NAIROBI, Kenya — U.S. naval forces say they’ve captured five pirates after exchanging fire with them, sinking their skiff and confiscating a mother ship.

The USS Nicholas came under fire early Thursday from pirates in an area west of the Seychelles.

The U.S. Africa Command said the five pirates seized would remain in U.S. custody on board the frigate for time time being. The Nicholas is home-ported in Norfolk, Va.

GALLERY: Black Soldiers

International naval forces have stepped up their enforcement of the waters off East Africa in an effort to thwart a growing pirate trade.

Experts say piracy will continue to be a problem until an effective government is established on Somalia’s lawless shores. The country has not had a functioning government for 19 years.

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For those not familiar with K’Naan, he is a rapper from Somalia based in Canada. Here is a piece he wrote for the Huffington Post on Pirates in Somalia.

Why We Don’t Condemn Our Pirates
by K’naan

Can anyone ever really be for piracy? Outside of sea bandits, and young girls fantasizing of Johnny Depp, would anyone with an honest regard for good human conduct really say that they are in support of Sea Robbery?

Well, in Somalia, the answer is: it’s complicated.

The news media these days has been covering piracy in the Somali coast with such
lop-sided journalism, that it’s lucky they’re not on a ship themselves. It’s true that the constant hijacking of vessels in the Gulf of Aden is a major threat to the vibrant trade route between Asia and Europe. It is also true that for most of the pirates operating in this vast shoreline, money is the primary objective.

But according to so many Somalis, the disruption of Europe’s darling of a trade route, is just Karma biting a perpetrator in the butt. And if you don’t believe in Karma, maybe you believe in recent history. Here is why we Somalis find ourselves slightly shy of condemning our pirates.

Somalia has been without any form of a functioning government since 1991. And although its failures, like many other toddler governments in Africa, sprung from the wells of post-colonial independence, bad governance and development loan sharks, the specific problem of piracy was put in motion in 1992.

After the overthrow of Siyad Barre, our charmless dictator of twenty-some-odd years, two major forces of the Hawiye Clan came to power. At the time, Ali Mahdi, and General Mohamed Farah Aidid, the two leaders of the Hawiye rebels, were largely considered liberators. But the unity of the two men and their respective sub-clans was very short-lived. It’s as if they were dumbstruck at the advent of ousting the dictator, or that they just forgot to discuss who will be the leader of the country once they defeated their common foe.

A disagreement of who will upgrade from militia leader to Mr. President broke up their honeymoon. It’s because of this disagreement that we’ve seen one of the most decomposing wars in Somalia’s history, leading to millions displaced and hundreds of thousands dead.

But war is expensive and militias need food for their families, and Jaad (an amphetamine-based stimulant) to stay awake for the fighting. Therefore, a good clan -based Warlord must look out for his own fighters. Aidid’s men turned to robbing aid trucks carrying food to the starving masses, and re-selling it to continue their war. But Ali Mahdi had his sights set on a larger and more unexploited resource, namely: the Indian Ocean.

Already by this time, local fishermen in the coastline of Somalia have been complaining of illegal vessels coming to Somali waters and stealing all the fish. And since there was no government to report it to, and since the severity of the violence clumsily overshadowed every other problem, the fishermen went completely unheard.

Read the Whole Story

Watch K’Naan Talk to Davey D. About Pirates

Part 2

The American captain held hostage by four Somali pirates made a desperate escape attempt Friday but was recaptured, and officials said other pirates sought to reinforce their colleagues by sailing hijacked ships with other captives aboard to the scene of the standoff.

The U.S. also was bolstering its force by dispatching other warships to the site off the Horn of Africa, where a U.S. destroyer shadowed the drifting lifeboat carrying the hostage, Capt. Richard Phillips.

The pirates on the lifeboat apparently fear being shot or arrested if they hand over Phillips — who was taken hostage in their failed effort to hijack the cargo ship Maersk Alabama on Wednesday — and they hope to link up with their colleagues who are using Russian, German, Filipino and other hostages captured in recent days as human shields.

Around midnight local time, Phillips jumped off the lifeboat and began swimming, but was recaptured by the pirates, according to Defense Department officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to talk about unfolding operations.

Sailors on the USS Bainbridge, which is patrolling nearby, were able to see Phillips moving around and talking after his return to the lifeboat, and the Defense Department officials think he is unharmed.

Negotiations are taking place between the pirates and the captain of the Bainbridge, who is getting direction from FBI hostage negotiators, the officials said. The captors are also communicating with other pirate vessels by satellite phone, officials said.

U.S. Central Command chief Gen. David Petraeus said U.S. warships also are headed to the area, more than 300 miles off Somalia’s Indian Ocean coast.

“We want to ensure that we have all the capability that might be needed over the course of the coming days,” he said.

Mohamed Samaw, a resident of the pirate stronghold in Eyl, Somalia, who claims to have a “share” in a British-owned ship hijacked Monday, said four foreign vessels held by pirates are heading toward the lifeboat. A total of 54 hostages are on two of the ships — citizens of China, Germany, Russia, Ukraine, the Philippines, Tuvalu, Indonesia and Taiwan.

“The pirates have summoned assistance — skiffs and mother ships are heading towards the area from the coast,” said a Nairobi-based diplomat, who spoke on condition on anonymity because he is not authorized to talk to the media. “We knew they were gathering yesterday.”

Samaw said two ships left Eyl on Wednesday. A third sailed from Haradhere, another pirate base in Somalia, and the fourth was a Taiwanese fishing vessel seized Monday that was already only 30 miles from the lifeboat.

He said the ships include the German cargo ship Hansa Stavanger, seized earlier this month. The ship’s crew of 24 is made up of five Germans, three Russians, two Ukrainians, two Filipinos and 12 from Tuvalu.

Another man identified as a pirate by three different residents of Haradhere also said the captured German ship had been sent.

“They had asked us for reinforcement, and we have already sent a good number of well-equipped colleagues, who were holding a German cargo ship,” said the man, who asked that only his first name, Badow, be used to protect him from reprisals.

“We are not intending to harm the captain, so that we hope our colleagues would not be harmed as long as they hold him,” Badow said. “All we need, first, is a safe route to escape with the captain, and then (negotiate) ransom later.”

Jack Cloonan, a former FBI agent whose Virginia-based firm Clayton Consultants Inc. handles hostage negotiations, told The Associated Press that the presence of other hijacked vessels in the area “could complicate the negotiation strategy under way.”

Negotiators are sure that various pirate groups are in contact, he said.

“We know for certain that they share information. We know they talk to each other. They’re not stupid. They can be very smart,” Cloonan said.

Phillips, 53, thwarted the takeover of the 17,000-ton U.S.-flagged Alabama by telling his crew of about 20 to lock themselves in a room, the crew told stateside relatives.

The crew later overpowered some of the pirates but Phillips surrendered himself to the bandits to safeguard his men, and the Somalis fled with him to an enclosed lifeboat, the relatives said.

At Phillips’ home in Underhill, Vt., family members nervously awaited word on his fate. Sister-in-law Lea Coggio said Thursday a representative of Maersk called to let Phillips’ wife know that food and water had been delivered to the lifeboat.

“I think he’s coping, knowing Richard,” she said. “He’s a smart guy, and he’s in control. ”

Officials at Maersk Line Ltd. offices in Norfolk, Va., did not respond to repeated messages seeking comment Friday.

The Alabama sailed away from the lifeboat Thursday, Maersk shipping line said, and a team of armed Navy SEALs is on board, according to a U.S. official who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the situation.

It was sailing toward the Kenyan port of Mombasa — its original destination — and was expected to arrive Saturday night, said Joseph Murphy, a professor at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy whose son, Shane Murphy, is second-in-command of the vessel.

Company spokesman Kevin Speers told AP Radio on Thursday the lifeboat carrying Phillips and the pirates was out of fuel and “dead in the water.”

Most of the lifeboats are about 28 feet long and carry water and food for 34 people for 10 days, Joseph Murphy said.

The lifeboats are covered and Murphy, speaking after a briefing by the shipping company, said he suspects the pirates have closed the ports to avoid sniper fire.

Petraeus said the other warships would arrive shortly. U.S. officials said the guided-missile frigate USS Halyburton was among them.

The show of force follows an increase in the number of attacks and the first on a U.S.-flagged ship. The vessels strengthen surveillance of the area and may dissuade pirates from seizing another ship, but there are not enough for a blockade in the danger zone that sprawls across 1.1 million square miles, said a senior U.S. defense official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss operational matters.

The Alabama was the sixth vessel in a week to be hit by pirates who have extorted tens of millions of dollars in ransoms.

President Barack Obama is getting regular updates on the situation, said White House spokesman Robert Gibbs. U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said the United States will take whatever steps are needed to protect U.S. shipping interests against pirates.

Steve Romano, a retired head of the FBI hostage negotiation team, said he doesn’t recall the FBI ever negotiating with pirates before, but he said this situation is similar to other standoffs. Although pirates release most of their hostages unharmed, the difficulty will be negotiating with people who clearly have no way out, he said.

“There’s always a potential for tragedy here, and when people feel their options are limited, they sometimes react in more unpredictable and violent ways,” Romano said.

Both France and Germany, which have ships in the area as part of an international anti-piracy coalition, sent the aircraft after receiving a distress call just after dawn, French military spokesman Cmdr. Christophe Prazuck said. But in the 15 minutes it took to get to the site, the pirates had already boarded and had taken the crew of 25 Indians and two Bangladeshis hostage.

The two British guards who leapt overboard with their Irish colleague were safe onboard a French warship, he said.

Germany and France have ships in the area as part of a NATO fleet which, along with warships from Denmark, India, Malaysia, Russia and the U.S., have started patrolling the vast maritime corridor.

They escort some merchant ships and respond to distress calls in the fight against increasingly brazen pirate attacks off Somalia’s coast, a major international shipping lane through which about 20 tankers sail daily. Friday’s was the 97th ship hijacking this year.

One of the hijacked ships, the Malta-flagged cargo ship Centauri, was released Thursday with all 25 Filipino crew unharmed after more than two months in the hands of pirates, Greece announced.

The ship hijacked Friday, the Liberian-flagged MV Biscaglia, is operated out of Singapore, said Noel Choong, head of the International Maritime Bureau’s piracy reporting center in Malaysia.

pirates are growing bolder. Hugh Martin, manager of Hart Security, said 20 speedboats filled with pirates launched a simultaneous attack on two slow-moving companion vessels off the south coast of Yemen on Thursday. Hart staff onboard both ships were armed, but managed to use evasive maneuvers and non-lethal methods to prevent the pirates from boarding during the four hour attack.

On Friday, Russia’s U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said it was possible the U.N. might pass a new resolution with more aggressive rules of engagement.

“Even harsher sanctions, harsher measures, harsher calls to the international community may be passed,” he told Russian TV channel Vesti-24. “It would give the possibility for more energetic actions by the naval forces of those countries, including Russia, that have dispatched their ships (to Somalia) for the fight against piracy.”

The U.S. navy says it is impossible to patrol all 2.5 million miles of dangerous waters. It has called on ship owners to hire private security contractors to protect vulnerable vessels, leading to a boom in business some contractors fear will encourage unlicensed or inexperienced companies to cash in.

Anti-Piracy Maritime Security Solutions, which employs the three guards who leapt off the Biscaglia on Friday, says on its Web site that it was formed in July 2008 and all its staff are ex-Royal Marines. They do not carry weapons.

Many companies prefer non-lethal methods of deterring pirates, including evasive maneuvers, electrifying handrails and the use of sonic weapons that can blast a wave of painful sound up to half a miles (one kilometer) away.

Cyrus Mody, head of the International Maritime Bureau, said the onus should be on international navies and not individual ship owners to ensure their vessels’ protection. He said the governments whose navies patrol the Gulf of Aden must strengthen their rules of engagement and put a legal framework in place to try suspected pirates.

“You don’t have to blow them out of the water, just confiscate the weapons and the ship,” he said. Navies needed to patrol more aggressively, boarding and searching suspected “mother ships” from which pirates launched their small fast attack boats, Mody said. Navies now are reluctant to search or detain suspected pirates because their legal standing is unclear, he said.

Somalia, an impoverished Horn of Africa nation, has not had a functioning government since 1991 and it cannot police its long coastline.

Somalia’s increasingly brazen pirates are building sprawling stone houses, cruising in luxury cars, marrying beautiful women — even hiring caterers to prepare Western-style food for their hostages.

And in an impoverished country where every public institution has crumbled, they have become heroes in the steamy coastal dens they operate from because they are the only real business in town.

“The pirates depend on us, and we benefit from them,” said Sahra Sheik Dahir, a shop owner in Harardhere, the nearest village to where a hijacked Saudi Arabian supertanker carrying $100 million in crude was anchored Wednesday.

These boomtowns are all the more shocking in light of Somalia’s violence and poverty: Radical Islamists control most of the country’s south, meting out lashings and stonings for accused criminals. There has been no effective central government in nearly 20 years, plunging this arid African country into chaos.

Life expectancy is just 46 years; a quarter of children die before they reach 5.

But in northern coastal towns like Harardhere, Eyl and Bossaso, the pirate economy is thriving thanks to the money pouring in from pirate ransoms that have reached $30 million this year alone.

“There are more shops and business is booming because of the piracy,” said Sugule Dahir, who runs a clothing shop in Eyl. “Internet cafes and telephone shops have opened, and people are just happier than before.”

In Harardhere, residents came out in droves to celebrate as the looming oil ship came into focus this week off the country’s lawless coast.

Businessmen gathered cigarettes, food and cold bottles of orange soda, setting up kiosks for the pirates who come to shore to resupply almost daily.

Dahir said she even started a layaway plan for them.

“They always take things without paying and we put them into the book of debts,” she told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. “Later, when they get the ransom money, they pay us a lot.”

Residents make sure the pirates are well-stocked in khat, a popular narcotic leaf, and aren’t afraid to gouge a bit when it comes to the pirates’ deep pockets.

“I can buy a packet of cigarettes for about $1 but I will charge the pirate $1.30,” said Abdulqadir Omar, an Eyl resident.

While pirate villages used to have houses made of corrugated iron sheets, now, there are stately looking homes made of sturdy, white stones.

“Regardless of how the money is coming in, legally or illegally, I can say it has started a life in our town,” said Shamso Moalim, a 36-year-old mother of five in Harardhere.

“Our children are not worrying about food now, and they go to Islamic schools in the morning and play soccer in the afternoon. They are happy.”

The attackers generally treat their hostages well in anticipation of a big payday, hiring caterers on shore to cook spaghetti, grilled fish and roasted meat that will appeal to Western palates.

And when the payday comes, the money sometimes literally falls from the sky.

Pirates say the ransom arrives in burlap sacks, sometimes dropped from buzzing helicopters, or in waterproof suitcases loaded onto skiffs in the roiling, shark-infested sea.

“The oldest man on the ship always takes the responsibility of collecting the money, because we see it as very risky, and he gets some extra payment for his service later,” Aden Yusuf, a pirate in Eyl, told AP over VHF radio.

The pirates use money-counting machines — the same technology seen at foreign exchange bureaus worldwide — to ensure the cash is real. All payments are done in cash because Somalia has no functioning banking system.

“Getting this equipment is easy for us, we have business connections with people in Dubai, Nairobi, Djibouti and other areas,” Yusuf said. “So we send them money and they send us what we want.”

Despite a beefed-up international presence, the pirates continue to seize ships, moving further out to sea and demanding ever-larger ransoms. The pirates operate mostly from the semiautonomous Puntland region, where local lawmakers have been accused of helping them and taking a cut of the ransoms.

For the most part, however, the regional officials say they have no power to stop piracy.

Meanwhile, towns that once were eroded by years of poverty and chaos are now bustling with restaurants, Land Cruisers and Internet cafes. Residents also use their gains to buy generators — allowing full days of electricity, once an unimaginable luxury in Somalia.

There are no reliable estimates of the number of pirates operating in Somalia, but they number in the thousands. And though the bandits do sometimes get nabbed, piracy is generally considered a sure bet to a better life.

NATO and the U.S. Navy say they can’t be everywhere, and American officials are urging ships to hire private security. Warships patrolling off Somalia have succeeded in stopping some pirate attacks. But military assaults to wrest back a ship are highly risky and, up to now, uncommon.

From CNN.com:

Pirates are believed to have anchored a hijacked supertanker carrying up to $100 million worth of crude oil off Somalia Tuesday, its operator has said, as more ships in the region have been boarded and taken over.

The 25-man crew of the tanker Sirius Star — including British, Croatian, Polish, Filipino and Saudi nationals — are reported to be safe, according to Dubai-based Vela International Marine.

“Our first and foremost priority is ensuring the safety of the crew,” said Vela President Salah Kaaki. “We are in communication with their families and are working toward their safe and speedy return.”

Click here for the full report.