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Pirate patrol uses Cole as inspiration

ABOARD THE GERMAN FRIGATE BREMEN — Pinned to a notice board on this warship are three well-thumbed pictures of the American destroyer Cole, its side ripped open after an al-Qaida suicide attack not far from where the Bremen was cruising.

"These photographs keep the crew focused," says Lt. Cmdr. Chris Scherrer. Seventeen American sailors were killed after the Cole was rammed by a small boat packed with explosives while moored in the Yemeni port of Aden in 2000.

The Bremen, a frigate bristling with high-tech weaponry and surveillance equipment, polices the seas to fight terror, part of Operation Enduring Freedom, set up in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Patrolling off the coast of the Horn of Africa, it protects the world's most important shipping lanes through which two-thirds of the planet's oil shipments pass.

Here, piracy, drug smuggling and arms and people trafficking are rampant — the proceeds helping finance global terrorism, according to the Bahrain-based maritime force, known as Coalition Task Force 150.

The 13-nation task force comprises U.S., France, Saudi Arabia, Denmark, Italy, Spain, Britain, Canada, Germany, Bahrain, New Zealand, Pakistan and Singapore.

"The kind of war happening here is a silent war," said the Bremen's commander, Capt. Andreas Jedlicka, who has spent more than half his 42 years in the German navy.

His war is fought behind radar screens and using intelligence reports.

In the frigate's darkened, restricted-access operations room, known as the “brain” of the ship, sailors man large, circular radar screens covered with hundreds of tiny green dots — each a boat traveling in these waters.

Other sailors take off in the ship's two Sea Lynx helicopters to identify boats, while a 10-man specialized marine unit is on alert for boardings. On the deck, sailors load ammunition into heavy machine guns, on the look out for a suicide speed boat or low flying aircraft attack.

Each ship they meet, be it giant container ships or traditional wooden dhows that have sailed these waters for centuries, has to be identified and logged.

The task is immense.

At present, nine coalition warships patrol 11,700 miles of coastline of 14 nations, covering 2.4 million square miles of sea — an area the size of the U.S.

Protecting the sea lanes is critical, says Jedlicka.

Sea borne trade is the backbone of the global economy — 80 percent of world trade is shipped — and has quadrupled in the last 40 years.

But, it remains the Achilles’ heel of the global economic order, say analysts, threatened by increasing pirate and potential terror attacks.

Over the last decade piracy has tripled. An attempted hijacking of a cruise liner by Somali pirates armed with assault rifles and rocket propelled grenades in 2005 was one of the most audacious.

And the Cole has not been the only target of a terror attack on water. Two years after the Cole was hit, a boat exploded after ramming a French oil tanker off the coast of Yemen, killing one. In 2004 a 1,050-passenger ferry sank off the Philippines after a bomb was detonated below decks, killing more than 100 people.

The greatest threat remains an attack against three choke points — narrow shipping lanes — in the region that could temporally close off the world's economy. More than 90 percent of European trade passes through the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf, the Suez Canal and the Bab el Mandab at the tip of the Horn of Africa.

Some 3.3 billion barrels of oil a day destined for Europe and the U.S. pass through the 18-mile, largely unpoliced Bab el Mandab straits.

"A terrorist attack on the international trade routes is only a question of time," said German-based security analyst Dustin Dehez, in a recent study presented to maritime military and civilian experts.

Such an attack would spark a two-digit oil price rise, added Dehez, the director of Northeast African Studies at Dusseldorf Institute for Foreign and Security Policy.

A $1 oil price rise costs the U.S. economy some $7.4 billion each year. For poor African economies that are dependent on oil imports, the costs are far more crippling.

Analysts say piracy and terror threats remain high in this region despite the presence of the coalition.

Most pirate attacks take place inside territorial waters, close to the coast, where the coalition has no legal authority, Jedlicka said.

In 2005, says the International Maritime Organization, there were 276 attempts and hijackings. Only 24 took place in international waters where the coalition can act. One in five of all the attacks were off the African coast.

The speed boats favored by pirates are no match for the 430-foot Bremen, its main gun a 76 mm cannon that can fire 80 shells a minute a distance of 10 miles and with pinpoint accuracy. However entering territorial waters, Jedlicka says, is a decision for the politicians and ultimately the U.N. Security Council.

The coalition is working with some countries, whose sea lanes it helps patrol, to help build and train national coast guards, but so far success is limited.

Jedlicka says his ship has never fired a shot in anger nor made any seizures since beginning its six month operation in late November 2006.

The mere presence of a warship in these waters is a deterrent, he says. "We make life difficult for them."