Crosshairs - Military Matters in Review

By the close of the 18th century, the Barbary States of Morocco, Algiers, Tripoli and Tunis were extorting protection money from ships that crossed near their shores. The newly born United States of America went along with this to the tune of more than $2 million, until Tripoli jacked up the price in 1801. The U.S. government refused to pay more, and the pasha of Tripoli declared war against the United States.

This made Americans realize that a maritime nation could not hide behind isolationism with impunity. It also nailed down the concept of freedom of the seas. So the fledgling U.S. Navy spread its sails and thrashed Tripoli in 1805, and defeated the others after the War of 1812. This put a dent in piracy, but it didn't eliminate it.

Today it's back, in places like Tanzania, Bangladesh, the Philippines, Brazil, Peru, Nigeria, the Malacca Straits, and Somalia. Many operations are hit or miss, but in Somalia, piracy has become the national industry of a failed state that uses its 2,000-mile coastline for a national resource. And piracy has gone high tech. Mother ships go offshore and launch speed boats containing boarding parties of seven-to-ten. They may carry assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers. Their electronics inventory includes radar, GPS, and satellite phones. By the last count, Somali-based pirates had seized more than 35 ships, and held 280 crew members hostage. Two had been killed. The prize trophies have been a Saudi tanker carrying two million barrels of crude oil and a Ukrainian freighter carrying tanks and other heavy weapons. Billions of dollars worth of cargo have been hijacked and millions have been paid in ransom. As a result, shipping companies' operating expenses are surging; insurance premiums have spiked 10 percent, and ship routes have become 10 percent longer, raising costs by 20,000 to 30,000 Euros a day.

BBC's Africa analyst Mary Harper wrote that when pirates have taken a ship, the port of Eyl, where most of the ships are brought, springs to life. It's time for coats and ties as the pirates' accountant and the chief negotiator arrive. Special restaurants open up to feed the crews of the highjacked ships. Jonathan Clayton of UK's The Times adds that clan elders arrive to broker a deal between their young clansmen and shipping companies eager to pay ransom. The money sometimes goes into accounts in the United Arab Emirates as well as Western Europe. The activity in turn has spawned more pirate gangs, equipped with higher technology weapons and attack boats.

Officials in the United States and other countries are concerned that pirates will partner with international terrorists. Considering that the West's economy is a strategic target of al Qaeda, think what a ship sunk in a chokepoint such as the Strait of Hormuz would do to the worldwide energy supply. And, remembering the attack on the USS Cole by a small craft in 2000, think what al Qaeda could do if its operatives gained access to a port by using a hijacked ship or tug boat that had been flagged under a new name.

Piracy on the high seas mostly ended during the latter part of the 19th century because the United States with its tiny navy dared to go to war against the Barbary Coast, and because ship's masters knew they had the right to simply hang pirates they captured on the high seas--no courts needed. Considering the bitter criticism aimed at the detention of terrorists at Guantanamo. What would happen to a ship's captain who was lucky enough to catch a pirate today--and hang him?

In a column on November 25, Bret Stephens of the Wall Street Journal warned that, "A society that erases the memory of how it overcame barbarism in the past inevitably loses sight of the meaning of civilization, and the means of sustaining it."

Coming: Purging the Pirates

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