SOMALI PIRATES EXTENDING OPERATIONS

By H. N. BURDETT

Somalia's statelessness, high fertility rate, large number of youths, its unemployment and poverty are all factors in the rampant piracy stretching across the Indian Ocean, says an authority on ship hijacking in the wake of four Americans killed by pirates on "Quest," a 58-foot custom-built yacht in the Gulf of Aden.

Lt. Cdr. Claude G. Berube, a reserve naval officer on active duty as a history professor at the Academy, says Somalia "has been a lawless state for the past twenty years" as piracy has grown, become more sophisticated and has spread far from the Somalia coastline. Berube has written extensively on piracy in academic journals as well as an unpublished novel.

Pirates in the area called "pirates' alley" generally release their hostages unharmed after collecting their ransoms. Two of the pirates who had seized the yacht with Americans aboard were negotiating for their release aboard a U.S. ship.

The motivations of the pirates who boarded the yacht of a Marina Del Rey, California couple, Jean and Scott Adams, for killing them and their crew, Phyllis Macay and Robert A. Riggle of Seattle, Washington, are so far "matters of speculation and conjecture," the professor said. Six of the pirates were also killed and 13 others were in U.S. Navy custody.

Armed with AK-47 automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades that Somali pirates "have been using for decades - weapons that can be found everywhere" throughout the region, Berube stressed, the outlaws have extended their search for prey to 50-100 nautical miles across the Indian Ocean and only about 40 nautical miles from India. "And they are now using satellite phones," he added.

Describing the pirates as "mostly young people, we're dealing with seventeen and eighteen-year-olds," Berube pointed out that they operate from skiffs launched from mother ship tankers and freighters.

Somalia's annual population growth rate is nearly 2.9 percent, the 16th largest in the world, more than 43 births per 1,000 population. Somali women have 6.4 births in their reproductive lifetime, the world's fourth highest fertility rate. More than 45 percent of the country's male population is under 15 years of age.

"The International Maritime Bureau classifies waters off of Somalia as some of the most dangerous in the world," Cdr. Berube says. Yet the shipping industry "has not seen (piracy) as a threat," he observes. Though President Obama has called piracy "a national emergency", he adds, "no one has taken full responsibility for dealing with the threat."

Betube stressed that there are three courses for dealing with piracy: private to public, nations hiring private maritime security; private to private, private sector firms hiring private security; and private ships with escorts supplied by national governments. Thus far, however, these options have been virtually ruled out as "too costly," the Naval Academy professor said.

The danger not being ignored is reports that the pirates have been negotiating with Al-Shabaab, a terrorist group operating in Somalia, with the latter receiving 20 percent of the hijacking profits for its cooperation.

According to New Yorker magazine writer Jon Lee Anderson, Al-Shabaab controls most of southern and central Somalia, including a large portion of the capital, Mogadishu, and has "declared war on the U.N. and on Western non-governmental organizations" that distribute food aid in Somalia. In the past two years, the group is believed to be responsible for killing 42 relief workers.

"Anywhere a state cannot control its own coastline, you're going to see piracy," Berube concluded.