“There’s no national security apparatus that can impose control on these pirates. It’s like the wild west,” said Mark Schroeder.
Schroeder is the regional director of Sub-Sahara Africa with Stratfor, an international analysis and intelligence company. He spoke with The Epoch Times from Durban, South Africa about the growing problem of modern day piracy.
On November 18, the Sirius Star, a large Saudi-Arabian oil tanker, and its crew of 25, were hijacked off the eastern coast of Africa.
The ship, which is the largest ever to be hijacked, and its crew are now believed to be held for ransom by a group of heavily-armed Somalian pirates. According to the International Maritime Bureau, between January and September of this year alone, there have been 199 reported incidents of piracy and attempted piracy.
Piracy in the oceans near Somalia has become big business at all levels. “You’ve got individual pirates that are trying to get on the game,” explained Schroeder, as well as organized crime groups connected to “regional politicians or officials that are tolerating, backing, or supporting pirates, because basically, it’s just big money.”
“They’ve been able to get ransoms ranging from $1 million to $5 million per ship. In a country like Somalia, that’s major money where there are very little legal avenues for making serious money,” he said. “Somalia is in a unique circumstance because there’s no effective government there.”
With each successful hijacking and takeover of a ship, the pirates have become more skilled at their craft. “Their success kind of feeds off of it and the ransoms they get allow them to buy more weapons, more fast boats, more supplies, and it’s really like a growing industry as far as they’re concerned,” said Schroeder.
“Again, back to Somalia, there are very few avenues to make a considerable amount of money, and this is one of them. If they can get a million dollars or a couple million dollars every week or so, that’s a pretty large amount of money,” he said.
Extending reach
The recent attack on the Sirius Star indicates that the pirates have extended their reach. Until recently, most of the attacks took place in northern Somalia, toward the Gulf of Aden. The Sirius Star, on the other hand, was hijacked off of southern Somalia, an area where such attacks have been extremely rare. According to Schroeder, this is because the pirates have boosted their arsenal.
“They’ve carried out attacks upwards of up to 100 miles off shore, and more in central and northern Somalia. But this attack occurred some 450-500 miles off the coast, way in the southeast,” he said. “That’s really far offshore and it’s out of the reach of most maritime shipping.”
The recent capture of a tugboat by one of the gangs has helped make this possible. The tugboat is used as a “mother ship,” carrying supplies and acting as a launch off point for the speedboats, also called “fast boats,” that conduct the attacks.
“They can basically load up and float around the ocean for whatever length of time it takes for them to find a big target and then they go and launch from there,” said Schroeder. “They’ve been pretty capable of taking over big ships, small ships, private yachts, and all sorts of things.”
The pirates carry heavy weaponry, often arming themselves with RPGs (rocket propelled grenade launchers), AK-47s, and light machine guns. According to Schroeder, these types of weapons are easily attainable in Somalia through its lucrative black market.
“Somalia is just the ‘wild west.’ There’s all sorts of weapons floating around,” Schroeder said. “There’s a black market that’s flown across from Yemen and Saudi Arabia, and that goes back to the operations of the global war on terrorism. There’s even been reports of Ethiopian troops that are intervening in Somalia, selling their weapons on the black market to make side money.”
“There’s also a regional trade in small arms, so if they need to get something from a neighboring country, it’s not going to be too difficult,” he said.
