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Re: Cold War stand-off over pirates' weapons ship
Russia has dispatched a frigate to the scene of an increasingly tense stand-off between the US Navy and pirates who have seized a tanker laden with tanks and weapons in the Indian Ocean off Somalia.
The tussle over the fate of the Soviet-designed tanks captured off a failed African state has developed into an international incident worthy of a James Bond novel. Pirates are demanding a $20m (£11m) ransom and governments in the region are denying any knowledge of the arms shipment, amid fears of a new civil war in Sudan.
Russia has seized upon the crisis to send the missile frigate The Intrepid, prompting speculation that it might attempt to free hostages in another public projection of its military power.
American helicopters and warships from the 5th Fleet have surrounded the Ukraine-flagged Faina after Somali pirates boarded her six days ago and seized a cargo which includes 33 T-72 battle tanks, ammunition and heavy weapons such as rocket launchers.
The US squadron has sent helicopters low over the deck of the seized tanker and has made it clear they will not allow the pirates to land their haul, which it is feared would be handed over to Islamic insurgents that Washington believes are linked to al-Qa'ida. The pirates have said they will fight to the death if the ship is boarded.
Reports of a shooting match between different factions aboard the cargo ship were denied by the hijackers, who used satellite phones to contact reporters and tell them that they were holding a feast for Eid, which marks the end of the Muslim holy month, Ramadan.
"We are happy on the ship and we are celebrating Eid," a spokesman for the pirates, who identified himself as Sugule Ali, told the Associated Press. "We are united as we were before and there was no fighting among us."
Andrew Mwangura of the East African Seafarers' Assistance Programme had said three Somali pirates were killed on Monday night in a dispute over whether to surrender, but later admitted he had not spoken to witnesses.
The pirates blame overfishing by foreign trawlers for destroying their livelihoods, forcing them into hijacking ships and demanding ransoms.
The most dramatic seizure yet, with its lethal cargo, has underlined a surge in piracy in the Gulf of Aden, one of the world's busiest shipping routes. The problem has spread south to the Indian Ocean coastal waters off Somalia with 62 ships attacked this year. The International Maritime Board's piracy monitors say there are at least 10 vessels and 221 crew members held hostage in ports such as Eyl, east Somalia.
Pirates, many operating out of former fishing ports such as Eyl and Bosaso, are deploying increasingly sophisticated methods, including high speed launches, GPS trackers, and satellite communications, to target shipping. They have captured some of the biggest vessels on the seas and extracted multimillion-pound ransoms from multinational companies and even the government of Spain. France sent in special forces to track pirates who took a luxury yacht in April and captured six of them. They will face trial in France.
The London-based think-tank Chatham House says piracy could see shipping forced away from the Gulf and into the longer route to Europe and North America, producing a drastic effect on oil and commodities prices.
Photographs from the scene showed a number of smaller vessels with outboard motors alongside the much larger Faina. The ship's crew of 21 includes Ukrainians, Russians, and a Latvian. One member is said to have recently died of a heart attack.
The tanker was bound for the Kenyan port of Mombasa but the government there has denied it had purchased the tanks. US diplomats said the military material was bound for the south of Sudan, where factions are believed to be re-arming ahead of what observers fear could be a resumption of the civil war between the Christian and animist south and the Arab-led government in Khartoum. Officials in the oil-rich south said they were "surprised" to hear the battle tanks were en route to them.
Somalia is already facing the world's worst humanitarian disaster, with 3.2 million in danger of starvation and aid groups forced to pull out after their operatives became targets for militants. Pirates have taken food shipments.
Somalia, which has Africa's longest coast, is in a state of anarchy, with no functioning government since 1991 and a civil war between a weak and unpopular transitional government, backed by Ethiopian forces, and an Islamic insurgency. A period of relative stability under the Islamic Courts - a loose alliance of clerics, militia and businessmen who displaced the warlords for six months in 2006 - was curtailed after Ethiopia invaded and reinstalled the interim government with tacit US backing. The Islamic insurgency has since pushed Ethiopia to the point of withdrawing. The administration has appealed for African Union and UN peacekeepers to fill the breach.
Re: Cold War stand-off over pirates' weapons ship
Russia has the right to defend its citizens. We are actually overstepping our boundaries in this situation. We have to for obvious reasons(US Navy mainly exists to control shipping routes, monitor strategic sea lanes,etc.) but this is an incident that involves Russian citizens at risk.
Somalia has granted Russia the right to use its land if this incident gets serious. This could turn into a flash point awfully quick as the US does have a history with Somalia and we have done strikes there in the past few years against some of their rebel groups tied to Al Qaeda. Russia obviously opposes these groups as well so no danger in that regard, but instead of taking a Cold War stance, the US and Russia should monitor this situation together, not separately.
Re: Cold War stand-off over pirates' weapons ship
I think the more dangerously scary situation is... it's like we're baiting Russia intentionally for a war.
Afghanistan. Check.
Iraq. Check.
Iran. Prepping.
Pakistan. Maybe.
North Korea. 'Finishing Touches'.
China. Our bill collector.
and now... Russia. Prepping.
Do we want World War III? Are we just committing suicide or what's going on?
Re: Cold War stand-off over pirates' weapons ship
I don't think we want World War III, but the world stage is changing. There's no stopping it either. Russia is about to become a huge influence in the global theater. China which has always sort of just plodded along has now decided its time to be a superpower. Its why they are investing more in defense than they ever have in their history. The US and EU are on the verge of collapse like the Soviets, and if I was gonna compare, I'd say we are where the Soviets were around 1985.....virtually bankrupt but still a "player".
We are now forced into wars and proxy wars to try and prove to the world we are relevant. The world doesn't care anymore. They're gonna sit back and let us bankrupt ourselves while we "spread democracy" and encourage "regime change".
Will Russia or China enter an Iranian conflict when the US starts bombing? No. Instead of wasting their own money to fight us, they're gonna laugh while we destroy ourselves, and when the US is completely irrelevant, Russia is gonna expand its sphere of influence(hello Soviet Union, nice to see you again) and China is gonna walk into Taiwan and there's not a damn thing that the US and EU can do about it. This will cause a chain reaction. You'll see other countries start aligning themselves with these powers, other countries fight wars because they know that the "world's police force" is in the unemployment line, and the world will start haggling over precious resources that the US needs but cant get because of what we have done to ourselves over the past 16 years.
We are witnessing history folks. The empire not only has no clothes, its a rotting corpse.
Re: Cold War stand-off over pirates' weapons ship
Great post. I think the scariest day will come when we're weakened to an extent that another 9/11 takes place, this time an actual country attack, where that fear of crossing the Atlantic to go at us on our home turf... will be gone.
That'll be the day they break out the nuclear arms, as a way of trying to re-establish their authority. America that is.
