A gang of pirates have taken over a cargo ship on the high seas and is demanding a twenty million dollar ransom. A US Navy ship, the USS Howard, is in sight of the captured pirate ship, ready to act if needed.
An incident from the time of the Barbary Pirates and the Presidency of Thomas Jefferson? Actually the standoff involving the USS Howard is taking place now, in this century, off the Horn of Africa.
The incident in question involves the seizure of a Ukrainian cargo ship, the Faina, filled with Russian built tanks and ammunition on order by the Kenyan government, by Somali pirates. The pirates are demanding a ransom of twenty million dollars for the release of the ship and crew. Besides the USS Howard, an Arleigh Burke class destroyer, a Russian missile frigate, the Neustrashimy, is sailing from its port in the Black Sea and is headed to the zone of the standoff.
Piracy has been a problem on the high seas since ships first sailed. The Roman Empire had to constantly combat pirates in the Mediterranean. The classic era of piracy lasted from the 16th to the early 18th Centuries and has been romanticized in novels and on film. Some pirates of that era, known as privateers, were sanctioned by governments to prey on the shipping of enemy nations. Most pirates of the classic era were just out for loot and adventure.
The first real foreign war fought by the United States was against the Barbary pirates of North Africa in the early 19th Century. The Barbary pirates extracted tribute from European nations in return for not seizing their shipping. The United States, then a young and somewhat impoverished nation but with a huge merchant fleet, choose to fight instead.
Modern piracy is a big problem in unsettled parts of the world, around Africa and in certain waters off Asia. Their tactics are not unlike their progenitors of old. They quickly seize unwary ships and either strip them of valuables or hold them and their passengers and crew for ransom. They are cruel and vicious and nothing like the romantic, Johnny Depp notions of what a pirate should be. While their goal of robbery, they are not afraid of murder to make a point.
Now as then, it is a job of the civilized navies of the world, including the United States Navy, to combat and suppress modern pirates. Nevertheless, far from being an anomaly, modern piracy is rife in unsettled parts of the world such as Somalia and has caused worldwide losses of between thirteen and sixteen billion dollars a year.
Sources: Somali pirate demands $20m ransom for cargo ship, Mohamed Olad Hassan, AP, September 28th, 2008
Terrorism Goes to Sea, Gal Luft and Anne Korin, Foreign Affairs, November/December 2004
