FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 2010
KLMNO Marines seize ship frompirates
Commandos overpower nine Somali hijackers, coax crew out of hiding
BY CRAIGWHITLOCK U.S.Marines rescuedahijacked
German-owned cargo ship off the coast of Yemen on Thursday, boardingthe vesselasdawnbroke and apprehending nine pirates without firing a shot. TwodozenMarine commandos
took control of theMagellan Star, a container ship en route from Spain to Vietnam, by swarming the decks and surrounding the armed pirates before they had time to react, U.S. military offi- cials said. The pirates, all Somali nationals, will remain in custody of theU.S.Navy until officials can decide whether they should be prosecuted or released. “The pirates were definitely
overmatched,” Vice Adm. Mark I. Fox, commander of the U.S. Fifth Fleet in Bahrain, said in a tele- phone interview. The rescue occurred less than
24 hours after pirates had cap- tured the ship, the latest inawave ofmaritime hijackings in theGulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean, whichcontainsome of theworld’s busiest shipping lanes. TheMarines were aided by the
Magellan Star’s wily 11-man crew, whohadavoidedbeing takenhos- tage by barricading themselves in a safe roomas thepiratesboarded the ship. The crew also killed the ship’s engine, leaving the vessel to float dead in the water until help could arrive. Frustrated, the pirates grabbed
an emergency phone in the con- trol room and called the ship’s owner in Dortmund, Germany, demanding to know the crew’s whereabouts and how to restart the engine. “We said, ‘Oh, the crew is on
holiday,’ ” saidHolger Roemer, an executive with Dr. Peters Group, the German firm that owns the vessel. “We also told them the engine was having trouble. They were very sour and told us a lot of not-very-nice words and hung up.” As the pirates stewed, the Ma-
rine commandos — assigned to the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit’s Maritime Raid Force and serving in the region as part of an international anti-piracy task force—prepared to intervene.
K EZ SU
The World A17 TODAYTHROUGHSUNDAY,SEPTEMBER 19
U.S. NAVY VIA GETTY IMAGES
Marines in inflatable boats approach theMagellan Star to take the container ship back from Somali pirates who had commandeered it.
By early Thursday, the pirates
found themselves surrounded by two U.S. warships, the Dubuque and the Princeton, as well as a Turkish frigate on patrol for the anti-piracy task force. Navy heli- copters also hovered around the hijacked container ship, but the pirates—defiantlywavingAK-47s — refused to surrender, Marine andNavy officials said. About 5 a.m., the platoon of
Marine commandos climbed on board the Magellan Star from boarding craft that had pulled alongside the ship. They subdued the pirates within minutes. Nei- ther side fired any shots, theMa- rines said. “It was a combination of speed
and overwhelming force,” Lt. Col. Joseph R. Clearfield, command- ing officer of the Marines who boardedtheship, toldreporters in a conference call. “At that point, I thinkthey realizedthat resistance was futile.” It took longer to convince the
barricaded crew that friendly forces had arrived. Hearing the commotiononthedecks andfear- ing that the pirates were coming for them, crewmembers respond- ed by retreating deeper into a warren of safe rooms inside the ship. Marines, armed with blow
torches and saws, finally cut a platter-size hole through awall of the crew’s hiding place. Marine Capt. Alexander Martin stuck a bullhornthroughandannounced, in English and Russian, that the pirates had beensubdued.
The crew — mostly Filipinos
but led by Polish and Ukrainian officers — was still skeptical, so Sgt.Max Chesmore tore off a U.S. flag patchthatwas attached tohis uniform and shoved it through the hole. “Once we showed them the
American flag, their disposition turned from scared, unsure of whatwas happening, to very hap- py,” said Staff Sgt. Thomas Har- trick, another of the commandos. The operation was the second
time that U.S. forces have saved a hijacked crew frompirates in the region. In April 2009, Navy SEALs res-
cued the captain of the Maersk Alabama, aU.S.-flagged vessel, af- ter Somali pirates had grabbed the ship in the Indian Ocean. In that case, Navy sharpshooters killed three pirates who were holding the captain hostage in a lifeboat. U.S. officials now face the chal-
lenge of deciding what to do with the pirates. War-torn Somalia lacks a func-
tioning central government, so sending the pirates home would meantheywould likely go free. In the past, the anti-piracy task
force has sent captured Somali buccaneers to Kenya and the Sey- chelles, the only countries in the region who have agreed to prose- cute for prosecution.But on other occasions, foreign navies have been stuck holding pirates for monthswhennocountryhasbeen willing to take them.
whitlockc@washpost.com
Anti-graft push strainsU.S.-Afghan ties afghan from A1
School ofForeign Servicewhohas monitored the U.S. role in Af- ghanistan. “We are a government at odds with ourselves.” Underscoring the Obama ad-
ministration’s sensitivity on the subject, officials persuaded Sen- ate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John F. Kerry (D- Mass.) to block the release of a report on corruption in Afghani- stan that the panel’s staff com- pleted last month.Kerry had pub- licly mentioned that the report was coming. An administration official said the concern was about sensitive information con- tained in the document, but oth- ers blamed fears that its release would lead to further embarrass- mentfor theU.S. government and Karzai. There is no authoritative esti-
mate of the toll that corruption has taken on the Afghan econo- my, which is sustained to a large extent by billions of dollars in American aid, as well as profits from drug trafficking. U.S. officials acknowledge that
they are still struggling to plug large leaks. An estimated $1 bil- lion a year, for example, is leaving the country in bags of cash car- ried out ofKabulairport. Authori- ties suspect that much of the outflow is diverted foreign aid. U.S. authorities have shown similarly limited ability to con- tain another emerging crisis: the potential collapse of Kabul Bank. The institution was created
with U.S. backing as a means of moving more of Afghanistan’s money into modern financial channels. Depositors have with- drawn tens of millions of dollars in recent days amid evidence that shareholders — including Karzai’s brother Mahmoud — used money to enrich themselves and acquire villas in the Persian Gulf emirate of Dubai. Corruption had been a second-
ary issue in Afghanistan until a combination of factors pushed it to the forefront this year. Those factors include Washington’s growing disillusionment with Karzai, and a warning from the U.S. military command last year that graft threatened to turn Af- ghans away from their govern- ment and toward the Taliban. Even so, many officials trace the trajectory of the corruption
issue back even further, to De- cember 2008 and the flipping of a switch at a still-secret facility in Kabul. Inside, U.S. officials oversee
dozens of Afghan translators transcribing cellphone conversa- tions being intercepted by an American wiretapping network. The system was initially installed by the Drug Enforcement Admin- istration as part of an effort to track the flow of drug money to insurgents. “It was not designed to specifi-
cally focus on corruption,” said Michael Braun, a former opera- tions chief for the DEA. “With that said, there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that when you fol- low the money, it will take you to the drugs, the guns and corrupt officials.” At the facility, the Afghan
translators almost immediately began catching Afghan officials soliciting bribes and otherwise using their public positions for private gain. U.S. officialshave described the
amount of evidence as an “ava- lanche” that accounts for dozens of corruption cases that have en- tered the prosecutorial pipeline only this year. At the same time, U.S.-backed
investigative teams have multi- plied. The FBI and its British counterpart inaugurated a new Major Crimes Task Force this year. A U.S. Embassy official in Kabul said more than 250 Afghan investigators, prosecutors and judges have been vetted and trained by U.S. mentors, includ- ing at a DEA facility in Quantico. Their expanding roleandeffec-
tiveness have triggered a power struggle in the Afghan capital, particularly after their investiga- tions implicated officials with close connections to Karzai. Mohammad Siddiq Chakari,
the nation’s minister of Islamic affairs, was accused of extorting millions of dollars from compa- nies seeking contracts to take pilgrims to theMuslim holy land. He fled the country this year — aided by intervention from Karzai’s inner circle. Perhaps stung by that example,
U.S. and Afghan authorities took a very different approach in ar- resting Mohammad Zia Salehi, one of Karzai’s national security advisers, last month. Acting on wiretap evidence that Salehi had
taken a bribe in exchange for trying to shut down a separate inquiry, Afghan authorities in commando-like gear arrested him at his house shortly before dawn.
Karzai, outraged, freed Salehi
and has threatened to rein in the anti-corruption units, which he has accused of violating the Af- ghan constitution and using Sovi- et-style tactics. U.S. officials said the units had
already frequently encountered interference from the palace, in- cluding instances in which the Afghan attorney general had re- moved names of politically con- nected Afghans from case files and ordered other investigations closed. Beyondthe rift with Karzai, the
Salehi case has also brought scru- tiny to the activities of other U.S. agencies — particularly the CIA, which began delivering suitcases full of cash to warlords within weeks of the Sept. 11, 2001, at- tacks.
CurrentandformerU.S. intelli-
genceofficials said Salehi isoneof many Afghan officials collecting routine payments from the CIA.A U.S. officialdefendedthe arrange- ment, portraying the anti-corrup- tion teams as zealous and short- sighted. Paying off warlords and officials who are in position to provide information or influence, he said, is crucial to U.S. objec- tives. U.S. officials involved in the
anti-corruption work, by con- trast, have said that the agency payments only encourage Af- ghans to see graft and payoffs as perks. One U.S. official said CIA payments to Afghans often ex- ceed in a single month the amount of money they collect in their U.S.-supported salaries for an entire year. “There are a dozen more Salehi
cases out there,” said the official, who is involved in anti-corrup- tion work. The friction over pursuing
them plays out in multi-agency meetingsat theembassyin Kabul, where investigative targets are identified and discussed. “I never heard anyone or saw
anyone try to play the trump card of ‘No, you can’t do him,’ ” the official said. “But you knew who wasnothappywith this guy being on the discussion list.”
millergreg@washpost.com
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