Update 4/15/2009 Pirates launched a grenade attack against a second US cargo ship off Somalia on Wednesday “in retaliation” for the deaths of their comrades during the rescue of American cargo captain Richard Phillips. Somali pirates were back to business as usual Tuesday, defiantly seizing four more ships with 60 hostages after U.S. sharpshooters rescued an American freighter captain. “No one can deter us,” one bandit boasted. The freed skipper, Richard Phillips, will return home to the United States on Wednesday, after reuniting with his 19-man crew in the Kenyan port of Mombasa, according to the shipping company Maersk Line Ltd. The U.S. and its allies battled Somalia’s pirates on two fronts Wednesday, with French forces seizing a bandit mother ship and Washington seeking to keep the marauders from their spoils. Another U.S. freighter headed to port with armed sailors aboard after pirates damaged it with gunshots and grenades 
Update 4/12/2009 Capt. Richard Phillips was rescued and freed unharmed after being kidnapped by Somali based pirates. Phillips who had been held captive for five days in a life boat by Somalia pirates as U.S. military ships surrounded the area so that the pirates could not escape with their hostage. Captain Phillips was taken when the pirates attempted to seize his vessel the Maersk Alabama. Capt. Richard Phillips’ crew, who said they were safe after he offered himself to the pirates as a hostage, erupted in cheers aboard their ship docked in Mombasa, Kenya. Some waved an American flag and fired a flare in celebration. Three of the Somalia pirates were killed in the rescued and one is being held as a prisoner.

The rescue was a dramatic blow to the pirates who have preyed on international shipping and hold more than a dozen ships with about 230 foreign sailors. But it is unlikely to do much to stop the region’s growing pirate threat which has transformed one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes into one of its most dangerous as a result of the constant hijackings and actions of the Pirates based in Somalia..

Abdullahi Lami, one of the pirates holding the Greek ship anchored in the Somali town of Gaan, said: “Every country will be treated the way it treats us. In the future, America will be the one mourning and crying,” he told The Associated Press. “We will retaliate (for) the killings of our men.” Jamac Habeb, a 30-year-old self-proclaimed pirate, told the AP from one of Somalia’s piracy hubs, Eyl, that: “From now on, if we capture foreign ships and their respective countries try to attack us, we will kill them (the hostages).” “Now they became our number one enemy,” Habeb said of U.S. forces.

How The Conflict Started

On Wednesday Somalia based pirates attempted to seize the crew and cargo of the Maersk Alabama, a US based cargo ship carrying aid for Somalia and Kenya among other containers. The attack began early yesterday when the Alabama was hijacked about 300 miles south-east of Eyl off Somalia’s eastern coast. This is the first U.S. ship and crew that the Somalia Pirates have attempted to hijack. The first encounter with Americans did not go so well for the pirates as the 20 man crew who been trained to deal with such a situation ended up foiling the high seas hijackers that have been so successful in the past.

The four hijackers armed with Kalashnikovs were successful in boarding the vessel but the crew was able to overpower one of the pirates and regain control over the ship. The remaining three fled off taking the captain, Richard Phillips an American as a hostage. A spokesman for Maersk, the largest container shipping company in the world, said that Phillips was believed to be unharmed at that time. His family had gathered at his farmhouse in Vermont waiting for news. The Alabama was the sixth ship to be hijacked off Somalia’s Indian Ocean coast in a week. The surge in attacks has coincided with a return to calm seas after the monsoon period, and has seen the main pirate gangs shift their focus away from their usual hunting ground in the Gulf of Aden, off northern Somalia, which is now patrolled by at least 15 warships in separate EU, US and Nato-led forces.

According to second mate Ken Quinn, who spoke by telephone to CNN, the pirates sank their speedboat shortly after boarding the Alabama early on Wednesday. The crew managed to regain control of the ship from the pirates by “brute force”, according to another crew member’s account. Phillips is reported to have convinced the gunmen to board the lifeboat after agreeing to go with them, in order to secure the safety of his fellow sailors. When the pirates first appeared, the Alabama crew, conscious that the nearest US naval vessel was more than 300 miles away, took evasive action for three to five hours to win time, but the four pirates eventually boarded just before dawn.

On April 8, 2009, the USS Bainbridge was dispatched to the Gulf of Aden in response to a hostage situation. The warship reached the Maersk Alabama early on April 9. The pirates are reportedly floating nearby in the ship’s lifeboat, out of fuel, while they continue to hold the ship’s captain hostage.

It appears Phillips took action as soon as pirates began to swarm aboard. According to conversations with the crews family members Phillips radioed his crew and told them to lock themselves away in a room, then faced the pirates himself. “He said the pirates were desperate,” said Zoya Quinn, the wife of the ship’s second mate. “They were going all over the stairs, back and forth, trying to find them, and they couldn’t.” How Phillips was taken, and then how the crew overpowered the pirates, is still unclear. At some point, the crew ended up capturing one of the pirates and making him their own hostage. “The crew was holding a pirate, and they were supposed to trade for Phillips. The Somalis didn’t go through with their end of the deal. They kept Richard,” another sister-in-law, Lea Coggio, told the Los Angeles Times.

History Of Somalia Pirates

Somali pirates have received over US$150 million during the 12 months prior to November 2008 according to a report done by the BBC. The seizures of aid ships in one of the busiest supply channels in the world has been under increasing threat by both organized and rouge groups that have demanded their ransoms from both governments and private companies that own the vessels. Though piracy off the Somalia and Kenya coast has been an issue since Somalia unrest that followed the civil war in the war torn lawless country the activity has increased drastically in the past few years with 2008 being a bounty year for the high seas thieve.

Al Shabaab:  AKA Al Qaeda in Somalia, “The Youth”

On May 1, 2008 a U.S. air strike hit it’s target in Somalia.  It was Aden Hashi Ayro, who led al Shabaab militants that have been blamed for attacks on government troops and their Ethiopian allies that have assisted the Somali government in the past fight against the Islamist militant group.  The death is being taken very hard by members who promise to carry on their fight with a new leader that is chosen.  Somalia-based al Qaeda operatives were suspected of carrying out two suicide attacks in Kenya that killed 224 people at the U.S. embassy in 1998 and 15 at an Israeli-owned beach hotel in 2002.  The embassy attacks led  President Bill Clinton to the final decision to bomb al Qaeda training camps in Sudan and Afghanistan where militants like Ayro later trained and gained expertise in Islamic warfare under al Qaeda central leadership.  President Bush has ordered strikes in the region in the past few years that have targeted personnel as well as other military targets inside Somalia.  The State department has long believed that Somalia, especially the Mogadishu area, is a breeding ground for Islamic terrorist fighters.   On February 29, 2008, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice designated al-Shabaab (aka al-Shabab, aka Shabaab, aka the Youth, aka Mujahidin al-Shabaab Movement, aka Mujahideen Youth Movement, aka Mujahidin Youth Movement, aka MYM, aka Harakat Shabab al-Mujahidin, aka Hizbul Shabaab, aka Hisb’ul Shabaab, aka al-Shabaab al-Islamiya, aka Youth Wing, aka al Shabaab al-Islaam, aka al-Shabaab al-Jihaad, aka the Unity of Islamic Youth) as a Foreign Terrorist Organization under Section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act

Sheikh Muktar Robow, an al-Shabaab leader, apparently welcomes State’s designation  as he stated to the BBC:

“Al-Shabab feels honoured to be included on the list. We are good Muslims and the Americans are infidels. We are on the right path,” he said.

Who is Al Shabaab?

Al-Shabaab is a violent and brutal extremist group with a number of individuals affiliated with al-Qaida. Many of its senior leaders are believed to have trained and fought with al-Qaida in Afghanistan.  Al  Shabaab is the armed wing of the Somalia Islamic Courts Council that took over most of southern Somalia for six months in 2006, until government troops backed by Ethiopian forces routed it in a two-week war. 

Al-Shabaab has used intimidation and violence to undermine the Somali government and threatened civil society activists working to bring about peace through political dialogue and reconciliation. The group scattered leaflets on the streets of Mogadishu warning participants in last year’s reconciliation conference that they intended to bomb the conference venue. Al-Shabaab promised to shoot anyone planning to attend the conference and to blow up delegates’ cars and hotels. Although al-Shabaab did not carry out these particular threats, the group has claimed responsibility for shooting Deputy District Administrators, as well as several bombings and shootings in Mogadishu targeting Ethiopian troops and Somali government officials. Al-Shabaab’s leader, Aden Hashi Ayrow, has ordered his fighters to attack African Union (AU) troops based in Mogadishu. Ayrow has also called for foreign fighters to join al-Shabaab in their fight in Somalia. Given the threat that al-Shabaab poses, the designation will raise awareness of al-Shabaab’s activities and help undercut the group’s ability to threaten targets in and destabilize the Horn of Africa region.

Leadership of Al Shabaab
The leader of al Shabaab until early this morning was Aden Hashi Ayro (Aden Hashi Farah “Eyrow” (also spelled Ayrow ). He was a member of the Ayr subclan in Somailia. He joined the Islamic Court in the mid 1990’s. He would attend training camps in Afghanistan and was trained in explosives and insurgency tactics that would assist the Islamic Courts Union after his return to Somalia in 2003. Al Shabaab was initially set up to protect leaders and group members of the Somali Islamic Courts and to carry our assassinations of foreign targets. Ayro was hand picked to go to Afghanistan by Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys. Aweys was the leader of the Shura Islamic Courts Union of Somalia. This group aim is to create am Islamic state in Somalia that is ruled by Islamic sharia law. Aweys is believed to be part of the group that carried out the bombings of the two U.S. bombings in 1998. The group has looted villages and towns leaving a path of destruction in it’s wake since it began offensive operations. It is thought that Ayro sent hundreds of his Islamic fighters to Lebanon to fight against Israel in 2006. This group has a blend of Al-Itihaad al-Islamiya members that are associated closely with al Qaeda. This fact concludes that a new leader will be named quickly with a revenge attack to follow as a show of force.

A quick video covering the current situation of terrorist groups including al Shabaab and their attempts to continue to disrupt Somalia.  The Islamic extremist groups are attempting to overthrow the current government and to instill Islamic law throughout Somalia.  In their quest they have murdered, looted and left a destructive path wherever they attack.  Islamic Terrorists are growing and well established threat that has been brewing since the early 1990's in Somalia.