of 298 crew members accounted for (of which 66 are Filipinos) are held in Somali waters and are monitored on our actual case-list, while several other cases of ships, which were observed off the coast of Somalia and have been reported or had reportedly disappeared without trace or information, are still being followed. Over 134 incidences (including attempted attacks, averted attacks and successful sea-jackings) have been recorded for 2008 with 49 fully documented, factual sea-jacking cases (incl. the presently held). For 2009 the account stands at 11 abandoned attacks and 2 sea-jackings. Mystery pirate mother-vessels Athena/Arena and Burum Ocean as well as not fully documented cases of absconded vessels are not listed in the sea-jack count until clarification. Several other vessels with unclear fate (also not in the actual count), who were reported missing over the last ten years in this area, are still kept on our watch-list, though in some cases it is presumed that they sunk due to bad weather or being unfit to sail. In the last four years, 22 missing ships have been traced back with different names, flags and superstructures.
Directly related news -------
Oil shippers are paying crews double to persuade them to sail through the pirate-infested Gulf of Aden, an official at Saudi Arabia's National Shipping Company 4030.SE (NSCSA) said on Sunday to REUTERS. "The main change in operations in generic terms is that most ships are now avoiding the Suez Canal and going around Cape Hope, which adds to the number of days of sailing", Saleh al-Shamekh, the company's president of oil and gas, told Reuters on the sidelines of an energy conference in Dubai. "But on the ships that have to go through the Gulf of Aden, they are having to pay the crew more, double the salaries", he said. Shamekh said their ships were also keeping a distance of up to 1,000 km from the Somali coast, and were traveling in convoys for safety, all of which was adding to cost. Insurance costs had also risen because of piracy, he said. "We don't see it affecting that much on the bottom line - hopefully", he said. Asked how much extra cost NSCSA was incurring as a result of the surge in pirate attacks, Shamekh said: "It's difficult to quantify". "Most of our business is spot business which goes east ... this doesn't get affected", Shamekh said, adding that 65 percent of the NSCSA's activities were in the spot market. NSCSA's five-year plan to double its fleet to around 50 tankers, including 32 chemical carriers, was to be completed by 2011 at a total cost of 5 billion riyals ($1.33 billion), he said. Shamekh said none of NSCSA's ships was being used as part of a global "floating storage", in which oil majors and traders store crude oil on supertankers to take advantage of the contango in oil markets and cheaper freight.
Analyst Galrahn writes on the blog Observations of an Armchair Admiral [excerpt]: The US Navy has established a multinational task force focused solely on counter-piracy operations in and around the Gulf of Aden, Arabian Sea, Indian Ocean and the Red Sea. Combined Task Force 151 (CTF-151) is the first tangible action taken by the United States Navy to address the piracy problems emanating from Somalia and will operate from the USS San Antonio (LPD 17) which will act as a command ship for its one-star Admiral commander, Rear Adm. Terry McKnight from the Atlantic Fleet. Expeditionary Strike Group 2. The reasons regarding why the US Navy is developing CTF-151 may vary. The Europeans, in particular the Germans, believe this is a reaction to the German Navy taking over command of Task Force 150 next week. The German Navy has a very specific mandate in the region regarding action against piracy, and German command over Task Force 150 coalition forces that take proactive steps to curb piracy could create political problems, and disrupt what has been a very successful coalition effort dealing with other security issues maritime forces are operating to address in the region. While it is an interesting theory, that would not explain why the US Navy's commitment to date fighting piracy has been lackluster at best, so it wouldn't explain why the US Navy decided to all of a sudden take a more proactive approach against piracy simply because Germany is taking command of Task Force 150. The fundamental change here has nothing to do with the Germans, the fundamental change is a shift in strategy towards piracy. Without the decision to adjust the Navy's fundamental strategic approach to fighting piracy, the US Navy would be quite content operating in Task Force 150 under German command. The US Navy has absolutely nothing to gain in creating maritime competitions in fighting piracy, indeed the Maritime Strategy is about creating maritime coalitions in dealing with maritime challenges. With the creation of CTF-151 the US Navy continues to evolve at the pace of the international community towards the development of a cooperative approach to dealing with the problems in Somalia. The success in developing a coalition approach to deal with Somalia will fall to the new Secretary of State, one Hillary Clinton. She, more than anyone, understands the challenges of military activities in Somalia. The question is whether that is an advantage, or a burden in the process. Time will tell.
End of Ecoterra 106th Press Release Update