Maersk Alabama captain freed. Will Somali pirates now treat hostages differently?

It appears to have been a dramatic end to the hostage-taking of the Maersk Alabama's American captain, Richard Phillips, earlier this evening. News reports say that at a little after 7:00pm local time, US Navy snipers fired on the lifeboat containing Phillips and his four captors. Three of the pirates were killed and the fourth was captured, the climax of five days of activity in the seas off East Africa.

The successful efforts to free Phillips would appear to show that American forces acted in a timely and deliberate manner, and hopefully puts a stop to all those armchair critics who were being harsh about the U.S. reaction to the incident. This was a unique case with regard to recent pirate events off the Horn of Africa, and could have turned out much worse had Phillips and his captors been able to seek refuge in Somali waters.

There are some fears that the killing of the three pirates could endanger other hostages by provoking "retaliatory attacks". According to AP, American Vice Adm. Bill Gortney says,"This could escalate violence in this part of the world, no question about it." The AP report also quotes two other Somali pirates who talked about the situation. One, Abdullahi Lami, said that, "Every country will be treated the way it treats us. In the future, America will be the one mourning and crying. We will retaliate (for) the killings of our men." The second, Jamac Habeb, told AP from one of Somalia's piracy hubs, Eyl, that, "From now on, if we capture foreign ships and their respective countries try to attack us, we will kill them (the hostages)."

While there is the distinct possibility that these comments do reflect a more dangerous reaction from pirates, I would point out that there was no real change in the activities of Somali gangs last year after French forces acted against elements of these sea robbers. A dead hostage is worthless to the pirates as you can't negotiate a ransom for a corpse. The Somali pirates have always understood this as a key element in their activities. Even last Friday's incident, when French commandos boarded the yacht Tanit and killed two pirates - as well as the skipper - did not seem to cause the same worry that it would ratchet up the reactions from the Somalis. (But then, maybe, the American press has just been hand-wringing a little too much.)

As well, it is important to remember that the term "Somali pirates" should be understood to mean a variety of disparate groups who often do not see eye-to-eye, not some blanket entity that is all-encompassing. These guys fight over the prizes available and value their zones of operation as strongly as street gangs do in urban centers. It's quite likely that some pirates are sitting ashore in Somalia tonight and, rather than pondering the killing of hostages, are thinking their brethren who died tonight were unlucky, or just plain dumb.

Was the U.S. action correct? Absolutely. Will it lead to the deaths of other hostages as a result? I doubt it. And I hope I'm right, given there are well over 200 mariners being held for ransom by Somali pirates tonight.

Maersk Alabama captain tries to escape; French hostage killed

It was a day without complete success in dealing with two hostage incidents involving Somali pirates, one American, the other French.

Undated photo of Maersk Alabama
(from Maersk Lines)

The captain of the Maersk Alabama, Richard Phillips, attempted to escape from his captors last night. According to reports, Phillips jumped into the sea, possibly in a bid to have nearby American naval personnel pick him up. Unfortunately, the pirates re-captured the captain and continue to hold him. They are said to be asking for $2 million in ransom for his release.

Capt. Richard Phillips
(Reuters/Phillips Family)

Meanwhile, French forces went after the pirates holding five people aboard a yacht that was seized last Saturday by pirates. The Tanit was heading towards the Zanzibar Archipelago, skippered by French couple Chloé and Florent Lemacon. Also aboard were the Lemacon's young son and another couple. According to the BBC and Reuters, French officials decided to act after negotiations with the pirate captors broke down yesterday. A rescue team was sent to board the yacht and free the hostages, but in the ensuing engagement Florent Lemacon was killed, along with two of the pirates. Three other pirates were captured. No word on any injury to the others.

Florent Lemacon with family aboard Tanit prior to capture by pirates
(from Lemacon's blog)

While all this was going on, the Norwegian freighter Bow Asir appears to have been released today. It had been held since March 26 (see my earlier note on this here).

It's too early to speculate on what went wrong in the French engagement or to even criticize their actions while there are many other hostages currently being held by pirates. Similarly, some are questioning the manner in which the U.S. is responding to Phillips' situation, even going so far as to label this a failure of the Obama administration. I would say that these views are questionable and being made far too early, and without a full picture of things. Without sounding too harsh, remember that we are talking about one individual being held by armed captors in a lifeboat. There are over 220 other mariners from a variety of nations still in pirate hands today.

As I wrote earlier, there are lots of people offering up analyses and opinions that are often incorrect. (See also EagleSpeak's recent posting that corrects the errors in just one of these sorts of things.) Even the venerable BBC World Service put up an item today with the headline: Piracy off the Horn of Africa: out of control? It's not long, and ends with, "The hijackings are threatening to destabilise one of the world's busiest shipping lanes."

It's vitally important to remain focused and calm and as objective as possible about what's happening on the other side of the globe. That's how any professional mariner would react to a dangerous situation. Journalists, reporters, bloggers and pundits need to try this, too.

And, per that BBC report: Piracy is not out of control off the HoA. Pirates are in complete control and they know exactly what they're doing. Our responses have been, perhaps, out of control and diffused. And the activites of pirates are not 'threatening' to destabilize the seas of East Africa. That happened a decade ago. Today, these pirates have made the threat a reality.

Maersk Alabama incident has people thinking about Somalia

As the Maersk Alabama sails to Mombasa and the USS Bainbridge keeps an eye on the pirates holding Captain Richard Phillips in a lifeboat, there is quite a bit of talk online and on air about the incident, and what to do about things. Many of the comments posted on media websites seem to involve a lot of "Let's go get the pirates with our guns" sort of sensibility, a reflection of the frustrations being felt. The number of postings that suggest putting cannons or other heavy weaponry aboard merchant vessels is staggering. But this isn't going to happen and reveals a lack of understanding about civilian mariners' lives at sea and the various national laws that prevent the arming of merchant vessels.

Then there are the comments posted by would-be experts positing their theories on what's caused piracy to become so endemic off the Horn of Africa and how the law could be applied. Many of these 'legal perspectives' are misguided, or just wrong, and a number otherwise smart people seem to be rushing to provide their own perspectives on the situation without understanding the broader picture.

For instance, there have been a number of sources that consider the Maersk Alabama incident to be an indication that piracy off East Africa is escalating. This appears to be based on the fact that it was an American-flagged vessel with American crew that was attacked. I, however, don't see it in that manner. The Alabama fell victim to a continuing threat that has seen five other vessels recently hijacked. An escalation is when pirates attack a new type of vessel - such as a cruise ship, a supertanker or a vessel laden with munitions and weaponry - or when mariners are injured or killed, or when piracy becomes a source of funding for terrorists. Box ships have been attacked before (and probably will be again), but I seriously doubt the pirates who boarded the Alabama knew the crew was American or targeted them purely because of their nationality.

On the positive side of all these discussions is the growing understanding that to effectively deal with piracy in the region, we need to deal with Somalia itself. Paul Reynolds, BBC News website's world affairs correspondent, has written a piece that suggests adopting a 19th Century approach to things, when gunboat diplomacy was a norm. He quotes Lord Palmerston, the British Foreign Secretary, who said, in 1841, "Taking a wasps' nest...is more effective than catching the wasps one by one." Right now that's what all those naval vessels are doing: swatting at individual wasps, so to speak.

(Reynolds also seems to imply in his piece that what's needed are naval commanders more willing to bend the rules when engaging pirates, much like Commodore Stephen Decatur did when the U.S. was battling Barbary Pirates in 1815. He also states that convoys are currently in use for aid vessels going to Kenya and Somalia, which is not completely correct. A warship shadowing a merchant vessel carrying food aid from Mombasa to Somalia doesn't really qualify as a convoy.)

Over at National Review Online, David B. Rivkin Jr. and Lee A. Casey posted a short piece that points out the reluctance of nations to root out the Somali pirate lairs ashore. This is the most effective way to suppress piracy, and has worked over the centuries. However, the likelihood that troops from the U.S. will go ashore in Somalia seems remote, at this stage (to say nothing of forces from Canada, Britain or France). And the African Union troops that have been deployed have proven virtually useless. But without a stabilizing force that is robust in its mandate and accompanied by the suitable political and economic clout to re-build Somalia's vacant infrastructures, the threat of continued violence - both at sea and on land - will continue.

I am, however, not advocating the wholesale invasion of Somalia by foreign troops; it's a far more complex situation than that. Indeed, the most effective stabilizing force would be one that is Somali in origin, not foreign. An excellent look at the domestic situation in Somalia was written last month by Graham Cooke for The Diplomat. Entitled "The Impact of Somali Piracy", it details the perspectives of a number of experts, and looks at the risks created by using force against the Somali pirates, as well as the risks of doing nothing. It also explores the potential threats posed by Islamists in Somalia, and their links to pirate gangs.

If this all seems complicated, it's because it is. But as Chatham House's Roger Middleton is quoted in The Diplomat piece, "[O]ne option the international community does not have is to ignore the problem."

Maersk Alabama update:

Bloomberg is reporting that reinforcements have set out from Somalia to provide some sort of assistance to their pirate brethren who are holding Capt. Phillips hostage. Hope they have enough fuel for the trip there and back, though one has to wonder whether they'll even get close to the scene, what with naval vessels in the area.

Also, Reuters reports that the U.N. special representative for Somalia wants the international community to do more to trace the money trail used by pirates in order to quash their financial backers.

Below is today's update of attacks off Somalia from NATO:

Maersk Alabama crew repels pirates

AP is reporting that the American crew of the container ship Maersk Alabama has regained control of their vessel after an attack by Somali pirates earlier today. Word of this was given to AP by the father of the vessel's second-in-command, who spoke with his son aboard Maersk Alabama via telephone. The report also has an unnamed U.S. official saying that the American crew are holding one of the pirate attackers, while three more fled overboard.

American mariners seized by pirates

A U.S.-flagged container ship, the Maersk Alabama, was hijacked earlier this morning while sailing about 500 kilometres off the coast of Somalia. In a statement from the vessel's owners, Maersk Line Limited, the vessel was said to have been en route to Mombasa from Djibouti at the time of the attack. The crew consists of 20 Americans and the ship's home port is Norfolk, VA.. The seizure of Maersk Alabama is the sixth such incident in less than a week. According to Maersk, the eleven-year-old vessel was carrying 400 containers of food aid, some of which was destined for the UN's World Food Programme.

The BBC's East Africa correspondent, Peter Greste, wonders whether the American hostages will receive the same treatment that Somali pirates have shown previous captives. According to the BBC report, "Somalia is largely under the control of a group with links to al-Qaeda, our correspondent says, and they may choose to make a political point out the situation." And while I beg to differ about the assessment that Somalia is, indeed, largely controlled by Islamists, I do agree that should al-Shabaab become involved in this situation, piracy-for-ransom may not be the outcome of this incident.

How to Beat the Somali Pirates

EagleSpeak yesterday presented an exceedingly lucid perspective on measures that could be emplaced to deter further attacks by pirates off the Horn of Africa, promulgating the idea of increased use of convoys to protect commercial ships in the region. Some shippers are already doing so, but a greater use of this time-tested process could definitely help alleviate future attacks.

There are many ideas being put forth about how to address the situation in the waters off the Horn of Africa, and before I add my own thoughts to EagleSpeak's opinions, I'd like to comment on a piece posted on the Foreign Affairs website by blogger Elizabeth Dickinson. Entitled "Pirates on a spree", it sums up what a number of people are feeling, especially in light of the hijacking of at least five vessels in the last two days. However, in my estimation she only gets things about half right.

Dickinson wonders,"How are a bunch of former fisherman (sic) defeating the world's navies?", which is wholly incorrect. Somali pirates are by no means defeating navies, for they go out of their way to avoid encounters with warships patrolling the region's seas. Indeed, pirates there are not 'defeating' anyone - they are threatening and attacking mariners in a manner intended to maintain the inflow of money to the various gangs and warlords who control these criminal ventures. Unlike, for instance, terrorist groups, pirates do not wish to defeat or vanquish an enemy; they wish to exploit a resource - ships and seafarers - on an ongoing basis.

Dickinson also brings up what she calls the "grievance theory", the idea that Somalis are "pissed" about over-fishing and the illegal dumping of toxic waste in the Indian Ocean, though she sums this up with the odd sentence, "Don't dump your waste on Somali soil if you don't want to get wasted at sea, apparently." I'm not sure what she means by that, but, regardless, the issue of illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing (known as IUU), and the dumping of toxic waste, is nothing new to the seas off Somalia. These activities go back well over a decade and have, at times, been done with the complicity of Somali warlords. You simply can't extract bribes, or "permits", on the one hand and then decry the despoiling that comes from allowing such activities on the other. If Somalis were out patroling their maritime economic zone and protecting fishing vessels - their own and foreign - or detering waste dumpers by reporting their activitiesto the international community, that would be an entirely different matter. But the cloak of environmental protectors sometimes put forth just doesn't fly with me.

However, Dickinson is spot on when she says that Somali pirates are venturing further offshore to avoid naval patrols and are continuing to pirate because there's no other viable, economic option available. But, most importantly, she offers a view I've already taken about the confusion arising from so many nations sending so many vessels into the foray.

To add to EagleSpeak's views, I would suggest that we need a more comprehensive and organized international response to piracy off the Horn of Africa. This is the only situation in current times in which such disparate elements as NATO, the EU, Russia, China and India have shown a willingness to work together to combat a low-level conflict, which is what piracy is. But the command and control structures are overlapping, reducing overall capabilities. It is vital that this be addressed.

And as to the big issue - dealing with the land-based commanders who send pirates out - it is clear that no one wants to send troops into Somalia itself. So, instead, I offer the suggestion that the international community work with the younger generation of Somalis, many of whom live in the West and hold little fondness for their elders, the members of the TFG and other groups that have done little to provide leadership in Somalia.

Two opportunities exist to augment convoys and patrolling warships: A more effective, coordinated multinational leadership and support for the younger generation of Somalis willing to put aside the sins of their fathers. Somalia today is a litmus test of how the international community can address age old problems in a completely modern, 21st century manner. To be sure, commercial shipping is being affected by the plight of piracy, but there are currently no other strategic imperatives there which might diffuse political objectives, such as oil, gas or terrorists. But there is the potential to suppress piracy in the seas off the Horn and support East African security without adding Somalia to the quagmires of Iraq and Afghanistan. Unaddressed, though, Somalia's criminal elements will prove far more costly to us than any ransom ever paid.

Tamil Tigers fight on from the sea

EagleSpeak posted a lengthy piece yesterday about the recent encounter between Sri Lankan navy and those of the Tamil Tigers' sea forces. As the BBC also says, at least four Tamil Sea Tiger vessels out of a group of some ten were destroyed in an engagement at the start of the weekend, with at least 11 Sea Tigers killed by the government forces.

None of this is about piracy, per se, but it is about the continuing use of the seas as a warfront. For the last few months, the Sri Lankan government has been reporting that their assaults on Tamil strongholds in the north of the island nation were proving exceptionally succesful in pushing the Tigers - the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) - into a position of non-existence. Yet the Tigers seem to be fighting on.

Putting aside, for the moment, political considerations, it's easy to see how a group of people would find ways to defend what they see as their homeland. They are sterotypically waging a g guerrilla war, and the use of the seas is, in this case, a viable option in furthering their goals.

Pushed into a corner, anyone might fight with all they have. And while the LTTE are waging a political campaign, this does beg some questions about what pirates, such as in Somalia, might do should we ever begin to go ashore and deal with their havens in that region.