Murphy on Piracy

Comments can be read here: http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/trend-lines/10521/global-insider-west-african-piracy

Reuters today published a report that pirate money is flowing to the violent Islamist insurgent group al-Shabaab. The assumption will be that this proves the existence of a pirate-terrorism nexus. It does no such thing. Reuters, furthermore, first reported on such suspected transfers in 2008.

There is no pirate-terrorist nexus in the sense that pirates and terrorists are cooperating to achieve a common aim. In terms of motivation they remain as far apart as ever.

MV Izumi: Al-Shabaab recieved $200,000 out of $4.5m total ransom

These are deals of convenience. It has been suspected that pirates have used the southern port of Kismayo to refuel and take on supplies. It has been known that since the middle of last year first Hizbul Islaam and then al-Shabaab had been putting the squeeze of the pirates in Haradheere which is the most southerly and therefore the most vulnerable pirate outpost.  Both organizations are heavily dependent on foreign donations. These donations have dwindled significantly over the past few months, especially since the failed Ramadan offensive. Their second source of income has been ‘custom’ dues on port traffic. Hizbul Islam and al-Shabaab shared the income from Kismayo, the most important port in the southern part of the country under their control until they fell out. Al-Shabaab defeated Hizbul Islam which then attacked Haradheere in an attempt to replace its income shortfall. Haradheere is not a recognizable port but it was the best they could get their hands on.

Al-Shabaab followed them but only appears to have gained access to the town once Hizbul Islam fell apart with some of its cadres and leaders throwing in their lot with their rivals. Even then their control of Haradheere appears to be incomplete. An unknown number of pirates were reported to have left the area and moved north towards Hoboyo. Some clearly stayed. Some of these where kidnapped by al-Shabaab and forced to agree some sort of deal to secure their own release (‘the biter bit’) but reports that this involved giving a fixed twenty percent share of all ransoms as reported by Reuters previously is not born out by Reuters’ new figures. The working assumptions has been that al-Shabaab and the pirates do deals ship-by-ship and the shake-down is not even applicable to every ship. It is therefore extortion. (No sympathy for the pirates but that is what it is.)

Moreover, it is not at all clear that the money is remitted to what might be termed al-Shabaab ‘central’. Al-Shabaab has always been a coalition, just like most organizations in Somalia, and appears to have become more so in 2011. Bottom-line: al-Shabaab is under financial pressure; their is no single percentage ‘cut’ for them; the only pirate base affected currently is Haradheere which means all the centers further north are largely unaffected.

MV York: Al-Shabaab received $100,00 out of $4.5m total ransom

Finally, the question that still has to be answered is that ‘assuming there is a pirate -terrorist connection what is to be done’? Send in the Marines? No appetite for that. Make ransom payments illegal? Pressure for that is building in Washington but America does not have a dog in the fight: most of the hostages come from India, Bangladesh, the Philippines and Indonesia which are US friends. Does the US want to provoke rows with these countries? I don’t think so. How many innocent seafarers are worth sacrificing? Given that choice, how enforceable would any legal prohibition be? Leaving to one side the public reaction in countries such as India and the Philippines, consider the legal problems this will occasion for ship-owners and their insurers. And don’t forget that India, the country that has been amongst the most aggressive when it comes to taking down pirate mother-ships, is backing off because of the number of Indian sailors that the pirates are holding.

Photo of MV York credit EU NAVFOR: http://www.eunavfor.eu/2010/10/pirating-of-mv-izumi-in-the-somali-basin/

Photo of MV York credit EU NAVFOR: http://www.eunavfor.eu/2010/10/merchant-vessel-york-pirated-in-the-somali-basin/

The minsters and officials of the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) of Somalia are the mighty rulers of an area of the capital Mogadishu barely larger than a good-sized suburban shopping mall (plus the port and airport). The news that they have arrested six foreigners carrying a $3.6 million ransom reportedly for the release of an Egyptian ship, the MV Suez, and a Chinese vessel, the MV Yuan Xiang, is unwelcome.

MV Yuan Xiang

It is certainly surprising that the group carrying the cash, which in addition to three Britons included an American, a Kenyan and a Mauritian, should have chosen to enter Somalia via TFG-controlled territory given its known opposition to the payment of ransom. Their apparent carelessness and the TFG’s desire to curry favor with the ‘international community’ have combined to ensure that innocent sailors will be condemned to spend more weeks and probably months languishing in the the hands of what will now be very angry and frustrated pirates.

The MV Yuan Xiang was hijacked on November 13, 2010, 650nm off Salalah, Oman. The MV Suez has been held even longer, since August 2, 2010. A ransom of $1.1 million had reportedly been raised in Pakistan for the release of the Suez and its crew. These included Pakistanis and Egyptians but also six Indian sailors who might be in especial jeopardy as Somali pirates have sworn to keep Indians captive until the Indian government releases the 61 pirates it captured when it sank the Vega 5 on March 12. They subsequently made good their pledge when they held back seven out of fifteen Indian sailors, including six officers but excluding the captain, when they released the Asphalt Venture on April 15. The Indian government has so far ruled out negotiations for the release of those left behind.

Suez Sevastaki

The TFG’s opposition is not, after all, principled. It is not opposed to the payment of ransom when doing so works in its favor as if did when the British yachting couple, Paul and Rachel Chandler, were freed in November 2010. In  that case the TFG reputedly  coughed-up the final tranche of $162,000 which secured their release and reveled in the subsequent publicity demanding that the pair, who had been  held captive in the heat and dust of Somalia’s interior for 388 days, divert to attend a press conference in the capital before they could leave the country. That the hostages of the Suez and Yuan Xiang should be so lucky.

Furthermore the TFG exists only because of a UN mandate that comes up for renewal on August 20 and survives only courtesy of an African Union military force (AMISOM) made up of around 5,000 Ugandan and Burundian troops. Without them its meager toe-hold would have been long-ago overrun by the al-Shabaab Islamist militia. In fact, even when AMISOM recently mounted a successful attack on al-Shabaab with Ethiopian assistance that pushed the Islamists out of several parts of the city, the TFG had no plan to secure and hold territory that had reportedly cost nearly 40 Burundian lives and had so overwhelmed Mogadishu’s hospitals that the injured had to be air-lifted to Nairobi for treatment. The AMISOM advance reportedly caused near panic in the al-Shabaab ranks as they were pushed out of the most of the areas they controlled yet the TFG’s failure to consolidate these gains forced all those who had expressed joy at al-Shabaab’s defeat and supported the TFG to leave their homes. The consequence, in the words of the respected French researcher Roland Marchel, was that the “trust that the AMISOM and TFG army should have built among the civilians evaporated as fast as the TFG soldiers.”

Paul and Rachel Chandler with TFG. Photo: Getty Images

Inside Somalia the TFG is regarded for the most part as just another faction. What legitimacy it has internationally derives from its UN mandate. That mandate should not be renewed. It probably will be for another 12 months because the ‘international community’ cannot make up its mind what do next. That would be a mistake. As Gerard Prunier, another long-time observer of the Somali tragedy suggested at a presentation at the Atlantic Council’s Ansari Center for African Studies on May 26, the TFG should be abandoned. Fears that al-Shabaab would take its place are unfounded. Donor countries should instead fund each and every stable entity in the country offering further support and reinforcement to those that succeed and letting the others fail. The process will take time but providing Somalis know which entities are capable of delivering the public goods they want and how they have done it, pressure from civil society will enforce better performance in areas where such standards are not being met. Somalis know best what works for them; not international bureaucrats.

In the meanwhile a bunch of almost-forgotten sailors, their hopes of release newly-dashed, remains pawns in their game.

Issues of applicable law and effective naval action have always been important when it comes to piracy suppression but they have never been the only tools in the counter-piracy locker. Unfortunately they have been the tools the US and other extra-regional powers have relied on almost exclusively to suppress piracy off Somalia.  Limited tools generate limited effects and these limitations will continue unless the importance of at least three other, historically-proven courses of action are recognized and adopted: disruption and denial of pirate bases on land; disruption and denial of pirate access to capital, labor and markets; and finally doing deals that encourage and facilitate behavioral change.

The Counter-piracy conference hosted by the UAE Foreign Ministry and held in Dubai between April 18-19 suggested that at least two of these three avenues might – just might – be edging onto the international agenda.

Before examining these it is worthwhile noting that the Final Declaration had something to say about the ‘war of words’ with the pirates, one that the US and its allies in particular have conspicuously failed to address. It has become common practice in those countries to undertake military action of all kinds without seeking public support or endorsement; time after time the public space has been left largely empty. Unsurprisingly it has been filled by doubters, deniers, skeptics and opponents. A similar reluctance to explain appears to be afflicting the Somali counter-piracy mission even though most members of the public are astounded that what appears to be a rag-tag collection of losers are able steal merchant seaman almost at will and profit from their anguish despite the presence of the world’s most professional navies. Consequently, the Declaration’s call for the awareness about the “phenomenon of piracy” to be raised is welcome even though it offers no specifics as to what needs to be done. However, the suggestion that the Contact Group’s communications strategy deserves continuing support and should remain the responsibility of Working Group 4 chaired by Egypt presumably counts as some form of diplomatic joke given that Working Group 4 has failed woefully to communicate anything. Given that the Working Group has never met this is hardly surprising.

When it came to disrupting pirate markets and doing deals the Declaration first focused attention on the need to track and disrupt of financial flows to and from the pirate kingpins. It stressed that the individuals involved needed to be apprehended and prosecuted wherever they might be. I was honored to chair the ‘Relevant Issues in International Law’ break-out session and was encouraged especially by the account given of Interpol’s progress in this area. Moreover, while the detention by US agents operating within Puntland of the man accused of serving as the pirate negotiator in the case of the Quest, in which four American’s were killed, was in no-way connected to the conference it was an important step forward in demonstrating to the pirate organizers that the sanctuary they have enjoyed so far can and will be breached.

The statements in the Declaration that pointed most strongly to a new direction in the battle against pirate influence were made in paragraphs 7 & 8: “The international community, including industry, must expand the resource-base available to projects supporting capacity building and economic development in Somalia…This should include the provision of coordinated training as well as material and financial resources to improve land-based security capacity and livelihoods [italics added] in Somalia, to deter and prevent piracy.” Moreover, “facilitating the pursuit of sustainable economic development for the population of Somalia” is an essential element in the process. In this it echoes the comments on the need for development in the Lang Report which I commented on in an earlier blog.

The conference agreed on three initiatives to advance this agenda:

A Seafarers’ Welfare Information Center which would serve as a registry of all those held by the pirates and a conduit through which their families could be kept informed of their whereabouts and well-being. At the moment wives and children left at home are often left tormented by worry as to whether or not their husbands and sons are alive, something that is especially frightening for the families of captives from developing countries who are held for long periods. The difficulty, of course, is that the pirates exploit this uncertainty as a way of putting pressure on ship owners, insurers and governments to pay up and to pay quickly. Interest-free humanitarianism is not one of their distinguishing features so how this initiative will work in practice remains to be seen. On the other hand any refusal to cooperate with the center once it is established, and the persistent use of physical and psychological abuse, will send a message that would adversely affect external perceptions of the pirates’ methods and begin perhaps to build public support for more robust action to counter their activities.

The Gulf Shipping Line Compact will hopefully start to close the large gap in self-protection and best management practice between international and regionally-based shipping which has left many ships in the region woefully unprepared to deter pirate assaults.  It is estimated currently that around 90 percent of ‘responsible’ i.e. large, well-funded ship-owners are observing the internationally-mandated best management practice (BMP) advice. However, some BMP recommendations, which are about to appear in a fourth iteration, are expensive to implement and many if not most small, regionally-based shipping companies either cannot afford to adopt them or operate ships that are too small or too slow to make them effective anyway. This initiative seeks way to mitigate these disadvantages and gradually close pirate access to a large, if less lucrative, source of hostage victims.

Finally, the most significant initiative for the long-term is the Port Community Livelihood and Security Initiative (PCLSI). This is based on the premise that “insecure, economically stagnant communities create an enabling environment for piracy” (as argued in the supporting paper that Joe Saba and I wrote for the conference). PCLSI would seek to create public-private partnerships to build capacity in pirate-affected regions including Puntland in four linked categories: health infrastructure, job creation and vocational training, port-related technical assistance and regional and supply-chain security.

The initial manifestation is undoubtedly a baby-step but at least it is a step: The Dubai-based international port operator DP World has been looking into the feasibility of outfitting 20 and 40 ft containers as self-contained operating theaters for cataract and reconstructive surgeries. The program, which would be based on the existing ‘ROADS’ initiative which has been implemented elsewhere in Africa would be staffed by part-time, volunteer professionals from hospitals in the UAE and elsewhere, and in a trial stage would be moved in 2-month intervals between port communities in East Africa, Yemen and the Subcontinent. Prospective ‘startup’ ports include Bossaso (Puntland), Aden (Yemen), Berbera (Somaliland) and Port Qasim (Pakistan). Note that it is only Bossaso that is affected by piracy, so maybe we should be saying one baby-step forward and three to one side. The company has pledged $400,000 in initial support.

The hope is that this baby-step, however tentative, will begin to demonstrate that economic and social measures can erode the appeal of piracy, paving the way for more substantial public and private investments in industries such as port services, livestock exports, fishing, oil, gas and mineral exploitation, and transport that can ‘crowd-out’ piracy over the medium- to long-term. The risk is that this limited initiative will have little impact due to a lack of funds, insufficient political support and its peripatetic operating model. If so it could fuel the arguments of those who believe Somalia is an irredeemable basket-case and that piracy can only be contained and possibly defeated by maintaining a persistent (and wasteful) naval presence, locking up hundreds if not thousands of pirate ‘foot-soldiers’, and making the payment of ransom illegal thus stranding hundreds of innocent seafarers beyond hope of rescue.

A one-dimensional approach based on attriting pirate numbers through naval action leading to incarceration rather than a layered approach which recognizes the need to balance naval and law enforcement pressure with economic alternatives to piracy flies in the face of what we know about deterring human behavior. The counter-piracy method endorsed by the international community is to pressure the pirates into changing their ways despite the fact there is no realistic understanding of what pressure and how much will break their will. Applying more and more undifferentiated pressure looks like a road to no-where. Curtailing Somali piracy requires a more nuanced approach in which each constituent elements is targeted using a different mixture of carrots and sticks. More tools more flexibly applied is what is required. Here’s hoping this baby-step will lead the way.

Captain Richard Phillips

Columbia Pictures has purchased the rights to Captain Richard Phillips’s story and has enlisted Tom Hanks to play the lead role. Kevin Spacey is set to produce the picture. Will Tom Hanks’ star power bring significant new American and world-wide attention to the challenges of piracy in Somalia and the plight of Somali youth?

The last major picture depicting Somalia, Black Hawk Down, painted a bleak apocalyptic vision of Somalia inhabited by people driven by barbaric blood lust. I imagine this film, with Hanks and Spacey in charge, will take a more balanced approach to the key drivers of Somalia piracy. Let’s hope so!

Read about it in the Daily Telegraph.

Somali piracy, which for a long time was a symptom of that country’s domestic turmoil, is now becoming a cause of its further decline. The sheer scale of the ransoms being paid for the release of ships – and the expectation is that sometime in the next few months the $10 million barrier for one ship will be broken – is drawing in hundreds of young men who have no knowledge of the sea.

Vega 5 used as a Pirate Mothership

Since Somali piracy took-off in 2005 the assumption has been that an unknown number of pirates drown off Somalia. Recent indications are that this number is increasing driven by an influx of young men from the interior beguiled by the promise of riches. Sources within Somalia suggest that concern is growing amongst pastoral communities that piracy is sucking them away never to return. These communities depend upon young men to carry out the goat and camel herding tasks that are central to the region’s traditional economy. Without them another alternative to piracy will wither and die. When in March the Indian Navy took down the Vega 5 which was being used as a pirate mother-ship, they discovered 25 of the 61 pirates on board where less than 15 years old.

Read the rest of this entry »

Well, not quite yet. But so long as it is safer for pirate boats to cross the Indian Ocean than legitimate shipping, while at the same time the ‘international community’ sees no point in addressing the problem of piracy on land in Somalia, then maybe such a list is only a matter of time.

The news that a pirate who gave his name as Saeed Yare claimed to have made $2.4m in one year will send shudders of avarice through his compatriots. It should also make those in the US and elsewhere who think stopping piracy is not worth the expenditure of one ounce of political capital think again.

Obviously there is no proof that what Yare says is any more than bluster but circumstantial evidence suggests otherwise. There are plenty of piracy financiers who are making a great deal of money. Their share in each ship shake-down is now believed to run as high as 50% and this squares with Yare’s claim to have made $1.2m from a British-flagged car carrier, the Asian Glory, which was ransomed for $2.4m in June 2010.

Suppressing the problem of piracy calls for a layered program of incentives and disincentives that lowers the rewards and increases the risks inside and outside piracy’s homeland in the Puntland region of Somalia.

Largely unremarked is the fact that Yare was able to make his claim openly in Bossasso, Puntland’s principal port, without fear of arrest. His confidence makes a mockery of the Puntland administration’s oft-repeated claims to be cracking-down on pirate operations.

The report also raises questions about the effectiveness of the international effort to track the movement of pirate money and to restrict the business interests of pirate financiers. Perhaps like so many suppressive activities it is another example of much talk but little effective action.

Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, prime minister in Somalia’s Mogudishu-based Transitional Federal Government, which although currently UN-mandated controls territory little bigger than a good-sized suburban mall, said that not only were pirates and Islamists working together in tandem, they were learning from each other, and…

“It will not surprise us if al Qaeda’s agents in Somalia start hijacking tankers in the high seas and use them as deadly weapons,” along the lines of the September 2001 attacks on New York and Washington using hijacked airliners, he said.

Frankly, it would surprise just about everyone else.

The MV Limburg burning off Yemen in 2002

Mr. Mohamed has revived two favorite canards. The first, that pirates and terrorists, can and have made common cause is one that is resurrected regularly. At a conceptual level pirates and terrorists have much in common: they trade on fear and use (or threaten to use) demonstrable violence to achieve their ends. But their motivations are entirely different: pirates want to keep the world as it except they want more of its wealth for themselves; terrorists want to twist the world into a shape that matches their own warped views of how it should be. Pirates are motivated by avarice; terrorists are motivated by power.

Admittedly, those who argue this gap can and will be bridged have some grounds for their belief. Criminals cooperated with AQI in Iraq. Phil Williams examined this in detail. Hezbollah is believed to have worked with gangs in Central America and Mexico. FARC used the proceeds of crime to finance its operations. Sri Lanka’s Tamil Tigers and various Moro insurgent groups in the southern Philippines engaged in piracy. Arguably a new criminal sub-culture might be emerging whose members may be prepared to supply anyone with specific, illicit goods, such as documents, or services, such as smuggling, and who might be much more prepared to work with anyone with the money to pay. While it is unwise to assert it will never happen, so far at least this sub-culture has not included pirates.  I looked at this subject in greater detail in my 2009 book Small Boats, Weak States, Dirty Money: Piracy and Maritime Terrorism in the Modern World and hope to return to it again later this year.

Despite this lack of evidence it has suited some interests to assert the existence of a pirate-terrorist nexus. In 2004 Singapore’s then Security Minister, Tony Tan, made remarks very similar to those of Mr. Mohamed’s. He pointed out that Singapore has repeatedly warned of the potential link between pirates and religious militant networks such as Jemaah Islamiyah, which was widely linked to al Qaeda. Al Shabaab, the Islamist insurgent movement fighting the ineffective Somali government which Mohamed represents, is also linked to al Qaeda. As Mohamed has done, he suggested that if terrorists were to

“…seize a tanker, a large ship, and sink it into a narrow part of the Straits it will cripple world trade. It would have the iconic large impact which terrorists seek.”

The incident Tan had in mind was that of the Dewi Madrim, a small freighter seized off Sumatra in 2003. He claimed that

“The Dewi Madrim pirates had fast boats, vhf radios, machine guns. They disabled the ship’s radio, took over the helm, and steered the ship for an hour before their escape.”

The only problem with the story was that it didn’t happen quite that way. No terrorist connection could be found. The pirates boarded the vessel and started to take what they could find. This took time and to avoid colliding with other ships they took over the helm. When they were finished they left.

Even if it had been terrorists who taken control of the Dewi Madrim, or terrorists were able to realize what Mohamed claims and pirated a ship off Somalia, what could they do with it? The fear that they would sail it into a vulnerable harbor and detonate the cargo animated the response to the seizure of a benzene carrier, the Golden Nori, off Puntland in October 2007. Because of the fear that it had been hijacked by terrorists, or might subsequently fall into terrorist hands, it was shadowed day-and-night for two months by the USS Porter, a guided-missile destroyer,  until it was released.

Very dangerous chemicals are transported by sea. Crude oil, which is almost impossible to burn and even LNG which would be technically difficult to release and which burns sub-sonically (deflagration) rather than supersonically (detonation) are not necessarily amongst them. Benzene is potentially more dangerous. If released and ignited under certain conditions it could explode. But that outcome is not guaranteed and terrorists look for a high probability of success before they invest their relatively limited resources in an attack. Maneuvering a ship even as relatively small as the Golden Nori requires experience and in the case of larger ships, the assistance of tugs.

The fact that something could be done does not mean it will be done. Any threat assessment has to take account of probability. Therefore, while not impossible the likelihood of terrorists using large ships with dangerous cargoes to attack ports must be regarded as low.

The threats that both Mr. Tan and Mr. Mohamed sought to address were not terrorism however. Terrorism was a device that served other ends. Mr. Tan was concerned that the problem of piracy in the Strait of Malacca rated insufficiently highly on the political priorities of Malaysia and Indonesia for them to do anything about it. Raising the specter of terrorism helped gain the international attention and pressure that Singapore needed to bring that about.

Mr. Mohamed’s government only exists courtesy of UN and AU support. Ministers and parliamentarians only get paid if the UN pays them. The UN mandate runs out in August. Mr. Mohamed delivered his remarks at the UN.

Terrorists have their uses.

My appearance on The Jim Bohannon Show discussing Somali piracy and the killing of Americans.
Listen Here.