The Pirates of Somalia_ Inside Their Hidden World - Jay Bahadur [66]
The pirates also responded to the NAVFOR crackdown by pushing ever deeper into the Indian Ocean. With attacks occurring over 1,500 kilometres from the Somali coast, they had struck as far south as Madagascar and almost as far east as the Maldives—closer to India than Africa. Six months to one year previously, said Harbour, things had been different. “The pirates tended to get out with enough fuel to take them maybe a hundred miles offshore, then they would switch off their engines and drift with the currents for days and days until they found a target of opportunity. And of course their plan was to find a target, take it out, and use it to get themselves back to the coast. But inevitably we would find small skiffs, adrift with no food, no fuel, and no water, and people dead in the bottom of the boat. They were probably pirates, but at that point it’s a humanitarian mission to rescue these guys.”
In more recent days, the pirates’ deep-sea missions had stepped up the demand for more far-ranging and sophisticated motherships. Over the previous month alone, said Harbour, NAVFOR had documented ten cases of fishing dhows or small coastal traders commandeered for this purpose, compared with a total of twelve to fifteen cases during the previous twelve months. “The advantage of that is that they’ve already got a hijacked crew on board, and that makes it a lot more difficult for us to find them and take them out,” he said.
As an example of the pirates’ recent ship-hopping proclivity, Harbour launched into the story of the ML Arzoo, a small transport seized after developing engine problems off the Somali coast while en route to Mogadishu. Realizing that the Arzoo was damaged and low on fuel, the nine hijackers called in reinforcements from Somalia, who duly arrived in a commandeered Indian trading dhow. After taking the captors aboard and leaving the Arzoo and her crew dead in the water, the group proceeded to hijack a third vessel, the Seychellois fishing boat Galate, which they in turn used to hijack an Iranian merchant ship, Al Abi, transferring the Galate’s six crew members aboard and abandoning the vessel. At this point, the Seychellois coast guard caught up to the pirates and brought their joy ride to an end; believing the hostages’ lives to be in danger, the coast guard opened up on the vessel with its machine guns.
“They started firing at the Al Abi’s waterline, to such an extent that they hit the engine and it caught fire,” said Harbour. “There was a fireball, and eventually the damn thing sank, leaving twenty-seven people in the water, plus nine pirates, who were duly picked up. The incident showed the pirates that we won’t always stop because there are hostages on board.”
Despite Harbour’s attempt to claim collective credit for the Seychellois coast guard’s action, NAVFOR’s rules of engagement have so far prevented its members from launching a comparably audacious rescue operation. During the one commando mission conducted by EU forces—the rescue of the German-flagged MV Taipan by the Dutch warship Tromp—the Tromp was forced to circumvent EU rules by temporarily removing itself from the Atalanta fleet, striking its NAVFOR colours and raising the Dutch flag.
Understandably, NAVFOR has drawn criticism for its perceived softness, which is underscored by its consistent practice of freeing captured pirates after confiscating their weapons and paraphernalia. One of the reasons behind this “catch and release” policy is that the EU, NATO, and CTF fleets have been operating under procedures more befitting a civilian police force