08 February 2011

Pirates


(Jon-no-H with a commemorative Budwieser at Old Jim’s traditional place at the Willow bar. Photo Jon-no-H.)

I was going to write about Jon-with-no-H this morning. He is a dapper guy, just about as far away from a pirate as you can get. Civilized.

He arrived at Willow last night with a crisply tied rep-stripe bow tie, looking smooth. He took Old Jim’s traditional position on the stool at the “L” of the bar and ordered a Bud from Elisabeth-with-an-H. It was an ac of homage to absent Jim, who is doing some technical writing in Atlanta to keep the rent paid on the place around the corner.

I had been thinking about pirates, since the messages had been coming across the ‘net for months, and the old family homestead on the island were constantly in the news.

Now, Jim could be a pirate. His bristling eyebrows and ready scowl would be completely at home of the poop-deck of a privateer, a cutlass on his belt.

Of course, that is not what today’s action Pirate looks like. They are not Long John-with-an-H Silver.

They are most emphatically not Johnny Depps. They are assholes, and things are getting worse. I see the reports fly by on a daily basis.

The close-in attacks on merchant shipping and private yachts by Somali-based brigands has evolved. Now, they are using seized large ships as floating mother-ships far from the coast.

This morning’s attack in the Indian Ocean was against an Italian flagged and owned oil tanker. The incident was almost seven hundred miles east of my ancestral home on Socotra island.

MV Savina Caylyn was en route from Sudan to Malaysia when five pirates on a small boat launched a "sustained attack" on the tanker with small arms and RPGs and then stormed the ship.
 
The whole thing is a little weird. There were twenty-two souls on board, seventeen Indians and give Italians on the crew.

You would think they could have held off five pirates. Apparently, the tactic of choice is for the crew under attack to retreat to a safe-room below decks and wait for assistance to arrive.

That might have worked in an area where the European Union Naval Force, or the NATO units, or the Americans or Russians might be operating. Not any more, apparently, and certainly not so far from shore.

When this all began a few years ago, it seemed perfectly straightforward. The US Navy and the Brits, traditional protectors of the sea, would step up and squash the scum. There was too much profit for so many poor people, and little risk.

Not until Navy SEALS did the cool thing and shot the captors of the MV Maersk Alabama did things start to change. Tactics evolve. The Pirates got much more aggressive. They moved further out. They are bringing torches and cutting into the steel bulkheads of the citadel safe-rooms.

They are torturing the captive crews.

In response, the ships have been mounting non-kinetic defenses; sound devices, water cannons, that sort of thing. Un-armed guards, if you can imagine. What conceivable use is an un-armed guard against a pirate with an AK-47 or an RPG?

Well, the dirty little secret is that, for insurance purposes, the ships are supposed to be unarmed. That goes with the theory that  an armed ship will try to fight back, increasing the risk of death and major liability.

The reality is that the ships are arming themselves, but with a slight problem. Most ports look dimly on the importation of automatic weapons, whether for self-defense purposes or not.

So, the weapons are on the ships and pitched overboard as disposable items on preparation for arrival.

If they do. That is the key.

The naval task force claims that the Indian Ocean is now carpeted with machine guns.

One of my professional colleagues recommends cleaning out the pirate bases on shore. Seems like a reasonable idea. I mean, what is another war in Somalia, anyway? Maybe we can ask around and find a superpower that isn’t busy already.


(Jack Sparrow Dead or Alive Poster. Copyright Disney Corp.)

Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
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