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Thursday, November 27, 2008

Pirates Win, Again

[ HT: Mongoose ]


Unbelievable incompetence.

The Indian navy sunk a poor fishing ship with fishermen still onboard. How do you randomly sink a fishing ship and call it a 'pirate mothership'?

Useless tits. The ship was captured a few hours earlier. I'm sure the distress calls were still echoing across the airwaves...

Obviously the pirates don't even give a shit. They'll just capture another ship.

Official: Sunken 'pirate' ship was Thai boat: "The pirate "mother ship" sunk last week by the Indian navy was actually a Thai fishing trawler seized hours earlier by pirates, a maritime agency said Wednesday. The Indian navy defended its actions, saying it fired in self-defense.

Fourteen sailors from the Thai boat have been missing since the Nov. 18 battle, which was hailed as a rare victory in the fight against increasingly brazen pirates who have rattled the international shipping industry and created chaos in vital sea lanes. At the time, the Indian navy boasted of sinking the vessel and showed pictures of it engulfed in a fireball.

But on Wednesday a maritime agency and the boat's owner said it was actually a Thai trawler, the Ekawat Nava5, that had been boarded by pirates just hours before.

"The Indian navy assumed it was a pirate vessel because they may have seen armed pirates on board the boat which has been hijacked earlier," said Noel Choong, who heads the International Maritime Bureau's piracy reporting center in Kuala Lumpur.

One of the crew members was killed and another rescued, said Wicharn Sirichaiekawat, the managing director of Bangkok-based Sirichai Fisheries, which owned the boat. Fourteen are still missing.

Sirichaiekawat said they found out about the fate of the boat after speaking to the survivor who was rescued four days later by passing fishermen.

The Thai Foreign Ministry said Wednesday it was looking into whether the Indian navy acted correctly.

Indian navy spokesman Commander Nirad Sinha defended the navy's actions, saying the INS Tabar — a 400-foot vessel carrying cruise missiles, surface-to-air missiles and six-barreled 30 mm machine guns for close combat was acting in self-defense.

"Insofar as we are concerned, both its description and its intent were that of a pirate ship," he said. "Only after we were fired upon did we fire. We fired in self- defense. There were gun-toting guys with RPGs on it."

Later, Indian navy chief Adm. Sureesh Mehta said the ship's actions were in line with international practices.

"The rules of engagement obviously are that if you are threatened by someone, you take necessary action and that is how it is done by everybody," Mehta told the CNN-IBN news channel.

It was unclear if the Indian warship was in contact with other forces in the area, since at least some had been warned that the Thai trawler had been captured.

Sirichaiekawat said his company had contacted the International Maritime Bureau after getting messages from other boats in the region that the trawler, which was headed from Oman to Yemen to deliver fishing equipment, had come under attack.

Sirichai Fisheries requested that naval ships in the area help their stricken boat. The British navy responded, but later told the company that pirates had already boarded the ship and any attack on them could cause the crew to be harmed.

"The British navy instructed us to wait until the pirates contacted us," he said.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told a State Department briefing in Washington that she was "very actively engaged" on the piracy issue.

"I had extensive discussions with the Russians, the Chinese, the Panamanians, lots of people, about the problem that is there with piracy. We will see what more needs to be done through the U.N.," she said.

Meanwhile, the International Maritime Bureau alerted the coalition forces patrolling the region and other military agencies in the area, sending them photos of the vessel, Choong said.

The Indian navy has no direct communication links to the maritime bureau, he added.

"We hope that individual navy warships that are patrolling the gulf would coordinate with the coalition forces or request information from us" to avoid such incidents, Choong added.

Choong, who had earlier praised the sinking of the vessel a "an action that everybody is waiting for," said he hoped the mistake would not hamper future operations against the pirates.

Somalia, an impoverished nation caught up in an Islamic insurgency, has not had a functioning government since 1991. Somali pirates have become increasingly brazen recently, seizing eight vessels in the past two weeks, including a Saudi supertanker loaded with $100 million worth of crude oil.

Also Wednesday, two foreign journalists were kidnapped in northern Somalia while reporting on the rampant piracy in the region, said regional police spokesman Abshir Abdi Jama.

The journalists' nationalities could not be confirmed. Jama said one was believed to be British. Foreigners, journalists and humanitarian workers are frequently abducted for ransoms in Somalia.

There have been 96 pirate attacks so far this year in Somali waters, with 39 ships hijacked. Fifteen ships with nearly 300 crew are still held by pirates, who have demanded multimillion-dollar ransoms.

At present, warships from Denmark, India, Malaysia, Russia, the U.S. and NATO patrol a vast international maritime corridor, escorting some merchant ships and responding to distress calls in the area.”

Related Posts:
NATO Finds Balls, Declares War on Pirates
Not Just Oil Tankers, Tanks and Anti-Aircraft Guns Too
Pirates: Brains, Muscles and Geeks
Modern Pirates, Somali Port of Eyl
Pirates Seize Massive Oil Tanker, Again

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ben, I suggest you stick to economics.

Fishing boats don't explode the way that one did - it was most likely carrying arms and ammuntion (and no, that explosion isn't from the diesel tanks, look it up. Google is your friend here).

And Thai "fishing" boats don't hover of the coast of Africa and make repeated runs along the African and Arabian coasts.

Anonymous said...

Now transfer that incompetence to all the software they're writing.

Anonymous said...

Pirates are sweet, not as cool as ninjas obviously

I like this one

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20081128.wpirates1128/BNStory/International/home

This tanker hired a trio of British security guards for protection..."Oh shit! Pirates!"...and they bailed out, only to be rescued by helicopters whilst the Somali's took 27 hostages, and the tanker and its delicious chemicals

Anonymous said...

link above

Anonymous said...

India just want in on a good thing. It's the same as all those "Taliban" / "Wedding Parties" NATO keep lighting up in Pakistan and Afghanistan - for their own protection of course.

Anonymous said...

Fishing boats don't explode the way that one did -

Does if you light it up with an anti-ship missile.

Anonymous said...

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d2c5989e-bc12-11dd-80e9-0000779fd18c.html?nclick_check=1


AIG to pay retention bonuses to executives

One day after announcing strict limits on salaries and bonuses for its top tier of executives, AIG revealed that some of those executives will receive millions in “retention bonuses” next year


A Joke:

Whats the difference(s) between a Somali pirate and an AIG executive?

1) A Somali pirate have to work for his money.

2) A Somali pirate is competent at his job.

K T Cat said...

Friendly fire happens. It's sad, but it's worthy of a prayer and some compassion, not a rant. It's not like the Indian Navy is out there just blasting away at everything on the water.

Anonymous said...

I live on the Kenya Coast and the best thing is that the fishing trawlers and long liners have pissed off because of piracy. The game fishing and ordinary fishing here has improved no end.
A new view on the benefits of piracy LOL....Josh

Anonymous said...

Live Piracy Map 2008

http://scenariosandstrategy.wordpress.com/2008/11/28/ahoy-there/