Wednesday, January 07, 2009

Shebab of the Sea



There has been a recent spate of piracy along the Red Sea, which caused considerable disruption to oil transportation routes from Middle East to the rest of the world. The acts drew worldwide condemnation of the pirates, who were portrayed as uneducated thugs who would sooner have caused trouble on land if not at sea. So I was rather surprised when AFP managed to catch hold of a pirate who was in the midst of hijacking some Saudi tanker, and actually coaxed some gems out of the pirate himself.
"We are the Shebab of the sea and we can't be scared of the Shebab of the land. Every Somali has great respect for the holy kingdom of Saudi Arabia. We have nothing against them but unfortunately what happened was just business for us and I hope the Saudis will understand."--Mohamed Said, pirate

How thoughtfully worded. So the hijacks were simply unfortunate incidents which he would rather not have happened but for the economic circumstances of the day. And for a moment, I could just imagine him whipping his fellow pirates into a gleeful song and dance with "We are the Shebabs of the Sea!" These pirates must be delightful company.

And some of the hijacks have turned up interesting returns. A cargo of Ukrainian tanks and missiles bound for Sudan insurgencies have been recovered from the pirates by the US Navy, but that would only mean that the arms smugglers are now cleared to continue their illicit business. "I certainly won't speculate on where they might end up," 5th Fleet spokesman Lieutenant Nathan Christensen says. "We want this to end as peacefully as possible." An absurd job on murky waters, these US Navy law enforcers on the Red Sea.

5 comments:

dappled grass said...

haha, the journalists are quite daring eh. to drop by the pirate ship for a chit chat.

Required field left blank said...

At first I tot so too, but later I realised they actually communicated via phone. It isn't difficult to call them because the phone numbers of those large tankers are definitely listed somewhere.

I'm sure you can call them too, if you want to.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/01/world/africa/01pirates.html?_r=1

avinash said...

Ha. It's always "just business"

Anonymous said...

Ah.... I see u have included a Lucasarts Great... I'm sure Guybrush Threepwood would have come up with a much wittier response to his piratey ways!

Required field left blank said...

Hey! I know who you are. You are a dirty poker colluder with that piratey mate of yours!