The gun-toting, seafaring thieves, who routinely pounce on cargo ships bobbing along on the Indian Ocean, suddenly found themselves in command of a vessel crammed with $30 million worth of grenade launchers, piles of ammunition, even battle tanks.
But this time, they might have gotten far more than they bargained for. Unlike so many other hijackings off the Somali coast that have gone virtually unnoticed — and unpunished — the attack Thursday evening on the Faina, a Ukrainian vessel bringing military equipment to Kenya, has provoked the wrath of two of the most powerful militaries on the planet.
The United States Navy was in hot pursuit of the ship on Friday. And the Russians were not far behind.
“This is really getting out of control,” said Mohamed Osman Aden, a Somali diplomat in Kenya. “You see how many countries are involved now? These pirates aren’t going to get away with this.”
Somalia’s 1,880-mile coastline is crawling with pirates, a serious problem given that so much of the country is dependent on emergency
food aid, which comes mostly by ship.
The pirates are highly organized. They work in teams. There is even a pirate spokesman (who could not be reached for comment on Friday).
They seem to strike with increasing impunity, grabbing everything from sailing yachts to oil tankers. They then usually demand millions of dollars in ransom for the ships and their crews.
And people usually pay — a response that Somali and Western officials say is fueling the problem. This year is one of the worst on record, with more than 50 ships attacked, 25 hijacked and at least 14 currently being held by pirates. The waters off Somalia are now considered the most dangerous in the world. As for the Faina, it may have looked like the kind of slow-moving, easy prey that pirates have hit time and time again. But its booty is not the kind that can be easily pawned off at port.
Each Soviet-designed T-72 tank weighs more than 80,000 pounds. The pirates would need special know-how, not to mention special equipment, to unload them — assuming, of course, that they could make it to port with the
Navy on their tail.
Somalia’s pirates are typically former fishermen who have turned to the more lucrative work of plying the seas with binoculars and rocket-propelled grenades. They travel in light speedboats, deployed from a mother ship far out at sea, and they have attacked tankers as far as 300 miles from the coast. Pirates even tried to attack an American naval supply ship this week. The ship fired warning shots at them. The pirates sped away.
“These pirates are getting bolder ever day,” said Andrew Mwangura, the program coordinator of the Seafarers’ Assistance Program in Kenya, which tracks pirate attacks.
Somali officials say the pirates are growing in numbers, with more than 1,000 gunmen at their disposal, and they have evolved into a sophisticated organized crime ring, with their headquarters along the rocky shores of northern Somalia.
An official close to the Somali government described the pirates as an oceanic “mafia” and said they had netted millions of dollars, which they use to buy fancy cars and big houses.
“Paying the ransoms is just making this worse,” said the official, who said he was not authorized to speak publicly.
Mr. Mohamed, the Somali diplomat, said: “This is not a Somali problem. This is an international problem. Shipping across this entire region is imperiled by this.”
Western countries have tried to crack down on piracy, with different navies patrolling the waters and escorting
United Nations-chartered ships transporting much-needed food to Somalia. Twice this year, French commandos battled with pirates who hijacked French yachts.
On Friday, Kenyan and Western officials said that an American warship was steaming toward the hijacked ship to intercept it, and the Russian Navy announced that it, too, was sending a warship, the Dauntless. This could lead to a showdown with the pirates in the middle of the Indian Ocean. With nearly two dozen hostages aboard a floating ammunition depot, things could get complicated.
The $30 million in Ukrainian arms were bought by the Kenyan government, one of America’s closest allies in Africa.
“This is a big loss for us,” said Alfred Mutua, a spokesman for the Kenyan government.
But, Mr. Mutua was quick to add, since the ship had not reached Kenya yet, the cargo was still the Ukrainians’ responsibility.
The ship, registered in Belize, was supposed to pull into port in Mombasa, Kenya, this coming Monday. But on Thursday around 5 p.m., when the Faina was about 200 miles offshore, it was surrounded by three speedboats, according to Interfax, the Russian news service. Communication was suddenly cut off. It was a typical pirate tactic.
According to the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry’s Web site, 21 people were aboard: 17 Ukrainians, 3 Russians and a Latvian. An official at the Mombasa port said the ship was carrying 2,320 tons of “project cargo,” a term usually used to describe heavy machinery.
But according to diplomats and Interfax, the cargo included 33 refurbished T-72 tanks, “quite a significant amount of ammunition” and grenade launchers. The supplier was a state-owned Ukrainian company. Ukrainian and Kenyan officials emphasized that the arms deal was perfectly legal.
Somalia’s pirates tend to hide their captured ships in isolated coves, ferrying people and cargo back and forth in dinghies, which are not exactly built for transporting 40-ton pieces of solid-steel military equipment.
“If there are tanks on board,” said one Western diplomat in Kenya, “I don’t think there’s a chance in hell they can get them unloaded.”
More worrisome, he said, was the prospect of the small arms, like the grenade launchers, falling into the hands of insurgents.
In the past week, insurgents linked to Somalia’s ousted Islamist movement have waged withering attacks on Somalia’s transitional government forces in the capital, Mogadishu. Dozens of civilians have been cut down in the cross-fire, and thousands are fleeing the bullet-pocked city once again.
Somalia has been enmeshed in chaos for 17 years, since the central government collapsed and clan warlords carved the country into fiefs. The fighting, however, has intensified since December 2006, when Ethiopian troops invaded the country and overthrew a grass-roots Islamist movement that controlled much of Somalia.
Ethiopian and American officials said the Islamists were sheltering Qaeda terrorists, and the American military helped the Ethiopians hunt down Islamist leaders.
The United Nations
World Food Program has said that the conflict and recent drought have pushed millions of Somalis to the brink of famine. More than three million people, nearly half the population, need emergency food to survive. Pirates have threatened the pipeline of food into the country because of the constant hijackings on the high seas.
Michael Schwirtz contributed reporting from Moscow, and a Somali journalist from Mogadishu, Somalia.
Medeshi
