Regrets Only: An Africa Journal: Naval Flotilla Hampers Somali Pirates Ability To Mount Attacks As Marines Move Into Place

Friday, March 13, 2009

Naval Flotilla Hampers Somali Pirates Ability To Mount Attacks As Marines Move Into Place

The director of the International Maritime Bureau in London, Pottengal Mukundun, said the presence of ships from 17 international navies in the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea area has not deterred Somali pirates from trying to hijack vessels.

But, according to a report by VOA Nairobi correspondent Alisha Ryu, he said the increased naval patrols have severely hampered the pirates' ability to mount successful attacks.

"In October and November, one attack in three succeeded as a hijacking. This year, they are looking at around one attack in seven. Now, that is quite a big difference. They are finding it more and more difficult to get on board the ships, which means that they are incurring the cost of keeping the mother ships out at sea without positive results," he said.

Pirate mother ships are vessels that act as launching pads for the small and nimble skiffs used by pirates to approach and hijack ships.

The skiffs helped Somali pirates carry out more than 120 attacks last year. They successfully seized 42 ships, including a supertanker laden with oil and a freighter carrying a cargo of Russian-built tanks and other weapons. The average ransom for crew and vessel had jumped to more than $1 million, driving up shipping and insurance costs and threatening to disrupt global trade.

The international community responded by sending dozens of warships to the region to escort commercial vessels through vulnerable shipping lanes and to prevent attacks. Various navies have captured pirates and seized their vessels and weapons.

NATO member states carried out the first anti-piracy mission off Somalia between October and December, 2008. The European Union is now spearheading a year-long effort, working with the navies of such countries as China, Russia, India, and South Korea.

Meanwhile the amphibious assault ship USS Boxer has arrived in the Gulf of Aden region to takeover as flagship for Combined Task Force (CTF) 151.

According to the US Navy, CTF 151's mandate is to deter and disrupt piracy in the Gulf of Aden, Arabian Sea, Indian Ocean and the Red Sea and currently includes naval forces from the United States, United Kingdom, Denmark and Turkey.

"We've had a great deal of success in deterring piracy to this point," said Rear Adm. Terence McKnight, commander, CTF 151. "Now we're going to continue our mission on Boxer, which continues our line of extremely flexible platforms. Boxer has a lot to offer in the fight against piracy."

Units on board the Boxer include combat helicopters, assault craft and a Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU). The MEU itself has helicopters as well as what is termed a "Battalion Landing Team."

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Why?

It is October, 1997. I am standing in a rubble-strewn Brazzaville street as the city returns cautiously to life after a bloody civil war. Armed men are all around me, most of them looting, occasionally firing off bursts of bullets in celebration. But I am not concentrating on this anymore. Instead, with the hand holding my microphone limp by my side, my tape running senselessly. I am looking at another corpse -- this one of a man, perhaps in his 20's, his legs charred. I know there will be no voice to record. But his lips are apart, his arms outstretched, fingers together, as if in prayer. It seems another one of Africa's dead is trying to speak to me. And I feel I owe him this one last consideration. I think maybe he wants to share his anguish, his despair, his pain. Or maybe a last word to a parent or a wife or a child. I feel badly -- because I do not know for sure. I do know though that I have seen corpses like this before -- victims of war, or of genocide, or of famine, or of sickness. A symbolic path of the dead now runs through my mind -- a personal collection reflecting the real path their corpses have left across much of Africa: from arid Somalia in the northeast, across Sudan and into northern Uganda, down through steamy Rwanda, Burundi and Congo in the center of the continent. Some have been young men in uniform, their bodies shattered by a bullet or a shell. Some have been old men, thin beyond belief, weakened by hunger or disease. Some have been women, their dresses in tatters, their faces etched with silent agony. Some have been children, too young to die, their skulls cleaved in half. Some I have met in battle-scarred streets, some in burned-out buildings. Some I have seen sprawled amidst flowers in an open field, some floating, limbs bound, in muddy water. Some I have found in groups thrown into a dirt pit, some alone in the aisles of a gutted church. I have, at times, had imaginary conversations with these dead of mine -- their unrecorded voices playing on endlessly inside my head, sometimes loud, sometimes just a whisper. I tell them I am sorry and if it were in my power, I would restore them to life. But I can't. It's not in my power. Perhaps the only help I can give is to try to tell their story.

The Reporter

Alex Belida has been in international broadcasting since 1971. He spent nearly eight years in sub-Saharan Africa as a correspondent for the Voice of America, based first in Nairobi (1993-1996) and then in Johannesburg (1996-2000). He covered conflicts and humanitarian crises in Rwanda, Somalia, Sudan, Burundi, Congo-Kinshasa and Congo-Brazzaville, northern Uganda, Angola and Lesotho as well as political unrest in Zimbabwe and catastrophic flooding in Mozambique. He suffered gunshot wounds while reporting in Somalia.
While in Africa, he was elected Chairman of the East Africa Foreign Correspondents Association in Nairobi and served as Treasurer of the Foreign Correspondents Association of Southern Africa during his Johannesburg assignment.
Before going to Africa, he served as VOA's Senior White House reporter for four years following stints as coordinator of the 1988 Presidential Election coverage and as National News Editor. Before those Washington assignments, he was based in Germany, where he served as Soviet affairs, East-West security and German affairs correspondent (1982-1985).
Following Africa, he served as Pentagon correspondent. In 2004 he was named Managing Editor and in 2007 became Senior Advisor for News at VOA. He retired in 2011.
Before joining VOA, he worked for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in both New York and Munich, rising from reporter to Assistant News Director. He has a BA from Trinity College, Hartford, Conn., and a MS in Journalism from Columbia University in New York. In 2006, he received the prestigious Alumni Achievement Award from Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism. He also has an honorary doctorate in communications from the Somali National University.

The views expressed here are his own.

Regrets Only: An Africa Journal

Friday, March 13, 2009

Naval Flotilla Hampers Somali Pirates Ability To Mount Attacks As Marines Move Into Place

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