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US Navy watches as Somali pirates nab $3.2 million
(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-02-06 09:12 Late Thursday, MV Faina's captain Viktor Nikolsky said his ship was under the protection of the Navy and would head to Mombasa, Kenya. Negotiations for the release of the ship and its crew dragged on for months because of the interference of unidentified "third parties," according to a statement by the ship owner, Vadim Alperin, posted on his spokesman's Web site. No explanation was given. Piracy is big business off the coast of war-ravaged Somalia, which has not had a functioning government for 18 years. Pirates made off with up to $80 million in ransom in the past year, seizing 42 vessels off the country's 1,900-mile coastline along the Horn of Africa. But no hijacking attracted as much attention as the Faina and its weapons cargo, which was a wake-up call about the danger piracy poses to one of the world's most important trade routes. "It showed Somali piracy no longer affected just small coastal vessels but important and dangerous cargos," said London-based analyst Roger Middleton. In November, pirates hijacked the Sirius Star, a Saudi supertanker filled with crude oil that was released in January. And last week they took the MV Longchamp, a German tanker filled with explosive gas. Intelligence agents had feared the weapons onboard the Ukrainian ship - which include 33 Soviet-designed tanks and crates of small arms - could fall into the hands of Somali insurgents the State Department says have links to al-Qaida. Diplomats in the region previously have said the cargo was destined for southern Sudan, something the autonomous region has denied. Kenyan government spokesman Alfred Mutua repeated his country's claim to the cargo Thursday. The high ransom payments mean pirates are unlikely to stop attacking. Still, Middleton said the international anti-piracy campaign has reduced the success rate of attacks to about 20 percent. Last year, pirates took 42 of the 111 ships they attacked. Graeme Gibbon Brooks, managing director of the British company Dryad Maritime Intelligence Service Ltd., said the drop was due to the coalition activity and unseasonably bad weather. Most of the 16 attempted hijackings in 2009 occurred in the first two weeks of January, when the weather was good. Three of those ships were captured. But pirates are showing a worrying new sophistication in their attacks, several experts told the AP, including greater use of global positioning systems that allow them to extend their range. Identification systems designed to stop ships from colliding can also lead pirates to potential prey because of the radio signals they put out. The pirates may be trying to buy magnetic mines and heat-seeking missiles that can be fired from the sea, according to a recent report in Jane's Intelligence Review. Brooks said pirates also were jamming emergency frequencies with Arabic music or sending out false distress calls to lure warships in the wrong direction. He warned that pirates have begun to mount diversionary assaults or attacks on several vessels at the same time. "We've gone from a pattern of sporadic attacks to a situation where the pirates coordinate," he said. In one incident last week, pirates simultaneously attacked three ships. Coalition forces were able to save two, but the third - the Longchamp - was captured. Vice Admiral Gerard Valin, the commander of a French naval task force, said five pirate gangs operate from Somalia, each with about 200 to 500 members. The coalition does not issue exact figures for security reasons, but Middleton said there are between 20 and 30 warships off the Somali coast. Even with all the extra firepower, it was hard to prevent attacks, due to the vast waters and the pirates' increasing ingenuity, Valin said. "I will not say congratulations," he said. "We have to respect the adversary."
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