Ten Pirates In A Leaky Tub

You will recall that last week the Russians taught a bunch of skiff-riding, gun-toting unemployed Somali "fishermen" the error of their ways. Having seized the Russian owned and crewed tanker, MV Moscow University, the pirates then sought to shoot it out with Russian naval infantry undertaking a heliborne rescue and recovery mission. In the process only one Somali buccaneer died.

The Russians later sent the others packing in either (take your pick as news accounts differed after the incident) in their skiff or "an inflatable boat." An hour later the Russians acknowledge that they lost either radio or radar contact with the pirates as they set sail for home some three hundred statute miles away. Fellow Raiders of the Briney Deep safely ashore in Somalia confirm that there has been no contact with their colleagues in crime since the Russians cut them loose without navigation equipment or weapons.

Reportedly the Russians considered (at least briefly) the idea of hauling the pirates back to Moscow for trial but decided not to given the uncertainties in international law and consequent problems in obtaining a conviction. Subsequently, President Medvedev averred that unless and until an adequate international system for bringing pirates to justice, "we will have to act as our forefathers did when they met pirates."

While NPR caustically questioned the correctness of setting the poor dear fishermen from the ungoverned geographic expression of Somalia off without any navigational instruments, it does strike this observer as a useful, cost effective way of giving the Daring Desperadoes of the Deep a better chance of staying alive than either a short drop from a (metaphorical) yardarm or a stint in the Siberian Gulag. If nothing else the Russian action does give a certain impetus to the creation of a special international tribunal to handle the pirates of Somalia and elsewhere.

Not surprisingly the Maritime Marauders have shown their typically overinflated sense of self-importance. An alleged "pirate commander" vowed to hold the Russians responsible for any harm which may have befallen their missing comrades in banditry. This pretense of being akin to a sovereign state is risible to say the least. In reply someone should remind the jacked-up thug just how fast his associates beat feet as the Islamists moved in on their particular pirates' cove.

The problem of securing the sealanes in the western Indian Ocean and the Gulf of Aden remains. So also does the kindred problem of the spread of piracy to the coast of Nigeria and the growing threat of both piracy and marine terrorism in the Straits of Malacca. The three challenges are linked by a common thread of religiously predicated political ideology. The pirates (and terrorists) of all three regions are directly or indirectly connected with Islamism and its armed twin, jihadism.

While individual shipowners may see the ransoms as an acceptable cost of doing business, the net effect of seizures made and ransoms paid has been the imposition of ever growing collective costs on the global economy. In addition, the seeming impotence of the assembled international flotilla to deter, let alone successfully either defend or recover stolen ships, lowers the credibility of the civilized states generally in their confrontation with global Islamism and jihadism.

At the very minimum the US should throw its diplomatic weight (if any is left) behind the Russian proposal for a UN created "Piracy Court." This approach is long overdue and is equally well provided for by precedent. If the International Criminal Court is any guide, the processes of the proposed court would be so lengthy that any pirates hailed before it would rot a suitably long time in durance more-or-less-vile so that they will be too old to keep on with living on the Somalian version of the Bounding Main even if acquitted.

Better yet, the US (and other countries as well) should go ahead and emulate the Russians in the rescue and recovery of the MV Moscow University and its crew. Most, if not all, the navies currently represented in the anti-piracy patrols have a special operations capability at least equivalent to that of the Russians. Certainly the US does. So, why not use it?

Sure there will be casualties. Pirates will die. (Hopefully.) Perhaps some captive crewmen will as well although that possibility can be lowered significantly if every ship has a secure room such as that aboard the MV Moscow University to which they can retreat after cutting off the main engines. Keeping in contact with the rescue forces would also be possible as shown by the MV Moscow University incident.

Historically, piracy has been suppressed only when the costs of doing piratical business are elevated to an unacceptable level. This has occurred when sufficient numbers of pirates have ended dead: violently dead or incapacitated through long, long incarceration.

Since the current "system" for bringing pirates to justice is not even good enough to aspire to the term "laughable," there is an immediate need to admit that President Medvedev is right: we have to deal with the saltwater brigands as did our ancestors. Perhaps not with a modern replica of Execution Dock, but certainly with a robust willingness to use force. (Adopting the Russian model of setting pirates loose in a leaky boat is strictly optional.)