Posted by Tina
FrontPage Magazine is featuring an article that explains the Pirate activity that has peppered news stories in the last year or so:
Jihad on the High Seas, by Stephen Brown
* Al-Qaedas goal is the removal of Western military bases from the Arabian Peninsula. It believes sea lanes weakened by acts of piracy, combined with mujahedeen attacks, will force concessions from Western powers. And while Al-Qaeda has not abandoned its more traditional tactics it has a presence in both Somalia and Yemen and attacked the American embassy in Yemen this month, killing 16 the organization is increasingly focusing its terror on the high seas. *
Al-Qaedas sea war is already having an effect. Piracy attacks have increased so dramatically in the Horn of Africa that a London-based International Maritime Bureau (IMB) spokesman called the waters off Somalia, a Muslim country, the most dangerous in the world. A failed state, Somalia has possessed neither a navy nor a central government since 1991 factors exploited by criminal organizations and al-Qaeda, sometimes working together. As a result, in the first two weeks of September alone, Somali pirates attacked 17 ships, four more than in all of 2007, and last week captured a Ukrainian ship carrying 33 T-70 tanks. In my time here, I must say, this is the most concentrated period of destabilizing activity I have seen in the Gulf of Aden, said Keith Winstanley, a British naval officer patrolling the gulf. *** Security experts fear the ransom money the pirates are receiving will allow them to buy better equipment and weapons for larger operations. Another concern focuses on the threat to the worlds energy supply. A Japanese tanker, for example, was hit with a rocket-propelled grenade last year, spilling hundreds of barrels of oil into the gulf. A spate of successful sinking would see sky-rocketing oil prices climb even higher. *** Such financial disruption would please al-Qaeda, since it has long targeted the American economy for destruction. It knows the Western world derives its military and cultural strength from its economic power, hence its attack on the World Trade Center. Al-Qaeda also wants to draw America into as many Gulf of Aden-type military sideshows as possible in order to drain American resources. *