MANAMA, 3 July 2005 — A US Navy commander in the region said that the coalition presence is helping reduce piracy and smuggling in the high seas as a US Marines colonel pointed out that there were solid indications that the US coalition’s overall strategy has been successful in combating terrorism and winning the war in Iraq.
Capt. Edward Barfield the USS Kearsarge Expeditionary Strike Group Commander, Amphibious Squadron Eight, said that piracy still existed on the high seas with pirates attacking large fraters to small dhows.
“The USS Gonzalez, which is part of the USS Kearsarge strike group, warded off pirates on June 6 in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Somalia after receiving a distress call from one of the ships in the area,” he said recently. “They fired warning shots as they approached and that scared off the pirates who were attacking the vessel”.
The incident was the most recent one of a number of piracy cases the coalition forces here in the region had reported of in past months. He also indicated that smuggling — which has been linked to financing some of the terrorist activities — continues to be a problem along what is known as “Hashish Highway”, which is the area from the Gulf of Aden across the Gulf of Oman and across Pakistan and around the Horn of Africa.
Barfield, who said that he has not seen a lot of smuggling in the northern Arabian Gulf area, added that the coalition forces’ strong presence has been a deterrent to terrorists, smugglers, and pirates alike. ‘The majority of the seizures we had involved hashish, but we had busts in the past that involved other counter bands,” he said from on board the USS Kearsarge that was on its way to make a port visit to Bahrain on June 27.
One of the strike group’s battle ships, the USS Kauffman, seized more than 4,200 pounds of hashish during a boarding of a vessel on May 20 after receiving intelligence of the vessel cargo. He pointed out that the current operations for the strike group, which is composed of six battleships and a submarine and operating in area stretching from the northern Arabian Gulf to the Arabian Sea as part of Task Force 58, was Maritime Security Operations to set the conditions for security and stability in the maritime environment as well as complement the counterterrorism and security efforts of regional nations.
“We are like a beat cop conducting maritime interception operations either by radio queries or flag verification boarding, or pattern recognition,” he said. “We also pressurize the maritime environment to deny international terrorists its use as a venue for attack or transport of personnel, weapons, or other material”.
Barfield also indicated that they had carried out rescue operations of capsized ships like the one that took place in the Gulf of Aden on April 29 where they were able to rescue 89 Mariners off the coast of Somalia. He praised the GCC navies and coast guards saying that intelligence sharing had helped combat terrorism and at the same time brought about better cooperate to help sea users across the region.
Col. Thomas F. Qualls, Jr., the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit commanding officer, which is stationed on the USS Kearsarge, said that there were solid indications that their overall strategy of the coalition in the region had been successful.
Qualls, who was cautious about using the word success to describe what is going on because he didn’t want to send the message that they were overconfident, added that one of the indicators of the strategy success was that his detachment was not sent in Baghdad like previous ones that were here before which had been deployed immediately into Iraq after they got off the ship. He cited that the force of 2,000 plus Marines had been involved in a variety of operations including joint exercises to train with other nations and to help the Navy’s activities in the region to focus on areas that had not been focused on as much before because of the focus on Iraq as an indication of success.
