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New at Reason: Jesse Walker on Piracy and Somalia
Managing Editor
Jesse Walker explains why it's easy to call vaguely for fixing
Somalia via humanitarian assistance or military action, but much
harder to come up with a plan that won't make things worse. Whether
you're building a working society on the land or protecting ships
at sea, real solutions are only going to come incrementally,
experimentally, and at the initiative of the people directly
affected.
Cabeza De Vaca|4.17.09 @ 3:32PM|#
"Let me get this straight. To combat communism in east Africa,
the United States propped up a Marxist dictator. After sending
troops to battle the warlords, it intervened again to assist the
warlords. It did this about-face to stanch the growth of Islamism,
but the effect was to put an Islamist group in charge of the
country. And after Washington backed an invasion and occupation of
the nation to end the Islamic Courts Union's control, the result
was a government run by a former commander of the Islamic Courts
Union?"
It amazes me how little attention people pay to the outcome of
events that they support.
|4.17.09 @ 3:37PM|#
real solutions are only going to come incrementally,
experimentally, and at the initiative of the people directly
affected.
Like throwing money at the problem. And if that somehow fails,
throwing more money at it. Systems and incentives are irrelevant
and overrated. The problem is funding. Why don't you care enough to
spend more?
/inner leftie
High Every Body|4.17.09 @ 3:39PM|#
Is Jesse manning personing the
"Anything Pirate" desk today?
Sorry for the misusage ;)
EJM|4.17.09 @ 4:06PM|#
Pirates have shifted their bases of operation before-since
2007, for example, most of their activity has moved from the waters
near Mogadishu towards the [breakaway] statelet of
Puntland.
I'm kind of surprised that there's no specific mention of Somaliland in the
article. One of the side issues concerning the current Somali
government is whether it represents Puntland and
Somaliland; Puntland positions itself as an autonomous region under
a larger Somali federal government (i.e., one based in Mogadishu or
Baidoa), while Somaliland has been trying (unsuccessfully) to be
recognized as a separate nation.
Not to put him on the spot, but I'd be curious as to whether Jesse
would favor international recognition of Somaliland.
(Separately, in addition to the sites
that I plugged last week, you may want to check out Hiiraan Online--which may be the best
one in terms of reprinting third-party news content.)
|4.17.09 @ 4:11PM|#
Curious George rules. I should do a Monkey Tuesday special
on him.
Absolutely. There is comedy gold in them thar books.
|4.17.09 @ 4:15PM|#
I bet you wouldn't be identifying Belgian pirates with a bumbling monkey, you racist.
|4.17.09 @ 4:18PM|#
"And if you do eliminate one group of criminals, you still
haven't eliminated or even, in the long run, reduced the crime.
Think of the drug war: The authorities are sometimes able to break
up particular gangs or cartels, but the profit motive that drives
people into the drug business is still there, so other gangs and
cartels take their place. At best, you'll be playing a game of
whack-a-mole. At worst, you'll also be whacking a lot of civilians
in the process."
an oddly illiberal respect for property isn't that
I am not so sure that the analogy to the drug war is exactly apt.
As libertarians and many others would say, legalize drugs and the
drug war logically ends.
Wouldn't piracy be much more closely likened to car jacking for
example? It is not as though that the state is going to legalize
theft [make the requisite libertarian "well actually the
state....." comments at one's leisure]
If there were roving gangs of car jackers attacking truckers on
intestates in the South West, I can't imagine that the FBI and
assorted High Way patrols would just throw their hands in the
air.
OR, is this simply a matter of scale of the problem
EJM|4.17.09 @ 4:24PM|#
Also, I might as well plug Rob Crilly's comparison of Somalia and quantum mechanics.
Kolohe|4.17.09 @ 4:34PM|#
since 2007, for example, most of their activity has moved
from the waters near Mogadishu towards the breakway statelet of
Puntland. They could easily pull up stakes again
I'd have to look it up to be sure, but I think the Gulf of Aden
piracy has been fairly consistent throughout the last two decades,
with a modest uptick recently - but still with the majority of
incidents then and now. The Gulf of Aden is a natural chockpoint;
after ships exit the horn, they can go any number of ways. The Gulf
of Aden ops are necessarily based in Somlialand and Puntland (i.e.
in the North)
Since 2007, the attacks that have made headlines are the large
ships that have been attacked in the Indian Ocean proper. Those who
based closer to Mogadishu may have migrated back north as folks
like the ICU (and for that matter the TNG) start to exert more
authority over the region around Mogadishu.
But the majority of the activity has *always* been in the
North.
|4.17.09 @ 4:43PM|#
...OR, is this simply a matter of scale of the
problem...
Our Coast Guard enterprise is too big to fail!
|4.17.09 @ 4:55PM|#
real solutions are only going to come incrementally,
experimentally, and at the initiative of the people directly
affected.
I think to some degree that depends on what you are regarding as
the problem those "real solutions" are to address.
If piracy, rather than the pervasive dysfunction of Somalian
society, is the problem, then I think the solution doesn't really
require that that Somalians pull themselves up with their
bootstraps is quite feasible.
(1) Allow merchant ships to be armed.
(2) Organize convoys.
(3) Have naval escorts for those convoys, and crank up real-time
surveillance (satellites, drones, whatever).
(4) Re-establish very permissive rules of engagement for suspected
pirates. You know, the old "shot across the bow, then a taste of
the grape".
(5) Authorize punitive expeditions against pirate bases.
Its a matter of incentives. The current hands-off, no self-defense
approach has made piracy a low-risk, high-reward proposition.
Change the incentives to make it a high-risk proposition, and you
will see less of it. RC'z First Iron Law:
1. You get more of what you reward, and less of what you
punish
To date, there has been very little punishment meted out to
pirates, and hundreds of millions of ransom money. Until that
changes, piracy will remain. If that changes, you don't need to
remake Somalia to get rid of Somali pirates.
economist|4.17.09 @ 5:04PM|#
I'm getting a "Meet Somali Girls" ad on my screen. I must admit the woman there is attractive but-correct me if I'm wrong-wouldn't most Somali girls look more...African?
economist|4.17.09 @ 5:06PM|#
"To date, there has been very little punishment meted out to
pirates, and hundreds of millions of ransom money."
Perhaps we should deal with pirates the way the colonial powers
dealt with them.
Raise the gibbet!
I am, in fact, being completely serious. If you kidnap people and
threaten to murder them if you don't get a ransom, it should be a
capital crime.
|4.17.09 @ 5:07PM|#
I'd ditch your #5, RC (on balance, I think the PR damage of dead
civilians would outweigh any benefit in dead or deterred pirates),
and - in a perfect world - replace it with no more
ransoms; 'once you pay the dane-geld' etc. Of course, the cat
is long out of the bag on that one.
But otherwise, I agree. This is pretty penny-ante stuff people are
getting worked up over, and it can be contained in all the
time-honoured ways. I mean, seriously - fighting pirates has been
the major peace-time occupation of most navies since the first king
sent the first national warship to sea. We're not exactly lacking
for precedent here.
Jesse Walker|4.17.09 @ 5:10PM|#
EJM: I'm generally in favor of recognizing it, though there's
something to be said for the argument that not recognizing
Somaliland means it doesn't get any aid, which means it doesn't get
all the pathologies that arrive when every local interest group
starts chasing that aid...
Not a Libertarian: It's a matter of scale. Obviously I don't want
to legalize piracy, but some solutions cost too much to do too
little.
R.C.: To the extent that you're calling for making it easier for
boats to defend themselves, I'm with you. But even a decentralized
defense will have holes, and as long as the honest alternatives to
piracy (i.e., production and trade) are being disrupted onshore, I
think you'll have pirates willing to exploit those holes.
|4.17.09 @ 5:28PM|#
If Somalia had a functioning Coast Guard, both piracy and the related-but-distinct issue of poaching in the EEZ would be much easier to control. There's a lot to be said, I think, for a system that combines offshore patrols (mainly conducted by local powers with foreign assistance, as suggested in the Guardian op-ed), armed merchant ships and a limited system of convoys run by various 'Western' navies. (Convoys have historically been much more effective against commerce raiding than free-ranging patrols, but the threat has to rise to a much higher level before shippers are willing to submit to them, because from the commercial perspective they're a gigantic pain in the ass. And of course convoys would do little to nothing to deter poachers.)
Paul|4.17.09 @ 5:47PM|#
R.C.: To the extent that you're calling for making it easier
for boats to defend themselves, I'm with you. But even a
decentralized defense will have holes, and as long as the honest
alternatives to piracy (i.e., production and trade) are being
disrupted onshore, I think you'll have pirates willing to exploit
those holes.
I'm not convinced. This is a group of people whose tactics are
pretty much the same as piracy throughout the ages. Well, except
these pirates are comparitively ill-armed compared to the pirates
of yore.
Approach boat. Throw ropes and grapples, knife in teeth, and board.
Overwhelm crew. Profit.
The only, and I mean only tactic I could come up with, which really
wouldn't be exploiting holes, would be for the pirates to arm
up...significantly.
The modern version of Somali piracy is successful for one reason
only. Ships are defenseless.
And by defenseless I'm not only talking about traditional arms, I'm
talking about vigilance as well. I'm sure vigilance has gone way,
way up recently, however.
Clearly, as your article points out, so has the cost of insurance.
And that of course gnaws away at the
just-do-as-the-pirates-say-and-eat-the-cost-because-it's-still-cheaper-in-the-long-run
argument.
As a strong believer in arming the boats, I'm not an advocate of
arming crews. That's just a bad idea, and any captain would
probably agree. Crews are often made up of varying nationalities,
often without even speaking a common language, are one step away
from being criminals themselves, and are probably untrainable in
the subtleties of rules of engagement.*
I'm an advocate of private or public security (military--if that's
what it takes). Most relatively light arms will be able to repel
99% of the pirate attacks I've followed over the last few
years.
*I'll never forget the camera crew that caught Joe Hazelwood being
release from prison when they asked him what it was like on the
inside. His answer: "Pff, I've sailed with rougher people than
that"
economist|4.17.09 @ 5:52PM|#
"(3) Have naval escorts for those convoys, and crank up
real-time surveillance (satellites, drones, whatever)."
This sounds expensive. Who pays for it? Do the merchants pay a fee
to the navy for defending them, or do taxpayers foot the bill?
Paul|4.17.09 @ 6:16PM|#
This sounds expensive. Who pays for it? Do the merchants pay
a fee to the navy for defending them, or do taxpayers foot the
bill?
Nothing new here. Historically, governments have protected their
merchant shipping interests.
Paul|4.17.09 @ 6:17PM|#
Note, that last comment I made was for Walker.
But are those boots made for Walking?
Cabeza De Vaca|4.17.09 @ 6:58PM|#
"Why isn't anyone discussing my proposal to bring back the
gibbet?"
Where would we hang the gibbet at? Somali pirates aren't rogue
sailors turning to piracy. So hanging them at the entrance to ports
wouldn't be a big deterrent.
BlueBook|4.17.09 @ 8:02PM|#
There's always the Star Trek III stratagem: set the ship to auto-destruct while the crew beams out - er, escapes in a lifeboat. I mean if you're going to lose the ship anyway, might as well sink the pirates along with it.
hmm|4.17.09 @ 10:01PM|#
You just whack a few as you enter the Gulf of Aden and hang them off the bow of your ship. It's a twofer! You kill some pirates and any approaching know they will be the next deterrent hanging off the bow for the second trip. Of course you would need to keep them on ice.
ed|4.18.09 @ 5:07PM|#
The Somalia parliament just voted in Sharia law. From CNN: The strict interpretation of Sharia forbids girls from attending school, requires veils for women and beards for men, and bans music and television. Hard to love a country like that.
economist|4.18.09 @ 8:31PM|#
"Hard to love a country like that."
You've just offended the Afghans and Iraqis, ed. I hope you're
happy.
engineer|4.19.09 @ 3:40PM|#
"Did Barre change his ways when he started getting U.S.
aid?"
I thought changed his ways over the patriot act, fiscal profligacy,
and the Iraq War.
Oh, wait, that's Barr.
Stagman|4.21.09 @ 4:00PM|#
Other than the libertarian argument against recognizing Somaliland (that it would then get aid) what are the stated reasons and arguments against recognizing Somaliland? It seems to me, after a quick read of the Wikipedia article, that they have their shit together (in the relative sense of course), that it is de-facto independent anyway and that there's no pressing reason it should be part of Somalia (at least in terms of the arbitrary national borders of Africa in general). I'm genuinely curious about this, not voicing an opinion on the matter either way.
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