Next Up for Obama: Somali Pirates

According to my soundings, even commando operations to defeat the pirates at sea or in their coastal lairs, much less invading Somalia, seem out of the question, at least for now.

So, it’s back to the future: Ransoms, or tribute, as it was called centuries ago.

To be sure, Indian and British naval ships have engaged the Somali pirates in combat, and French commandos freed two of their countrymen held by hijackers. But for the most part, shippers have been resigned to coughing up millions of dollars in ransoms, including the next-door Saudis, who lost an oil supertanker to the pirates last week.

Asked whether U.S. commandos might enter the fray, a spokesman from the U.S. Special Operations Command punted the question to the Navy’s 5th Fleet, based in Bahrain.

Its spokeswoman, Cmdr. Jane Campbell, did not answer my query. But earlier she threw cold water on the idea.

“We have a full range of options . . . that allow us to stop pirates from attacking merchant vessels,” Campbell told the Associated Press, not very convincingly. “But once the ship is hijacked, it’s a hostage situation and we don’t see a military solution is the right one to pursue.”

Some experts say that shadowy individuals in Europe or elsewhere may be pulling the strings, ordering shipjackings from lists of sailing vessels and satellite tracking.

“The timing and knowledge of which ships to attack are too good to leave to pirates,” said a recently retired CIA expert on Africa now in private business, who asked not to be identified.

The shipjacking arena in the Gulf of Aden, which at 1.1 million square miles is larger than the Mediterranean Sea, is simply too large.

“I believe the warlords and others in Somalia have connections to people in Europe with access to the info to coordinate these attacks,” he said.

Then there’s the question of what to do with all the ransom money.

The pirate bosses seem to have solved that problem. Most likely, at least some of it is disappearing into the Arab world’s version of Western Union, the hawalas, the CIA expert and others said. Numbered Swiss bank accounts may not be appropriate.

“Even though the sums are large,” he said, “many of these guys will still be cautious of having the funds tracked to a Swiss account, especially if they are obtained illegally.”

Next Up for Obama: Somali Pirates

The pirates present terrorism-finance trackers with a different kind of challenge, says Victor Comras, a retired veteran U.S. diplomat and trade specialist.

“The investigators in terrorism financing and money laundering cases are as interested in going after the initiators of the terrorism financing and money laundering transactions as they are in going after the recipients of the funds,” Comras told me. “Both sides of the transactions are illicit, but in a ransom payment, the authorities are only going after the ultimate recipients.”

Comras added, “This means that the transaction can be handled more overtly. The funds are transferred to an intermediary who may be completely unaware of the nature of the transaction he is handling. He merely forwards the money to other intermediaries in an untraceable network, usually within a failed state that lacks the ability to trace the movement of the funds. Even when the ultimate recipients can be identified, they are usually unreachable — they may well include local warlords, mafia chiefs or insurgent groups.”

Hopeless?

Maybe not. The CIA expert said there are ways to identify the hidden hands putting the pirates to sea.

“A true test would be [to] pass along false info regrading the merchandise on a specific ship (which would be armed with soldiers),” he said by e-mail, “and see if the pirates attempt to shipjack it.”

Whatever the means, he warned, we have to deal with the pirates — and soon.

“I don’t know if there is any connection to . . . al Qaeda,” he said, “but I’m concerned that [its] interest will grow if the pirates are not deterred.”

Welcome aboard, Mr. Obama.

Jeff Stein can be reached at jstein@cq.com.