A bizarre development in the story of the pirates operating off the coast of Somalia:
Military.com has the exclusive interview with Ms. Ballarin, definitely worth reading. But the real news here is that the pirates, with their seizure of the Saudi-owned supertanker, seemed to have crossed the Islamist insurgent group Al Shabab, successor to the Islamic Courts Union that was toppled by an American-backed Ethiopian invasion.
It seems obvious enough that the Saudis have some kind of relationship with this group. That concerns me. Al Shabab has been designated as a terrorist organization by the United States State Department. One wonders how much money the Saudis gave these terrorists in exchange for a little help protecting the sea lanes in the Gulf of Aden and further out into the Indian Ocean. And if the terrorists are running some kind of racket here, shaking down the Saudis for help with keeping the pirates under control — isn’t that our racket? What is the United States Navy doing if not protecting sea lanes and insuring the free flow of commerce on the world’s oceans? Interestingly, there is a current on the left that would welcome a return of Islamist rule in Somalia for the measure of stability it would bring — even if that stability allowed the state to become a safe-haven for al Qaeda affiliated terrorists. There are others who think we should embrace the pirates as the “secular, liberal capitalists of Somalia,” who might serve as a bulwark against what now seems to be the inevitable return of Islamist rule. Must we accept a choice between pirates and terrorists? Shouldn’t we be for killing them all?
