Spain should take a lesson from America - NO MORE BLACKMAIL
As some of you might know, last week Somali pirates seized a Spanish fishing vessel and took it's 26 sailors hostage. Yesterday, they released the crew, and I strongly suspected a ransom was paid. Unfortunately, I was right. $1.2 million dollars were paid to the pirates, which will now help fund future piracy and kidnappings, prompting even more payments.
There needs to be an international agreement over this: Ransom needs to stop. No ransom should ever be paid, ever again. If the monetary incentive disappeared, then piracy and kidnappings would disappear as well.
Of course, there is always the issue of how I would feel if my own family members were taken hostage. My first instinct would of course be to pay the money now, safeguarding lives, and worry about justice later. But there is a difference between what benefits me and what is better for society's greater good. People will always look out for their own interests above others, which is why we have laws in the first place. Moreover, if we had an international agreement ending the payment of ransoms, and everyone stuck to it, then the issue would become moot.
This has striking parallels to piracy prior to the early 19th century.
Morocco, Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli were semi-independent states under the Ottoman empire, and they engaged in heavy piracy throughout the Atlantic and the Mediterranean. Like today, vessels were seized and captives taken for ransom. But unlike today, people who weren't ransomed were often sold into slavery. Some of them were European women who ended up in harems in the Middle East. This slavery of Westerners by North Africans is a too seldom-discussed episode in history.
By the 18th century, European states were making blackmail payments (which they called a "license tax") to protect their ships from attack. They figured it was cheaper in the long run than aggressively going after the pirates themselves. Prior to 1776, American vessels fell under the British agreements. But after the War of Independence, Americans were on their own, and their vessels were captured, and occupants kidnapped, imprisoned, and tortured.
In 1801, President Thomas Jefferson had had enough. He commissioned the building of a new US Navy, and engaged in an ultimately successful war against the Tripoli pirates, known as the Barbary Wars. Unlike the older, established European powers, the fledgling nation was the only one that stood up to the bully in the schoolyard. And it worked.
More recent background here:
The BBC's Mohamed Olad Hassan in Somalia says many of the pirates are former fishermen, who began by attacking ships they argued were "illegally threatening or destroying" their business.
"Businessmen and former fighters for the Somali warlords moved in when they saw how lucrative it could be. The pirates and their backers tend to split the ransom money 50-50," he says.
The Puntland authorities argue that if piracy paid less well, there would be less of it.
They condemned the $700,000 (£350,000) ransom paid by a Danish company last month for the release of the crew of a tug, the Svitzer Korsakov, after 47 days of captivity off the Puntland coast.
Although Spain is calling for a UN anti-piracy force to be created, they still have a navy of their own. They could have handled this problem very differently. They know where the pirates come from, and they can find the warlords responsible. Maybe after withdrawing from Iraq, they are worried about accusations of getting involved in another war? But if you are afraid of using your own military, then what's the point of having it in the first place? No matter how much nations might disagree over other issues, there is no ambiguity here. Piracy is a universal crime, and policing it is exactly what navies are for.
Note about the painting above: In 1804, during the first Barbary war, 75 American sailors sneaked into Tripoli harbor to burn the frigate The Philadelphia, which had been captured the year before. More details here.
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4 comments:
Hopefully these guys were smart enough to put a tracer or something on the money they paid. But then again, I'm not that hopeful.
Smile, pay the ransom and like the young Caesar return with a consular army and kill or crucify the pirates. Though later in life Caesar gave the Dalmatian pirates the choice of being farmers or carrion and they chose wisely!
Piracy has been on the uprise again ever since the cold war ended and the two superpowers reduced their navies and have been patrolling less. It doesn't mean that it is their fault though, it simply made it possible in large scale again. The coastal area in Somalia is especially perileous because important sea routes go through there.
It is a very lucrative job and at least in southeast Asia, Indonesia, Singapore etc. probably controlled by the triads. They hijack large tankers and blackmail the shipping lines for ransom which the insurance company usually pays because it is still cheaper to pay the ransom than to build a new ship. It has almost become a Standard Procedure by now.
Somalia doesn't really have a functioning government that could react in any meaningful way should the US Navy or other navies decide to intervene, but in the Strait of Malaca things are more complicated since Indonesia would not appreciate foreign warships in their territorial waters so policing those areas is out of the question. Also, liquid fuel/gas tankers for example are very vulnerable to any kind of sparks and take extra precautions to reduce electrical current/sparks at any cost; it would be very counterproductive to go in there guns blazing since the ship could explode.
Having your own security force on board that could fight off pirates might just result in more dead people since those that go after the lucrative targets aren't the poor fishermen that have no other choice but probably highly trained and ruthless.
Modern day pirates are just the same as in the old days in what they do, ruthless killers and thieves.
I knew about the slave trade in the mediterranean during the time you mentioned, but I believe that as soon as the opportunity arises pirates will spring into existance, no matter what you do. Modern technology works in their favour as well, they have radar and mobile cellphones, modern weapons and modern ships. Poverty is on the uprise world wide and especially around those countries that have the most piracy incidents. If you destroy the ones that are there now new ones will come so it isn't enough just to hunt them down.
Of course it is a good example, but we do not actually need taking lessons from any one on this issue. We just have to look at our own history.
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