Security

NATO Treats Pirates with Kid Gloves: Indian Admiral (Updated)

Are the U.S. and her allies being too gentle with Somalia’s pirates? That’s the accusation from Indian retired Rear Admiral Raja Menon. NATO’s rules of engagement — when their ships can fire, and when the can’t — "worries more about the human rights of the pirates, than about stamping out piracy," Menon writes in the […]

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Are the U.S. and her allies being too gentle with Somalia's pirates? That's the accusation from Indian retired Rear Admiral Raja Menon.

NATO's rules of engagement -- when their ships can fire, and when the can't -- "worries more about the human rights of the pirates, than about stamping out piracy," Menon writes in the New Indian Express. "Actually there is an 1838 convention that permits any warship to interfere anywhere on the ‘High Seas’ to intercept pirates and try them — without handing them over to the country of origin. Today’s interpretation by human rights lawyers state that pirates cannot even be handed over to their own state if that state does not respect the human rights of the pirates. This is an absurd situation."

I'm hearing, second-hand, that Western sailors are making similar complaints.

Meanwhile, the Indian Navy -- which has fought at least three battles with pirates in less than two weeks -- is talking with Russia and Japan about going on pirate-hunting missions together. New Delhi says it doesn't want to be under NATO's wing, following the Alliance's rules.

[UPDATE: The owner of a Thai trawler claims that his ship was mistaken for a pirate "mother ship" by the Indian Navy -- and sunk. 14 sailors are still missing.]

Over at Information Dissemination, Galrahn wonders whether this whole pirate-hunting business is really in America's interests at all. "Somali piracy does not represent even a minor economic threat to the United States. Even with the hijacking of a Saudi supertanker, and even if every supertanker from the Persian Gulf has to take the long route around the Cape of Good Hope, this amounts to less than 1 penny per gallon cost for the American citizen," he writes.

In fact, Galrahn says, the pirates should be our buddies, not our adversaries.

American forces in the region have "a purpose," he notes, and it "has nothing to do with piracy. Somalia represents a major front in the
Global War on Terror, and the U.S. National Security Strategy for Somalia is essentially to wait for a government that can manage the nation to emerge... The United States is essentially allowing Somalia to remain an ungoverned country because the status quo gives us more freedom of action in fighting al Qaeda and other extremist terrorism allies in Somalia. Piracy is a side effect, and not necessarily a terrible side effect, of that strategy."

*There are very few people dieing from piracy. The areas that are being governed by the pirate companies are functioning and less violent than areas where piracy does not exist, indeed pirate cities are thriving. The pirates are not only commercial in nature, but they are enemies of the Islamic extremists that represent the enemy of the United States. It sounds crazy to say, but the pirates are essentially the secular, liberal capitalists of Somalia, and the United States would prefer to deal WITH
not AGAINST those types of people. Know your history, the Europeans preferred dealing with the Brashaws of the Barbary states than the alternative, the Islamic militant armies. We are essentially allowing the pirates to build themselves as regional Brashaws of Somalia with the ransom money from piracy, while the Islamists who remain violent are struggling for funding. *(emphasis mine)

I think the ordinarily clear-eyed Galrahn got crossed-up on this one. Keeping up the global flow of free trade is absolutely vital to
America's interest -- especially in tough economic times. There may not be a direct impact at the pump. But do we really want yet another reason for commerce to slow down, right now? And if we allow piracy to go in the Gulf of Aden, what signal does that send to other potential hijackers? Do we really want the Mexican cartels, or the Castro regime, or the Chavez posse getting the idea that this is somehow an acceptable course of action?

It may be official U.S. policy to keep Somalia as a failed, ungoverned state, as Galrahn says. So maybe some enemy-of-my-enemy logic could be employed. But that doesn't make the policy smart. Or the logic sound.

[Pic: Hunt of the Sea Wolves]

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