Iraqi Forces Pursued Robbers of Cargo Ships in Gulf
By BEN LANDO of Iraq Oil Report
Published August 11, 2010
At about 4am on Aug. 8, in the dark waters of the Gulf near Iraq’s primary oil-export terminal, a small pirate vessel accosted an American cargo ship. Two men wielding AK-47s boarded the Sagamore, held the crew at gunpoint, and robbed them of money, cell phones, and computers.
It was one of four nighttime pirate raids perpetrated that morning, between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m., in waters guarded by the U.S. Navy. According to the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet, based in Bahrain, the other ships targeted were the Arminia, sailing out of Antigua and Barbuda; the Crystal Wave, of North Korea; and the Sana Star, of Syria.
“They were all located within general vicinity of the al-Basra oil terminal,” which is about 19 miles from the port of Umm Qasr, said Fifth Fleet spokesman Lt. John Fage. This confirmsearlier reports that the ships were anchored in the waters of Khor Abdullah, an entryway to the port.
After receiving a distress call from the Sagamore at 4:35 a.m., the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet deployed a guided missile destroyer and a U.S. Coast Guard cutter to ensure the ships’ security.
“Even if you have ships in the area, they can’t be next to every single ship in the area,” said Fage. “It’s a large body of water, and they can’t be everywhere all at once.”
The U.S. Navy then notified the Iraqi Coast Guard, which sent four boats in search of the pirates, according to Col. Mehdi Ahmed, the deputy commander of those forces. Those boats apparently pursued the pirates to a shoreline area dense with reeds.
At that point, official accounts differ. According to Ahmed, the Coast Guard stopped the suspect boat, but the pirates themselves escaped into the marsh. According to the media director of Iraqi ports, Anmar al-Safi, “the Coast Guard managed to apprehend those looters and confiscated stolen stuff.”
Iraqi officials all downplayed the incident as an isolated act of petty criminals.
“Describing those thieves as ‘pirates’ is not a common thing for us,” said Capt. Ma’an al-Basri of the Iraqi Coast Guard. “They’re only a bunch of looters in the waters of the Gulf and Shat al-Arab.”
Al-Safi, media director of the Iraqi ports, agreed: “What happened was just an ordinary robbery. We’re not in Somalia!”
According to the Fifth Fleet, their patrols are continuing and commercial traffic has been unaffected, despite this incident and a recent, suspected terrorist attack on a Japanese vessel in the Straits of Hormuz, which also falls within the Fifth Fleet’s area of responsibility.
“We’re maintaining a high state of vigilance, as we always have,” said Lt. Fage. He added that the robbery doesn’t officially qualify as piracy because it didn’t take place in international waters.
Iraqi staff contributing from Basra are anonymous for their security. Ben Van Heuvelen contributed from New York.
