Pirates and Yemen
A compilation post, a bit more detail on this in an article I wrote for the Yemen Times in December. The VOA article is very good:
VOA: UN Warns of Ties Between Lawless Groups in Somalia and Yemen
For years, criminals have used ports in the Arab world’s poorest country, Yemen, as staging areas for trafficking humans, drugs, and weapons. There are growing fears that criminal groups in Yemen and pirate gangs in Somalia are moving closer together, further complicating international efforts to stabilize the region.
In a report released last December, the U.N. group tasked with monitoring the 1992 arms embargo on Somalia included a paragraph on piracy, alluding to the growing financial ties between Somali pirates and criminal entrepreneurs in Yemen.
The U.N. report said the NATO Shipping Center had identified five ports along the Yemeni coast, which were serving as re-supply stations for mother ships belonging to Somali pirates. Mother ships are usually hijacked fishing trawlers or merchant vessels, used to tow the speedboats needed to attack slow-moving ships sailing in open waters.
Maritime terrorism analyst Peter Lehr at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland says the information is worrisome because it implies that Yemenis, facing high unemployment and widespread poverty in their country, are being increasingly lured into the lucrative world of piracy.
“So far, there is no evidence that Yemeni fishermen are actually working as pirates,” said Peter Lehr. “You have just these opportunistic people on the shore, who do not care to whom they sell their stuff. But because of the economic meltdown, we have lots of people descending into even deeper poverty than before. And it is quite logical to me that the Yemeni fishermen there might also embark on piracy because this is, at the moment, the only show in town, even for them. And the Gulf of Aden is perfect for pirates because you have confined waters and lots of targets.”
The Gulf of Aden is a narrow waterway that divides Somalia from Yemen on the Arabian Peninsula. It is also a vital shipping route for hundreds of maritime companies around the world. In the past year, dozens of vessels have been seized in the area, earning Somali pirates and their associates tens of millions, perhaps hundreds of million of dollars, in ransom.
The U.N. Monitoring Group believes much of the arms, ammunition, and fuel needed to sustain the growth of piracy off the coast of Somalia is being supplied by locals in Yemen. Its adds that pirates, in turn, may be assisting smugglers by using hijacked vessels to move refugees and economic migrants from Somalia to Yemen, and then bringing arms and ammunition on the return journey to Somalia.
An analyst with the global intelligence company Stratfor, Scott Stewart, says the problem is growing largely because the Yemeni government has been unable to crack down on criminal activities taking place in its southern ports.
“They do not have the resources,” said Scott Stewart. “It takes people. It takes boats. It takes training, and they simply do not have the bandwidth to devote to that issue. They have got much bigger problems, where they really need to focus at this point. The south is really looking to break away. There are a lot of mass protests and uprisings right now. The country is very, very tense. So, that is a very important dynamic in what is going on here. There are factions and tribes and people trying to make money off this trade, not only for personal gain, but also to use it to foster their independence of the south.”
Oil makes up two-thirds of Yemen’s public revenue and 90 percent of its export earnings. Most of the oil facilities are in the south, where the people have long complained of being discriminated against by northerners and the government in Sana’a.
Secession would be disastrous for President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who took power in the former North Yemen and has been the country’s leader since the merger with the south in 1990. His government is already trying to cope with numerous other problems, including a separate tribal rebellion in the north, a rapid population growth, threats from a regional al-Qaida group, and worries that the country’s dwindling oil and water resources may soon plunge Yemen into deeper poverty.
Peter Lehr at the University of St. Andrews says he fears Yemen will begin to mirror Somalia, acting not only as a breeding ground for al-Qaida, but also for legions of impoverished youths joining pirate gangs.
“The more the problem persists, the more likely that you will have Yemeni pirate expeditions on the scale comparable to the Somali expeditions,” he said. “What you need to do is move fast now to prevent the situation deteriorating in Yemen any further. How you do that is anybody’s guess.”
In a recent report, London-based Chatham House warned that Yemen faced a potent combination of problems, which, if left unresolved, could expand a lawless zone stretching from northern Kenya, through Somalia and the Gulf of Aden to Saudi Arabia.
The Somali pirates attacking shipping in the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean are directed to their targets by a “consultant” team in London, according to a European military intelligence document obtained by a Spanish radio station.
The document, obtained by Cadena SER radio, says the team and the pirates remain in contact by satellite telephone.
It says that pirate groups have “well-placed informers” in London who are in regular contact with control centres in Somalia where decisions on which vessels to attack are made. These London-based “consultants” help the pirates select targets, providing information on the ships’ cargoes and courses.
In at least one case the pirates have remained in contact with their London informants from the hijacked ship, according to one targeted shipping company.
The pirates’ information network extends to Yemen, Dubai and the Suez canal.
The intelligence report is understood to have been issued to European navies.
“The information that merchant ships sailing through the area volunteer to various international organisations is ending up in the pirates’ hands,” Cadena SER reported the report as saying.
This enables the more organised pirate groups to study their targets in advance, even spending several days training teams for specific hijacks. Senior pirates then join the vessel once it has been sailed close to Somalia.
Captains of attacked ships have found that pirates know everything from the layout of the vessel to its ports of call. Vessels targeted as a result of this kind of intelligence included the Greek cargo ship Titan, the Turkish merchant ship Karagol and the Spanish trawler Felipe Ruano.
In each case, says the document, the pirates had full knowledge of the cargo, nationality and course of the vessel.
The national flag of a ship is also taken into account when choosing a target, with British vessels being increasingly avoided, according to the report. It was not clear whether this was because pirates did not want to draw the attention of British police to their information sources in London.
European countries have set up Operation Atalanta to co-ordinate their military efforts in the area.
Yemeni special forces stormed an oil tanker that had been seized by Somali pirates last week, killing three pirates and capturing 11 more.
The government of Yemen, which is just across the Gulf of Aden from Somalia, is trying to portray itself as part of the solution to piracy in the region. But others say that Yemen — which is itself a failing state where sympathy for the Somali pirates runs deep — might be part of the problem.
The pirates had seized the Yemeni-owned tanker just 10 miles off Yemen’s coast, after it left the port city Mukalla. The next day, the Yemeni coast guard retook the ship and brought the alleged pirates back to port. The men were paraded in front of reporters while the Yemeni national anthem blared from a coast guard boat.
Some of the accused pirates wore nothing more than their underwear. One was hopping on one leg.
Mohammad Hajri, a Yemeni coast guard captain, said the pirates would be detained and interrogated, then brought to trial.
Pirates Just ‘Ordinary’ People
It was the fourth group of alleged pirates from Somalia to be placed in Yemeni custody. In February, 10 men were captured by a Russian navy boat and handed over to the Yemeni coast guard. Officials say that group of Somalis was caught with Kalashnikovs, a rocket-propelled grenade launcher, ammunition and a small, fast boat. The group now awaits trial.
Yemeni reporter Mohammad al-Qadhi met the accused Somalis in the library of the central jail in the port city of Aden. He says the men told him they started out as fishermen, then grew angry when they saw large international ships overfishing Somali waters and dumping waste there, too. So they decided to rob a ship.
The men were ordinary people, Qadhi says. “They were not some people who are strange — just young people.”
They told Qadhi that if there were stability in Somalia — education, employment — they would not be pirates.
“One of them told me, ‘If there is stability in Somalia, we are ready to give up and be members of the army and protect our state,’ ” Qadhi says.
Sympathy For Pirates, Not Western Countries
This kind of sympathy for pirates is shared by many people — officials and civilians alike — in Yemen, despite the coast guard’s crackdown. An American Navy commander recently alleged that private citizens in Yemen are selling weapons, fuel and supplies to Somali pirates. And maritime experts worry that pirates are increasingly able to find refuge along Yemen’s vast coast.
The sympathy runs so deep in the country that some Yemeni officials suggest the extensive international attention to piracy is just a pretext for big powers like the U.S. to gain control of the Gulf of Aden, a waterway through which millions of barrels of oil pass every day.
Ahmed al-Asbahi, a member of the Yemeni parliament, suggests that Western powers are allowing piracy to continue as a way to serve their own interests.
“What the international community should do is help bring a real and lasting peace to Somalia. If they do this, then there won’t be any piracy. They can do this without bringing their military forces to our waters,” Asbahi says.
Yemen May Face Its Own Piracy Problem
But that kind of peace takes time, says Yemeni political science professor Abdullah al-Faqih. Until that happens, he says, “Yemen is part of the problem.”
That’s because Yemen itself is a failing state, Faqih says. It has a growing separatist movement in the south, an insurgency in the north, a re-emergence of al-Qaida and, on top of all this, a collapsing economy.
“Yemen is dependent [on] oil revenues. Now with the financial crisis, the oil price is going down. … Basically, the country lost most of its credit and financial resources,” he says.
What’s more, the oil itself is running out. And the government has failed to diversify the economy. Faqih says a total economic meltdown could come very soon. The government already has cut the state budget in half.
He says he thinks that within three to five months, the government won’t be able to pay its salaries.
If the state fails, Faqih says Yemen would expand the belt of lawlessness in the region to both sides of the Gulf of Aden and become yet another place where pirates, smugglers and militants could thrive.
Instead of worrying about how to fix the problems in Somalia, he says, Yemen should worry about whether it will become the next Somalia.
