Jack Huemmler
Richard Foulk
20th Century
2 November 2011
Anarchy and Exploitation on the High Seas
Off the coast of Africa’s horn swims a menace. Gone are the days of squalls sinking armadas and U-boats threatening fleets. Scurvy and horse latitudes are no longer problems, and yet a threat still lingers. Today we live in a second age of piracy, with insurgents taking up arms and taking in hostages against ships, ranging in size from private yachts to cruise liners and oil tankers. The old technology is gone, but the price, both economic and human, remains.
Becoming a threat with the Somali Civil war in 1991, Somali pirates have been regularly hijacking and holding for ransom ships off of the coast of Africa with a scope ranging from as far north as Oman to two thousand miles south, off of Tanzania. These attacks have become more brazen over time, with bigger heists and bolder outlaws captivating the world almost as well as Pirates of the Caribbean.
But who lets this happen? Surely a gang of pirates based in America would get nipped in the bud as soon as they forgot to pay their hideout’s property tax. Unfortunately, today’s Somalia is largely lawless. Occupied by the British, Somalia was a pawn in Britain’s empire until the crown relinquished control in 1960. An unstable government existed until a military coup in 1969. This led to an oppressive authoritarian socialist rule under Mohamed Siad Barre. This collapsed in May 1991, and a civil war ensued between the northern and southern states. Anarchy engulfed large parts of the country and continues to this day. This, coupled with the worst drought of the century in 1992, caused a humanitarian disaster, leading to the United Nations stepping in in December 1992 with Operation Restore Hope. The U.N., backed by American forces, left Somalia in 1995, having failed to restore stability in the violent, gang fueled turmoil that inspired Black Hawk Down. Dysfunctional governments came and went, but overall anarchy and violence reigned supreme. Groups seized control of Mogadishu, the capital, including the powerful Al Shabaab. Gangs ran municipalities and minor infrastructure systems, essentially keeping Somalia functioning while securing power (Somalia: History, Geography,, 2005).
In these lawless conditions, piracy thrived. Beginning namely in 2005 with the attack on the Hong Kong based tanker Feisty Gas, piracy gained momentum. The pirates’ representative in Mombasa, Kenya was paid 315,000 dollars and the ship was released.
Later in 2005 the Semlow, transporting U.N. food supplies for tsunami victims from Kenya to Somalia, was attacked by pirates. The ship was held for 100 days until the pirates, demanding 50,000 dollars, left empty handed.
In November 2005, Somali pirates attacked the Seabourn Spirit, a luxury liner with 210 passengers. The pirates attacked with rocket propelled grenades and machine guns but were driven off with non-lethal weapons, including a fire hose and a long range acoustic device.
In 2006, the Indian Safina al-Birsarat was captured. The USS Winston Churchill intercepted the vessel and fired warning shots, and the ten pirates were taken into custody (List of Ships).
These are only a few of the incidents that gained international attention in 2005 and 2006. The piracy continued with greater frequency and attacks became more brazen through 2006 and 2007. The United Nations reported 489 acts of piracy or armed robbery on the high seas in 2010. Responding to these attacks and others, the Combined Task Force 150, or CTF-150, was assigned to anti-piracy duty around 2008, supported namely by countries with shipping interests off of the Horn of Africa. This included the U.S., Russia, India, Korea, Canada, France, Germany, and the U.K. among other countries. Even with this task force in place, attacks continued, multiplying still in number, although many were deterred by CTF-150 responses (Protecting against Piracy, 2009).
One day in April 2009, a ship signaled the CTF-150, reporting an attempted attack by pirates. The closest military ship was over 300 miles away. In a news story that made headlines the world over, pirates boarded the Maersk Alabama, a U.S. flagged ship. The captain offered that he be taken hostage in lieu of his entire crew, and he was taken onto a life raft for days. His captors were finally killed when U.S. Navy Seals sniped all three.
These cases are only a few examples of the hundreds of attacks off of the coast of Somalia since 2005. The pirates are usually age 20 to 35, and are part of the roughly four large pirate gangs in northeastern Somalia’s Puntland. The brains of the operations are usually Somali fishermen who have boats and extensive knowledge of the waters. Ex-militiamen from Somalia’s civil war often supply the brawn, that is, RPGs, assault rifles, and handguns. Most attacks happen in the early morning, using with one or two speedboats, or ‘skiffs’, that can reach speeds much faster than those of a tanker. The skiffs are based off of an out of sight mother ship. RPGS and machine guns are fired to intimidate the driver to slow down and allow boarding, after which light ladders are used to gain access to the deck. Afterwards the pirates try to take control of the bridge and thus of the ship. The pirates use the hostages and the ship’s cargo itself (especially notable in the case of multi-million dollar oil tankers) to get a ransom wired to an onshore representative, and then make off on their skiffs (Pirates of Somalia, 2009).
Piracy directly and indirectly affects more than just the sailors involved. While the cost of paying ransoms from year to year may be less than a quarter billion dollars, the cost of maintaining a naval presence to protect shipping is immense. In a case like the MV Golden Nori, demanding a one million dollar ransom for a chemical tanker worth almost one hundred times that is hardly a dent in shipping companies’ bottom line. However, insurance rates have climbed for shipping, and slower ships have to be re-routed, wasting time and therefore money. Routes are being scared from the Kenya’s Suez Canal, inadvertently costing it an estimated 642 million dollars yearly. Kenya and Yemen are under strain, as trade and humanitarian aid between these countries and Somalia is difficult with pirates on the loose. Kenya’s tourism industry is collapsing under visitors’ fear of becoming another hostage, to the point where Kenya has closed its borders to the liability that is Somali anarchy ("Timeline: Somalia," 2011).
The human cost of piracy is ugly as well. In 2010, 4,185 seafarers were attacked and 1090 were taken hostage, often to be abused. Many die, either when negotiations turn sour or due to malnutrition or suicide. Due to the harsh treatment or outright slaying of captured pirates by world governments, pirates often issue warnings threatening the lives of any potential hostages or current hostages if the government tries to intervene. After release, many seafarers are traumatized, having been held captive for sometimes hundreds of days (Straziuso & Muhumed, 2011).
Needless to say, however, Somalia often profits from this lawlessness. In an incredibly poor, impoverished nation, huge paydays are enough to transform villages. A successful pirate can make hundreds of times the average yearly wage in Somalia in one successful heist. Somali children, after seeing and experiencing this wealth are drawn towards a dangerous, criminal life.
As a result of increased piracy, encroaching fishing vessels from other countries are beginning to keep away from Somali waters. Local fishing boats haul in bigger catches, earning up to fifty times as much as they had when foreign trawlers had snapped up most of the fish. In fact, fishing and shipping competition are not the only thing pirates are scaring away. Private companies, due to the lack of government in Somalia, are dumping toxic and potentially nuclear waste into the waters where fishermen make their livelihood. Thus, pirates often call themselves badaadinta badah, which translates to ‘Saviours of the Sea’, protecting their homeland from foreign trawling and tampering. The Somali attacks on some boats do hold water, however. These Chinese and Taiwanese fishing boats are hauling in far more than their fair share, however: “Using steel-pronged drag fishing nets, these foreign trawlers did not bother with nimble explorations of the reefs: they uprooted them, netting the future livelihood of the nearby coastal people along with the day's catch. Today... there are no more lobsters to be found in the waters off Eyl” (Bahadur, 2011.)
The Maersk Alabama case, one of many acts of piracy, effectively highlights issues in reacting to and preventing piracy. To begin, the CTF-150 only has fourteen to sixteen ships patrolling at any time, an incredibly small amount for the area at risk: almost 1600 kilometers of pernicious coastline (Bahadur, 2011). The U.S. Navy’s Bill Gortney said "To put it in perspective, draw a box from Houston to Chicago to New York City down to Jacksonville, Florida. It's an immense body of water." Second, the targeted boat had no weapons for self defense. This essentially made it a sitting duck, traversing a known and dangerous trade route without protection (Protecting against Piracy, 2009).
These problems, among many others, can be solved in a few simple steps. To begin, shipping companies need to begin arming their ships. No longer can tankers be the cows of the sea: slow moving, easily attacked, with their herders nowhere to be found. Simply adding horns to the cows would make them the bulls of the sea, and rarely do country youngsters go bull-tipping. Armed resistance to piracy has worked in the case of a November 2011 hijacking of a Taiwanese fishing vessel, and Britain is reworking its laws banning firearms on commercial vessels in light of piracy’s emerging danger. In this case, private security personnel would be hired and would work aboard the ship, instead of entrusting the skipper or first mate with weapons. "The evidence is that ships with armed guards don't get attacked, don't get taken for hostage or for ransom, and so we think this is a very important step forward,” said David Cameron in an interview with BBC. Indeed, the response to piracy should not be to increase the size and scope of the already costly CTF-150, but to keep the force at the same size to respond to imminent threats and arm ships to deal with small problems themselves, assumedly scaring off a large portion of attackers simply by being armed (Stringer, 2011).
Next, the world needs to pursue pirate leaders on the land. America knows the costs of fighting a ground war in Somalia all too well, and currently uses drone strikes, which have several reported hits of pirate leaders. While some pirates are just disgruntled fisherman, others are in piracy for a profit and won’t stop until someone makes them.
In order to further quell piracy, the U.N. needs to implement a ban on waste dumping of any kind off of Somalia’s coast in order to stop the poisoning of Somalia’s waters. Furthermore, foreign fishermen need to stay away from Somalia’s coast, as fishing is the lifeblood of many an honest Somali, and destructive fishing measures that go otherwise unpunished have all but destroyed the traditional livelihood. The CTF-150 can patrol for these ships as well as pirates, and can respond to reports of them just as they can respond to reports of pirate attacks.
Finally, and perhaps the most difficult solution, is to rebuild Somalia’s government. Pumping money into a non-gang infrastructure will alleviate Somalia’s oppressive poverty. The U.S. government already learned to build nations in Iraq, and now the entire world, or at least the parts that ship near Somalia, can pitch in. The U.N. owes the millions of innocent Somali citizens a stable government, and we can’t afford to shy off again because the gangs want to stay in power. Piracy off of any other coast is hardly a problem, and this is because any other coast has a government. Once a stable, effective government is in place, gangs turn into criminals that can be caught, piracy turns into terrorism that can be stopped, trawling turns into poaching that can be prosecuted, and despair turns into poverty which can be alleviated.
Somalia’s problems run deeper than just piracy. While the world prefers to pay attention to our seamen in danger, we need to turn our attention instead to the millions of impoverished Somalis fueling this terrorism out of desperation. We need to stop the pollution and plundering of Somali waters, and stop the violence and oppressive influences of the gangs on land. We need to establish a government that can take the reigns and stop their own pirates, and then we can shrink the CTF-150 and go along our merry way. Piracy is a side affect of Somalia’s anarchy and the average Somali’s victimhood, and to cure the symptoms we need to cure the disease, stabilizing Somalia and therefore its waters.
References
Bahadur, J. (2011, May 24). Somali pirate: 'We're not murderers... we just attack ships'. The Guardian. Retrieved from http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/24/ a-pioneer-of-somali-piracy List of Ships Held by Somali Pirates. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.filepie.us/
?title=List_of_ships_held_by_Somali_pirates#2005 Pirates of Somalia- The Big Picture [News Stories in Photographs]. (2009, March 16). Retrieved from
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/03/pirates_of_somalia.html Protecting Against Piracy Difficult in Vast Area. (2009, April 12). Retrieved from
http://articles.cnn.com/2009-04-12/world/somalia.pirates.region_1_pirates-piracy-ships?_s=PM:WORLD Seymour, R. (2011, June). Somali Pirates Cost Global Economy Billions. Retrieved from Power Library database. Somalia. (n.d.). Somalia (africa). Retrieved from World Factbook database.
Somalia: History, Geography, Government, and Culture. (2005). Retrieved from
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0107979.html SOMALIA: Russia executed all Somali pirates – spokesman. (2010, May 12). Somaliland Press. Retrieved
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