Let the hand-wringing begin

Let's get one thing out of the way first. I didn't criticize Obama's handling of the Maersk Alabama piracy for the simple reason that there wasn't anything to criticize. Well, OK...side-stepping a reporter's question by saying he wanted to talk about housing when he could have issued a simple response indicating the situation had his attention was kinda dumb. But I thought the constant cries of "why isn't Obama doing anything?" during the hostage standoff were kinda dumb, too. The ship and crew were safe and absent an immediate threat to Capt. Phillips' life, there was no need to rush a rescue attempt. It's quite likely that our own military counseled against assaulting the enclosed lifeboat unless the situation detiorated. Obama did the right thing in leaving the decision to those on the scene and pre-approving the action they needed to take.

What's important now is how Obama follows through. The Somali piracy problem didn't end yesterday when our Navy rescued Phillips. In fact, it's likely to get worse.

The killing of three Somali pirates in the dramatic U.S. Navy rescue of a cargo ship captain has sparked concern for other hostages and fears that the stakes have been raised for future hijackings in the busy Indian Ocean shipping lane.

[ ... ]

It "could escalate violence in this part of the world, no question about it," said Vice Adm. Bill Gortney, commander of U.S. Naval Forces Central Command.

A couple things are almost certain. One is that with piracy being the linchpin to some local economies in Somalia, it's not going to stop just because of this episode. The second is that the piracies will become more violent.

Somalia is not just a failed state, it's a non-state. That became evident the other day when Somali "officials" blamed the US for the breakdown in negotiations on our insistence that the pirates be arrested and prosecuted. There's really nobody in control there and what little authority is exercised in Somalia is local and is owned by the warlords who employ the pirates.

That leaves the US and other nations with functioning naval forces in the region to make it too costly for the pirates to operate. Blockade the pirates' harbors by establishing an exclusion zone off the coast of Somalia. Primitive though they might be, the pirates have a functioning logistical support network that can be taken out with relative ease.

There is simply no reason to allow the pirates to continue to operate with impunity. What remains to be seen is whether Barack Obama has the resolve to do something about it or if he'll join the rest of the world in wringing his hands over it.

Awesome: Ship's captain free, 3 pirates dead

AP is reporting that Capt. Richard Phillips of the Maersk Alabama is safely in the hands of the US Navy, and three of the Somali pirates killed and one captured in a "swift" firefight with Navy SEALs.

Update: Drew M. at AoSHQ is saying Phillips jumped overboard again, and the SEAL team took advantage.

Update: Early reports said that Phillips had jumped overboard, but it seems that snipers took out the pirates with Phillips still on the boat. Still not sure how that all worked what with an enclosed lifeboat and all, but I guess we'll find out soon enough.

Impotence

This first paragraph from a foxnews.com piece on the standoff between the US Navy and Somali pirates just about made me have a stroke:

U.S. talks with pirates holding American ship captain Richard Phillips broke down this weekend, with Somali officials blaming a U.S. insistence that the pirates must be arrested, The New York Times reported.

OK. Setting aside for the moment the fact that the term "Somali official" is an oxymoron, what possible objection could "Somali officials" have to arresting the pirates? Surely these "Somali officials" don't endorse or support these outlaws...do they?

Letters of Marque and Reprisal

In a comment to my most recent post on the Somalia piracy problem, my brother Chuck said:

Maybe it's time to issue Letters of Marque and Reprisal. I'll bet a lot of freelancers would jump at the chance!

If you're not familiar with this somewhat archaic legal instrument, a letter of marque permits a private party - a merchant marine, for example - to search, seize or destroy assets or personnel of a foreign party which has committed offenses against the issuing nation.

This got me wondering if there was still a legal basis for letters of marque, and it appears there is. From Wikipedia:

Article 1 of the United States Constitution lists issuing letters of marque and reprisal in Section 8 as one of the enumerated powers of Congress, alongside the power to declare war.

The Wikipedia article goes on to say that the 1856 Treaty of Paris bans the issuance of letters of marque, but the US is not a signatory to the pact and isn't bound by it.

The US last issued a letter of marque during World War 2, and Texas congressman Ron Paul, crazy though he may be, introduced a bill to authorize the issue of letters of marque after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, but the bill apparently failed to pass. He introduced a similar bill in 2007 which never made it to committee.

Terrorism and piracy: Criminal or national security matter?

There's a good article in the Wall Street Journal by Mackubin Thomas Owens which draws parallels between global terrorism and the ongoing piracy problem off the east coast of Africa and the Obama administration's approach to both issues.

From the very words the new administration uses to describe events and the parties involved we learn much about how Team Obama views the problems:

It seems that our new president is desperate to do everything he can to distance himself from his predecessor, which is why his team has launched a campaign to rebrand the War on Terror. The results are mystifying. "Overseas contingency operations" [See note below. --ed.] is the new name for the war, while "man-caused disasters" is a euphemism for terrorist attacks.

[ ... ]

Instead of calling the detainees enemy combatants, the administration has opted to refer to them as "individuals captured in connection with armed conflicts and counterterrorism operations," or "members of enemy forces," or "persons who [the president] determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, and persons who harbored those responsible for the September 11 attacks."

Though these changes might seem superficial, unfortunately, they represent a substantive shift. They signal a return to the policy mindset that existed before 9/11, and the consequence will be material harm to U.S. security.

Which of course is exactly what many of us warned of during the campaign; namely that Obama, along with most Democrats, don't take very seriously the threat of international terrorism and have resumed a 9/10 way of thinking about the problem.

Owens then gets to the heart of the matter in terms of how to classify those who are caught engaging in illegal (by international norms) warfare or in hijacking (pirating) vessels exercising their rights of maritime navigation:

As the eminent military historian Sir Michael Howard argued shortly after 9/11, the status of al Qaeda terrorists is to be found in a distinction first made by the Romans and subsequently incorporated into international law by way of medieval and early modern European jurisprudence. According to Mr. Howard, the Romans distinguished between bellum (war against legitimus hostis, a legitimate enemy) and guerra (war against latrunculi, pirates, robbers, brigands and outlaws).

Bellum became the standard for interstate conflict, and it is here that the Geneva Conventions were meant to apply. They do not apply to guerra. Indeed, punishment for latrunculi, "the common enemies of mankind," traditionally has been summary execution.

Though they don't often employ the term, many legal experts agree that al Qaeda fighters are latrunculi -- hardly distinguishable by their actions from pirates and the like.

I said as much in this post nearly two years ago:

In fact, under international law, their legal status is closer to that of sea pirates.

Now, about that "overseas contingency operations" thing.

A "contingency operation" is a generic military term for any real-world operation carried out by our military in response to an event. It can range anywhere from humanitarian relief operations to evacuation of US embassy personnel during times of civil unrest to invading a country and replacing its government.

Nobody dreamed up the term "overseas contingency operations" to replace "Global War on Terror". My guess is someone in the Pentagon was preparing a paper for the new kid in the White House and was advised that the new kid didn't like the Bushism "Global War on Terror" and simply replaced such references to it with the generic term "overseas contingency operations". Imagine a memo with the line "operational costs associated with the Global War on Terror" modified to read "operational costs associated with overseas contingency operations" and you get the picture.

It's on! Or is it?

Most Americans have paid only passing attention to the sea piracy occurring on a nearly daily basis off the coast of Somalia and nearby waters. But now that a US-flagged vessel with an all American crew of 21 has been taken by the scurvy swine, this major problem will be harder to ignore.

Somali pirates on Wednesday hijacked a U.S.-flagged cargo ship with 21 crew members aboard, a diplomat and a U.S. Navy spokesman said.

The Kenya-based diplomat identified the vessel as the 17,000-ton Maersk Alabama and said all the crew members are American. The diplomat spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

The U.S. Navy confirmed that a U.S. flagged ship with 21 members of crew was hijacked early Wednesday off the eastern coast of Somalia.

Unfortunately, the current occupant of the White House isn't likely to want to do anything more than negotiate, accede to ransom demands then study the root causes of why so many ships - owned by evil corporate leviathans and greedy rich bastards, of course - are being pirated in that region.

Update: This doesn't appear to have worked out too well for the pirates. Both CNN and FOX News are now reporting that the crew has re-taken control of the ship with one pirate "in custody and several in the water". Heh.

Dial 'P' for pirates

Via my brother, Chuck, who left a comment on yesterday's post about going after the Somali pirates on shore.

A BBC reporter provides an amusing view into how she got the Somali pirates who are holding the Sirius Star supertanker on the phone.

It was a cold, dark, wet and miserable Sunday afternoon. I was in my car, driving my 12-year-old daughter and her friend back from a birthday party. I was tired and fed up from being in the car.

"Mummy, mummy," trilled a voice from the back. "I want to phone the pirates."

My daughter had heard me repeatedly trying to get through to the Somali pirates on board the Sirius Star.

They usually picked up the phone but put it down again when I said I was from the BBC. My obsession with getting through to them had reached the point that I had even saved their number on my mobile phone.

"Mummy, mummy, please can I phone the pirates for you?"

"No."

"Pleeeeez."

By this time, with rain battering my windscreen and cars jamming the road, I was at the end of my tether.

"OK", I said, tossing the phone into the back of the car.

"They are under P for pirates."

"Hello. Please can I talk to the pirates," said my daughter in her obviously childish voice.

I could hear someone replying and a bizarre conversation ensued which eventually ended when my daughter collapsed in giggles.

Of course, this being the BBC and all, the reporter can't help but feel sorry for the bad guys and educate us on the "root causes" of piracy:

A pirate, who called himself Daybad, spoke in Somali, calmly and confidently. He said Somalis were left with no choice but to take to the high seas.

"We've had no government for 18 years. We have no life. Our last resource is the sea, and foreign trawlers are plundering our fish."

OK, maybe that's not fair. We've known since Bill Clinton's first term that Somalia is 'profoundly under the shithammer'.

Somali piracy: Cutting it off at the source?

Now here's a great idea to fight piracy in Somalia that'll probably never get off, or in this case, on the ground.

Somalia's government has welcomed a call by the United States for countries to have U.N. authority to hunt down Somali pirates on land as well as pursue them off the coast of the Horn of Africa nation.

[ ... ]

Diplomats at the United Nations said the U.S. delegation there had circulated a draft resolution on piracy for the Security Council to vote on next week.

A draft text seen by Reuters says countries with permission from Somalia's government "may take all necessary measures ashore in Somalia, including in its airspace" to capture those using Somali territory for piracy.

Awesome, right? The US wants to do it, Somalia's government wants us to do it, so what's the hold up? Why even bother going to the UN if both of the lawful parties involved are in agreement? As a Somali provincial government official says:

"We are not happy because the United Nations never implements what they endorse," Abdulqadir Muse Yusuf, Puntland's assistant fisheries minister, told Reuters in Bosasso.

The hell with the UN. With both Somalia and the US in agreement, it seems there's no need for a UN Security Council resolution, and I'm pretty sure we'd have plenty of help in this effort from other countries.

Escalation

I've been following off and on for the past year and a half or so the growing trend in acts of sea piracy off the coast of Somalia, but I had no idea it was this bad. The image above is a zoom of the Google map at the link. Each marker represents a hijacking or attempted hijacking this year.

Now these guys have captured a super tanker and will, in all likelihood, get the ransom they want. As I've said before, this huge increase in piracy got going in full swing after western governments started choking off funds to al Qaeda and their affiliates, and almost certainly represents a new way of putting money into their pipeline.

It's well past time to get serious about stopping this.

Funding the jihad

Let's say there was one street in your town which was well-known for its high rate of armed robbery and nearly complete lack of police presence. Let's also say that on occasion, you had no choice but to travel this street. You just couldn't avoid it. How would you do it? Well, you'd probably do it armed to the teeth (let's assume for the sake of discussion that the robbers on this street are, in general, armed with nothing more than a knife) and you probably wouldn't do it alone. You'd have every buddy of yours with you, and they'd be armed to the teeth, too.

One thing you know you wouldn't do is waltz down the street naked waving your wallet in one hand and your Rolex Submariner in the other, yet that's pretty much what international shipping companies do every day off the coast of Somalia. The most recent cases are described here.

It seems that in most cases I've read about over the past few years, the ship and crew are released unharmed after a ransom is paid by the shipping company or by the government of the shipping company. It seems that the risks and the ransom are viewed as simply a cost of doing business. But in shrugging off these hijackings, the shippers and their governments are aiding and abetting international terrorism. I mean, seriously...where do they think this money is going? Mansions and Ferraris for the hijackers? Please. This is fucking Somalia we're talking about. While I'm sure some ringleaders are being handsomely paid off, it's a sure bet that the lion's share of the ransom money is going into the international Jihadi treasury.

Think about it for a minute. How many of these hijacks-for-ransom did you hear about six, seven, eight years ago? Not a whole lot. But since western nations started getting sophisticated about shutting off the sources of financing for al Qaeda and their ilk, these hijackings have become a nearly daily occurrence.

While the US and other NATO countries have dispatched ships to the waters off Somalia to counter the hijackings, it's time to get tough. Not just with the hijackers, but with the shipping companies. Put them on notice that if a ship is hijacked, we won't permit a ransom to be paid. An effort will be made to rescue the ship and crew but failing that, the ship - along with its crew and the hijackers - will be sunk.

This may sound harsh, and it is. But since it's more likely that these ransoms are paid through murky international funds transfers than by suitcases full of cash, this will have to do until international banking laws catch up with the times and can stop the new flow of money to the jihad.

Update: It seems the pirates are making themselves rich from the ransom money. But I think it's still safe to say that the bulk of the money is going to international terrorism.