dysnomia.us

piracy does not fund terrorism

Five tons of flax to Telarus for this one:

My chief competition in blogging about pirates is Hunt of the Sea Wolves. It’s an effort to promote an unpublished novel, now a screenplay, about a linkup between piracy and terrorism. It’s a good source of breaking news on the high seas action, but it’s all wrong about the terrorist connection.

Mix tapes aside, there’s not much to tie piracy and terrorism. Sure, terrorists could turn pirate and seize tankers full of liquefied natural gas. But they could also plant dirty bombs, poison water supplies, gas subways, whatever. We can imagine an endless stream of potential terrorist tactics, but just imagining it doesn’t make it a real threat.

The other angle people play up is that Somali pirates could be supporting Islamist militants who are on the verge of re-taking power in Somalia. The militants themselves are said to provide shelter for Al Qaeda, and maybe they do- I’d consider Somalia a good place to hole up if I were an AQ operative on the run. The militants themselves don’t practice terrorism for the most part, being more concerned with traditional military objectives like seizing territory. But in American policy debate, they all tend to get lumped in together.

There’s not much to indicate that the pirates support the Islamic militants with their booty. In fact, most of the stories we see about the pirate’s life make it look like they’re sinking their money into houses, cars, GPS units and cell phones. What’s more, evidence on the ground indicates otherwise as well.

I’ve talked about this before, and the Danger Room hits the topic again: when those Islamist militants were in power, they were the only force to effectively suppress piracy in the region. The brief period of law and order imposed by Somalia’s short-lived Islamic government was the only time that the Somali coast came under the rule of law. As soon as Ethiopian troops drove that government from Mogadishu (with US backing, of course), piracy didn’t just return- it redoubled.

For what it’s worth, Somali pirates don’t have their roots in madrassas or terror camps- they come from fishing communities that were swamped by foreign ships as soon as there was no authority to defend Somalia’s economic sphere. With overfishing allegedly came illegal dumping as well. The excellent video embedded in the Danger Room post above and this article in the Christian Science Monitor lay it all out.

I started posting stories about pirates because it was a fun little thing that played into my theme of lawlessness, but I quickly realized that it fit into my particular niche of nerdom very nicely. It carries a deeper level of lawlessness that reflects the breakdown of the international order and the failure of the nation-state.

Somalia has had no effective government since 1991 or so, except for a brief period of rule by the Islamic Courts. During that period, Somalis had some semblance of peace. Piracy was largely halted. The price, of course, was to live under strict Sharia law.

If you’ve ever smugly quoted Ben Franklin to the effect that those who give up essential liberty to achieve temporary security deserve neither, I hope you’ll give some thought to Somalia. I intend to post on this question at greater length in the future, but it represents perfectly the conflict embedded in that famous quote. Somalis stare into the darkest aspect of this question every day, and if the international system wants to end piracy and restore order in Somalia, it’s going to have to face the same tough conflict as well.

Wikipedia maintains a good list of ships attacked by Somali pirates.

• Islamic group ready to fight pirates
• Tension mounts in Somali pirate lair as ransom clock ticks
• More tankers to shun Somalia as insurance costs surge
• For seafaring Greeks, piracy compounds global trade slowdown woes
• Somali Pirates Release Greek Ship