By Michael Burgevin
An American Congressman narrowly escaped an attack in Somalia just 24 hours after a hostage standoff involving Somali pirates ended in a victory for the United States. Insurgents fired mortars at Rep. Donald Payne’s airplane as he departed from the capitol city of Mogadishu on Sunday. Rep. Payne (D-NJ), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee's subcommittee on Africa and global health, was in the country to discuss how the international community could lend assistance to the war torn Somali government. Although police claim that no one was injured during the attack, local residents reported that three people were wounded when a mortar dropped on a nearby neighborhood.
The attack came just one day after Navy SEALS shot and killed three pirates during the rescue of an American captain. Captain Richard Phillips had been held hostage since early last week when gunmen boarded his ship off the Somali cost. The rescue ended a five-day standoff between the world’s largest navy and the pirates’ small lifeboat. After F.B.I. Hostage negotiators failed to secure Capt. Phillips’s safe return, President Obama authorized the use of military force should the captain’s life be placed in imminent danger. The President praised Capt. Phillips, saying that his courage was a “model for all Americans.”
Many have cited the Captain’s release as an early victory for President Obama, stating that his decision to authorize military action should Capt. Phillips’s life be threatened demonstrated his capability to act as Commander in Chief of the armed forces. “This was an incredible team effort,” said Admiral William Gortney, who was involved in the operation. “I am extremely proud of the tireless efforts of all the men and women who made this rescue possible.” The reaction from Somali pirates was notably less positive. The sentiment felt in pirate communities was, you kill our men, and we kill your men. “From now on, if we capture foreign ships and their respective countries try to attack us, we will kill (the hostages),” Jamac Habeb, a 30-year-old pirate, told the Associated Press.
Somali pirates currently hold more than a dozen ships and over 200 hostages in the Indian Ocean, none of them American. Both NATO and the European Union have launched policing efforts in the seas around Somalia, but some have criticized the dual forces as being counterproductive. "The two separate missions won't cooperate as they should. They will needlessly duplicate already expensive effort, and the resulting disarray might even give pirates the upper hand,” explained Bjoern Seibert, a research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London.
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