Friday, October 31, 2008

War At Sea: Piracy And The Rise Of Private Navies


WNU Editor: This post was posted a week ago .... but it is still relevant today.

From Pundita:

This story is so 21st Century in so many ways. The Somali pirates who captured the MV Faina are still in a standoff with the Russian and U.S. navies. Tomorrow it'll be a month that the pirates captured the ship -- the one with 33 battle tanks and large heavy weapons and ammunitions caches aboard.

When last I read the Russians are talking about storming the ship and the pirates are threatening to kill the crew.

Meanwhile, everyone's still trying to understand why Kenya bought those tanks from Ukraine; the gossip is that they were trans-shipping them to southern Sudan although when last I heard they're hotly denying.

I wonder what Lord Avebury and Baroness Cox are up to these days.

The question is why Ukraine's government didn't send a guard ship to accompany a ship loaded with weapons that they knew was sailing into pirate waters. The answer seems to be that they didn't want to draw international attention to the Faina's cargo.

Read more ....

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