I can hear the chants of "Kill the pirates!" already. No, not in response to the sole surviving Somali teenager facing trial in the United States for attempting to hijack a U.S. ship the other week -- though I don't expect his mother's appeal for clemency will find a very receptive audience from the take-no-prisoners crowd. Rather, if mainstream commentators are already explicitly calling for summary executions of pirates, I don't expect the latest chapters in the piracy justice chronicles to endear many to a more nuanced legal position.
Over the weekend, NATO enjoyed two successes in its anti-piracy operation in the Gulf of Aden, foiling an attempted hijacking of a Norwegian tanker and rescuing 20 Yemenis who had apparently been impressed into piracy as hostages. Yet the bottom line that I worry some will take out of these successes is what happened next: the pirates were released. Lacking legal jurisdiction -- in the latter case, neither the pirates, the victims, nor the waters were Dutch, as the ship's commander rather unhelpfully pointed out -- and without a NATO policy on how to detain the pirates, they could not be arrested.
That there is no standing NATO policy on pirate detainment is troubling, but it is not insurmountable. This is a relatively new scenario that NATO finds itself in (Barbary piracy aside, please -- I don't think Jefferson's escapades in the 1800's count as a fair argument in favor of unilateralism here), and it is certainly no reason to regress back to a "walk the plank" solution. The UN has brokered extradition accords with Kenya, and more countries, as well as international organizations like NATO, will assuredly do the same in the near future.
As for the pirate on trial in New York -- he should probably be glad he's being tried by the American justice system, not by those who probably would rather the SEALs have just taken him out too.
(image from flickr user ClownBog under a Creative Commons license)
Eritrea is becoming a "giant prison" due to its government's policies of mass detention, torture and prolonged military conscription, according to a report published today .
Human Rights Watch (HRW) said state repression had made the tiny Red Sea state one of the highest producers of refugees in the world, with those fleeing risking death or collective punishment against their families.
There is no freedom of speech, worship or movement in Eritrea, while many adults are forced into national service at token wages until up to 55 years of age.
HRW is a very credible source, and from reading the article, it's hard not to come away with the conclusion that Eritrea should spend less energy on its ongoing dispute with its neighbor, Eritrea Ethiopia, and more on caring for and protecting the rights of its own population. One way that the country's government did not help itself in that regard was by essentially forcing the departure of UN peacekeepers from the border region with Ethiopia.
It should be said, as we at Dispatch have emphasized, that the Ethiopian government, particularly by not abiding by a UN decision to award a disputed border town to Eritrea, did not help calm this situation either. And neither is it a paragon of human rights. Both would benefit from halting their military escalation and long-standing confrontational politics, as peace has been shown to have far better effects on people's individual, social, and economic well-being than a perpetual state of near-war.
First of all, I was right: those pirates who tried to hijack the U.S. ship (and probably many others besides); they were kids. Which just might make it a bit more complicated to prosecute the one who survived.
And, echoing the comment that drew loud applause from a Somali audience at a conference last month, the country's prime minister is now basically saying, just give us some money, and we can get the pirates on our own. (For what it's worth, the president of Somalia's semi-autonomous Puntland government already said that he'd take care of that whole piracy thing.) This seems all well and good, and it would probably prove much less expensive than mounting a complex international response that is essentially a band-aid solution. Somalia, though, without even much of a police force, certainly can't be expected to provide the naval battalions that, even if they are only addressing a symptom, not the cause, of the problem, still provide some necessary security and reassurance for ships out there.
I'm all for supporting the Somali government as a way of rooting out the domestric problems that lead to piracy, but I'm not sure I'd trust it to take out "pirates" on land. That can easily become a label for other such targets, and, anyway, it's not actually always that easy to tell who's a pirate. Rather than just give money for pirate-hunters, countries should make serious long-term investments in Somalia's state institutions and help strengthen its rule of law and justice system. Rebuilding infrastructure will create jobs, helping the Somali government deliver services will shore up its legitimacy and aid the population, and enforcing laws -- such as bans on the illegal fishing and toxic dumping that directly spurred the early vigilante piracy -- will push people back into legal lines of work. At the same time, Somalia's humanitarian crisis needs to be taken care of, and its continuing political reconciliation needs to be dealt with very carefully. Bombs, it should go without saying, should be avoided.
Another bad idea -- at this stage, at least -- would be sending a UN peacekeeping force to Somalia. The troop commitments would be hard to muster, and the presence of the blue helmets would likely only galvanize hardline Somali militants and further destabilize the country (see here for more on why this would be a counter-productive move). The Secretary-General is scheduled to release a report today on the possibility, and so far he's acknowledged that the conditions are not exactly ripe.
In other news, the score is now U.S. ships 2, pirates 0. Unfortunately, as the Greeks, Togolese, Liberians, and Egyptians can now attest to, the global scoreboard is a bit more lop-sided in the other direction.
Yes, they were the ones who heroically defended their ship from a full pirate takeover, but it seems a little presumptuous for the crewmembers of the Maersk Alabama to be advising the U.S. president on anti-piracy policy.
"We would like to implore President Obama to use all his resources and increase his commitment to end this Somali pirate scourge," he said, reading from a prepared statement. "Right now there are still ships being taken, right now as we are standing here. America has got to be at the forefront of this. It's time for us to step up and put an end to this crisis.
Calling for American leadership on an important global issue is not exactly making false claims about a candidate's tax plans -- and it's something we agree with, to boot. The crew of the Maersk Alabama does actually know what it's talking about -- having been trained, through their union, no less, to thwart pirate attacks -- but let's hope Officer Murphy's comments are not Wurzelbacher-ed into some sort of ubiquitous green light for pirate snipings. He's right that America should take the lead on this, but it needs to do so in a way that will address Somalia's interior crisis. The killing of three Somali pirates yesterday was probably a necessary, spur-of-the-moment decision, but just the kind of thing that is not a one-size-fits-all solution.
And, as usual, Beth Dickinson has all the right answers -- or asks all the right questions -- to those who are calling for bombing strikes against Somali pirates. In addition to Beth's points, I might add: bomb what? The secret pirate fortresses where they keep their mounds of cash? The docks where they park their Jolly Roger-flying vessels? If there’s one thing that we’ve learned about Somali civilians over the past 18 years or so, it’s that they, like civilians the world over, don’t like having bombs dropped on them.
(image from flickr user baldheretic under a Creative Commons license)
UPDATE: Cordell suggests that we just find the pirates' island of Tortuga; GoogleEarth has already got it covered.
Thomas Jefferson understood you can not defeat pirates by chasing them one by one around a vast sea. We must either in concert with our allies or unilaterally, if need be, devise a strategy to take the fight to the pirates and re-establish some semblance of order...
If preventing future attacks means eradicating pirates’ safe havens then we may be on the right track. But if the ploy here is to play cat-and-mouse on the high seas and treat pirates as individual criminals we’re in for a long and likely inconclusive outcome.
Well, I don't think looking to a 200-year dead president for advice on combating modern piracy and statelessness is the best idea, but I also don't think Rubin is necessarily prescribing invasion here. She's right that "eradicating safe havens" will be an important step, though I'd rather eradicate the problem of piracy than the entire city of Eyl, say. For that matter, what Rubin suggests -- going ashore to pursue the pirates, which has become a pretty trendy policy recommendation -- has already been permitted by a Security Council resolution. This is definitely a helpful tool, and the fact that such a provocative step has a UN seal of legitimacy is significant. But navies would still be wise to use this authorization carefully, as precipitous excursions could have a strong likelihood of destabilizing Somalia further and galvanizing all sorts of landlubbing "pirates," which nobody wants.
I think treating pirates as "criminals" -- and in fact taking seriously the grievances of at least the original fishermen-cum-vigilante-pirates (namely, the illegal fishing and toxic dumping that engendered the whole viable life-as-pirate thing) -- is in fact the appropriate thing to do. Certainly better than just killing them summarily and arbitrarily. If Capt. Phillips' life was indeed in danger, then undertaking sniper attacks was probably the best course of action in such a tense situation. But consider how badly the plan could have gone wrong. I find no small hypocrisy in those who exuberantly cheer the SEALs and the unconquerable might of the U.S. military over this success, but who would have, without a doubt, be excoriating Obama for recklessness if the whole affair had gone awry. An anti-piracy strategy that succeeds or fails based on a couple inches of snipers' bullets seems very dangerous and ineffective.
The need for the United States to act "unilaterally, if need be" to tackle the piracy issue does not make any sense. This is something that affects every country that sends a ship through or around the Gulf of Aden. It only makes sense to pool these countries' collective resources and wisdom and address the problem together. Going solo on this one will just endanger the lives of real and potential hostages, undermine the efficacy of the whole project, and unduly antagonize the strange bedfellows of allies (read: NATO, EU, Russia, China, etc.) that piracy has brought together.
And one final note, re: what to call the pirates. Annie Lowery at FP (and Mike Allen at Politico, apparently) suggest calling them "maritime terrorists," to prevent the romanticization that marauding swashbucklers (okay, I'm guilty, too -- veryguilty) conjures up. I agree, but I also agree with Yglesias, that "maritime terrorists" conjures up something far more sinister, of a larger scale, than what these criminals are essentially doing, which is robbing and kidnapping (at gunpoint). Combined with the international legal distinctions between piracy and terrorism, calling the pirates terrorists would only unnecessarily expand the blanket "war on terror" concept, at a time when the term is, thankfully, being dropped in favor of a more nuanced approach.
That said, I don't see much reason to take seriously the pirates' bluster about retaliating against American ships. First of all -- yeah right. And second of all, for the very reason that "pirates" is not really a helpful term, there is no monolithic bloc of pirates. From my understanding, the guys (and sometimes kids, I'd imagine) undertaking all these hijackings are not all coordinated actors. And that's another advantage that a unified international coalition has over these bandits.
Oh, and Robert Farley is right -- Victor Davis Hanson is crazy.
UPDATE: Greg at RealClearWorld responds, rightly pointing out that, while it's all well and good to say that we need to make development and state-building in Somalia priorities of our anti-piracy efforts, it's another thing entirely to actually propose those kind of initiatives, then gather up the political will to see them through.
(image from flickr user TMWolf under a Creative Commons license)
Forgive me if I can't help wondering that the crew of the captured Maersk Alabama -- having, incredibly, somehow thwarted the pirates, only to have them renege on their end of a hostage exchange and take the ship's captain hostage -- must have taken a page or two out of Capt. Steve Zissou's book: Okay, maybe it's not quite a Wes Anderson movieepisode of CSI "crew of Rambos." But "super-slippery goo?"
And with all due respect to the U.S. Navy, I don’t exactly think they’re “in command of the situation.” This one was all the crew.
Well, I suppose it was bound to happen sooner or later. Hundreds of ships pass through the Gulf of Aden transporting cargo. Some of those ships are American. Today, one of those ships was hijacked by pirates.
Pirates commandeered a United States-flagged container ship with 20 American crew members off the coast of Somalia on Wednesday, the first time an American-crewed ship was seized by pirates in the area.
The container ship, the Maersk Alabama, was carrying thousands of tons of relief aid to the Kenyan port of Mombasa, the company that owns the ship said.
After a lull in January and February -- which many analysts assumed, rather logically, corresponded a least somewhat causally with the increased international investment in naval patrols and anti-piracy measures -- pirates have been back with a vengeance over the last month-plus, even seizing five ships over a period of 48 hours recently. A number of factors are likely responsible for this surge, but what optimistic analysts seem to keep missing is the fact that, as many ships that NATO, EU, the United States, China, Japan, Russia, and other countries put off the coast of Somalia, they still have to cover an area of over a million square miles of water. And, we're dealing with pirates out here.
It's hard to see how the United States could be more involved in anti-piracy work, which, by all accounts, has been raised to the level of a priority far more serious than that with which the crisis on land in Somalia has been addressed. Unfortunately, it's this latter problem -- even more complicated and maddening than pirates that just won't stop hijacking your ships -- that will need to be dealt with before a lid can fully be put on the piracy problem offshore. For now, the United States and other countries will almost certainly bolster the international naval presence, hoping, effectively, that with a few more people looking, they'll be able to catch those needles in the haystack.
Bjoern Seibert writes on The Argument that, when it comes to anti-piracy patrols, too many chefs battleships in the kitchen Gulf of Aden make for an unsavory stew of piracy. His points are well-taken: NATO and EU can tend to get into a show of gamesmanship; fighting piracy is a crowd-pleaser for both alliances; and coordination difficulties between the two can be expected in such a complicated endeavor.
For these reasons, I was even more reassured, after reading Seibert's post, that the UN is not insisting on elbowing its way into the pirate-fighting game. The Secretary-General's most recent report [pdf] on Somali piracy is also refreshing in this regard: it acknowledges and supports the efforts currently ongoing; stresses the UN's work in liasing and coordinating countries' anti-piracy mechanisms; and, taking into account the "operational capacity and resources of the United Nations Secretariat," refrains from advising a UN military presence (something that countries would be wise to consider when it comes time to discuss a possible UN peacekeeping mission on land in Somalia).
The unfortunate flipside of the international indignation over piracy off Somalia's coast has always been the appalling negligence to which the instability in the country itself has been treated. While NATO and EU are eager to speed into the Gulf of Aden and burnish their pirate-busting credentials, the same kind of will (or ease) just doesn't exist when it comes to peace-making, capacity-building, and law-and-order-upholding. Sure, pirates are an enemy of China and the United States alike -- and everyone (in the waters) between -- but aren't, say, terrorist landlubbers as well?
But then, if building up state structures stable enough to withstand terrorism were as easy as fighting pirates, then we could just station a whole bunch of troops around the country. Oops -- guess it isn't that easy out there on the deep blue sea either.