The new forums will be named Coin Return (based on the most recent vote)! You can check on the status and timeline of the transition to the new forums here.
The Guiding Principles and New Rules document is now in effect.
What would you do about the piracy problem in Somalia?
Shanadeus
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Now what would you do to combat this problem in case you were in charge of job of dealing with these pirates.Piracy off the Somali coast has been a threat to international shipping since the second phase of the Somali Civil War in the early 21st century.[1] Since 2005, many international organizations, including the International Maritime Organization and the World Food Programme, have expressed concern over the rise in acts of piracy.[2] Piracy has contributed to an increase in shipping costs and impeded the delivery of food aid shipments. Ninety percent of the World Food Programme's shipments arrive by sea, and ships into this area now require a military escort.[3]
Would you keep up negotations until you can get to the root of the problem?
Or is it perhaps unfeasible to try to solve the domestic problems of another country and instead deal with these pirates as terrorists - never acnowledging their demands and ransoms.
But remember:
According to Ecoterra, as of mid-November 2010, more than 500 crew members and at least 31 foreign vessels remain in the hands of Somali pirates.[16] As of December 11, 2010, Somali pirates are holding at least 35 ships with more than 650 hostages.[17]
Hundreds of lives are at stake here.
Shanadeus on
0
Posts
And we know how those go..
Critical Failures - Havenhold Campaign • August St. Cloud (Human Ranger)
ahahhahahahaha
I was just replying the same. The Somali what?
Critical Failures - Havenhold Campaign • August St. Cloud (Human Ranger)
A big start would probably be not letting companies dump toxic waste into Somali fishing areas which deprives the rural peoples of their livelihood and, uh, survival.
The north is control by separatists, the south by a radical Islamic government. The coalition only exists because it is propped up by nearly every non muslim country in the area.
No, no it does not. It has a thing that they call a Coalition Government. It is entirely backed by foreign countries, mostly the US. They have firm control over a few blocks of Mogadishu. They need to be regularly bailed out with money and crate-loads of weapons from the states. Most of their fighting is done by trying to get rebel groups to fight themselves.
The "Coalition Government" is a US backed militia that holds a couple key areas of Mogadishu. That is all.
But yeah, the lessons from the 17th century are probably applicable here. In the short term, an Increased naval presence by affected countries, plus an internationally acceptable solution for dealing with captured pirates (the British admiralty courts of that era declared that pirates were 'enemies of all mankind', and could be tried (and executed) by any British court, including court-martial). US courts have upheld that theory in the past, so hypothetically they could be tried in the US, although the logistical difficulties such as finding witnesses and evidence would be immense.
In the long term, try to promote economic development in the areas so that pirates have another way of life (and something to lose, other than their lives), also build up the local government so that they can deal with pirates on the land.
As for the captured crews and ships, that is a trickier issue. Ransoms merely encourage more piracy, but commando raids to free the crews wouldn't end happily. Not to mention that the ships are probably extremely valuable to their owners, and they wouldn't be happy about losing them.
I recently read "Dangerous Waters, Modern Piracy and Terror on the High Seas". Despite the hyperbolic title, it was a pretty good book about the issue.
Edit:
Actually, the north is controlled by a fairly stable government, called Somaliland. After the end of the colonial era, British Somaliland was convinced to join up with Italian Somalia in one united country. After the collapse of the Mogadishu government in the 90's, they decided to go their own way. But nobody will recognize them as an independent country, probably for fear of encouraging other seperatists movements. Or because nobody really pays attention to Africa anyway.
Realistically, maybe place platoon sized groups of marines on random ships as they enter the pirate effected areas. They'll have the high-ground and much better weapons/training than the attacking pirates.
It's a slippery slope in the state system. What constitutes a failed state? At what point is it okay to enter a country and tell them they're doing it wrong? Should we recognize Somaliland, and just intervene in Somalia?
IMHO the only thing that would actually address the pirate issue directly would be special forces intervention, but in order to go there, the UN would have to agree that Somalia doesn't have sovereignty or legitimacy, or its problems threaten international security. In a physical sense, there are ways to beat these assholes; but doing this is politically infeasible.
The other way to address it is even harder: fix Somalia's economy. South Park got something very right in their treatment of the issue: most pirates are not pirates because it's fun, they're pirates because there is a very limited breadth of opportunity in Somalia. Piracy is the most profitable and reliable way of life available.
So, in summary, they need a coherent government with a minimal corruption and a consistently unchallenged monopoly on physical violence, a natural resource industry that employs locals, a service economy and a state-run education. To get to there from here, they need large-scale intervention, primarily a foreign military to establish security and massive investment from UN states and NGOs to establish infrastructure. These things need to be maintained for decades to establish stability. Pirates will gradually transition into the traditional economy, and eventually the people of Somalia will marginalize the remaining ones.
Making this kind of sustained commitment is really fucking hard. Afghanistan and Iraq are prime examples of how difficult it is in every way, and furthermore, they remind us that most democracies are innately unable to maintain a commitment for the amount of time necessary. So there it is...all that's needed is widespread policy consensus and sustained multilateral intervention.
tl;dr: Somalia is fucked and will remain fucked for the foreseeable future. The hostages are probably fucked.
But don't worry about toxic fish. The coastline of Somali is like 3,000 miles long. Like dumping in California and fishing in Florida.
Anyway, that place is really just... Torso Boy has probably the best answer.
Saying pirates wouldn't be pirates if they had access to real work seems too simple. You have to raise the risk of being a pirate so they reconsider. Offer an amnesty program for a little while and then bring in the warships from all nations who do trade in the area to arrest/kill stubborn holdouts.
That is god-damn hilarious. Where might I learn more about this?
http://www.amazon.com/Jeffersons-War-Americas-Terror-1801-1805/dp/0786714042/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1294446211&sr=1-1
I think you're right about military intervention being the best feasible option in terms of directly addressing the problem, and AFAIK increased naval presence in the area is the current strategy. However it can't be emphasized enough that the world has changed a lot since the 19th century. Piracy was far more viable as a way of life back then, relative to the other options, whereas now one's potential for prosperity and security are so much better in a traditional economy. Raising the risk of becoming a pirate is absolutely necessary, but one can't downplay how important it is to create opportunity. If you're going to push people, you have to give some thought to where you're pushing them. Violent intervention begets more violence unless there is an avenue out of the cycle.
Pirates don't have great lives. If they function anything like any rebel/sobel group in Africa, the wealth flows to the top of the organization and most grunts are paid with food and whatever they can loot. Life is risky and unstable. Life is shitty. People don't aspire to this kind of life; they grow up in countries where violence is a way of life, and where piracy might provide the only stable source of food- not income, food. In many cases, it's all these people know. Violent deterrents alone push them...where? They're still in poverty, and their skillset is limited to being a thug.
So the band-aid solution is to slaughter them or force them out of the water. Fixing the problem is a totally different beast, of which military intervention is still an important part.
Saying pirates wouldn't be pirates if they had access to real work does seem simple, and I'm not pretending that it stands alone as an explanation, but its importance is absolutely huge. If I can't articulate the point well enough, it's worth reading/watching the work of Paul Collier.
Just making something a little better somewhere else isn't often enough, you have to give them that little push.
In this case the push being a carrier fleet.
They are probably just as likely or more likely to die staying on the main land - some parts are essentially war zones.
And it's not really feasible to just send in more ships, I heard the following on a documentary on the Somalian pirates:
The somalian water territory surface area is 3/4 of the entire surface area of the US and the coast of Somalia is as long as the entire coast of the US.
More seriously, I'm no expert on this situation but it seems to me that the only thing that could really stop the pirates for good would be to stabilize Somalia itself. Way easier said than done, I know. Military intervention might be necessary, yeah. Or it might make things worse. But my impression of Somalia is very much that it's safer to be a Somalian pirate than to actually live in Somalia. That's just what I've taken from my admittedly limited exposure to the subject, though.
EDIT: Truly I am a fountain of deep, complex plans. I didn't realize how shallow this whole post sounded until I re-read it.
This isn't something that's really feasible. There are far, far too many ships out there.
If they had real jobs that would allow them to provide for themselves the problem would slowly disappear. The real question is what the hell does Somalia have to offer the world, continent, or region.
hmmmmm ummmmm
Pirates!
oh wait......
Anything remotely suspicious, blow it up.
Clearly you missed the part about the size of the Somali coastline and the size of its territorial waters.
E: actually considering that was probably a joke nm
But the issue really is shipping. You could create a secure corridor through the area.
Is radar any good at picking up ships on the surface?
You have an area size of the Arabian peninsula extending from the Somalian coast to as far as the Indian coast, with the forces you are supposed to catch operating on tiny, very easily replaceable boats that can be launched from pretty much everywhere in the coast.
Only way to block the pirate attacks for sure are military escort convoys on every ship. Currently the combined military missions operating on the area have little bit under hundred ships. Not sure how many transport ships operate on the area, but has to be thousands at the least. I guess you could put soldiers on every ship, but kind of a same problem there. Could be done, but it would most likely cost more in money then what the pirates boost...
Normally radar is good, but the small speedboats used by the pirates are too small.
Finding these guys in general is extremely difficult. The US has powerful surveillance capabilities, with drones, manned aircraft, boats (subs?) and satellites. Yet, even a very large ship is very, very small compared to the ocean. Unless you have some sort of tip its extremely unlikely you're going to run into something. You can blanket the shipping routes with UAV coverage, maybe, but what does that get you? You see the boat being attacked, at the same time as you get the distress call from the ship. You need something to actually protect the ships.
Some firms have started hiring mercenaries to guard their ships. Many companies have not though, I suppose being more willing to pay a ransom then have gun battles on their ships.
It's really a sticky situation
Interestingly, the US is very lacking in small "littoral" craft- they are fast and agile, meant for getting close to coastlines, armament for attacking light ships and land targets. The US doesn't have a lot of options at the moment, they just awarded contracts to make some new littoral craft the other day:
http://www.defpro.com/news/details/20883/?SID=d16a4a5a9882b97397a3318d174c1c7e
They had to buy them on the cheap though, so they may not be that cutting edge when they finally sail.
As a bit of an aside, this doesn't really matter *that* much for Somalia. Pirates are going to run from military ships 99% of the time, regardless of what the ship is. But, take Iran. Iran doesn't have pirates, but knowing that US sea power is very large scale, has developed very large numbers of small, quick craft and anti-ship missiles. The little boats don't show up on radar, they zip in and out of bigger ships, you can even put bombs on them ala USS Cole bombing.
Back to Somalia though, as US military presence increases in the area, we might get more hostility vs US or other nations' boats, not just for commercial reasons. The US is already fighting proxy wars in both Somalia and Yemen against Islamic rebel groups there. It may turn into more of a sea-based guerrilla war, which so far as I know has never happened in modern times.
That's because on land, you can hide in forests and mountains, detonate IED's, blow yourself up in busy city streets and so on...
But when you are on this:
In this:
You don't want to get anywhere within a fifty miles radius to this:
Sea guerilla war would be kind of impossible, because that's what it ultimately draws down to.
The pirates aren't stupid, if the members of NATO get together and put together a decent sized armada of small ships that run escorts through a pre-established shipping corridor it would probably help a lot.
Selling that to the US Navy who don't like to do it if the result can't be used in a Michael Bay trailer is tricky though
Well, everyone was "HELL YEAH AMURICA" when they killed those Somali pirates and rescued that captain.
1. The international naval presence
2. Formation of a useful government in Somalia
3. Formally recognising the splitting Somalialand and possibly Puntland out of what is recognised as Somalia and seeing if they can be turned into independent states that would be capable of controlling their coasts.
4. Heavy aid to Kenya, Tanzania, Yemen, Djibouti, the Seychelles, the Maldives etc focused on coastal naval resources
*cough*
U.S.S. Cole.
My, look at that confluence of shipping lanes and port cities. At least the Somalians knew they were sitting on such a swath of opportunity.
In situations like this in history, don't we usually start hiring some of the pirates to protect our stuff from the rest? Privateering and all that?