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Piracy Down; Hard Legal Problems Remain

By Colin Clark Friday, March 6th, 2009 11:47 am
Posted in International, Naval, Policy

Bottom line on piracy off Somalia: it’s down in the face of increased patrols and greater coordination between the US, China, Russia, EU and NATO. The problem spiked in August with 12 ships seized in just a few days. Since then “significant strides” have been made but piracy will remain episodic as long as Somalia remains poor, overfished and virtually ungoverned. That was the message yesterday from Vice Adm. William Gortney, commander of Central Command’s naval forces, and State Department officials before the House Armed Services Committee.

My favorite detail from the hearing: China and the US Navy communicate using Yahoo email accounts. Adm. Gortney told the House Armed Services Committee yesterday that the US has suggested that China post a liaison officer with the EU/NATO force patrolling the area and to initiate bridge to bridge radio comms. No takers so far.

So far, 250 pirates have been seized. Of those, 130 were disarmed and released, 110 disarmed and turned over for prosecution, and 7 were turned over yesterday to Kenya for prosecution,

So far this year there have been 26 attacks on merchant vessels, with 4 ships seized. For some perspective, roughly 33,000 ships sail the Gulf of Aden each year and 42 ships have been pirated — about 0.13 percent of the total, according to Adm. Gortney.

Combined Task Force 151 and other navy assets have seized or destroyed 28 pirate vessels and confiscated 133 small arms, 28 RPGs, 51 RPG projectiles, and 21 ladders/grappling hooks.

But legal problems remain a sticking point. Navy ships can grab pirates, but unless they hang ‘em from the yardarms they need to turn the pirates over to someone for prosecution. While the US has relatively expansive laws concerning attacks on American overseas or piracy, most other countries have much more restrictive laws that require an attack on a ship flying their flag or an attack on one of their citizens, according to a State Department official at yesterday’s hearing.

A conference is underway in Copenhagen this week to come up with more effective anti-piracy laws, Stephen Mull, the State Department’s acting undersecretary for international security and arms control, told the committee.

However, in the near term, Kenya has helped greatly in this, signing an MOU with the US in late January that allowed the first prosecutions to get started with yesterday’s transfer of the seven detainees.

Meanwhile, many DoDBuzz readers will remember the story we broke about Michelle Lynn Ballarin and her efforts to help negotiate release of the pirated crews and their ships through her contacts in Somalia. After speaking with us, Ballarin went quiet. So I asked Mull what role she might have had in freeing the Sirius Star and any other ships held by Somali pirates. He smiled tightly and said: “We really can’t comment on her role.” All of which makes us wonder just what it was in the end.

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	JC March 12th, 2009 at 9:37 am It’s interesting how 0.13 percent can seem like such a small amount, until it’s your family member or your company’s ship or cargo that is taken. How should a world power try to stabilize an anarchic country like Somalia? I hope we don’t use Iraq as a model; it just doesn’t fit. The situation is much closer to that of Afghanistan, where numerous warring tribal factions have held everything but the cities for millenia. How does an external force create a national identity and cohesion where none has previously existed?
	Winston Wolfe March 13th, 2009 at 1:25 am “How does an external force create a national identity and cohesion where none has previously existed?“ Coughcolonizationcough. Except the US doesn’t do colonization…outside the Phillipines, Panama… I’m going to play devil’s advocate, and suggest we out neo-con the neo cons. I argue the time is ripe for the return of imperialism. Ideologically the world is stuck with the ill thought out consequences of the anti-Imperial ideal — much publicised by Woodrow Wilson — that races are the same thing as cultures and should all have their own nations. That works, sort of, in Island nations and bits of Western Europe. Elsewhere it has bought us the ongoing success stories of peace harmony and rational debate that are Zionist Palestine and Pakistan. From Beiruit the Burundi, Belfast to Berlin, multicultural nationalism does not work. It does not work in the confused over lapping tribalism of Africa, The Middle East, Central Asia, the Balkans. It did not work — until colonization — in places like Australia, New Zealand and the Americas. Even in the home of the Nation State, Western Europe some 200 years ago, the idea that peoples formed natural nations seems silly;- Belgium could have been divided between France and Holland, the lowland scots had more in common with the English than those Collodened Highlanders, all the Scandanavian nations were one people with one culture, while Italy and Germany were anything but…and couldn’t even understand each other’s language… (yes the whole question was academic, because Napoleonic France ruled the lot of it — okay it was the the last time Frane won anything, unless you call Verdun a victory). My point it respect for self determination prevents anyone stepping in to sort out messes like Somalia. Democracy alone, as we have seen in Iraq and Afghanistan, is not a cure when the people are ignorant and uneducated and kept so, when the media that might inform them is in effect in the hands of religion and partisan propaganda. To sort out these nations involves not merely ocupation, but a benign imperialism; governance, education and honest media — which criticises of the occupation force, and has the freedom to throw shoes at the President. And then and only then will they eventually be fit to vote as equals in the Empire. (I think the failure of most recent empires has been their inability to include those they come to control; let me be plain, there must be no taxation without representation). To finish I give you one instance, from the end of the last great Empire, the English one. As America was becoming bogged down seeking a purely military solution in Veitnam, this sort of solution was used by a small and cheap commonwealth force to end Indonesian and Chinese backed insurrection in Malaya, (one of the those forgotten wars that may be unexiting, but also quite enlightening). I say it is time for the Empire to strike back!
	Dennis Jackson March 13th, 2009 at 5:00 pm Simple observation here. It ain’t our fight. Arm some privateers and send them. Some Navy folk to operate the vessel and some Marines to kick butt. i bet the Saudi Government would have loved to get their hands on the pirates that took the tanker. This would build a hell of a lot of political clout. And hey, its even constirutional; “Grant letters of Mark and Reprisal”.
	Dennis Jackson March 13th, 2009 at 5:17 pm Oh yeah one other thing, George Washington, in his farewell address cautioned us from getting involved in other peoples politics, we can see where that has gotten us. Mr Wolf and JC both have valid points. We cannot civillize the world. And just who on God’s green earth gave us the right or the damned duty in the first place. If some liberial whiny “lets fix it all” moron want to let them do it. But no one individual, or group of individuals, has the right to force the citizens of any nation to stoop to the resort to force to enforce that individual’s view, even if they are a majority. The last I looked the word democracy was not in the Constitution. However, the term Republic is. You know, “all men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights… .” The last time I checked the standing Army was to be used to repell invasion and insurrection. Of course when someone attacks us we have the right to sudue the aggressor. I haven’t seen the amendment that says it can be used for some one’s pet war. We need to educate ourselves about the meaning of this document because a great many of our so called leaders don’t seem to be able to read.
	3 War LTC March 14th, 2009 at 10:40 pm The issue is national will on the part of the United States, other NATO nations, Russina and China to engage in kinetic action against the pirates and have CNN, BBC and other media outlets showing the resulting floating detritus after a 5 inch naval gun fires a shell into a pirate sea going open boat. There is also the issue of prisoner status…are the pirates prisoners of war, if so what war, or are they internaitonal criminals who would be brought to court in Washinton, DC, London or some other capturing nations national capital.