Somali Piracy

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Approach the concrete through the news media instead of through direct experience. Start at a remove from the real.  Either way there is distortion.  The grunt on the ground who only knows what he can see, hear and sense directly versus the abstract overall visualization of the senior cadre. Or compare the viewpoint of the sailor on a freighter outrunning a speedboat of men firing rifles and grenades with that of the  statistician summarizing reports of piratical incidents.

All of my  attempts at concrete analysis are based on a very crude method. I am not there at the scene of the action. I work with patterns built on the data of others.  I do not know what is false, exaggerated. diminished. Or what is missing. So what I offer with this rough carpentry is a way of doing this kind of work. The better our materials, the better our results.  In each case I want to think through to my own understanding. Even members of an audience far distant from the actual are not sentenced to the passive, uncritical acceptance of the cadre given. It is possible to find one’s own way.

Crime is a piggy-back activity.  Observe what the other is doing, find the vulnerable spot and moment and then strike. Ships whose tracks funnel through narrow passages are subject to ambush. Ports  that  support illegal acts with service and safe harbor are nearby. A minimal level of equipment to start–a rowboat and a gun or club.  A willing criminal. And there you have it–piracy in the ocean environment, the floating hold-up-nick. A very old dodge.  It has several kinds of pay-off:  directly  steal cash and goods;  kidnap and hold  crew, ship and cargo for ransom, threaten and extort tribute to allow peaceful passage.  There can be purely terror attacks with the aim to destroy property and kill actors and bystanders but so far on the Somali front the motives and acts have been commercial, pure and simple.

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Piracy has a romantic side.  The freebooter, the ultimate entrepreneur  out for himself. The letter of marque, acting privately but in the name of your government’s policy, attacking enemy shipping. Indentured convicts and slaves rebel in transit and raise the Jolly Roger and hit back, with profit, at their oppressors.

On the other side, the official fighting back. Early in the 19th century, the still young U.S. Navy sending a small expedition against the Barbary Coast pirates in the now Algiers-Tripoli area of the North African coast where captured sailors were held at hard labor, awaiting ransom.

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Somalia, supposedly ungoverned but actually only without a dominant center.  The various armed gangs, the warlords, the heads of established kin groups have their various sectors under control. Accepting an overlord state is simply not in their interest  The only central authority to arise lately represents the local fanatical religious crazies. It is antithetical to most of the rest of the world and when it made its move for power it was suppressed by the Ethiopian Army. Don’t get me wrong. I am not urging on the fanatics,  only pointing out that the alternate provisional regime, our government seems to support, neither frightens nor has any  house with any of the local players.

Lawless? Yet the media tell us that heads of piratical groups build mansions for themselves–an organized activity for sure requiring international trade and building crafts. There is an organization in place there and it is doing exactly what it wants.  The senior cadre in Somalia only work for themselves.

The piracy game has progressed.  We are told that gangs are improving their equipment, increasing the size of their organizations.  More people are entering the business.  Talk about social mobility! People emulating the the CEOs of advanced industrial societies and the chiefs of illegal drug groups in Mexico and Columbia and Afghanistan.  The money rolling in.

It is not easy to confront.  A ship has no defilade. The high explosives bunch through the steel plates.  Each meeting of pirates and intended victims is a dance.  Maneuver, threaten, posture, but when the drop occurs, as in get the drop on, there is a giving up.  Prisoners (hostages) are taken.  No one wants the all-out shoot out.

There are a few  exceptions but mainly there is an avoidance of extreme violence.  The civilian crews of the commercial ships are unarmed.  Once the pirates clamber aboard and point their guns, captain and crew give up. The vessel now under the command of the criminals sails to the local port, anchors.  The crew and ship are held while negotiations for ransom proceed between the  pirate intermediaries and the ship owners.

The international flotilla of naval ships sent to intervene appear to be under rules of engagement that strictly limit what they can do. Once the pirates have captured a ship the navies might sail alongside but they will not try to take the vessel  back.  Suspected pirates who are picked up and who claim to be simple fishermen or on peaceful passage are let go. Few are held for trial.  To save the cargoes, the ships, and the crews there is a general willingness to pay the ransom (some might call it tribute) rather than risk the mayhem and death that might be the result of an aggressive military (police) action. Any attack on the sanctuary ports on the coast would endanger civilian populations in residence.

 This hesitancy in finding the maximal response to a threat is particularly visible in the post-cold war era we are now in.  To find the reaction to a provocation takes a lot of testing and waiting for the possible invention of the easy way that gives maximal results. But there is no assurance that the answer will come in time. Or even that it exists. The  decades long delayed discovery of the use of a charge of conspiracy to jail the leaders of syndicated crime. The difficulty limiting rogue nations breaching the anti-proliferation treaty against the spread of the number of nations manufacturing and holding nuclear weapons.  The failure of civilized nations to block the genocide in Rwanda.  The unbelievable failure of the African Union to resolve the long-running anti-democratic  Mugabe crisis in Zimbabwe.  On and on.

There is a Gordian Knot and the sword that cuts through it awaits to be discovered.  So the hidden zinger in the analysis of a crisis that does not resolve is the analysis of the block to the invention and discovery of the maximally correct way.

Proviso.  The point-of-view again.  For the pro-active movers behind the crisis, in the current example the criminals,  the way things are now is the maximal way.  Stop searching Pal, we are already there.

Clear the deck.