Somalians aggrieved at U.S. over killing of pirates, threaten revenge

Everyone today speaks the language of victimology and grievance—even criminals, even African pirates and their sympathizers. It reminds me of black America’s blissful reaction to the O.J. Simpson acquittal, which blacks justified on the basis that the police were their enemies and therefore black suspects ought to be acquitted even if they are stone cold guilty. Much of black America thus showed itself to have an essentially criminal mentality, and not different in kind from the Somalian pirates.

I’ve abridged the story from Bloomberg to cut out the endlessly recycled information from earlier stories.

Somali Pirates Vow Revenge on U.S.,
By Hamsa Omar and Gregory Viscusi

April 13 (Bloomberg)—Somali pirates vowed to target American and French ships to avenge the death of five colleagues in two recent rescue operations, including the freeing of a U.S. captain yesterday.

“France and the U.S. will encounter unforgettable lessons,” Mohamed Hashi Yasin, a self-declared pirate spokesman, said by mobile phone from the port town of Eyl. “We will treat every country as they treat us.”…

“We will take quick revenge on American ships if we don’t receive apologies,” Yusuf Mohamed Mahdi, who identified himself as a pirate commander, said in a separate telephone interview today from Eyl. “We will not only target ships and crew in the sea, but also American agencies’ staff in Somalia.”

The French and U.S. operations didn’t deter pirates from striking elsewhere. An Italian tugboat was seized two days ago with 16 crew, including 10 Italians, five Romanians and one Croatian. It’s being shadowed by the Italian frigate Maestrale, which is in the area as part of the European Union’s Atalanta anti-piracy mission, the Italian defense ministry says….

Attacks have surged this past month as pirates strike off the east coast of Somalia to avoid naval patrols in the Gulf of Aden. Pirates have assaulted 64 ships so far this year, taking 19 of them, according to the U.S. Navy. A total of 15 ships and more than 230 seamen are being held by Somali pirates in various ports along the country’s lawless coasts….

Omar Jamal, director of Somali Justice Advocacy Center in St. Paul, Minnesota [emphasis added] said Somali press reports identified the captured pirate as 16-year old Mohamed Abdi from the breakaway Puntland region.

Yasin said pirates are angered by the U.S. operation because talks were underway to release Phillips.

“The Americans broke the peace process and killed our teenagers aggressively,” Yasin said. “They tricked us and opted out of the peace deal.”

Yasin’s version of events agreed with that of Ecoterra, an East African environmental group, and of an elder reached by phone. In an e-mail, it said negotiations between elders in Somalia and the U.S. Navy were stalled because the Americans insisted on arresting the pirates, while the elders refused though they promised to punish them themselves.

Ali Suriyan, an elder in the town of Gara’ad, said elders were waiting for a U.S. boat that was to carry them to the lifeboat to exchange Phillips for the pirates

“As we were waiting, the Americans preceded the decision with this terrible action,” he said….

In the case of the French yacht, French negotiators never bothered to involve village elders, Ecoterra said. Defense Minister Herve Morin said at a press conference that the French commandos attacked because they picked up threats that the pirates might execute the hostages. Ecoterra said the pirates would have only harmed the hostages in the case of a French assault.

The four surviving hostages, who included a 3-year-old boy, arrived back in France yesterday. At the request of their families, no TV cameras were present as they landed at an army base near Paris.

The body of the fifth hostage, Florent Lemacon, 27, the father of the child, will be returned to France later this week. An autopsy should determine if he was killed in crossfire during the three-minute operation, or if he was executed by the pirates.

Somalia has lacked a functioning central government since the ouster of Mohamed Said Barre in 1991, and pirates are able to operate out of its lawless seashore, which is almost as long as the U.S.’s Eastern seaboard.

Captain Shane Murphy, the Alabama’s second in command, asked at a press conference today that Obama take further steps to combat piracy.

“I appeal to President Obama to use all resources to end this scourge of Somali piracy,” the 33-year-old said in Mombasa. “It’s a crisis, wake up.”

The Maersk Alabama is operated by the Maersk Line, a Norfolk, Virginia-based U.S. unit of A.P. Moeller-Maersk A/S, based in Copenhagen. The boat is in Mombasa, Kenya and the crew isn’t being allowed to return home yet because Federal Bureau of Investigation agents have deemed it a crime zone. Murphy wouldn’t give details of how the crew wrestled back control of the boat from the pirates.

Dimitri K. writes:

It all becames so absurd, that I hope even some “centrist” Americans will start to hesitate. After all, it’s an American ship attacked. Can’t be all our guilt.

David B. writes:

This report tells us that the on-site Seal commander gave the order to fire. This took moral courage on his part. If things had gone wrong, if the captain and several American sailors had been killed, all of the blame would have gone to the Seal commander. The top admirals in the U.S. Navy would have seen to that. Obama will get some credit for the success, but it would have been heavily reported that he didn’t give the order if it had gone wrong.

By the way, before Sunday, I glanced at the Huffington Post’s coverage. Several columnists pronounced that what we call piracy is just the way Somalians go about their everyday business.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at April 13, 2009 02:45 PM | Send