Fighting Pirates--Blackwater Or The Navy

Blackwater Worldwide and the rather bluntly named security company from Mississippi, Hollowpoint, are among the mercenary outfits looking for work in the waters off Somalia. Admittedly not all these private purveyors of security are trigger-pulling thugs like those deployed by the infamous Blackwater bunch. Some, primarily British, don't use lethal force depending instead on brains and less-than-lethal technology to enhance the chances of their clients when faced by fisherfolk turned maritime bandits.

Don't get the Geek wrong, he has no particular objections to killing pirates. He thinks it is a rather good idea. Raising risk while reducing benefits is a time-honored and effective technique of defeating piracy. If anything, the Geek is perturbed by the generous concern for the well-being of the seaborne opportunists of the Somalian coast.

It appears that the fear of lawyers and their landbased ilk is driving a desire on the part of governments, including that of the United States, to "privatize" the risks and liabilities of seeking to end the pirate plague by forceful action. Frankly, it galls the Geek to read a spokesperson for the US Navy encourage the use of private means to repel hostile borders.

It is equally galling to read of NATO hiding behind the need for "regulations" before the assembled armada can do any more than twiddle collective thumbs while the merry raiders of Puntland go about their business of seizing ships and crews. History indicates beyond the law's much beloved "reasonable doubt" that force and force alone ends piracy.

It is quite true that the Somalian pirates are not so forthright as to fly the Jolly Roger before opening fire. It is true that difficulty exists in distinguishing between fishermen and pirates. The same sort of problem as has bedeviled generations of counterinsurgents trying to parse between peasant and guerrilla.

It's nothing new.

We've been there before. And the reality is that some non-guerrillas are killed by mistake. The same would happen if the US or any other nation's navy opens fire. The probability of killing or wounding fishermen can be reduced, but never eliminated. Still, the possibility that non-pirates might be hurt should not be allowed to impair the effort to end a threat to the twenty thousand or so ships transiting the Gulf of Aden on route to or from the Suez Canal.

Impediments to shipping whether in insurance costs or travel time will do harm to an already shaky global economy. Resolute and robust action against piracy will be of global benefit. Failure to take such action will only embolden the marine marauders and put more trade at risk.

To put it simply: make the risk averse lawyers walk the plank and get serious about ending the threat. A large naval force which simply drives around or "monitors" the situation aboard one seized ship or even one which limits its activities to providing convoy escorts to food aid ships bound for Somalian ports is as useless as mammary glands on a bull.

Perhaps the Russians will show the world how pirates can be stopped. Their long-awaited frigate took on water and fresh supplies in Aden the other day. It has to be closing on Somalia and the captive M/V Faina shortly.

In the past the Russians have shown a genuine capacity for robust action and an accompanying willingness to accept innocent casualties when confronted by terrorists and the like. Perhaps that proclivity will be demonstrated in the near future on the Somalian coast.

The Russians seem to understand that warships have weapons. They have guns. As the Squadron Leader Mandrake put it in the film Dr Strangelove, "You have a gun. Use it! That's what the bullets are for. Shoot!"

To stop piracy in the Gulf of Aden or elsewhere, shoot and then let the lawyers dither. That's what lawyers are for. Dithering.