Somail Pirates Prepare Their New Public Relations Campaign

There are only a couple of months remaining in the current piracy season off the Horn of Africa, before the seas get rough again and the pirates take a breather ashore. And while the pirate gangs continue to attack and hijack vessels anywhere they can - including closer to India than to Somalia - they also appear to be thinking about how to bolster their image to the world, perhaps in order to use the summer months for another attempt at a media make-over.

The English-language version of Arabic daily Asharq Al-Awsat today reports that pirates in Puntland are planning a secret meeting shortly in Eyl in order to discuss how to better improve their image and international reputation. One anonymous Somali pirate told the daily's Khaled Mahmoud that, "The world is depicting us as terrorists and a handful of criminals. This is wrong. We have a just case and want to present it. We have no other choice but to press ahead with what we do well, which is hijacking ships."

This is another sign of the organized aspect of Somali pirate groups, of how they methodically plan to use the media and others to re-brand themselves as anything but criminals. It will likely be picked up by individuals willing to overlook the human impact on innocent mariners who are being attacked and captured by pirates. And while there are many issues that drive Somalis to taking such extreme acts as pirating vessels, there must be a broader understanding that under no circumstances can these attacks be condoned in any way. As I wrote last June, pirates operating from Somalia are not 'Robin Hoods', 'eco-warriors' or anything similar.

So when reports trickle out of the region over the summer, with sympathetic portrayals of impoverished fishermen forced to attack vessels in order to simply feed their families, keep a shaker of salt nearby, because you'll need more than a grain's worth to discern the reality.

Also, I'd like to mention that UN Goodwill Ambassador Angelina Jolie has commented on the situation in Somalia. The UN News Centre reports that the Hollywood actress is "deeply troubled by the complete and utter disregard for human life in Somalia," and has appealed, "[T]o those who carry on fighting not to shell and target civilian neighbourhoods."

I mention this not to be trite about her comments, but to point out the ongoing concerns the UN has with the situation in Somalia that Jolie has added her voice to. It's likely that many millions more will read what she has said, more than might follow the reports from the UN and other agencies. If she is able to raise greater awareness of what is going on in the Horn of Africa, it is all for the better.

By comparison, I received an note from a reader in Florida keying me to a piece written by columnist John Nash in Hernando Today (published by the Tampa Tribune), entitled "An answer to piracy off the Horn of Africa." Read it yourself, if you wish, but the gist of his commentary falls into the 'blow 'em out of the water' genre (his words, not mine). It's an ill-informed piece that talks of "sporadic reports" from a region where the U.S. and a few other nations "sometimes" confront pirates. It simplifies not only Somali piracy but also the Second World War, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, trying to draw parallels between those latter conflicts and what is currently going on off the Horn of Africa.

The effect of articles like Nash's can be as counter-productive to thinking about piracy as a media campaign from maritime criminals based in Somalia. Let the reader beware.

Is the media over-publicizing piracy?

My colleague EagleSpeak recently posted a piece highlighting comments made by retired U.S. Navy Rear Admiral Terence McKnight, in which he said that the piracy problem in the Gulf of Aden is "over publicized". By this, the former commander of Combined Task Force 151 (the international counterpiracy operation in the region) was referring to the situations in Iraq and Afghanistan, in which thousands of people have been killed and injured and millions more affected by the ongoing fighting, situations that McKnight presumably feels merits more attention from the media and the general public than some Somali pirates harassing passing vessels. (You can read the source of EagleSpeak's post at Defence Professionals.com by clicking here.)

Military commanders, especially retired ones, often make comments critical of how the media has been covering events in war zones - or elsewhere - and McKnight's thoughts are not without some merit. After all, until the Maersk Alabama was attacked earlier this year, many North Americans cared little about the situation off the Horn of Africa (HoA). And quite often the media will glom onto something currently considered "sexy" in the hopes of attracting an audience, only to discard any serious follow-through because they've moved on to the next item of interest. To a degree, it's the ADD nature of news gathering and the audience who consumes the output: One moment it's troop surges or economy and the next it's Tiger Williams late night driving abilities. And, in the face of little real, factual information gleaned from on-the-ground investigation - something which is becoming rarer and rarer - you often end up with superfluous pieces that are merely trying to fill a void. It's something I commented upon earlier this year regarding the hijacking of the Arctic Sea incident in European waters.

But is the scourge of piracy off the HoA being over-hyped by the media? I don't think so. Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia are all different situations, each replete with its own history and different levels of instability. My issue with McKnight's comments are that they seem to infer a quantitative differentiation between Somali piracy and the situations in Iraq and Afghanistan, as though the number of casualties or personnel involved automatically make one theater of operations more important than another.

It's not about a body count and it's not about the numbers. Dealing with piracy and dealing with Somalia is about national and international obligations. It's about reminding people, as EagleSpeak rightly points out in his own post, that there are several hundred people currently being held hostage by Somali pirate gangs, people whose lives are at risk. The same can not be said about Iraq or Afghanistan - there are not hundreds of foreigners being held captive in those places by insurgents. In fact, I dare say that if there were so many foreign hostages being in either of those countries, there would be a greater sense of outrage by many people. (And, yes, I know that many citizens of Iraq and Afghanistan are facing dire threats, but I am here focusing on the impact of piracy operations on mariners.)

Dealing with the problem of piracy off the HoA is also fundamentally about dealing with Somalia and the eight million people trying to survive there, people who have been forgotten and written off by most nations for the better part of two decades, to say nothing of the many millions more who live in the surrounding regions. If that's not as worthy of media interest as the plight of the Afghan or Iraqi people, then what else is? An "Octo-Mom"?

And, by the way, I would also mention that McKnight's comments about over-publicizing the issue were not, in fact, widely reported in the media.

The Arctic Sea Incident and the Media: Getting it Wrong

It's been a few days since the saga of the Maltese freighter MV Arctic Sea came to a conclusion, of sorts, with the freeing of her crew by Russian naval forces, who also apparently apprehended the suspected pirates who'd seized the vessel. But all the unanswered questions that linger, as well as the way things played, out raise some serious questions about the media's role in the incident. Not just in the way things were reported, but also in the way it appears the media was deliberately misinformed. None of this does much to much to better the public's awareness of global piracy and the threats mariners face on a daily basis. If anything, it may have muddied the proverbial waters by stoking more skepticism and the reality of things and fueling those conspiracy theorists who feel there are all sorts of grand geo-political machinations going on.

As piracy expert EagleSpeak has alluded to on his site, sometimes it's better to keep things simple (and you, too, can look up the definition of Occam's razor he mentions). Instead, what we've seen since the Arctic Sea disappeared in the Baltic was ever increasing misreporting, misinformation and mistakes.

In my opinion there are two culpable players whose actions should be looked at: the media itself and several governments and NGOs.

The Media: Filling a Void

I'm a professional journalist, so am implicitly aware that headlines garner attention and sensational stories - like a freighter going missing in European waters - captivate audiences. But I'm also aware that one shouldn't fill a vacuum of information with mere speculation or, worse, self-serving innuendo. Too many journalists and would-be experts (and some real ones, too), threw their hats haphazardly into the ring on this one. And in many cases they should not have.

For the record, I received a number of requests for interviews about this incident over the last few weeks. Most wanted to know if terrorists had taken the ship or if piracy off Europe was about to rival that of the Horn of Africa. I disagreed, saying to all who contacted me that we just didn't have enough information to come to any firm conclusions.

That's not very sexy, but there were enough others willing to postulate on the potentials of something dramatic to fill the airtime. Yet it seemed as though most ignored the obvious while spinning ever more complex ideas. Drug smuggling, nuclear weapons, even a strange idea that the whole thing was some bizarre Russian naval exercise (see CNN's report here). And, more problematic, is that many media outlets simply got things wrong when a little research - a Google search, in fact - would have corrected things.

For instance, the Arctic Sea is not a Russian vessel. Russian-built, yes, and crewed at present by Russian nationals, but she's registered in Malta so flies the Maltese cross off her transom. And managed by a Finnish company, to make things more complex - welcome to the world of modern shipping. Small details, but nevertheless important if you're a journalist looking at current events.

Also, this was not the first time we've seen an act of piracy in European waters in centuries, as some have said. I've myself written about an incident a decade ago that mirrored, in some ways, the Arctic Sea event (see here), and then there's the Achille Lauro hijacking back in 1985. Yes, the liner was seized by Palestinian terrorists, but they still committed an act of piracy in so doing.

By the definitions of piracy used by the United Nations, the International Maritime Bureau and a number of sovereign states, what happened to the Arctic Sea most definitely constituted an act of piracy. So I take exception when experts or pundits played this down (see The Telegraph, for instance, which insisted on putting the word pirates in quotation marks).

This was a pirate incident, pure and simple. What the intentions of those who controlled the Arctic Sea the last few weeks was remains to be seen. If it was terrorists who had hijacked the vessel, they had still committed an act of piracy. If it was criminal gangs who'd sent a team to seize her, those boarders were still pirates. If the crew had gone rogue, they would be considered pirates.

So, the media didn't exactly do a bang-up job in reporting on this one. Some blame may be "summer journalism", something outsiders are not much aware of. It's what happens when the more experienced staffers take their vacations and leave juniors to deal with things. But juniors become senior and need to learn the game and how they're manipulated. Which leads me to the second element in this story...

The Official Story

Without a doubt, one of the most troubling aspects of the Arctic Sea incident is the dearth of information that has been provided by the Russian government and what seems to be a number of other offical bodies. I find it very hard to believe that the Russians - and others - knew what was going on all along, and spun a web of deceit to the media in order to safeguard the lives of the freighter's crew. It sounds too much like a case in which parties were initially unaware of the true danger and, effectively, caught with their pants down. Then, after scrambling to deal with the situation, the mantra became "We were always in control of things."

In the days since the vessel was freed, we have yet to receive a full public accountability that can fill in the gaps. This is odd, to say the least, and makes one wonder if the reality of what transpired isn't more confusing. I, for one, would have expected to Russian official to have by now stood up in a press conference and said something like:

"Ladies and gentlemen, I apologize for the lack of information that's been provided but rest assured we've been on top of this situation from day one. On July XX at YY hours, we learned of the fate of the vessel and mobilized our assets. In communication with the authorities in ZZ we set out to track the ship, knowing it had been hijacked. At no point was anyone in Western Europe or any other mariner at risk by this incident. Our decision to allow it to transit the busy Kattegat and English Channel at no point was something to be concerned about..."

Was the Arctic Sea ever at risk to other vessels? Why was it allowed to exit the Baltic Sea, where Russia maintains a strong naval presence, to say nothing of the other littoral states there? And why was it deemed necessary to dupe the media - and the public - about what was going on in this particular case?

When a vessel is commandeered by Somali pirates, there is never a news blackout to ensure the safety of the captives, though this is sometimes because the pirates themselves make the news available. I, for one, cannot help but wonder if the Russians succumbed to American envy after the Maersk Alabama incident. The US Navy resolved that situation successfully in order to resuce their own citizens. Was the Arctic Sea incident supposed to be a Russian variation that showed their own resolve?

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Hiding details, misinforming the public or filling columns and airspace with innuendos are not the way to deal with the threats that incidents like this one reveal. Piracy, maritime crime and seaborne terrorism are grave problems for the global community. And they should not be hidden away or glossed over.