Nine Things We Hope You Knew About Pirates

David Axe, a military correspondent currently located in Mombasa, Kenya presents a list of "10 Things You Didn't Know About Somali Pirates." We hope that, as a reader of our blog, you did in fact know the first nine (all well-taken); it's the last one "It May be Time for Desperate Measures" which caught our attention. Axe is not too specific on this point, but appears to advocate Karim Kudrati's proposal for a multinational invasion of Somalia. Writing for Foreign Policy's The Call, Eurasia Group president Ian Bremmer outlines why targeting pirates on-shore would be ineffective and why the Obama administration is unlikely to opt for this course:

First, a direct, onshore U.S. strike on pirates would have only a limited impact on the broader piracy problem. Second, it could undermine efforts to contain Islamist militants by inviting them to tap into wounded Somali national pride, one of a very few forces that can unite divided clans. (Somali nationalism provided the Islamist movement with early legitimacy in the struggle to expel U.S.-backed Ethiopian troops from the country.) Third, it would weaken transitional President (and moderate Islamist) Sheikh Sharif Ahmed, a potential force for stability in a country that badly needs it.

African and Gulf governments and U.S. counter-terrorism officials are well aware that strikes could drive extremism in the region and help militants recruit local youth. But there's another risk: Pirates in Puntland, a region in Somalia's northeast where most of the pirates are based, have already threatened to kill some of the 270 hostages they now hold-hostages from countries all over the world, some of them key U.S. allies.

As part of the ongoing debate over the appropriateness and efficacy of military responses to piracy, Wayne Long, a former Army colonel and the UN chief security officer in Somalia from 1993 to 2003, suggests a soft power approach to one of the problems of piracy. Drawing upon his personal experience with Somali pirate hostage situations, Long proposes withholding humanitarian aid from clans and regions where hostages are being held. Rather than futilely targeting what Long calls a "stateless state," this approach relies upon the state-like functions clans have assumed in Somalia and drives a wedge between the pirates and the clans (and their families) back on shore. Long admits that this his approach will do little to suppress piracy, but presents it as a third option to the traditional blood vs. treasure dilemma (that is, whether to stage a potentially deadly rescue as in the case of Captain Phillips last week or to pay a large ransom as was done with the Sirius Star).

The other problem with Long's proposal -- as illustrated by Axe's fourth point ("The Law Can't Touch Them") -- is that it contains no provision for detaining or punishing pirates. This issue has been in the news lately, with the US decision to prosecute Abduhl Wal-i-Musi, one of the pirates who attacked the Maersk Alabama, in a federal court in New York and with Dutch NATO forces' inability to detain pirates:

Dutch commandos freed 20 Yemeni hostages on Saturday and briefly detained seven pirates who had forced the Yemenis to join them in attacking vessels in the Gulf of Aden, NATO officials said.

The Dutch forces, operating under a NATO antipiracy mission, then released the pirates, a NATO commander said, because NATO has no “detainment policy.” [...]

Commander Fernandes said the hostages had been for more than a week. The commandos briefly detained and questioned the seven gunmen, he said, but had no legal power to arrest them.

“NATO does not have a detainment policy,” he said. “The warship must follow its national law. They can only arrest them if the pirates are from the Netherlands, the victims are from the Netherlands, or if they are in Netherlands waters.”

Charli Carpenter outlines some of these legal questions, drawing upon a recent seminar by Harvard University's Humanitarian Law and Policy Forum devoted to the legal challenges of off-shore piracy (which you can listen to here).