IMB Live Piracy Map 2009
I was reading this CBS World News blog article discussing a new audiotape from the senior Al Qaeda operative Sa’id Ali Jabir Al Khathim Al Shihri (aka Abu Sufian al-Azdi), who you may have heard about considering he was a 6 year resident of Guantanamo Bay before being released to Saudi Arabia last year. After serving his time, being released in Saudi Arabia, and participating in a repatriation and rehabilitation program, Shihri has popped up in Yemen calling on Somali jihadists to attack “crusader” forces at sea in the Gulf of Aden. The audiotape appears to be a response to the US and French actions against piracy last week. The article discusses the typical Al Qaeda rhetoric then states:
Al Qaeda does have links to Islamic extremist groups operating in Somalia but, thus far, piracy and al Qaeda’s brand of terrorism have remained largely separate. The pirates in the Gulf of Aden have always sought ransom payments or loot — they have not been motivated by Islamic fundamentalism.
That is exactly how I have come to understand the relationship between the Al Qaeda terrorism and pirates in Somalia. However, I had never seen what was reported in the very next paragraph.
A maritime intelligence source tells CBS News correspondent Sheila MacVicar that interaction between pirate groups and Somalia’s al Qaeda-linked groups was first noticed about nine months ago, and has been on the rise.
The source said it was now “inconceivable” to Western intelligence agencies that al Qaeda would not be getting some financial reward from the successful hijackings. The question, says the intelligence source, is whether that cut will remain sufficient to keep the Islamic extremist group satisfied as piracy gains public attention, and bigger ransoms.
For at least the past 18 months I have been trying to find a hard news article, not a political opinion website, but a hard new report that offers some detail on a link between pirate groups and Al Qaeda-linked groups, and I have never previously found a news report like this. We know they both operate in the same black market space in Somalia, but this ‘interaction’ that began ‘nine months ago’ is new information. It is also very interesting, because if this relationship began 9 months ago, around August of 2008, that would be very significant.
Lets examine piracy in 2008:
January – 1 hijacking
February – 1 hijacking, 1 attack
March – 2 attacks
April – 2 hijackings, 4 attacks
May – 3 hijackings, 4 attacks
June – 1 hijacking, 1 attack
July – 1 hijacking, 1 attack
**** Interaction between Pirate groups and Somalia’s al Qaeda-linked groups reportedly begins ****
August – 7 hijackings, 1 attacks
September -9 hijackings, 9 attacks
October – 5 hijackings, 7 attacks
November 9 hijackings, 12 attacks
December 2 hijackings 11 attacks
So far between January and April 16th, 2009 there have been 19 hijackings and 80 attacks, clearly an enormous increase over last year around the same time.
Are we sure we fully understand the relationship between al Qaeda-linked groups and pirate groups, because I find it difficult to believe it is just a coincidence that the two groups just happened to form a link at the exact same time Somali piracy exploded in that region. I also think the timing is interesting in that just 4 months prior, in April of 2008, Al Qaeda called for naval terror cells to be established around the Arabian Peninsula.
On April 26, 2008, the Islamist website Al-Ikhlas posted an article from Jihad Press, an e-journal reportedly linked to Al-Qaeda, which urges the mujahideen to establish naval terror cells. The article argues that gaining control over the seas and sea passages – especially around the Arabian Peninsula – is a vital step towards renewing the global Islamic caliphate…
Finally, the article stresses that the seas off the coast of Yemen, namely the Gulf of Aden, the Bab Al-Mandeb strait and the Red Sea are of supreme strategic importance in the campaign to expel the enemy from key locations. If the enemy loses these key areas, it explains, “he will not be able to defend himself on land and [to protect] his naval bases from the mujahideens’ attack.”
Hmm. If you click the image above, it will take you to the IMB Live Piracy Map. Does anyone else see that big cluster of pirate activity off the coast of Yemen, in the Gulf of Aden, the Bab Al-Mandeb strait, and the Red Sea where most of the piracy has been concentrated since August of 2008?
That is what I’d call a very strange coincidence. Does CBS even realize that one implication of this information, if accurate, is that the al Qaeda-linked groups in Somalia are potentially the primary reason for increased piracy off Somalia?
I think that would be important information.
