It’s time to add terrorism on the seas to the long list of perils the United States faces as it careens into the 21st Century — this time the ages-old plague of pirates at sea taking on a new twist: there has been an attempt to hijack an American cruise ship and shots were fired:
Pirates chased and shot at a U.S. cruise liner with more than 1,000 people on board but failed to hijack the vessel as it sailed along a corridor patrolled by international warships, a maritime official said Tuesday.
The liner, carrying 656 international passengers and 399 crew members, was sailing through the Gulf of Aden on Sunday when it encountered six bandits in two speedboats, said Noel Choong who heads the International Maritime Bureau’s piracy reporting center in Malaysia.
The pirates fired at the passenger liner but the larger boat was faster than the pirates’ vessels, Choong said.
“It is very fortunate that the liner managed to escape,” he said, urging all ships to remain vigilant in the area.
The International Maritime Bureau, which fights maritime crime, did not know how many cruise liners use these waters.
The U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet, based in Bahrain, said it was aware of the failed hijacking but had no further details.
CBS News notes that this is a major SHIFT: an attempt to capture a fast, cruise ship — packed with literally tons of passengers:
But the pirates may be biting off more than they can chew. They’re irking many nations, including Iran which is considering military action due to one of its ships that was captured:
Iran says it will consider a military option against pirates, who hijacked an Iranian ship in the Gulf of Aden taking its crew hostage.
Parviz Sarvari, a member of the Iranian parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, said Iran considers a diplomatic solution to the issue reached through international cooperation the better option.
“However, the military approach is among the options that Iran’s National Security Commission is mulling over,” Sarvari cautioned.
Earlier in November, Somali pirates captured the Hong Kong-flagged cargo ship Delight, which was chartered by an Iranian company, along with its 25 crewmembers in the Gulf of Aden. The ship was carrying 36,000 metric tons of wheat.
The Iranians have been critical of the American response to piracy to date — although look for the American stance to possibly change now that an American ship has been directly attacked in a hijack attempt:
The Iranian official said the United States indifference to the matter translates into showing a green light to organized crime in Somalia and its territorial waters.
Sarvari warned that an apathetic approach toward piracy would challenge global economy, leading to economic recession and subjecting prices to fluctuation.
Part of the problem: piracy’s context has changed. For years it was glorified in literature and by Hollywood and up until recently had been considered strangely romantic. But in the context of the 21st Century, and its potential to be manipulated or used by terrorists, it has now morphed into nothing less than undisputed high seas terrorism — and the international community is taking note:
[This] month, the European Union takes over the NATO mission, sending four ships to replace the four currently patrolling under the NATO flag.
The Europeans say they may send more ships if necessary but caution such a move would take time because of the need to prepare boats and crew trained for the North Atlantic to operate in the Indian Ocean’s equatorial waters.
Currently, patrols work under a restrictive U.N. mandate that allows force only in the case of direct attacks on the 20,000 cargo ships transiting through the area annually.
“They can patrol. They can deter. They can even stop attacks that are happening, but what they do not do is then board the ship that has been hijacked elsewhere to try and free it,” NATO spokesman James Appathurai said.
The U.S. Navy is similarly constrained.
“We have a full range of options … that allow us to stop pirates from attacking merchant vessels,” said Cmdr. Jane Campbell, a spokeswoman for the 5th Fleet in Bahrein. “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.”
Responding to the crisis, the Security Council on Thursday imposed new sanctions on pirates, arms smugglers, and perpetrators of instability in Somalia, but stopped short of allowing warships to intercept seized ships.
Strategies proposed to combat the piracy scourge include attacking the bandits on land, arming merchant vessels, and rerouting ships away from the volatile region near Somalia for a massive detour around southern Africa.
Experts reject such measures as unrealistic.
“The only solution I see is a coordinated effort by various naval forces. The problem is that no single country wants to take the lead,” said Fred Burton, a vice president of Stratfor, a U.S.-based intelligence risk assessment agency.
Expect piracy to be in the news in 2009 — and some kind of strong reaction to it by either one or more nations, or a team of nations. And expect pirates’ efforts to get a big “get” to continue as well.
UPDATE: Be sure to read Ed Morrissey. Here’s part of what he writes:
As the AP notes, this isn’t the first time pirates have attempted this kind of operation on a cruise liner. In 2005, the Seabourn Spirit made headlines not just for outracing the pirates, but also for its notable non-lethal weapon. They aimed a long-range acoustic device — a kind of sound gun — that focuses extremely powerful sound waves on people in order to temporarily disable them. That makes for a good getaway, but doesn’t do much to discourage pirates from attacking again.
The best method to discourage pirates is to sink their ships. However, we have to make sure that the ship we sink actually belongs to pirates before sending it to the bottom of the ocean.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.