From: wolda002@umn.edu
Date: Fri Apr 10 2009 - 22:32:34 EDT
AlterNet
'Pirates' Strike a U.S. Ship Owned by a Pentagon Contractor, But Is the
Media Telling the Whole Story?
By Jeremy Scahill, Rebel Reports
Posted on April 8, 2009, Printed on April 10, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/135716/
UPDATE: At least one nuclear-powered U.S. warship is reportedly on its way
to the scene of the hijacking off the coast of Somalia of a vessel owned by
a major Pentagon contractor. A U.S. official told the Associated Press the
destroyer USS Bainbridge is en route while another official said six or
seven ships are responding to the takeover of the “Maersk Alabama,”
which is part of a fleet of ships owned by Maersk Ltd., a U.S. subsidiary
of a Denmark firm, which does about a half-billion dollars in business with
the U.S. government a year.
The Somali pirates who took control of the 17,000-ton "Maersk Alabama"
cargo-ship in the early hours of Wednesday morning probably were unaware
that the ship they were boarding belonged to a U.S. Department of Defense
contractor with "top security clearance," which does a half-billion dollars
in annual business with the Pentagon, primarily the Navy. The ship was
being operated by an "all-American" crew -- there were 20 U.S. nationals on
the ship. "Every indication is that this is the first time a U.S.-flagged
ship has been successfully seized by pirates," said Lt. Nathan Christensen,
a spokesperson for for the U.S. Navy's Bahrain-based 5th Fleet. The last
documented pirate attack of a U.S. vessel by African pirates was reported
in 1804, off Libya, according to The Los Angeles Times.
The company, A.P. Moller-Maersk, is a Denmark-based company with a large
U.S. subsidiary, Maersk Line, Ltd, that serves U.S. government agencies and
contractors. The company, which is based in Norfolk, Virginia, runs the
world's largest fleet of U.S.-flag vessels. The "Alabama" was about 300
miles off the coast of the Puntland region of northern Somalia when it was
taken. The U.S. military says the Alabama was not operating on a DoD
contract at the time and was said to be delivering food aid.
The closest U.S. warship to the "Alabama" at the time of the seizure was
300 miles away. The U.S. Navy did not say how or if it would respond, but
seemed not to rule out intervention. "It's fair to say we are closely
monitoring the situation, but we will not discuss nor speculate on current
and future military operations," said Navy Cmdr. Jane Campbell.
The seizure of the ship seemed to have been short-lived. At the time of
this writing, the Pentagon was reporting that the U.S. crew retook the ship
and was holding one of the pirates in custody. At this point, it is unclear
if the crew acted alone or had assistance from the military or another
security force.
Over the past year, there has been a dramatic uptick in media coverage of
the "pirates," particularly in the Gulf of Aden. Pirates reportedly took in
upwards of $150 million in ransoms last year alone. In fact, at the moment
the Alabama's seizure, pirates were already holding 14 other vessels with
about 200 crew members, according to the International Maritime Bureau.
There have been seven hijackings in the past month alone.
Often, the reporting on pirates centers around the gangsterism of the
pirates and the seemingly huge ransoms they demand. Indeed, piracy can be a
very profitable business, as the following report from Reuters suggests:
A rough back-of-the-envelope calculation shows that the operation to
hijack the Saudi tanker, the Sirius Star, cost no more than $25,000,
assuming that the pirates bought new equipment and weapons ($450 apiece for
an AK-47 Kalashnikov, $5,000 for an RPG-7 grenade launcher, $15,000 for a
speedboat). That contrasts with an initial ransom demand to the tanker's
owner, Saudi Aramco, of $25 million.
"Piracy is an excellent business model if you operate from an
impoverished, lawless place like Somalia," says Patrick Cullen, a security
expert at the London School of Economics who has been researching piracy.
"The risk-reward ratio is just huge."
But this type of coverage of the pirates is similar to the false narrative
about "tribalism" being the cause of all of Africa's problems. Of course,
there are straight-up gangsters and criminals engaged in these hijackings.
Perhaps the pirates who hijacked the Alabama on Wednesday fall into that
category. We do not yet know. But that is hardly the whole "pirate" story.
Consider what one pirate told The New York Times after he and his men
seized a Ukrainian freighter "loaded with tanks, artillery, grenade
launchers and ammunition" last year. "We don't consider ourselves sea
bandits," said Sugule Ali:. "We consider sea bandits those who illegally
fish in our seas and dump waste in our seas and carry weapons in our seas.
We are simply patrolling our seas. Think of us like a coast guard." Now,
that "coast guard" analogy is a stretch, but his point is an important and
widely omitted part of this story. Indeed the Times article was titled,
"Somali Pirates Tell Their Side: They Want Only Money." Yet, The New York
Times acknowledged, "the piracy industry started about 10 to 15 years
ago… as a response to illegal fishing."
Take this fact: Over $300 million worth of tuna, shrimp, and lobster are
"being stolen every year by illegal trawlers" off Somalia's coast, forcing
the fishing industry there into a state of virtual non-existence.
But it isn't just the theft of seafood. Nuclear dumping has polluted the
environment. "In 1991, the government of Somalia collapsed," wrote Johann
Hari in The Independent. "Its nine million people have been teetering on
starvation ever since -- and the ugliest forces in the Western world have
seen this as a great opportunity to steal the country's food supply and
dump our nuclear waste in their seas."
According to Hari:
As soon as the [Somali] government was gone, mysterious European ships
started appearing off the coast of Somalia, dumping vast barrels into the
ocean. The coastal population began to sicken. At first they suffered
strange rashes, nausea and malformed babies. Then, after the 2005 tsunami,
hundreds of the dumped and leaking barrels washed up on shore. People began
to suffer from radiation sickness, and more than 300 died.
…
This is the context in which the "pirates" have emerged. Somalian
fishermen took speedboats to try to dissuade the dumpers and trawlers, or
at least levy a "tax" on them. They call themselves the Volunteer
Coastguard of Somalia -- and ordinary Somalis agree. The independent
Somalian news site WardheerNews found 70 per cent "strongly supported the
piracy as a form of national defence."
As the media coverage of the pirates has increased, private security
companies like Xe/Blackwater have stepped in, seeing profits. A few months
ago, Blackwater executives flew to London to meet with shipping company
executives about protecting their ships from pirate attacks. In October,
the company deployed the MacArthur, its "private sector warship equipped
with helicopters" to the Gulf of Aden. "We have been contacted by
shipowners who say they need our help in making sure goods get to their
destination," said the company's executive vice-president, Bill Matthews.
"The McArthur can help us accomplish that."
According to an engineer aboard the MacArthur, the ship, whose crew
includes former Navy SEALS, was at one point stationed in an area several
hundred miles off the coast of Yemen. "Security teams will escort ships
around both horns of Africa, Somalia and Yemen as they head to the Suez
Canal… The McArthur will serve as a staging point for the SEALs and their
smaller boats."
All of this is important to keep in context any time you see a short blurb
pop up about pirates attacking ships. "Did we expect starving Somalians to
stand passively on their beaches, paddling in our toxic waste, and watch us
snatch their fish to eat in restaurants in London and Paris and Rome?" Hari
asked. "We won't act on those crimes -- the only sane solution to this
problem -- but when some of the fishermen responded by disrupting the
transit-corridor for 20 percent of the world's oil supply, we swiftly send
in the gunboats."
***
Just as it seemed that this drama was coming to an end, the story has taken
a very bizarre turn. It seems as though the pirates essentially tricked the
ship’s “all-American” crew into handing over the Alabama’s captain,
Capt. Richard Phillips.
After reports, based on Pentagon sources, emerged that the ship had been
retaken by the US crew, word came from the ship that the captain of the
“Alabama” had been taken by the pirates onto a lifeboat. The details of
how exactly the four pirates managed to get the captain onto a lifeboat are
still sketchy, but it seems a little bit like a scene out of a Marx
brothers movie. The ship’s second mate Kenn Quinn was interviewed on CNN
and described how the crew was essentially tricked into handing the captain
over to the pirates. Quinn spoke to CNN’s Kyra Phillips:
Quinn: When they board, they sank their boats so the captain talked
them into getting off the ship with the lifeboat. But we took one of their
pirates hostage and did an exchange. What? Huh? Okay. I’ve got to go.
Phillips: Ken, can you stay with me for just two more seconds?
Quinn: What?
Phillips: Can you tell me about the negotiations, what you’ve offered
these pirates in exchange for your captain?
Quinn: We had one of their hostages. We had a pirate we took and kept
him for 12 hours. We tied him up and he was our prisoner.
Phillips: Did you return him?
Quinn: Yeah, we did. But we returned him but they didn’t return the
captain. So now we’re just trying to offer them whatever we can. Food.
But it’s not working too good.”
As TV Newser pointed out, “Later Phillips gave what may be the
understatement of the day: ‘It sounds like the pirates did not keep their
end of the deal.’”
Jeremy Scahill, an independent journalist who reports frequently for the
national radio and TV program Democracy Now!, has spent extensive time
reporting from Iraq and Yugoslavia. He is currently a Puffin Writing Fellow
at The Nation Institute. Scahill is the author of Blackwater: The Rise of
the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army. His writing and reporting is
available at RebelReports.com.
© 2009 Rebel Reports All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/135716/
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