Kenya won a quiet but significant victory over Somali pirates (pictured) that have waged a devastating campaign against its maritime economy when a judge at the Mombasa federal court formally charged eight Somali pirates with felonies under Kenyan law on Dec. 11. The eight men were captured by the British Royal Navy in November while trying to hijack a Danish merchant ship near the Yemeni coast.

The Dec. 11 hearing was brief. The defense requested more time to prepare, and the case was promptly deferred until January. But the fact that it wasn’t dismissed outright represents a major step forward for authorities struggling to build the institutional tools to combat piracy.

Read the whole story here.

In November, the port of Merka in southern Somalia, previously held by the U.N.-backed Transitional Federal Government (TFG) alliance, was captured without a fight by soldiers of the rival Islamic Courts Union (ICU).

In the aftermath of Merka’s fall, the U.N. worried that the ICU might halt aid shipments to the starving country. Those fears proved premature, but ultimately accurate. Last week, further advances by the Islamic Courts threatened to disrupt incoming food convoys.

Merka’s fall was a watershed event for this nation of 8 million that hasn’t had a functional central government since a brutal civil war beginning in 1991. The ICU had briefly controlled much of Somalia in 2006 before the TFG, with U.S. and Ethiopian reinforcements, routed the Courts in an overwhelming Blitzkreig-style attack.

Now the ICU is back, and inching closer to the TFG’s last strongholds in Mogadishu and the de facto capital of Baidoa.

Read the whole story here.

(Photo: me)

Thanks to readers who donated more than $1,000 to underwrite my travel. Your generosity makes my work possible.

Two Sundays ago the new European Union naval force deployed to East African waters escorted its first food ship to Somalia from this sweltering port town. The two-day dash by the MV Semlow and the HMS Northumberland marked the beginning of a planned yearlong U.N.-E.U. effort to feed as many as 4 million Somalis. That’s nearly half the country, for those of you counting.

Somalia has depended on U.N. food aid for more than 15 years, ever since the brutal 1991 civil war and a subsequent famine. An unprecedented peacekeeping mission in the early 1990s designed to protect the food distribution effort ended in bloodshed when 18 U.S. troops were killed in a disastrous October 1993 raid, recounted in the book and movie Black Hawk Down.

Today the demand for food is only growing, but without a large military force on the ground to protect distribution. So the U.N. has concentrated its food program on the ports of Merka and Mogadishu, avoiding Somalia’s lawless, bandit-infested roads. Freighters making the run from Mombasa bring in around 12,000 tons of food to these two ports every month.

Things were going swimmingly until pirates began attacking and seizing the food ships. In 2007, the U.N. asked for naval protection. The current E.U. force is the latest chapter in that partnership. No U.N. food ship under naval escort has been successfully attacked by pirates. “We feel secure that the vessel will go safely and come back safely,” said Tariq Farooqi, the caretaker of MV Onega I, the 8,000-ton vessel slated to make the second E.U.-escorted food run Tuesday.

In contrast to the first food run with MV Semlow, this second run will be a true convoy. A second humanitarian ship, hailing from Tanzania, will link up with Onega and her escort, a Greek frigate currently serving as the E.U. flagship, and the three will sail straight into Mogadishu, where a small Ugandan peacekeeping contingent waits to throw up a protective cordon. After unloading, the ships will turn around and backtrack to Mombasa.

The Somalia food circuit is just one facet of the escalating piracy war in East African waters, but it’s easily the most successful. While pirates continue to attack and seize commercial vessels deep in the Indian Ocean, the food ships are safe, as long as the E.U. is riding shotgun. The operation’s success speaks volumes about the viability of World War II-style convoys in today’s piracy war. It’s not for no reason that some Mombasa-based shippers are calling for the various naval contingents to pool their resources, put their heads together and come up with a convoy plan for all shipping in the region.

Captain Tariq Farooqi, 51, pictured, stands on the bridge of the MV Onega I, overseeing the loading of 7,000 tons of food and cooking oil into her cavernous hold. It’s a hot day in Mombasa, as cargo handlers and Onega’s 22-man crew prepare the vessel for her Tuesday run from here to Mogadishu, delivering her cargo to the U.N.-run Somalia aid effort feeding 4 million people.

The waters through which Onega will pass are the most dangerous in the world, teeming with hundreds of pirates armed with AK-47s, RPGs and aluminum ladders. Onega will be escorted by a Greek frigate, and no food ship under escort has ever been successfully attacked by pirates. Still, Farooqi says, even without an escort, he has no fear.

“We have got so much courage because we are living on the sea all the time. [There's] no piracy [everywhere], but we have seen storms and hurricanes. There is no fear.”

The only thing Farooqi fears, he says, is God.

One time, sailing past the Nigerian coast, another piracy hot-spot, Farooqi ordered his crew to unwind the fire hoses and prepare to hose down anyone attempting to climb aboard. The old hose trick is a favorite of captains defending their ships against pirate assaults. In Farooqi’s case, it wasn’t necessary, but he was prepared all the same.

There’s a mood of genuine panic in Mombasa among those who livelihoods come from the sea. But not among the seafarers working the Somalia food circuit. For a year, every food ship has had a military escort. And escorts work.

Too bad there aren’t enough warships in the world to escort every single ship plying East African waters. But then, imagine the cost if there were …

The Chinese deployment, which the U.S. welcomes as a chance to increase cooperation with Beijing, will take weeks to organize and travel the distance from China to Africa.

In the meantime, one Chinese ship crew took the war on piracy into their own hands, using water hoses and Molotov cocktails to fight back pirates who had boarded their Shanghai-bound vessel.

The crew of Zhenhua-4 barricaded themselves on an upper deck, emptied 400 beer bottles and filled them with gas, lobbing the improvised bombs at pirates milling around on the lower deck. The 90-minute battle ended with the crew locked in the cabins as the frustrated pirates tried to beat down the doors. Then a Malaysian ship and its helicopters arrived, sending the pirates fleeing.

The top Kenyan army officer staged a dramatic press conference in this port town on Monday, intending to strike fear in the hearts of Somali pirates that have waged an escalating war on shipping in African waters.

“Any attempt to commit any act of piracy within Kenya will be resisted very strongly,” Gen. Jeremiah Kianga, chief of the General Staff, told reporters at a Kenyan Air Force forward operating base adjacent to the Mombasa airport. “We want to send the message to would-be pirates that they risk being sunk.”

The general outlined ongoing operations by Kenyan military vessels and aircraft to deter piracy in national waters. “The armed forces are ready to confront the challenge of piracy,” Kianga said.

It was a powerful bit of posturing against a highly cinematic backdrop. As the general ended his comments, two fighter jets spun up their engines and roared down the runway, banking low over this port city of 700,000.

Read the rest here.

(Photo: via Flickr)

When the giant cruise ships pull into Mombasa’s harbor and disgorge hundreds of Western tourists, souvenir vendors are there on the pier to greet them. The vendors’ curios — carvings of animals and wooden utensils — sell for $10 or more in a city where many workers earn just a few dollars per day.

John Ngundo, 55, is a veteran of the curio trade in Mombasa. Lately, he said, business has declined. He blames his problems on the increase in piracy off the Somali coast. “We don’t get tourism coming into the port because people are afraid,” he said on Saturday morning as a few elderly Italians trickled past from the cruise ship Costa Europa.

Across Mombasa, everyday Kenyans are seeing their incomes decline as Somali pirates put a growing dent in sea trade and tourism in East African waters. Piracy is not a new problem: it has plagued the region for more than a decade, ever since the collapse of Somalia’s last functional government in the early 1990s. But this year has seen a huge spike in seaborne crime on the Indian Ocean. There have been around 100 major documented pirate attacks on commercial and cruise ships, and around 40 successful hijackings.

It’s not just the curio vendors feeling the pinch: fishermen, boaters, port hands and mariners are in trouble, too. Many shipping companies have begun rerouting traffic to avoid East Africa; cruise lines are considering doing the same. “Piracy obviously has affected the entire shipping industry,” said Khalid Shapi, managing director of Pollman’s Tours, which arranges safaris for cruise ship passengers in Mombasa.

“The trickle-down effect is that people are losing their jobs,” said Frederick Wahutu, director of the Kenya Ships Agents Association in Mombasa.

Habib Hakem, 29, owns a small fleet of deep-sea fishing boats and employs around 20 people in Mombasa. He said that in a normal year he would have around 60 contracts to take tourists on fishing expeditions, but this year, due to concerns over piracy, he has had only 15 contracts.

“Fishing is not lucrative right now,” Wahutu confirmed.

Kenyans are seemingly unanimous in asking the international community to do more to combat piracy. Wahutu, Shapi and Ngundo all said they want more foreign warships patrolling East African waters. “What I ask is [for] the world to put [forth] more effort, so these men can be stopped,” Ngundo said, while standing over his customer-less souvenir stand. “If piracy continues, it will bring a lot of loss.”

(Photo: me)

Mombasa, southern Kenya’s sweltering port town is, in many ways, the center of gravity of the piracy war. While pirates themselves are based mostly in northern Somalia, hundreds of miles from here, the repercussions of piracy — and many of the higher-order command functions on both sides — play out in Mombasa.

Many of the ships most threatened by pirates — fishing boats and coastal freighters — are home-ported in Mombasa. And as this is the major port in East Africa, many large vessels coming from or to Europe via the Suez Canal, braving pirate waters en route, call here. When a ship is released from pirates’ captivity after ransom is paid, it comes here first. In Mombasa is extensive infrastructure (ship’s agents, mariners’ unions, courts) to handle the aftermath of an act of piracy.

Equally, many of the most important leaders on both sides of the piracy fight, plus their intelligence networks, are anchored here. Mombasa ship’s agents, unions reps and shipping executives, representing tens of thousands of maritime professionals and billions of dollars in trade, have been powerful voices advocating for international intervention to thwart piracy.

Take Karim Kudrati, owner of Motaku Shipping, with four freighters. He was a leading proponent of bringing maritime patrol aircraft into the piracy fight. “Unfortunately, the coast is so huge that we don’t have a [military] vessel every time [we need one],” he told me last week. More convoys — that is, warships gathering up large groups of commercial vessels for mutual protection — “is possible,” he said, but barring that, he asked for patrol planes. “I have been recommending … surveillance aircraft,” he said, to extend warships’ eyes and decrease their response time. Sure enough, the E.U. has included a number of patrol planes in its force package as it begins replacing NATO on the piracy front lines.

The bad guys have strong Mombasa ties, too. Kenya has a fast-growing Somali population, fed by legal and illegal immigration. Indeed, some of my Somali journalist friends who have fled their own country are now in hiding in Kenya. While pirate foot-soldiers all operate out of Somalia proper, many of their bosses and financiers are living in Mombasa, according to some of my Kenyan sources.

It makes sense, considering that pirates have spies working for Kenyan maritime offices. Any ship departing Mombasa harbor must file paperwork stating its cargo and destination. According to my sources here, pirate spies read the forms and forward the details to pirate bands, so they know which ships to target. I was told of one Western couple, laying over in Mombasa while on a pleasure cruise around the world, that sensed they might be targeted, so actually filled out their departure forms with misleading information. That caused all sorts of problems at their actual destination, but it was better than being nabbed by pirates.

What Kenyan authorities is doing about this is hard to say. The pirate networks lie in shadows. Everyone knows about them but nobody can really prove anything. And with so many people, Kenyans and Somalis alike, profiting big from sea crime, there’s strong incentive for those supporting piracy to keep right on doing it.

(Photo: me)

MOMBASA, Dec 17 (IPS) – Pirate attacks in East African waters this year have disrupted the delivery of much-needed food aid to Somalia. With millions of lives at stake, U.N. World Food Program officials said the commencement last week of a European Union naval escort mission should help guarantee regular food shipments in the early months of 2009.

While Somali piracy has been a local problem since at least the late 1990s, only this year have pirates extended their reach deep into the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean, endangering major international shipping. Pirates have hijacked around 40 large vessels since January. The U.N.-led aid effort to Somalia — one of the biggest humanitarian campaigns in the world — is one victim of this surge in hijackings.

Periodically this year, WFP has found it difficult to get food into Somalia by sea — at a time when demand for food aid is only growing.

Read the rest here.

(Photo: me)

The ships that make the two-day run from Mombasa, Kenya, to Somalia carrying vital humanitarian supplies are frequent targets of pirate attacks — and have been for more than a decade. How have ship’s crew adapted? Same way the pirates have adapted over the years: with simple technology and no-nonsense tactics.

On Wednesday, the small cargo vessel Semlow, an old veteran of the Somali humanitarian route that was hijacked by pirates and held for 110 days back in 2005, prepares for a Sunday run to Mogadishu carrying hundreds of tones of split peas and other foodstuffs. Captain Edward Kalendero gives me a tour of the bridge. In the small, wood-paneled map alcove on the starboard side, he points out the green-and-black screen of a simple ranging radar. Kalendero says he uses it to spot incoming boats. If he decides they’re hostile, he can turn tail and open the throttle.

According to experts in Mombasa, you need to exceed 20 knots to outrun pirates. It’s not clear that rickety old Semlow can make that speed.

Stealth is a more reliable tactic. Kalendero lays out a detailed chart of the waters around Mogadishu and traces the most dangerous zone with his finger. When Semlow breaches this zone, he said, it will be night — and he will rig the ship for silent running. That means turning out all the lights and minimizing noise. Rigged like that, Kalendero says, a pirate can pass within yards and not even know Semlow’s there.

But if they are detected, and there’s no chance of outrunning the attackers, there’s one last measure. Kalendero crosses the bridge to the port side and opens a door to the closet-size radio room. He pops open a tiny cabinet. Inside is a white plastic device shaped like a garage-door opener. This, he says, is the panic button. Press this, and it alerts Semlow’s owners, by radio, that the vessel is under attack.

Now, alerting the owner won’t save the ship from being captured. But it will speed the process of ransoming the ship and crew, and hopefully head off any desperate, violent acts by impatient, panicky kidnappers.

(Photo: me)

Kennedy Mwale, 32, pictured, is a freelance tour guide in Mombasa’s old port, a claustrophobic melange of Arab and Portuguese architecture with one small stone pier. A week ago Monday, three small cargo ships were tied to the pier. Scores of shirtless stevedores lugged bags of cement and tossed them into the ships’ holds. The stevedores might earn a couple dollars for hours of hot, back-breaking work. That’s just enough to survive in Mombasa. Mwale, by comparison, earns up to $15 for an hour tour.

Five years ago, Mwale escaped Mombasa’s maritime economy. He had been a fisherman, plying the waters as far north as the Somali borderland in search of tuna and other big fish. But with piracy taking root in lawless Somalia, fishing and sea trade were becoming riskier and less profitable by the day for the small operators. One of the final straws for Mwale was a close call, in 2002, with a band of 14 pirates that sneaked up on the 11-man refrigerator ship where Mwale was the chief engineer. (The reefer ships follow behind the fishing boats to store fresh catches.)

They came at night, as the ship was anchored near Mdoa island, surprising the sleeping crew and their one Somali bodyguard. When the pirates failed to wrestle away the guard’s rifle, a standoff ensued. The pirates demanded the crew’s money and possessions, plus all the diesel fuel stored on deck — and wanted the ship sailed to the Somali port of Kismayo. If the crew didn’t comply, the pirates would start killing people, they said. The crew coughed up all their cash — just a few dollars for most, but around $700 in the case of the ship owner’s secretary — and handed over possessions including a new boom box stereo. But the captain refused to give up the diesel or to sail to Kismayo. He would not allow the ship to enter in to captivity, nor strand it at sea. The captain had only as much leverage as was afforded by his one armed guard, but it was enough. The pirates compromised. They agreed to go to Mdoa and continue negotiations.

That apparently was a clever bit of strategizing on the captain’s part, for he had called at Mdoa earlier, seeking the ruling committee’s permission to fish Somali waters. The committee had endorsed the expedition. And when the pirates rolled in with Mwale and his shipmates in tow, the committee immediately branded the captors criminals and had the local militia seize their weapons and return everything they’d stolen. They gave back the boom box, but denied taking anything else. The penniless Kenyans now were free to sail home.

This story has a happy-ish ending, but for Mwale, it was another near-miss in a career full of them. Every day the arguments mounted against working at sea. Already, three of his friends had been killed by sharks. And with piracy making profitable fishing a dicey venture, Mwale soon decided he’d had enough. He went ashore, for good, and for five years was unemployed on Mombasa’s sweltering streets.

Today, as a tour guide, he survives, and surely does better than many of the city’s 700,000 residents. Not that freelancing for curious tourists is an easy way to make a living: it’s just a Hell of a lot safer than grappling with Somali pirates.

(Photo: me)