By SPIEGEL Staff
The Boxer set sail at 5:00 p.m. on a Thursday, two weeks ago. The next morning, once the warship was no longer in sight, the GSG-9 pilots flew their helicopters from Mombasa to the Boxer. An escort of four German ships with a total of 800 men on board joined the Boxer: the frigates Rheinland-Pfalz, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Emden , and the Berlin, a supply ship.
After almost three days, the convoy reached the waiting position off Harardere. Lindner knew that the pirates always kept six hostages on the bridge of the Stavanger, while the rest were hidden below deck. The GSG-9 commander counted roughly 30 pirates, armed with machine guns, pistols, Kalashnikovs and grenade launchers. The weapons were rotated on a regular basis and the ship was kept brightly lit.
The situation couldn't have been more difficult. Lindner weighed his options. He could send the helicopters, but the pirates would hear them approaching and possibly kill the hostages. Instead, he devised a combination approach. The frogmen would approach the Stavanger first, bringing along inflatable dinghies and their underwater tractors. Then they would use suction equipment to climb up the ship's side. The pirates would likely open fire and the frogmen, facing a hail of bullets, would seek to protect the hostages. Only then would the helicopters arrive.
But there were at least two groups of hostages. The frogmen could quickly reach the hostages on the bridge, but the labyrinthine passageways below deck on a typical freighter could become a death trap.
The issue of risk assessment sparked a dispute among government officials. Silberberg requested a written assessment from the federal police. At first, Hanning said that the assessment was not yet available, but then he described the risks verbally, telling Silberberg that the secrecy surrounding the mission prevented him from providing further details.
The officials at the Foreign Ministry, feeling left out of the loop, were growing increasingly impatient with the Interior Ministry. When the crisis team met again on Monday evening, the state secretaries were in favor of proceeding with the operation, and Silberberg was also on board. Although the team envisioned launching the mission on either that Wednesday or Thursday night, many of the details remained unresolved.
The head of the GSG-9 was also undecided. Lindner, who was able to communicate with the team in Berlin on a secure line from the Indian Ocean, was under tremendous pressure. He insisted that further observation was necessary and that he wanted to wait for the right opportunity -- hardly ideal circumstances for successfully completing a sensitive operation.
Steinmeier, who had departed on a last-minute trip to Afghanistan and expected the attack to take place on Wednesday night, took along a telephone equipped with a coding function.
On Wednesday, Silberberg contacted his superior in Kabul to notify him of an unconfirmed piece of news that was making the rounds in Berlin: The US military was strongly opposed to the use of force to rescue the Stavanger and wanted to withdraw the Boxer.
The rumor became official that afternoon, when US National Security Advisor James Jones called Christoph Heusgen, the chancellor's foreign policy advisor. At approximately 6:00 p.m., Heusgen notified the relevant state secretaries of the American decision. It was clear, even before the crisis team met that day, that the operation would have to be cancelled. Hanning acted decisively, as he had done in the preceding weeks, calling for a withdrawal and ordering the GSG-9 team to return to Germany.
Officials in Berlin now face the question of what went wrong. The operation lasted for three weeks, at a cost to the German treasury well in excess of the combined ransom payments of recent years. The failed campaign demonstrated that without improved logistics and available aircraft and ships, the GSG-9 is incapable of operating swiftly enough in comparable situations.
The obvious solution seems to be to concentrate such rescue operations in the hands of the Bundeswehr, but this would require the military to be more effectively prepared for foreign missions. To date, Defense Minister Jung has managed to muster neither the power nor the means to bring about the necessary reforms.
Back in Somalia, the process of resolving the hostage crisis has returned to what Berlin refers to as the "normal approach": The haggling over ransom money between the shipping company and the hostage-takers. There is still a divide of €2 million or €3 million between the pirates' demand and the shipping company's offer. But the pirates are considered relatively predictable, and are expected to release the hostages for roughly $2 million.
The German naval frigates are still patrolling the Indian Ocean off the coast of Harardere. The Germans could pursue the pirates once they have released the hostages in return for the ransom. That too would be a signal. But perhaps they will simply continue observing from afar.
RALF BESTE, MATTHIAS GEBAUER, CLEMENS HÖGES, HORAND KNAUP, HOLGER STARK, ALEXANDER SZANDER, ANDREAS ULRICH
Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan
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