By Roger Middleton

Published: April 21 2009

Piracy is a crime as ancient as maritime trade, flourishing in areas where authorities are too weak to counter criminals. Somalia is a perfect pirate environment, lawless and next to busy shipping lanes. Yet history shows that piracy can be stopped, whether in the unruly seventeenth century Caribbean, the ancient Mediterranean or, more recently, in south-east Asia where attacks are being curbed. But can lessons from the rest of the world be applied to Somalia?

The answer is: only if adapted for the Somali context.

The solutions being applied off the coast of Somalia – gunboat diplomacy, without the diplomacy – may appear on the surface much like those which worked in the past.

The ancient Mediterranean was awash with pirates until Pompey launched a massive military campaign to clear them out, armed with 500 ships and 125,000 troops. The Royal Navy used a head-on assault to take out Blackbeard, perhaps the most notorious pirate ever. Lord Palmerston, the nineteenth-century British foreign secretary and exponent of gunboat diplomacy, remarked that it was more effective to strike the “wasp’s nests” than the wasps, and he could have been speaking for anti-piracy campaigns from medieval Venetians in the Adriatic to the US assaults on the Barbary coast.

In all these cases the pirates operated from lawless or protected havens, and eventually ended their shipping raids only when attacked. But the big attacks on pirates also had a major cost: the US and Venice paid pirates serious money for many years to leave their shipping alone, before attacks cleared them from their nests. Rome spent virtually all its treasure to fund Pompey’s anti-piracy campaign. Even with the world’s navies cruising off Mogadishu pirates in Somalia can still threaten shipping because they face no threat from the land. Even a massively increased naval presence would find it next to impossible to secure all the areas of the Indian Ocean and Gulf of Aden threatened by pirates.

Somalia is not unique in the modern world. Until the recent surge in attacks off Somalia, the Malacca strait in south-east Asia was the most dangerous stretch of sea in the world, with pirates capturing ships and, after disposing of the crew, often by murder, creating “phantom” ships. Renamed and re-registered these could be used to collect cargoes which were then stolen – a long way from the popular image of pirates represented by Blackbeard and the Jolly Roger.

South-east Asian pirates were able to exploit the lack of co-ordination between the coastal states to avoid capture; they were part of large and organized criminal gangs that operated across borders and drew crews from around the world. Only after Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia started to work together have attacks subsided and pirates been put under pressure.

Unfortunately, the reality is that none of Somalia’s neighbors, and certainly not Somalia, have the resources to copy the Malacca model. The real lesson that needs to be learnt is that force alone cannot solve the problem. Even Pompey, with 125,000 troops, made the Mediterranean safe for shipping mostly thanks to cunning negotiation and offers of a new life for pirates.

To some extent piracy is the external manifestation of Somalia’s internal chaos and any plan to combat it is unlikely to succeed unless it recognizes that reality. Pirates can be chased on the ocean and even taken abroad to stand trial, but this is far less effective than local police action. However large the international naval flotilla gets, Somalia’s lawless state will remain.

Ransoms paid to pirates are one of the largest foreign currency earners in Somalia. For young men who see no legitimate way to rise out of poverty and have grown up surrounded by violence the risks associated with piracy seem bearable. Becoming a pirate in Somalia is easy: small plastic skiffs are readily available and inexpensive, weapons are cheap and even outboard engines and GPS are unlikely to push initial costs beyond a few thousand dollars.

In Somalia there is no piracy command centre or single commander to be neutralized. If one village is deemed a “wasp’s nest” and targeted, the pirates can easily move. The recent spate of attacks demonstrates this flexibility; as navies increased patrols in the Gulf of Aden pirates moved to the unprotected Indian Ocean.

Hillary Clinton has suggested attacking pirates’ financial assets. Cash from ransom payments is distributed to individual pirates, clan members, and as bribes to political and military figures; some is reinvested. Almost none of that money finds its way into formal banking systems where it could be tracked and seized. What is saved is tied up in livestock and cars. It’s unlikely that a campaign to impound pirates’ camels would be practical or successful.

The simplicity of pirate operations is what makes them so hard to defeat militarily, although increased naval and airborne patrols can help somewhat.

The long-term solution lies inside the country. Somalis are not ungovernable or averse to peace. Somaliland in the north-west offers security and a fledgling democracy in extremely difficult circumstances. In 2006, when the Islamic Courts Union governed in Mogadishu, piracy was all but eliminated.

Only by engaging in a positive and imaginative manner with Somalia’s problems and complex politics will America and the outside world have any hope of bringing peace, security and development to the country. Then fighting pirates would be more than just displacement activity. Solutions that come from Somalia and are accepted by the local population may not fit with Western ideas but would be welcomed by Somalis who have lived so long in a state of war.

The writer is a consultant researcher at Chatham House

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009

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