Will Somali Piracy Spark Further Mideast Conflict?

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal-Pioneer

The Somali pirates are becoming increasingly bold. But some ships are beginning to return fire.

An Italian cruise liner with 1,500 on board fended off a pirate attack off the coast of Somalia at the end of April, when its Israeli private security forces exchanged fire with the bandits and drove them off.

Israelis possess advanced military and security skills. And they are right to be worried about what is going on in the Indian Ocean south of their country.

All Israeli shipping that leaves the port of Eilat, or that travels through the Suez Canal, must exit the Red Sea through the Bab al-Mandab, a strait located between Yemen on the Arabian Peninsula, and Djibouti and Eritrea, north of Somalia, on the Horn of Africa.

This narrow passageway connects the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean. It lies just north of where the pirates operate.

Somalia, a country of about eight million people, has not had a functioning national government since warlords overthrew President Siad Barre in 1991. Much of the country is now run by an Islamist movement known as al-Shabaab.

Might the pirates become allied to the Islamists on the Somali mainland, who have also allowed Somalia to become a base for al-Qaeda? Washington thinks al-Qaeda recruits are training there for terror attacks. The country has become an African Afghanistan.

In the spring of 2007, fishing boats containing armed Al-Qaeda affiliates landed at the northern Somali port of Bargal and fought a battle with local police. A U.S. navy destroyer in the Red Sea fired several cruise missiles against them but their leaders escaped.

In the southern town of Baidoa, the Islamists have ordered women to wear full body veils and businesses to close for prayers. They have also attacked westerners trying to curb the problem of piracy.

Al-Shabaab claimed responsibility for a mortar attack on an American Congressman in mid-April.

"We carried out mortar attacks against the enemy of Allah who arrived to spread democracy in Somalia," Sheikh Husein Ali Fidow declared in Mogadishu, according to a BBC report.

Just as worrisome, Eritrean President Isaias Afewerki has of late developed closer economic and trade ties with Iran, and military ties followed suit. The Iranians have reportedly established a naval base overlooking the Bab al-Mandab strait.

A link between pirates and Islamists is certainly not good news. The Middle East conflict might, in consequence, spread to the horn of Africa.