As Standoff Continues, Somalia Permits Foreign Navies to Attack Pirates

"The international community has permission to fight with the pirates," the head of Somalia's Foreign Ministry told The Associated Press.

Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf added, "The government has lost patience and now wants to fight pirates with the help of the international community," he said in a radio address on Wednesday.

The MV Faina has been held by about 50 pirates since Thursday. Its manifest includes 33 Russian-made battle tanks, anti-aircraft guns and a large quantity of ammunition.

Several U.S. Navy vessels have encircled the ship for days, but have not engaged the pirates, allowing negotiations to proceed. American officials have not released details about the number of ships involved or their exact location.

Aboard the ship, one crew member has already died of a supposed heart attack, and there have been unconfirmed reports of mutiny within the pirate ranks. A Kenyan official said three pirates were killed in a shootout while they tried to decide whether to surrender or not, but the pirates have denied that.

Somalia, which has been without a stable government since 1991, has become a haven for pirates in the last few years. More than 60 ships have been attacked off its coast since January, up from just a handful during the same period in 2004.

The hijackers have demanded $20 million to release the ship and the hostage crew, but some officials are concerned that they want more than money.

Western governments have long suspected that Somali pirates may have ties to al-Qaida or to Islamic insurgents fighting the government in Mogadishu.

American military officials said they would not allow the pirates to keep or unload the weapons aboard the Faina.

"Our intent is for the ship not to offload any of its cargo," U.S. Navy spokesman Lt. Nathan Christensen told The New York Times.

But the pirates contend they have no intention of arming insurgents.

"We don't want these weapons to go to anyone in Somalia," pirate spokesman Sugule Ali told The Times. "We are not going to offload the weapons. We just want the money."

While warning not to "believe a word they say," former U.S. Ambassador to Ethiopia David Shinn of the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University, says that the pirates are "nothing but hooligans and thieves," but added they have "nothing to do with terrorism."

Ted Dagne, an Africa specialist at the Congressional Research Services, who last visited Somalia in January, agreed. He told the NewsHour that when the insurgent Islamic Courts Union briefly controlled Somalia in 2006, piracy "went down completely, the insurgents literally went after them."

"These are young Somalis, not organized or political," he said. "[They] grow up in poverty and violence, they know how to shoot, they know violence."

Still, Jonathan Stevenson of the U.S. Naval War College, said the U.S. would probably not find it acceptable to "just let the Somalis go." But Stevenson does not predict a battle; instead, he imagines the navy will pursue a "maritime siege" strategy, in which the U.S. would cut off the pirates and wait until they give up.

"That country doesn't need any more sources of firepower," he added.

Even as the negotiations and threats of military actions continued, reports about where the Faina's military cargo was headed continued to be debated. Officially, the tanks were meant for the Kenyan government, but Western diplomats, military officials, arms experts and the pirates themselves claim otherwise. Most agree the likely destination was southern Sudan, to supply the rebel group which fought a decades-long civil war with the central government that ended in 2005.

Kenya usually supplies itself with American or British military hardware and has no history of using Russian equipment.

"I can tell you these tanks were not for Kenya," a Western diplomat told the Times on the condition of anonymity.

But the Kenyan government denied this; a spokesman told the Times that they "buy weapons all the time. I don't see what the big deal is." The Russian-made tanks were cheaper, he explained.

In June, the U.N. Security Council passed a resolution allowing foreign warships to enter Somali territorial waters and use "all necessary means" to tackle piracy.

While Shinn predicts a greater international military presence in Somali waters, he acknowledges that piracy will not go away until its root cause --poverty and lawlessness-- are addressed.

"It's a part of the world where life is hard and cheap," Shinn said. "They're willing to take very high risks for very high rewards, and [with piracy] they figured out a way to do that."