BEIRUT—Yemen's leaders are pushing the United States to increase its military aid roughly 40-fold for their country to fight al Qaeda -- but Yemen isn't just relying on aid to generate cash from the international security threats burgeoning on its lands and seas.
For more than a year, Yemen's financially pragmatic civilian and military officials have been contracting with at least one maritime-security broker to hire out commissioned Yemeni warships and active-duty and armed Yemeni coast guard and navy sailors as private escorts for merchant ships and oil tankers crossing the pirate-infested Gulf of Aden. The cost for Yemen's escort service: up to $55,000 per ship, per trip.
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Guaranteeing "the ultimate protection for your vessel and crew,'' the website of Gulf of Aden Group Transits, Yemen's London-based broker, offers shippers "a dedicated escort by a heavily armored 37.5 meter Yemen Navy Austal patrol boat" and ''six serving Yemen military or coast guard personnel to embark and protect your vessel."
The fee apparently also guarantees shippers a degree of immunity regarding any ensuing battles at sea: "Any action taken by the teams or vessels provided … is fully authorized by the Yemeni Government,'' says the website of Lotus Maritime Security, the Yemeni company that claims to serve as a liaison between the London-based broker, the Yemeni government and military, and shippers.
The broker's website offers testimonials from satisfied sea captains. The Yemeni sailors were "always on high alert, followed all crew officers' instructions," one happy customer noted.
Although the Yemeni sailors follow the orders of a ship's captain when aboard a private vessel, said Khaled Tariq, Lotus Maritime's spokesman, they follow Yemen's rules of engagement in any contact with pirates.
That sets up possible conflicts of private and public interests not encountered by countries that do not rent out their militaries, naval experts said. In one encounter, according to Lotus's website, the hired Yemeni service members fired shots at suspected pirates, raising the question of whether they did so with the full protection of a sovereign state, or as private individuals.
Christian LeMiere, an analyst at London's International Institute for Strategic Studies, said he could not think of any other current instance of a government hiring out its warships or active-duty sailors to private customers for a fee.
The entrepreneurial activities of Yemen -- a country where the security services and active military officers hold a great deal of political clout and allegedly control much of the country's economy, both legal and otherwise -- with its own navy shows "one of the vagaries of foreign military assistance," LeMiere said. "You can give them as much equipment as you like, but you can't necessarily tell them where to direct it."
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