Premier says Somalia can help fight piracy
MOMBASA, Kenya - As the American skipper once held hostage by pirates headed home early today aboard an executive jet, and his 19-man crew received a heroes' welcome in the United States, the source of the piracy plague in the Indian Ocean - Somalia - said it could help fight the problem.
MOMBASA, Kenya - As the American skipper once held hostage by pirates headed home early today aboard an executive jet, and his 19-man crew received a heroes' welcome in the United States, the source of the piracy plague in the Indian Ocean - Somalia - said it could help fight the problem.
Also yesterday, a U.S. official said the captured pirate in the Maersk Alabama incident, identified as Abduhl Wal-i-Musi, would be brought to New York to face trial, the Associated Press reported.
Somalian Prime Minister Omar Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke said aggressive actions by foreign navies - such as Sunday's U.S. Navy assault that freed the Maersk Alabama's captain, Richard Phillips, after five days in captivity - could at best be a stopgap measure against piracy.
Its roots are on Somalian soil, he said, and Somalia's government, though desperately weak, could attack pirate bases and money networks with a little more financial help from foreign donors.
"We have information on how they do business," Sharmarke said of eight pirate "cartels" that he said Somalian officials had identified. "We can stop them before they go into the water."
Somalis, traditionally suspicious of foreign intervention, are nonetheless growing angry at the rise in piracy off their shores, which has refocused attention on the failings of a country that has lacked a functioning government since 1991.
Somalian leaders have tried to walk a fine line between expressing regret at the surge in pirate attacks and mourning the killings of Phillips' three Somalian captors by Navy sharpshooters from the destroyer USS Bainbridge.
"We hope that the scourge of piracy can be eliminated from Somalia, so we don't have to suffer any further losses," Sharmarke said in a statement released by U.S. officials in Kenya.
Phillips' fourth captor, who came aboard the Bainbridge before the Navy assault, was moved to an undisclosed location, the Pentagon's Central Command said. The official quoted by the AP, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said it was not immediately clear when that captor, Wal-i-Musi, would be brought to New York.
Yesterday, the Maersk Alabama crew celebrated and recuperated at Gaylord National Resort outside Washington, after a chartered flight delivered the men into their families' arms early in the morning.
Phillips was flying home from Kenya to Vermont, where he is expected this afternoon.
"I'm just so relieved and overwhelmed that it's over," said third engineer John Cronan of Merion Station, Pa. "I'm home now. The greatest country in the world."
Many people agree that piracy has to be fought on land - deploying hulking warships to ward off the pirates' speedboats is a little like trying to kill a mosquito with a bazooka - but analysts questioned the wisdom of pouring more money into a Somalian government that doesn't control much territory and has been unable to train or equip its own security force.
The current stab at a government is backed by the United Nations and claims a 10,000-man security force. But in the face of a raging Islamist-led insurgency in the south - unconnected to the northern-based pirates - the Somalian army has been dogged by low morale, low pay, and desertions.
So analysts have expressed skepticism about Sharmarke's proposal to carve out a 3,000-strong "rapid response" anti-piracy force from that ragtag army.
