A slightly different take on what the deal is.
The pirates off the Somali coast are now more of a nuisance than a problem. Estimates are that 25,000 to 30,000 ships per year transit the area, most headed for the Suez Canal. Successful hijackings over a multi-year period have been very low in comparison, but have increased. In 2007, for instance, there were 12 successful hijackings. In 2008 pirates attacked 130 ships, but didn’t have much success, being driven off by water hoses, thrown deck chairs, or simply accelerating to full speed ahead and running away. There’s been 30 successful hijackings so far this year in 2009, but twice as many failures. The pirates switched tactics to using "mother ships" allowing them to get further out to sea, 400 miles or more to hit more ships. The Maersk Alabama was both a high profile hijack attempt, and a wake up call to pirates that the US military was not to be taken lightly. The latest is using people smuggling, Africans to Yemen, and the pirates use some of these refugees as human shields, or just camouflage.
In the beginning of March the USN moved the USS Boxer (LDH-4)into the area to act as flagship and C&C for CTF151. Boxer is a fully equipped amphibious assault ship, replacing a newer sleeker USS San Antonio (LPD-17), an amphibious transport dock ship that was having multi-year teething problems.
CTF 151 has also switched up tactics, and offers new tools for ships in transit. One of those tools is a website, where vessels transiting the area can register their vessel and alert CTF151 about their time of arrival in the area in which hijacking is most likely, as well as most current pirate activity reports and alerts. These are largely peaceful non-aggressive responses to the piracy problem, and it sends a message to pirates that conflict with the US Marines is not a certain thing. In fact it may be very far from it. Currently, the policy on pirates is catch and release, which may seem odd, but may have serendipitous consequences.
Al Qaeda Fleeing Pakistan
Al Qaeda operatives are leaving their former stronghold in the tribal region of Pakistan after months of increased drone attacks as well as the Pakistani Army’s recent campaign against Taliban and al Qaeda terrorists in the region. Together, 11 of 20 top al Qaeda commanders have been killed. Al Qaeda has retreated before, from Af’stan to Pakistan after US Special Ops forces cornered and decimated Taliban and al Qaeda in Tora Bora. The Taliban are staying to fight, but al Qaeda by the dozens are moving to the Horn of Africa, fleeing Pakistan for Somalia and Yemen. American Special Forces operators have people in Somalia and Ethiopia collecting information, and an increasing number of known al Qaeda members are being detected.
Taliban setbacks in Pakistan
Pakistani army units defeated the Taliban in Swat and have moved on to militant strongholds along the border of Afghanistan. They are very concerned that US drones may mistake army units for bad guys, especially at night, and are protesting the drones. They’ve seen the destruction the all-but-invisible and silent Predator drones can deliver. Typical of the shifting alliance nature of the tribal area, militias of local villagers are openly fighting Taliban, and Pakistani air force units have provided air strikes to help the cause.
The new support for tribes that fight back against the Taliban is another change in tactics in the Pakistani approach to Islamic extremism. Despite highly publicized (and contested) claims of civilian deaths, tribal leaders understand American resolve to pursue and kill individual Islamist and al Qaeda commanders. Taken together, Pakistani, tribal, and American military actions have made the Tribal Areas very uncomfortable for Taliban, and untenable for al Qaeda.
SOCOM making it tough for Taliban in Af’stan
The new Commander of Af’stan, U.S. Army General Stanley A. McChrystal, is as tough as they come, has his controversy, and with a pragmatic and practical Gates, has a viable plan to put the heat on the Taliban. In parallel with Gates installing McChrystal, The Sec of Defense has also beefed up SOCOM funding from around $5 billion last year to well over $8 billion in this year's budget.
SOCOM has been successful with a money, hearts, and minds type campaign centered on being nice, being respectful, being helpful (especially with Spec Ops superb medical care being deployed into villages), listening politely, staying quiet and out of the way, and striking like cobras when the enemy draws near. You'll be reading more stories where Taliban fighters enter an area, then a few days later another story of SOCOM eliminating the bad guys with the local tribe pitching in and supplying a lot of the muscle, typically at $200/fighter/month. Friendly tribal chiefs get a lot more.
Al Qaeda retreats again
So al Qaeda fighters and commanders are moving into the Horn of Africa- pirate country. There have already been fighting between pirates on land with Islamists, looking to move in on the pirate action to make money. Somalia’s Islamist faction will use al Qaeda fighters from Pakistan and vice versa, so the pirates have a big problem getting bigger. Islamic radicals controled Ethiopia's Ogaden province of mostly ethnic Somali for a while (Ethiopia countered by setting up roadblocks and troops), and want to control access to the Red Sea and Persian Gulf.
This would mean replacing the Puntland pirates now up there, with seagoing terrorists. Keep in mind, the pirates are not Islamists, Shabaab, Taliban, or al Qaeda, they’re mainly fisher tribes that lost their livelihood when the civil wars began many years ago. In fact, the whole bountiful harvest of the area has not only been stripped clean and destroyed, Europe simply dumped it’s toxic waste in the waters off the shore of the Horn of Africa since the early 1990’s Nick Nuttall of the United Nations Environmental Programme: "Somalia has been used as a dumping ground for hazardous waste starting in the early 1990s, and continuing through the civil war there," and "European companies found it to be very cheap to get rid of the waste, costing as little as $2.50 a tonne, where waste disposal costs in Europe are something like $1000 a tonne."
CTF151 + pirates vs. al Qaeda + Islamists?
So al Qaeda is heading back to an area of the world that has changed since Clinton and "Blackhawk Down" days. The warlords play along with the Islamists who hold increasingly large areas under Taliban-like control, and the al Qaeda will come in as added muscle. The pirates will be enemies once al Qaeda and the Islamists start to seriously move in on the pirate scene. The restraint employed by CTF151 so far in dealing with the pirates sends a measured message to them. As in Af’stan and Pakistan, cooperating with the locals (pirates) may be in the best interests of the US, in order to get a open shot at killing many al Qaeda before they realize they have jumped from the frying pan of Pakistan into the possible fire of Somalia. CTF151 has several options if it can properly develop those same type of tribal intelligence contacts, ranging anywhere from air support for pirates battling al Qaeda, to a full bore marine amphibious assault, to Boxer based Predators continuing the rain of death upon al Qaeda forces.
Stay tuned.