The U.S. military says it may try 15 Somalis in connection with the
deaths of four American hostages in February. Despite the presence of
an international flotilla off the Somali coast, pirates continue to
seize a growing number of vessels over an ever-larger geographic area.
NEAL CONAN, host:
On Monday, Somali pirates shot and killed four Americans held hostage
aboard a captured yacht as U.S. naval forces stood by. These are the
first U.S. citizens to die in the pirate attacks off the east coast of
Africa. The U.S. military says that the 15 Somalis detained after the
killings could face trial in the U.S.
Pirates continue to hold hundreds of other sailors and dozens of
ships. If business continues, as it has over the past several years,
they will eventually be ransomed for millions of dollars, and business
appears to be booming. Despite an international flotilla of some 30
warships, more ships are being seized than ever, and pirates now
operate over a wider area.
Professor NIKOLAS GVOSDEV (U.S. Naval War College): Thank you.
CONAN: The U.S. military certainly has the manpower, the training and
weapons to tackle the pirate threat, but deterrence doesn't seem to be
working.
Prof. GVOSDEV: Well, let me give you my opinion on that. I'm not
speaking on behalf of the Navy. These are my own assessments. It's a
mix of issues. The first is the will, the political will to get
involved in Somalia itself because this problem is being addressed
right now only from the sea. We're trying to deter attacks. We're
trying to protect ships. But the problem lies on land. It lies in
villages and port cities, in ungoverned spaces, where, as you just
alluded to in your opening, this is a profitable business. It is
essentially the main driver for revenue in Somalia. Everyone - it
trickles down not only from the businessmen who sponsor pirate attacks
through to the pirates, through to a whole variety of villagers and
people who provide services.
And if you're not going to tackle this issue on land, what we've been
doing up to this point - not just the United States, but the entire
coalition, the European Union, China, Russia, India, South Korea - has
been to try to limit these attacks at sea. But again, as you noted in
the opening, the pirates are getting better equipped. They're able to
strike over a much wider range of ocean. We've even had reports now of
pirate vessels using mother ships that had been off the coast of
India.
And you think of this as a problem emanating from Somalia and if there
are now pirates who are in the middle of the Indian Ocean and actually
closer to the Persian Gulf and closer to the coast of India itself, it
gives you an idea of the ability to which they've been able to extend
their range. Thirty ships simply can't cover that degree of ocean, not
with the number of vessels that transit the area. This is a key
shipping lane. It's a key link to energy markets. And there's just
simply not enough vessels there to protect all of the ships that could
potentially enter the area.
CONAN: And when you say deal with the problem on land, what are you
talking about?
Prof. GVOSDEV: It depends. There are several ways forward. One would
be to start aggressively carrying military action to the shore,
because up to this point pirate sanctuaries have not been attacked on
land, with the exception of the French commando raid in 2008, which
liberated several people who had been taken hostage. Otherwise there's
been no on-land action against pirates. There's a sense that Somalia
is sanctuary.
One of the things we saw with this incident, which led to the four
Americans being killed, was that the pirates were desperately trying
to get the yacht back into Somali territorial waters, because there is
a sense, over the last number of years, that if you can just simply
get back into Somali waters, you're safe from retribution. You can
then take your hostages ashore and negotiate for their release.
Another item we may begin to look at - and the situation is changing
because of what's happening in Sudan. With South Sudan separating from
North Sudan, that removes perhaps some of the reluctance we've had up
to this point to countenance the division of Somalia itself into
smaller, more sustainable entities which could, in fact, exercise
greater control over their coastline, provide more opportunities for
their citizens. So I'm thinking specifically here of Somaliland.
Up to this point, U.S. policy, EU policy has been to try to create a
functional, central government for Somalia to control the entire
country. We may now be moving to a situation where we move away from
that and accept the reality that a unified Somalia is not possible. So
let's try to at least narrow the areas of ungoverned space in Somalia,
make it more manageable by recognizing some of these other statelets
that have risen on Somali territory.
CONAN: As we look at the situation that developed in the last few
days, does the killing of American citizens change the calculations
here?
Prof. GVOSDEV: It does change the calculations, because first, this
has been a change of operations for the pirates. Up to this point, you
have not had people killed by the Somali pirates. You've had deaths.
You had, for instance in 2008, when you had the hijacking of the
Ukrainian freighter, the captain died of a heart attack when the
pirates boarded. You've had some accidental deaths. But you've never
had the pirates deliberately targeting or killing the captives that
they've taken.
This may send a different signal now, that there's a greater degree of
desperation. We also have to look at the number of pirates that were
involved in this incident. And it raises the question of: Was this
one, single, unified pirate gang? Or was this several different pirate
groups that converged on the yacht at the same time and couldn't agree
on how to negotiate with the United States, how to proceed forward?
CONAN: The circumstances of what actually happened in the shooting are
unclear at this point. It's not known whether the hostages were
executed or caught in a crossfire in an argument.
Prof. GVOSDEV: In a crossfire - exactly. And we don't know - and that
-but it raises this point that since - increasingly, over the last
year, more and more Somalis are turning pirate. This initially started
off as a relatively small group of ex-fishermen and ex-militia men.
But over the last several years, success begets success.
And the more that people have seen that this is a profitable sideline,
the more you've had demand for people to get involved in this
activity, and that raises the question of: Do you have more competing
gangs, less control? Are they fighting over potential targets? Which
make it all so harder.
In the old days, you had a relative sense of who to negotiate with,
and the rules of the game were clear. They're becoming a lot less
clear now. It also raises the question about the rules of engagement
for the navies that are participating in the anti-piracy mission.
We've seen - particularly in the last number of months - the Indian
Navy, the South Korean Navy, the U.S. Navy being much more aggressive
now in going after pirates, in trying to retake ships, in trying to
prevent them from getting back to Somalia. The pirates may be
interpreting this as that they need to show that they are serious,
that they mean business and that they will, in fact, be willing to
inflict deadly force on their captives should they take control of
vessels.
Linked to this further is now questions about what happens to pirates
after they've been captured. You noted that there's now talk that we
will take the pirates who were captured and extradite them to stand
trial in the United States.
Other than the Maersk incident, this is a - this represents a
departure for the U.S., because traditionally, we have sought to have
pirates be tried in African locales, in Kenya or the Seychelles rather
than bringing them back to the United States for trial. So this may
reflect a change in our own modus operandi in dealing with pirates,
moving away from either taking them to Kenya or, what most countries
were doing up to last year, the famed catch and release. Again, this
was part of the rules of the game that many Somali pirates assume that
we were operating under, that if you captured pirates and they hadn't
harmed the crews, you would just simply disarm them and let them go.
Now, the sense that we may be trying to not just simply capture them
but take them in for trial, and then hand down some serious jail time
which, again, may be changing the rules of the game as far as the
pirates see operations in the last several years.
CONAN: Nikolas Gvosdev teaches national security studies at the U.S.
Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. He speaks for himself and
not the War College or the U.S. Navy.
Let's get some callers in on the line. This is Jennifer. Jennifer with
us from Monroe, in Michigan.
JENNIFER (Caller): Hi.
CONAN: Hi.
Prof. GVOSDEV: Hello.
JENNIFER: Well, I'm a teacher, so I'm a little bit biased. I think
that we should take a look at history and take a look at what has been
done before in dealing with piracy and take the lessons from there and
build onto that, because piracy was a huge, huge problem for the East
and the West Indies companies in the 17th and 18th centuries.
And there was a lot of work that the United Kingdom, Holland and even
the United States had to do on cracking down on piracy and essentially
eradicating and making it so unprofitable that these guys just didn't
want to risk hanging. Because for a while there, the policy wasn't
catch and release. The policy was catch and hang. And...
CONAN: Nikolas - Jennifer, thanks very much for the history lesson, as
Nikolas Gvosdev, I'm sure, knows this history. And this goes back at
least to the Roman Empire and Julius Caesar.
Prof. GVOSDEV: Certainly. We've always had pirates. And the question
has been - there are several ways of dealing with pirates. One of the
classic ways in the Mediterranean, particularly during the Ottoman
period, was for pirates to be legitimized. One of the famous North
African pirates ended up as an admiral of the Ottoman navy. He was
-easier to bring him into the system than to take him out. These are
some of the issues we have with Somalia today, unlike, say, the
Barbary states, which is usually a comparison you hear of the late
17th and early 18th centuries.
CONAN: This is on the coast of North Africa.
Prof. GVOSDEV: The coast of North Africa. That was state-sponsored.
You had states that were involved in the pirate activities, so you had
actually authorities that you could negotiate with. And, in fact, John
Adams impressed the negotiators from North Africa with his anecdotes
about his ability to blow smoke rings when he was sitting around,
negotiating the amount of tribute that would be paid - protection
money that would be paid. And the U.S., under the Washington and Adams
administrations, in fact, paid protection money to the states of North
Africa.
And then under Jefferson, the decision was made that the tribute was
becoming too expensive, and too many ships were being seized. So then
we went for the military option. In Somalia, the problem, of course,
is that we don't have - this is not being sponsored by a state. This
is not - these are non-state actors, so there's a command and control
issue there, which, I think, is - makes it harder to say, well, if we
just simply deal with a state actor, we could solve this.
One of the proposals that's been circulating is - and it goes back to
this question of opportunity: You know, why are fishermen setting out
to be pirates? Why not do something else? There's been this talk about
taking the Sons of Iraq model, which worked to get Sunni tribesmen in
Iraq hired to be security guards and to be auxiliary military forces
alongside U.S. forces as a way to get them to stop attacking American
forces and to become de facto allies.
So there's been some talk in Somalia of could you do a Sons of
Somalia, which is to go and recruit - among fishermen, among sailors -
a kind of rudimentary Somali Coast Guard. It would have to, of course,
be paid for and equipped, but not - Somalia couldn't support it
itself. But then you would be offering an alternative to people who
otherwise would feel that their only livelihood would be to turn
pirate, would be to say: Well, why not come in and work on a kind of
rudimentary Coast Guard with the international community, with the
international taskforce that's there, as a way of building up a
counter-economic incentive, instead of turning pirate? Again, the
question about would we want to work with Somaliland and others to
also build up their capabilities. So there are some - some of these
different ideas are floating around there.
CONAN: We're talking about what to do with Somali pirates. You're
listening to TALK OF THE NATION, from NPR News.
And let's see if we can go next to - this is Eric, Eric with us from
Cincinnati.
ERIC (Caller): Hi, Neal. Thanks for taking my call.
CONAN: Sure.
ERIC: You know, we've been batting around historical notions, and I'd
like to toss out the name of Stephen Decatur, the premise being that
you rationally has to clean up pirate nests, which is what he famously
did so well.
A couple of comments here. First, piracy - there's state-sponsored
piracy and private enterprise piracy. We're dealing in Somali with
private enterprise piracy. There's really not much we can do, except
when we see them, catch them in the act, don't lug them home for
trial. History says throw them overboard or sink them. I think we
should be doing exactly that.
CONAN: Eric, thanks very much...
ERIC: But if they do get away with it, we've got to go out and clean
them out. It's nasty. It's expensive. But what else are you going to
do?
CONAN: Well, what else are you going to do, Nikolas Gvosdev? Up until
now, the shippers whose ships are being seized and held hostage have
found it easier to just pay the ransom and ship - escalate the
insurance charges a little bit and say, well, this is just a cost of
doing business. We don't want to get involved in military action.
Prof. GVOSDEV: And that is still the dynamic that is prevailing. It is
still cheaper to pay ransom once in a while. When you think about the
number of ships that transit the area, you have less than one percent
chance of even being approached by pirates, much less being taken
over, so that for most people, most shipping companies, most boaters
and others, they're willing to gamble. And up to this point, as long
as it doesn't happen to you, you say: Well, why should I have to pay
these extra cost? Why do I want more security? Why should I pay extra
taxes to fund a naval presence that's there?
What this incident may end up doing - because not simply that you had
an American yacht seized, but Americans killed - is to begin changing
some of that dynamic to say something's changed.
Some people have talked about this being the equivalent of a 9/11
moment, that when 9/11 occurred, up to that point, the rule of thumb
was if you were hijacked on a plane, you cooperated with the hijackers
because they were going to land the plane and negotiate for your safe
release. After 9/11, the rule of thumb is is that you have to take
hijackers out.
The question is whether or not we've reached that tipping point in the
waters off of Somalia where shipping companies and governments and
publics have reached that 9/11 moment where they say, we can't
tolerate this anymore. This isn't just simply a price of doing
business that you accept some extra insurance payments and the costs
of ransoms are spread out throughout the system, but something
actually has to be done. And then you move to - as the caller alluded
- the Decatur solution, which is you actually have to begin cleaning
out the pirate nests.
And again, the historical example is the first two presidential
administrations in the U.S. found it cheaper to pay tribute. The third
found it cheaper, in the end, to go for military action. And then,
ultimately, the regime changed in North Africa.
CONAN: Nikolas Gvosdev, thank you very much for your time today.
Prof. GVOSDEV: Thank you.
CONAN: Nikolas Gvosdev joined us from a studio at the U.S. Naval War
College in Newport, Rhode Island. Again, he spoke for himself.
Tomorrow, it's TALK OF THE NATION: SCIENCE FRIDAY. Ira Flatow will
join us with a look at our love affair with technology. Have we grown
too fond of our devices? That's tomorrow on TALK OF THE NATION:
SCIENCE FRIDAY. Have a great weekend. We'll talk to you again next
week.
I'm Neal Conan, NPR News, in Washington.
To: kulmiye@yahoogroups.com
From: ihussein22@yahoo.com
Date: Thu, 24 Feb 2011 13:33:48 -0800
Subject: [kulmiye] Ooda ka rog
SCWW
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