WASHINGTON (AFP) — The top US military officer said Monday he was "stunned" by the reach of the Somali pirates who seized a Saudi supertanker off the east coast of Africa, calling piracy a growing problem that needs to be addressed.
But Admiral Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said there were limits to what the world's navies could do once a ship has been captured because national governments often preferred to pay pirates ransom.
Somali pirates pictured from a US Navy ship in October"I'm stunned by the range of it, less so than I am the size," Mullen said of the seizure of the Sirius Star Sunday by armed men.
The huge, oil laden prize, which is three times the size of a US aircraft carrier, was some 450 miles east of Kenya when it was boarded, he said.
That is the farthest out at sea that a ship has been seized in the latest surge of piracies, according to Mullen.
The pirates, he said, are "very good at what they do. They're very well armed. Tactically, they are very good."
"And so, once they get to a point where they can board, it becomes very difficult to get them off, because, clearly, now they hold hostages.
"It's got a lot of people's attention and is starting to have impact on the commercial side, which I know countries raise as a concern," he said."And so there's a lot more focus on this. It's a very serious issue. It's a growing issue. And we're going to continue to have to deal with it," he said.
The Times (of London) reports Saturday's hijacking has already had a ripple effect on the price of crude.
News of the hijacking lifted global crude prices above $58 a barrel - meaning that the content of the vessel could be worth up to $116million on the open market. The pirates' haul accounts for almost a third of Saudi Arabia's daily oil output.
The MV Sirius Star, owned by Saudi oil company Aramco but flagged by Liberia, was heading to the Caribbean when it was attacked 450 miles off the coast of Kenya.
[The ship] is 1,080 feet long – about the length of an aircraft carrier – making it one of the largest ships to sail the seas. It can carry about 2 million barrels of oil....
Warships from the more than a dozen nations as well as NATO forces have focused their anti-piracy patrols in the Gulf of Aden, increasing their military presence in recent months.
But this attack occurred well away from mulitnational forces patrolling the Gulf of Aden, where the majority of the attacks have occurred, reports the AP.
Saturday's hijacking of the MV Sirius Star tanker occurred in the Indian Ocean far south of the zone patrolled by international warships in the busy Gulf of Aden shipping channel, which leads to and from the Suez Canal....
Maritime security experts said they have tracked a troubling spread in pirate activity southward into a vast area of ocean that would be extremely difficult and costly to patrol, and this hijacking fits that pattern.
"It is very alarming," said Cyrus Mody, manager of the International Maritime Bureau. "It had been slightly more easy to get it under control in the Gulf of Aden because it is a comparatively smaller area of water which has to be patrolled, but this is huge."
According to the The Times (of London) the ship and its 25-member crew, which includes Britons, Croatians, Poles, Filipinos, and Saudi Arabians, are heading toward an area believed to be a safe haven for pirates.
The US Navy says the ship is believed to be heading toward the semiautonomous Somali region of Puntland.Lieutenant Nate Christensen, of the US Navy, 5th Fleet, said that the tanker was today approaching an area of the Somali coast controlled by bandits.
An October New York Times article described one area of Puntland as catering to the piracy industry.
The pirates use fast-moving skiffs to pull alongside their prey and scamper on board with ladders or sometimes even rusty grappling hooks. Once on deck, they hold the crew at gunpoint until a ransom is paid, usually $1 million to $2 million....
People in Garoowe, a town south of Boosaaso, describe a certain high-rolling pirate swagger. Flush with cash, the pirates drive the biggest cars, run many of the town's businesses – like hotels – and throw the best parties, residents say....
This is too much for many Somali men to resist, and criminals from all across this bullet-pocked land are now flocking to Boosaaso and other notorious pirate dens along the craggy Somali shore. They have turned these waters into the most dangerous shipping lanes in the world.
Saturday's incursion comes after a spate of recent attacks – a chemical tanker owned by Japan was also seized Saturday – and 11 ships are currently being held while pirates await ransom monies, CNN reports.
According to Bloomberg, Saturday's attack signals Somali pirates are willing to take more risks."It's quite an escalation," said Tudor Ellis, maritime security expert at Drum Cussac, a London-based risk advisory company. "They've taken chemical tankers before and they've attacked oil tankers, but they've never taken an oil tanker before."
The most notable previous attack that pirates launched this year was on the MV Faina, a Ukrainian tanker carrying arms, that was seized in September and is among the 11 still being held. The Christian Science Monitor reported that the attack reinvigorated international efforts.
"The sheer volume of weapons on board, and the fact that it could even represent the turning point in the Islamists' war on land, could serve to force the international community to get serious, albeit rather later," says Bruno Schiemsky, a recent chairman of the United Nations' Monitoring Group on Somalia.
In a Q&A in The Guardian, reporter Peter Walker discusses the rise in pirate attacks in the region:
In 2007, the [International Maritime Organization] recorded 60 piracy attacks off east Africa, up from 31 the year before, and the Chatham House thinktank, which released a report on Somali-based piracy last month, said more than 60 attacks had taken place in the region so far in 2008.
According to a September article in The Christian Science Monitor, piracy off Somalia's coast surged in 1991 following the government's collapse, but appeared to be under control as recently as two years ago.
Two years ago it [piracy] was all but stamped out by the Union of Islamic Courts, which controlled most of southern and central Somalia for six months. But the pirates returned with a vengeance this year.
Though the Islamists shut down the pirates when they were in power, it seems they are happy to use them to help bring weapons, cash, and fighters into the country as they wage war against the government and Ethiopian forces.
The pirates appear to be operating in conjunction with al-Shabaab, the youth wing of Somalia's Islamist movement, which controls the key port city of Kismayo and swaths of the country.
