View From Canberra: There be pirates abroad | ADM May 2010
But what led to this situation?
A Special Correspondent | Canberra
Back in 1993, the then Labor government despatched a battalion group based on 1RAR as our contribution to the international peacekeeping mission following the disastrous civil war and famine.
Despite strong pressure, the government stuck to the three month commitment and home they came as scheduled, having lost one soldier to a tragic mishap with a Steyr rifle but with the defence organisation gaining much useful experience about the unfamiliar business of deploying troops far away and then supporting them while there.
This mission occurred in the great bloom of post cold-war enthusiasm for a new global order in which the US and other high-minded nations could resolve third world conflicts through goodwill, aid and force of arms.
That Somalia proved especially intractable is well known.
Although 1RAR had gone by the time it all hit the fan in October 1993 in what's now enshrined in popular culture as the battle of Blackhawk Down, some Aussies were still there in the form of a movement unit at Mogadishu airport, guarded by a small team of SASR soldiers.
The last Australians finally departed in November 1994, by which time the UN had given up and Somalia was well into its downward trajectory towards failed statehood.
Just why this occurred has been the subject of much deep thought.
Black Hawk Down author Mark Bowden cited an unnamed US official who said the US had gone into Somalia in the belief that a few bad people were responsible for oppressing many good people who just wanted to get on with their lives.
But the reality, the official said, was that Somalis weren't about to compromise over traditional clan ambitions and simply didn't want peace enough.
In a recent article in the influential US Foreign Policy journal, journalist Jeffrey Gettleman noted that Africa's numerous intractable conflicts weren't like wars of the past where the protagonists actually had political agendas.
What is spreading across Africa like a viral pandemic, he said, was actually just opportunistic, heavily armed banditry with the perpetrators not interested in political concessions but solely in continuing to rampage.
Somalia, with its wholly ineffectual government, warlords, Islamic extremists and pirates is well down this path.
"But what if Somalia is less of an outlier than a terrifying forecast of what war in Africa is moving toward," Gettleman pondered.
That invokes a discomforting spectre of much more of Africa a lawless wasteland ruled by blood-drenched warlords and gangsters and their hordes of Kalashnikov-armed child soldiers.
Lacking any national government, Somalia has turned into pirate central and that has again engaged Australia in the affairs of this blighted nation.
Australian warships despatched to the Middle East as the major maritime contribution to Operation Slipper have periodically participated in counter-piracy activities conducted off the Somali coast.
That came about with the expiration of the UN mandate for international forces in Iraq on December 31, 2008, ending a role for Australia and other naval forces in providing security to Iraq's oil facilities at the top of the Persian Gulf.
Since that time, the RAN has spent most time attached to Combined Task Force 150 (CTF150) conducting war on terror security and counter-narcotics operations in the lower Persian Gulf and Gulf of Aden, with the occasional foray into CTF151.
This multinational task force was formed in January 2009 specifically to counter Somali piracy and has at various times involved the navies of 25 nations, including China and Iran, all arrayed against as ragtag a bunch of nautical bandits as have ever sailed the high seas.
With that many warships with a common purpose, it has to be asked - how come the pirates are still active?
There appear to be a variety of reasons.
One is that for all the warships cruising around, there's still a very large amount of sea and pirates have shown themselves quite willing to go long distances, considering the small size of their vessels which are little more than outboard powered runabouts.
The big reason is that the business is so lucrative.
Shippers are unwilling to reveal ransoms paid for all the usual reasons but on one estimate, the pirates' gross haul was US$150 million in 2008.
A ransom of as much as US$7 million was reportedly paid to free the Greek tanker Maran Centaurus, hijacked near the Seychelles, around 1,300 kilometres off Somalia.
This is in a country with per capita GDP of US$600.
What started in a small way with Somali fishermen seizing the occasional foreign trawler in revenge for illegal fishing in their waters has now become big business with the warlords getting in on the act and a significant infrastructure developing to support pirate activities.
On two occasions, Australian ships have experienced run-ins with pirates.
In May last year, even before Australia officially joined TF151, two Australian warships transiting the Gulf of Aden answered a distress call from tanker under attack by pirates, scaring them off.
Subsequently, the Anzac frigate HMAS Toowoomba was specifically deployed on counter-pirate duties and in September struck gold with its boarding party detaining a pirate gang in the act of trying to hijack a passing freighter.
For the innocent fishermen they claimed to be, this gang lacked fishing gear but were well armed with a rocket-propelled grenade launcher (RPG), six AK-47 assault rifles, a G-3 assault rifle and a large quantity of ammunition.
Under Australian rules of engagement (ROE), they were disarmed, given a stern talking to and sent on their way, after first ensuring they had sufficient fuel, food and water for the return trip.
Not all pirates escape so lightly.
In April last year, three were shot dead by US navy SEALs while holding the captain of a US freighter.
In November, pirates made the grave mistake of opening fire on two boatloads of UK Royal Marines.
Three pirates died.
In March this year, one pirate was shot dead by a private security contractor when his gang tried to board a UAE-owned freighter.
With ransoms of millions demanded, more shipowners are likely to take the cheaper option of hiring armed security guards not bound by inconvenient ROE.