The Pirates of Somalia

by Jay Bahadur

  Five years ago, the Somali pirates were little more than fishermen who had traded in their nets for assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades. Since then, they have blossomed into maritime trade professionals, with an expanding capital base and a logistical and navigational sophistication that has allowed them to strike deep in the Indian Ocean, hundreds of kilometres beyond the reach of the international naval forces.

  Though the naval presence continues to burgeon, pirate hijackings are on the rise, and as of February 2011 more vessels are being held hostage along the Somali coast than ever before. The international naval forces have yet to grasp that violence is best used as a scalpel, not a club, and that their efforts to bludgeon the Somali pirates out of existence through sheer military force alone are no more likely to succeed in the future than in the past.

  How might Somali piracy look in another five years?

  First, the business will probably be a lot more lucrative. The current trend of ransom inflation is almost certain to continue unabated; hijacked vessels and their cargos are often worth hundreds of millions of dollars (over and above the value of the crews’ lives), and pirate negotiators have only just begun to realize how much shipowners are willing to pay. Each time a company agrees to a record-setting ransom, it sets a precedent that fuels the upward pressure on future payments.

  Second, pirate gangs are likely to be much more organized. As the payoffs continue to rise, rival organizations, clan militias, and even Somali Islamist groups will be increasingly tempted to rip off successful pirate groups. This threat, in turn, may provoke the pirates to coalesce into more permanent criminal syndicates and establish standing armies of their own. Piracy might well develop into a mafia-style business, complete with infighting, turf wars, and mob hits.

  Third, encounters at sea are likely to get a whole lot bloodier. Already, the use of firearms on all sides is on the rise; private security is becoming increasingly common on commercial vessels, the French government has stationed marines on the decks of its Indian Ocean fishing fleet, and Spain has followed suit by subsidizing the cost of armed guards on its own tuna boats. And the pirates are responding; whereas in the past, pirate attack groups used their weapons primarily as noisemakers—with the aim of frightening ships’ crews into surrendering—it has recently become standard practice to fire directly at the attacked vessel and her crew.

  The brutality has already begun to escalate. In February 2011 the Associated Press reported that the pirates had begun “systematically torturing” hostages, subjecting them to beatings, locking them in freezers, and ligating their genitals with plastic ties.2 On February 18, there occurred a tragedy unprecedented in the brief history of Somali piracy. In circumstances not yet entirely clear, American retirees Sean and Jean Adam, along with crewmates Phyllis Macay and Bob Riggle, were murdered by pirates after their yacht, the S/V Quest, had been hijacked four hundred kilometres off the coast of Oman. Shadowed by four US warships, navy helicopters whirring overhead, the pirates reportedly panicked and began to fight amongst themselves over which course of action to take. Responding to the sounds of gunfire aboard the Quest (some accounts say that the pirates also hit a warship with a rocket-propelled grenade), US forces were speedily dispatched to the yacht, prompting the pirates to execute all four hostages. The hijacking brought a cruel end to the Adams’ proselytizing voyage around the world, their vessel ballasted with thousands of Bibles to hand out along the way.

  With the cost of future attacks increasingly likely to be measured in blood in lieu of dollars, bringing a swift end to the scourge of piracy has never been more imperative.

  * * *

  What might be done to solve the piracy problem?

  Since the mid-1990s, Somali nation-building has been divided between those advocating for the “building block” approach—supporting stable, autonomous regions from the bottom up—and the top-down approach, as represented by the Transitional Federal Government (TFG). This latter strategy, which has held sway since 2000 (when the first in a series of transitional national governments was proclaimed), has been a disaster from the start. The TFG is a government in name only: its members have no constituents and its ministers no portfolios, and its continued existence rests only on the blind willingness of its international backers to believe that a fantasy is real. Yet the international community has remained steadfast in its patronage. At an April 2009 donor conference held in Brussels, for instance, Western nations pledged $250 million to support the TFG and fund the African Union’s AMISOM peacekeeping mission, the only force preventing Shabaab from driving the few MPs remaining in Mogadishu into the sea. No money, conversely, was set aside either for Puntland or Somaliland.

  Piracy in Puntland, I believe, is a direct symptom of the international community’s failed strategy of nation-building in Somalia. The decline of Puntland’s political and economic stability from 2005 to 2008 laid the groundwork for the subsequent piracy outbreak—a crisis that may have been averted had the international community diverted a fraction of its attention to stabilizing Puntland (by helping the administration meet its payrolls, for example). As Puntland came apart at the seams, the United States and other donors continued to put money towards the mortars and machine guns that would buy another stay of execution for the besieged members of Somalia’s official national government.

  * * *

  If there is one thing on which every commentator on Somali piracy agrees, it is that the problem must be solved on land, not merely at sea. Startlingly few, however, explain what an on-the-ground solution might entail, other than the swift return of a functioning government to Somalia—as if the state collapse of the last two decades were the result of a lack of effort. Other analysts counsel military force, citing the United States’ successful nineteenth-century war against the Barbary pirates—during which US marines ultimately invaded North Africa—as an educational precedent.3 But although the UN Security Council has authorized land-based measures, the current security climate makes deploying ground forces on Somali soil a madman’s proposition, and no country has volunteered (or will) its troops for such an errand.

  Non-payment of ransoms is another policy option that has been discussed very seriously at the highest levels—both the UK government and the Baltic and International Maritime Council (the world’s biggest shipping association), for example, have counselled against giving in to pirate demands. Concerns that the pirates may be linked to Al-Shabaab have also led to calls to treat pirate payoffs like ransoms to terrorist groups—explicitly prohibited under any circumstances. Perhaps if shipping companies had taken a firm anti-ransom stance five years ago, Somali piracy would never have developed into the current epidemic. But the time for such brinksmanship is over; after over a decade of steadily increasing ransoms, the threat of withholding payments is no longer credible.

  Notwithstanding the savage murders of the four American yachters, the pirates rarely kill, and it is possible—as Boyah and his colleagues have suggested to me—that the threat is largely a bluff. Unfortunately, even if shipping owners wished to gamble on this dubious assertion, the pirates still possess a viable option between the two extremes of murdering the crew or releasing the ship without a ransom: the threat to transfer the crew ashore and abandon or scuttle the hijacked vessel. Indeed, this manoeuvre has already been carried out on multiple occasions; in the case of the Rockall hijacking (see Chapter 4), a German couple was held in the mountains near Bossaso for months, and a similar fate befell Paul and Rachel Chandler, elderly British yachters who were held near Harardheere for over a year under intolerable conditions.

  The problem with “getting tough” with the pirates is that just one misstep could occasion a monumental financial or even ecological disaster, to say nothing of the potential loss of life. As we saw in the case of the Victoria, pirate gangs often incur considerable operating expenses in expectation of a certain ransom payment, and potentially owe hundreds of thousands of dollars to dangerous creditors on land. In short, com
ing home empty-handed might prove as lethal to them as facing a team of Navy SEALs. They are scared, desperate, and unpredictable, and only one jittery finger on a grenade launcher would be needed to detonate an oil tanker and send a few hundred million dollars—more than the total of all ransoms paid to date—straight to the bottom of the ocean, leaving deadly toxic chemicals washing ashore on Somalia’s beaches.

  In essence, the risks of employing hardball tactics—either by refusing to pay ransoms or through direct military assaults—far outweigh the few million dollars such a strategy might save. The fact is, with only a fraction of 1 per cent of all ships passing through “pirate waters” being successfully hijacked, paying ransoms is economically sustainable for the long term (although this might change if ransom amounts continue to rise). Bowing to extortion may be humiliating, and the months of lost labour and capital inconvenient, but at least usually no one dies. The long-term cost of “giving in,” on the other hand, is measured by the increasing ransoms paid to the pirates, and, with the higher stakes, the ever-growing chance of incurring loss of life.

  One thing, at least, is clear: when the situation on the ground produces men desperate enough to set out into the Indian Ocean in four-metre skiffs without enough food and fuel to return—their only hope of survival either to capture a vessel or themselves be captured—military force alone will not be a sufficient deterrent. Short of convincing Somalia’s warring factions to lay down their Kalashnikovs and come together to form a functioning national government overnight (which many analysts seem to treat as a realistic solution), Somali piracy is unlikely to be completely eradicated in the foreseeable future. Any feasible solution must therefore aim at the pragmatic mitigation, not the elimination, of piracy.

  With that in mind, what can the international community do against piracy?

  1. FINANCE AN EFFECTIVE AND WELL-PAID PUNTLAND POLICE TASK FORCE.

  A coast guard is a legitimate last line of defence against piracy in a mature state, but in Puntland a much more cost-effective strategy would be to invest in a police task force capable of stopping the pirates before they reach the sea. Train and equip police officers, perhaps through an expansion of the police training program already operated by the UN Development Programme. Fund small permanent garrisons in Eyl, Garacad, and other coastal towns, and provide all-terrain vehicles that will allow for a rapid response to pirate threats. Salaries should be high enough—in the region of President Farole’s suggestion of $300 per month—to deter corruption and reduce the allure that piracy has presented to members of the security forces in the past. In the longer term, provide funding for roads, radar stations equipped with high frequency radios, and other basic infrastructure in the coastal regions that will further improve response time.

  2. FUND AN EXPANSION OF THE PUNTLAND PRISON SYSTEM.

  The Puntland government is going to need somewhere to put suspects apprehended by its revamped police force, ideally without resorting to the mass pardons I witnessed at Bossaso prison. Accordingly, finance the construction of new prisons on Puntland soil, with the aim of increasing the region’s prison capacity to roughly 1,500–2,000 inmates.

  Instead of resorting to legal hocus-pocus to assign arbitrary jurisdiction over suspected pirates to Kenyan courts, establish qualified multinational tribunals to try them. Once the Puntland authorities have proved that they can be trusted to make prisoners actually serve their sentences—regardless of their clan or family connections—start to hand over convicted pirates to local prisons.

  3. FOSTER INTELLIGENCE COORDINATION BETWEEN PUNTLAND AND INTERNATIONAL NAVAL FORCES.

  The best source of intelligence on pirate activities is not EUNAVFOR or the CIA, but the local people on the ground. In order to tap this resource, create intelligence-gathering centres within Puntland. Set up pirate tip hotlines, publicize the relevant contact numbers, and offer modest rewards for information leading to the arrest of suspected pirates. Many local residents of Puntland’s coastal areas are sufficiently fed up with the pirates to turn informer, and sufficiently poor that a moderate financial incentive would be enough to sway equivocators.

  Finally, establish channels for coordinating ground-based intelligence with the international naval forces, ensuring regular communication between Puntland authorities and the NATO, EUNAVFOR, and CTF-151 command and control centres.

  4. CLAMP DOWN ON ILLEGAL FISHING.

  Although Somali piracy began as a backlash by disaffected fishermen, the hijacking of commercial vessels is now a self-sustaining business that has far outgrown its original impetus. Nonetheless, the continuing role of illegal fishing as a powerful founding myth, psychological justification, and effective PR tool should not be underestimated.

  Somalis often point out to me the hypocrisy of foreign warships arresting pirates as long-liners fish unmolested within sight. Indeed, it hardly seems fair for international forces to apply one standard of justice to pirates and another to thieves. Given the political will, the EU has the legal authority to rein in the Spanish, Italian, and French fishing interests that continue to violate Somalia’s exclusive economic zone. The Taiwanese, Thai, Chinese, and South Asian vessels that constitute the majority of the remaining violators would have to be stopped through other means. To that end, the international naval fleets patrolling Somali waters should expand their mandates to include interdicting foreign fishing vessels, or, at the very least, collecting photographic evidence of fishing violations to pass on to a regulatory body empowered to sanction offenders. Eliminating illegal fishing will not remove the financial incentive for piracy, but publicized prosecutions of vessels caught fishing illegally will help to undercut the pirates’ claims of legitimacy.

  Stymieing illegal fishing will also bring many benefits to those on land. Heavily armed trawlers, along with the more recent danger of foreign warships mistaking legitimate fishermen for pirates, currently make fishing far too dangerous an occupation for the average life-loving Somali. Cleansing Somali waters of thuggish foreign fishermen will aid in revitalizing Somalia’s fishing industry, providing a vital source of income for destitute coastal dwellers and reducing the pool of potential pirate recruits. Action at sea should be matched on the ground by investments in fishing boats and gear, as well as processing plants and refrigerated transports.

  5. ENCOURAGE OR REQUIRE PASSIVE SECURITY MEASURES ABOARD COMMERCIAL VESSELS.

  Simple security measures—such as extra watches, barbed wire, travelling in convoys, and lockdown areas in which the crew can barricade themselves (my “turtle defence”)—are extremely effective at deterring pirate attacks. Ideally, the International Maritime Organization should adopt binding regulations to force owners of vessels transiting through Somali waters to implement a bare minimum standard of such practices.

  * * *

  Implementing the above recommendations would not require additional foreign aid to Somalia, but rather the reinvestment of the hundreds of millions of dollars already being spent on the bloated—and largely ineffectual—international marine flotillas. If the (mostly Western) countries contributing to the naval effort—the United States, France, and the United Kingdom principal among them—coordinated with one another to cut the annual budgets of the NATO, EU, and US-led coalition task forces by as little as 10 per cent (approximately $100–$110 million per year), sufficient funds would be freed to finance my suggested course of action.

  The method of delivering financial and technical assistance, however, is as critical as the assistance itself. After years of foreign meddling in their affairs, Somalis have become wary of outside intervention, and Puntland’s cooperation with Westerners, particularly the United States, could provoke and attract support to an Islamist insurgency. The simultaneous Al-Shabaab suicide bombings in Bossaso and Hargeysa (Somaliland) in October 2008 demonstrated that the Islamists have both the capacity and the will to strike at their northern neighbours when they perceive them to be cozying up to the United States.4 In mid-2010, moreover, an Al-Shabaab-li
nked insurgency sprang up in northern Puntland, led by the Warsangali warlord Mohamed Said Atom from his mountain base in Galgala, thirty kilometres outside Bossaso. Consequently, the visible foreign presence on the ground would have to be kept to a minimum; even unarmed military or police advisors on Somali soil would risk a very high chance of eliciting, or exacerbating, an extremist response.

  Is the Puntland government up to the task? Many would argue that the current administration is too kleptocratic, institutionally weak, and clan-oriented to be a trustworthy partner. Some—such as the UN Monitoring Group on Somalia—have come close to calling Puntland a criminal state, and might easily argue that funding the Puntland government is merely one step removed from buying off the pirates themselves.5 Moreover, with the deaths of American yachters in February 2011, it is increasingly tempting to equate giving aid to Somali political institutions with helping the people responsible for the brutal murder of US citizens.

  To these detractors, I have two responses. First, Puntland is all we’ve got. If an on-the-ground solution is required, then perpetuating the farce that the TFG is in control of the entire country is an unproductive delusion. Second, even if one assumes the worst excesses of corruption from Puntland government officials, muscling in on the international donor scene would be, for them, a far more profitable racket than piracy. In order to be assured of continued international assistance, the Puntland government would have to deliver concrete results, and if the price were scuttling its alleged pirate associates, their choice would be easy. My point here is not to suggest another way to line the pockets of corrupt officials; rather, it is a cynical assessment of how we might incentivize such officials into working for our advantage.

  I have one last caveat. Enhancing the Puntland government’s capacity to enforce law and order will not end piracy completely, because pirate bases south of Puntland—most notably Harardheere and Hobyo—have become the new centres of the trade. However, success in Puntland would provide a model for similar action in the far weaker semi-autonomous region of Galmudug, where these two towns are situated (though the Galmudug administration is yet to bring them under its control). The lynchpin of my approach is that valid local partners—wherever they may be found—are vital to any serious attempt to curtail Somali piracy. The same dogmatic inflexibility that has permitted the TFG-focused nation-building approach to consistently triumph against all reason must not be allowed to infect our counter-piracy thinking. Like an earthquake that exposes the faults in a foundation, piracy has revealed the flaws underpinning the world’s strategy in dealing with Somalia. Perhaps it is time to tear down the house and begin anew.