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Saturday, December 03, 2005

Privateers

Tolerating piracy in the Horn of Africa region while we have interests and assets there seemed ridiculous to me.

Apparently, since private enterprise navies attack civilian ships (we call them pirates), we are sending private enterprise ships to combat the pirates (call them privateers, I guess). Top Cat Marine Security has a two-year contract with us:

While no one is saying it, the United States is basically taking over coastal security duties for Somalia. The Transitional Government there has no money for this sort of thing, so it appears that the U.S. is picking up the tab. This could get interesting, for the Somali warlords who operate along the coast are not going to take kindly to some foreigners trying to interfere. The first priority of the new coast guard is to put the pirate gangs, and especially the two larger "mother ships", that are supporting attacks far out at sea, out of action.

Interesting.