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| -Lurid Crime Tales- |
| Piracy: The Family Business? |
| 2009-04-14 |
| An interesting read -- he attended the trail of the pirates we caught and took to Kenya Nairobi, Kenya -- It is easy to blame "anarchy" in Somalia for piracy off its coast, as Robert Kaplan recently did in a New York Times op-ed. Of course, were Somalia ever able to reunify and muster the trappings of a modern state -- including a coast guard, a police force, and a prisons service -- then piracy might not be a problem. Yet to treat Somalia as if it is somehow in an abnormal phase of existence is misleading. The place we call "Somalia" has almost never had a central government. Despite speaking the same language and sharing customs, Somalis have been riven by clan divisions since Europeans first witnessed and started writing about them. Only colonialism forced Somalis together, and then only for a brief interlude wholly within the confines of the 20th century. Where Kaplan sees the anarchy of post-Cold War geopolitics, it is probably more accurate to say that Somalis are merely returning to their historical norm. Even ethnic Somalis who live outside of Somalia itself are organized in clans. Eastleigh, a bustling suburb of Nairobi, is almost entirely given over to Somali immigrants or Kenyan citizens of Somali background. But even here in Kenya, a state with a functioning (if corrupt) government, ethnic Somalis prefer to rely on familial and clan bonds to settle disputes and to arrange commercial transactions. Clan is not necessarily a resort to which one flocks when government isn't functioning. Rather, in many ways, clan and tribe in Africa are logical and organized systems that are highly efficient when compared with the artificial, banana-republic institutions of state. Somalis have every reason to keep clan, even if a more workable national state was introduced. Clan's usefulness became obvious to me last November, when I went to Mombasa, Kenya's coastal port city, to attend the trial of eight Somali pirates who had been dumped there by the U.S. navy for prosecution. Sitting in the courtroom, waiting for the pirates to be brought forward, I watched as Kenyan after Kenyan was called to the dock to have read charges against him. Each defendant, whether on trial for murder or armed assault or simple theft, lacked defense counsel. Then came the Somalis and, as their case number was read, a figure in black robe and white wig leapt forward: the pirates' attorney, one of Mombasa's best, who later told me he was being paid from a Dubai account to the tune of thousands of dollars. Clan had come through for these pirates. All of this is to say that the root problem with piracy is not really Somalia's "anarchy." Indeed, it is in some ways the opposite of "anarchy": well-organized regional clans with an eye for easy profits. The root problem with piracy is -- to put it simply -- piracy. Clans have been encouraged in their piratical entrepreneurship by sustained, pliant, million-dollar hauls. A number of European navies, who have captured pirates only to dump them back on Somali soil after determining they have no jurisdiction, have not helped this matter. Rather than obsessing about how we can push and pull at geopolitical and cultural levers to co-opt clan in our fight against piracy, the shipping nations would do well to take the more efficacious approach the U.S. Navy used over the last weekend to solve the Capt. Phillips hostage situation. Stop negotiating with pirates. And stop worrying about Somalia's internal dynamic. Confront this crime as and when it occurs, with as much force directed towards the assailants as possible. It would make a world of difference if shipping crews were allowed to carry weapons, which many port rules currently prohibit. There are also currently projects in the works, including by the New York-based maritime security firm Unitel, to outfit smaller boats with firepower and private-security personnel sufficient to escort large cargo vessels in their Indian Ocean transit. These would be important practical steps to deal with these pirates, and a necessary antidote to imagining these rag-tag Somalis, shackled to their own quirky history, to be more romantic and important a threat than they really are. |
| Posted by:Sherry |
| #1 Excellent article, Sherry. The root problem with piracy is -- to put it simply -- piracy. It takes genius to make the obvious simple. Piracy is the problem so deal with the pirates. |
| Posted by: Steve White 2009-04-14 15:15 |