Some Thoughts and Observations on Somali Piracy

I haven't completely defined my geographic range for this blog yet, but MEI as a whole and the Journal in particular have long taken a "greater Middle East" view, going all the way back to 1946. Besides:

1. Somalia is a member of the Arab League.
2. The anti-piracy mission is part of the operational area for US Fifth Fleet and Central Command's Naval Forces Central Command (NAVCENT), based in Bahrain.
3. The sea lanes giving access to the Red Sea from the Indian Ocean are clearly a strategic element vital to the oil-producing states of the Middle East, and Somali piracy has already exacted considerable ransom from tankers on the Gulf run.

Before talking about anything else, I want to note three interesting things that as of this writing I haven't seen noted by the various talking heads and bloggers:

• The American ship that was attacked, the Maersk Alabama, is home-ported at Norfolk, Virginia. Knowing the area well, I immediately reflected on the fact that just across Hampton Roads, in the town of Hampton, is the spot known as Teach's Point, where the Royal Navy in 1718 once stuck the no-longer-attached head of one Edward Teach on a pike. The late Mr. Teach is generally better remembered as Blackbeard the Pirate.
  

• Combined Task Force 151, which patrols the area under the overall command of Fifth Fleet/NAVCENT, and will likely be even more involved now that a US-flagged vessel has been attacked, is currently commanded by Rear Admiral Michelle Howard, who was previously the first African-American woman to command a Navy warship.
  

• Oh Lord, this is almost too much: the destroyer heading to the scene is the USS Bainbridge, the latest of many Navy ships named for William Bainbridge, who among other things in a long career, surrendered his frigate Philadelphia to the "Barbary Pirates," leading to the campaign that brought the Marines to North Africa ("the shores of Tripoli") for the first time. It seems to have been the nearest vessel to the incident, but the synchronicity is weird.
  

The fact that, if reports are accurate, this has turned from a hijacked-ship story to a hostage story, the crew having retaken the ship but not recovered their captain, means the options for US Naval response will be rather different. I won't speculate about what, precisely, will be done. The question of dealing with piracy is a complex one, especially since parts of Somalia have become the sort of open pirate enclaves that Port Royal, Jamaica was back in Blackbeard's day. Part of the problem is the anarchy on the ground in Somalia.

At a time when the Somali central government's writ does not run even in Mogadishu, the particular pirate's nest apparently behind the Maersk Alabama attack, Eyl, is part of the autonomous region that calls itself Puntland, which declared its autonomy of the central government over a decade ago. (Unlike "Somaliland," to its West, which proclaimed its own independence, Puntland apparently still considers itself part of Somalia.) Eyl does not seem to be under the control of the Puntland government, either.

The Somali government cannot control its own capital and certainly is unlikely to develop an effective coast guard anytime soon. The local population presumably tolerates piracy because the big ransoms that the pirates are raking in adds to local prosperity in a country with no functioning economy. It's quite possible that the single largest source of foreign exchange in Somalia today is ransom. That tends to be an incentive for tolerating the pirates.

The pirate nests of the 17th and 18th century, like Port Royal and Kingston, were eventually eliminated by the Royal Navy. (Well, in the case of Port Royal, they had the help of an earthquake.) The present task force in the region is multinational, which always raises issues of unity of command and of coordination. Americans also have the singularly unpleasant memory of the 1993 Battle of Mogadishu, memorably depicted in the book and movie Black Hawk Down. Up till today, no American ship had been directly attacked, so the US had less incentive to take direct action.

Some of the talking heads today have noted that the ocean involved is a huge space and that it is impossible to patrol all of it. That's true, but an Aegis cruiser or two, a carrier with E-2C Hawkeyes, possibly AWACS operating out of Saudi or Omani air bases (admittedly a political issue), a couple of helicopter carriers, and it would be difficult for a pigeon to fly through that area undetected. (Slight exaggeration, I know. But if the pirates now have GPS, we now have a lot more than that.)

Of course, military action has its limitations, especially against "asymmetric" threats. Mogadishu in 1993 was a reminder of that, but so far not a single country has sought to mount any kind of special operation against the pirates, not even a commando recovery of a seized ship. I suspect that will change as the costs rise and the US finds itself more of a target. [UPDATE: my commenters keep me honest; one notes: "British radio news reported that a French commando raid had freed a small vessel taken by pirates, and the Indian Navy recently attacked and destroyed a 'Pirate Mothership' which eventually turned out not to be. Both of these took place off of Somalia in the past 12 months." I stand corrected.]

One thing that I do not fully understand is the fact that so few, if any, of these merchant vessels carry any kind of self-defense weapons. Four Somalis with AK-47s feel safe attacking a container ship or oil tanker, because they assume the crews are unarmed. Some of these big vessels are so automated they have only tiny crews, but the Maersk Alabama reportedly had 20 people aboard, and in the end they were able to overpower armed men though without arms themselves. But why not arm the ships? Armed merchantmen have a long history in combating piracy, unrestricted submarine warfare, and other threats to the sealanes.

I'm not the first to note this of course, but not only do the Marines sing about the "Shores of Tripoli," but Marine officers' swords are still modeled on the Mamluk sword presented to Presley O'Bannon. What started the campaign against Tripoli, you may recall, was the capture by the "Barbary Pirates" of the frigate Philadelphia, commanded by William Bainbridge, namesake of the destroyer sent to help the Maersk Alabama.

I'm not suggesting an equation between then and now — the so-called "Barbary pirates" were actually acting under color of state authority — but freedom of navigation is one of the oldest principles of US foreign policy, since the days of the Barbary Wars and the War of 1812.

Another point: although both terrorism of the al-Qa‘ida variety and piracy are fueled and strengthened by failed states and anarchic conditions, they are distinct things. Al-Qa‘ida is fighting for a religious and ideological goal; pirates want money. Pirates are a lot less likely to die for a cause, and thus can be suppressed by coercive means. There are no suicide pirates: there's no money in it. But some aspects of counterinsurgency theory can work against piracy as well: the key is to gain the support of the local population who, at the moment, see the pirates as an economic boon. If they start to see them as bringing the wrath of the international community down on Eyl and other towns, the pirates might lose some of their support base. (There's a complicating factor here, namely clan loyalty; clans are more important in Somali society than almost any other factor, and that is hard to dislodge. Just as the Pushtun code is so strong in Afghanistan, we may find it very hard to undermine clan solidarity in Somalia.)

Anyway, those are some initial thoughts, not prescriptions. I suspect we'll be paying a lot more attention to Somali piracy now that a US ship is involved. And this isn't just a jingoistic, insult-to-the-flag sort of issue: it's a genuine threat to the sealanes that contain much of the world's oil and container traffic. It's certainly an issue for Middle Eastern states.