18 May 2010 How long can a Somali pirate tread water?

18 May 2010 How long can a Somali pirate tread water?


Somalia pirates' clash with Russian navy reveals a gap in rule of law

By Anne Applebaum

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

The pirates attacked the merchant ship early on the morning of May 5. The crew locked themselves in the engine room with a stock of food and water. A naval destroyer came steaming to the rescue and demanded that the pirates give up the ship. When they refused, the destroyer attacked with guns and cannons and, after a brief firefight, the pirates surrendered. Had this been a story from a children's book -- the kind with a skull and crossbones on the cover and a foldout treasure map inside -- the pirates would then have walked the plank. But it wasn't. This was 2010. The merchant ship was not a schooner but a Russian tanker, carrying 86,000 metric tons of crude oil worth $52 million. The pirates were not colorful figures with cutlasses but Somalis led by professionals who knew what this cargo was worth.

As for the Russian destroyer, it was not operating according to an 18th-century code of honor but according to international law, such as it is. Theoretically, the captain was supposed to hand the detainees and the evidence over to regional police. Not wanting to involve himself in legal wrangling, however, he decided to "release" the pirates instead. And thus they were "set free" in a tiny inflatable raft, with no navigation equipment, 350 miles off the coast of Yemen. The raft has disappeared. In the 21st century, this is how pirates walk the plank.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/17/AR2010051702971.html?nav=hcmoduletmv

Our Navy and every other navy got its start as an agent of the state organized to suppress piracy. As far back as recorded history goes, there have been pirates. Maritime and Naval law is partially about assurance of freedom of the sea lanes, rights of passage, protection of commercial vessels from pirates. The solution for pirates, once apprehended, has classically been to make sure that they never again practice piracy. That has been accomplished by using many methods. They have been dispatched by sword, by abandonment, by rope, arrows, by drowning, and by less kind methods. Usually their demise was similar in manner to that they used to dispatch their victims.

Since every naval ship’s captain is acting as a commissioned agent of his government, prior to the mid 19th century they were authorized to try, convict, sentence, and execute those apprehended in the act of piracy, the historical precedent exists. That relationship still exists for captains of men of war. While international law has largely prevented gun deck courts-martial for pirates, the current treatment of pirates as aquatic thieves has not been sufficient to prevent piracy. Civil trials in nations that don’t use capital punishment don’t provide enough deterrence to prevent piracy becoming an attractive occupation.

A return to swift trial, sentencing, and execution for piracy is the best solution. There will be cries for the pirates, “deprived from birth,” “unfairly tried and convicted,” “unjustly executed.” I’m not bothered by those cries. Pirates are terrorists, murderers, and kidnappers/hostage takers. Their hostages are abused, beaten, starved, raped, and often killed. They are owed no mercy, no pity, and no compassion. I’m happy with the solution adopted by Russian, Danish, Netherlands, and Naval officers from other nations engaged in anti-piracy duty in the Indian Ocean. It’s time for our Navy to return to the same practice.

Some of the people I indirectly communicate with or around on a fly fishing forum have repeatedly condemned “the elitists” in politics as encouraged by Fox News and Palin, the resignator. They need to return to those days when the definitions of target populations shifted daily and the mob scooped up all accused without any reason but vengeance, greed, or envy. They’re fond of making such unfounded accusations about politicians and citizens as the uninformed did. They need to be cautious about unleashing a mob. It may well engulf them.

This was my response to another round of anti-“Elitist” comments:

We should be careful when we let the mob load "the elite" into the tumbrels. Any of us who has completed a university degree: who has ever worked a white collar job; practiced medicine or allied professions; practiced law; engineering; journalism; owned a company that employs others; served as an officer or NCO in our armed forces; is computer literate, has the opportunity to spend time on social sites such as this while others are engaged in physical labor; can easily be considered "the elite" by others with less leisure time, less intellectual curiosity, &/or less education.

And that bar may, all too quickly, become too high for the mob.



Those of us with multiple fly rods and reels, collections of firearms for hunting and for recreation, multiple cars, large suburban homes, recreational boats, satellite radios, smart phones, library cards may fall into the pool of "elitists." We joke about ourselves as elitists in comparison to other recreational fishers. But we're only partially joking.



As Colston knows, you can organize the first mob but you can't control who winds up in it, or what direction it ultimately takes.