Blackwater vs. Blackbeard off the coast of Africa

Europe sends warships to stop pirates off of Somalia while Blackwater offers private security for hire to shipping companies.

Editor's note: This article originally appeared in Der Spiegel.

By Spiegel staff

Read more: NATO, Politics, European Union, News, Africa, Iraq War, Blackwater

Nov. 25, 2008 |

The most important things in life are simple, at least in the world of Erik Prince. A square-jawed American with closely cropped hair, Prince served as an elite soldier in the U.S. Marines in Bosnia, Haiti and the Middle East. Given his experience, he believes that it will be relatively easy for him to distinguish between good and evil on the new battlefield, the high seas.

"If a couple of guys are sitting in a six-meter (20-foot) fishing boat, in the middle of the Gulf of Aden, and if they've got bazookas in their hands, they're clearly not out there for the fishing," says Prince, 39, the CEO of Blackwater Worldwide, the world's largest and most infamous private security firm. "You have a pretty good idea of what they're up to."

Prince is recruiting fellow former Marines to provide a new service: escorting merchant ships. In performing the job, their first step will be to issue warnings to attacking pirates through the ships' PA system. This will be followed by a few shots in the air as a deterrent. And if none of this works, the sharpshooters on board the two helicopters on Blackwater's ship, the McArthur, will do their jobs.

Up to 3,000 of his mercenaries have already been deployed to support the U.S. military in Iraq. There, they acquired the reputation of shooting first and asking questions later. This has already caused problems. In September 2007, for example, 17 civilians were killed during a Blackwater mission in Iraq.

Blackwater is now receiving inquiries from dozens of new clients, mainly shipping companies and shipping insurance companies. All of them want the same thing: for Blackwater mercenaries to guide their freighters and tankers safely past Somalia, through the world's most dangerous waters, the hunting grounds of bands of pirates armed with Kalashnikovs and grenade launchers, attacking anything that comes into their sights. In their flip-flops and inflatable plastic boats, they look more like small-time crooks, the sort hardly worth the effort of any Coast Guard vessel. And yet, in reality, these pirates are causing huge problems for the naval fleets of major powers -- and, of course, for the governments in places like Berlin, Paris and Washington.

Somali pirates have already attacked more than 90 ships this year, three times as many as in 2007. They have managed to hijack 39 freighters, tankers and fishing vessels. At least 14 of them are currently anchored, under heavy guard, off pirate villages along the coast. The ships' crews have been waiting for months for ransom money to arrive and secure their release. The United Nations estimates that shipping companies have already paid close to $31 million in ransom.

The pirates scored their biggest catch on Nov. 15. Far out in the Indian Ocean, 420 nautical miles off the coast of Somalia's neighbor Kenya, they hijacked the Saudi Arabian tanker Sirius Star, one of the world's largest, filled to capacity with more than 300,000 tons of crude oil. The pirates could threaten to unleash an oil spill bigger than anything the world has seen yet, contaminating large swaths of the ocean.

The tanker hijacking triggered crisis meetings around the world, among leaders worried that the pirates could threaten world trade and the energy supply to the West. About 95 percent of all goods traded internationally are transported by ship, and one of the key bottlenecks in shipping is the Bab al-Mandab, or "Gate of Tears," the straits at the southern tip of the Red Sea, within range of the pirates. More than 16,000 ships have to pass through the Bab al-Mandab each year.

Representatives of neighboring countries met last week in Cairo to discuss urgent measures to address the crisis. A short time earlier, European Union military officials had flown to Northwood near London to coordinate the E.U.'s first joint naval mission, in which it plans to send a number of warships to the Horn of Africa. Operation Atalanta is scheduled to begin on Dec. 8.

Four NATO ships are currently patrolling the Horn of Africa, protecting, on behalf of the United Nations, freighters carrying food cargos. Ships belonging to the E.U.'s Atalanta mission will replace the NATO vessels.

But NATO is prepared to stay longer, given the E.U.'s slow rate of progress. Last week, it was still uncertain whether E.U. military officials in Brussels would even be ready to submit their operations plan by Dec. 5.

Laws and mandates are not the only sticking point for the Western military forces, which, whether under NATO or U.N. command, are simply in too weak a position. The pirates are fast, "professional people," says French Vice Admiral Gérard Valin. A warship faces the difficult task of intercepting the pirates in the critical 15 minutes they need to board a ship. Once the pirates have taken hostages, the narrow window for taking military action has closed.

A normal frigate traveling at full throttle can reach speeds of up to 30 nautical miles an hour, or about eight nautical miles in 15 minutes. This, says Valin, is a minuscule deployment radius. "When the pirates see a warship on the horizon, they know that they have all the time in the world." Based on Valin's calculations, one warship can only secure 1 to 2 percent of the waters off Somalia.

Commodore Keith Winstanley of Her Majesty's Royal Navy says: "The pirates will go where we are not. If we are patrolling in the Gulf of Aden, they'll go to Mogadishu. If we are in Mogadishu, they will be in the Gulf of Aden." To address this challenge, an American naval officer recommends that the shipping companies actively arrange for their own protection. This means traveling in convoys, and using defensive measures such as barbed wire, electric fences and sonic canons. Ship owners could also hire private mercenaries for their protection.

The U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet has had ships patrolling the Horn of Africa for many years. The Russian frigate Neustrashimy also patrols the waters off Somalia, and Moscow is now sending more ships to the region.

"We should have no illusions"

These are all well-intentioned efforts, say experts, but they note that this is hardly the way to secure Somalia's 1,860 miles of coastline. And controlling the Indian Ocean, where the Sirius Star was hijacked, is an impossible task. "We should have no illusions," says Valin, the commander of the French Navy in the Indian Ocean.

If the Russians and a handful of officials at the U.N. had their way, the whole thing could escalate into a war. Dmitry Rogozin, Moscow's ambassador to NATO, has called upon the E.U. and the Western alliance to "extinguish" the pirates' stronghold on land. Rogozin proposes a limited "coastal operation," and argues that this would be the only way to get rid of the pirates.

Although he is probably right, the idea of limited operations in a country like Somalia, brimming with hatred and violence, is impossible.

Western troops would be drawn into the horror of a civil war raging among warlords, Islamists and clans that has already claimed the lives of tens of thousands of people -- the same adventure that ended in a nightmare for the Americans in 1994. At that time, U.S. soldiers, sent in to help people in war-torn Somalia, were eventually forced to withdraw under a hail of bullets. In Mogadishu, a mob triumphantly dragged the body of a killed U.S. soldier through the streets.

Next page: The pirates have spies in port cities like Dubai. Their operations may also be coordinated and controlled by powerful backers