April 14, 2009 05:29 AM UTC

Pirates ? Piratz!

• 5 Comments
• by: Barron X

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Sir Robin, Canines, Gilpin Guy, Libertad, Parsing, Duke, Steve, MOTR and others are following the topic, even Ardy.

I have been posting, but I have not been forthcoming on my involvement heretofore.

When the US Central Command ordered the formation of Task Force 150 last year in response to a jump in piracy in the Gulf of Aden, the top US Admiral in the region saluted and followed orders, but stated to the press that the solution to the pirate epidemic lay ashore, not at sea.  

No long after that, staff at CENTCOM headquarters leaked that contingency planning included numerous air strikes against the coastal towns of Somalia from whence the pirates embarked.  

Admiral Gortney again faced the press: he clarified that the long-term solution to piracy was going to have to be the rise of effective governance in the region.  He did not want to have the Navy assigned the task of blowing up thousands of mud huts, because he didn’t think it would help, and thought it would probably hurt, US interests in the region.  

Then the Bush Administration got the UN Security Council to issue 4 Resolutions on Somali pirates.  One specifically authorized Western navies to blast the pirates out of the water, and another authorized strikes on land in hot pursuit.  

Ever the pessimist, I imagined this going bad pretty quick.  

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I pulled a team together to work on this, including personal acquaintances who are Ethiopian-American and Yemeni-American.  The key team member was a Somali who had served as the Fisheries Minister for the Puntland Government for 2 years, someone who I knew only through the Internet.  

Hoping to provide an opportunity for the naval experts to set the tone and direction in Somalia before the politicians could screw the place up even worse than we found it,

we came up with a non-violent alternative approach for dealing with multiple challenges: pirates, grinding poverty, weak governance, the worst humanitarian disaster in the world, and a possible safe haven for transnational terror groups.    

We submitted it to the top plans guy in the office of the Chief of Naval Operations.  Admittedly we were also motivated by the possibility of getting work from the project.  

In short, we offered to help the Puntland regional government to build up their Coast Guards force; build up the local police forces in several cities and towns; expand jail capacity; and work with the judiciary to bring procedures and facilities up to international standards.  

We even offered to take custody of any suspected pirates detained by US forces, and transfer them to Puntland officials.  

But unlike US development efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, there would be no Americans on the ground, running these programs.  We would stay in the background, providing advice, money and technical support.  

Like Admiral Gortney, we believe that only a local governance authority can fix the piracy problem.  We also believe that this local government can only get stronger if they are in charge.  Having US military folks telling the local authorities what to do, like the Provincial Reconstruction Teams do in Iraq and Afghanistan, would turn the opinion leaders we need on our side against us.  No room for disrespecting local leaders and cultures on this project.  

We were going to bill the Navy tens of millions, possibly hundreds of millions over several years, to do this work.  

The alternative, the course we are on now, is to spend over $1 Billion per year to have a grey-hulled blue water navy tracking and intercepting barefoot guys in canoes: the wrong force using the wrong tactics to achieve the wrong objectives.  

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I advocated putting the bulk of the money into strengthening local governance.  The former minister wanted to shift a lot of it into Economic Development.  His top priority was poverty reduction programs, even though there’s supposedly a huge USAID effort in that area.  He knows the needs there better than almost anyone.  But the proposal had to be tailored to US Navy needs.  As the one with the best understanding of how our US government works, I kept the focus on the Navy’s immediate mission – reducing piracy.  We compromised, making the governance portion the largest and unifying theme.  

We sent the proposal to the Navy in December, before anybody thought an American vessel or crew might be taken hostage.   The approach was developed in detail.  

It was not coordinated explicitly with any current officials of the Puntland government, though the guy on my team had worked with most of the current ministers since his first government appointment as Education Minister in 2005.  He knew them and their views fairly well.  

The Navy was not very responsive.  I received one letter in 2 months.  In March we decided to approach the State Department.  

Well, I got an email from a State Department official this afternoon:

your proposal [was forwarded] to the Bureau of African Affairs; however, there is no  interest our  pursuing an acquisition process for your services at this time.  

I don’t believe anybody will win in an escalation of this conflict, except maybe the Islamist terrorist-aligned groups and arms merchants.  

The pirates sure won’t win if we drop foogas or napalm on their abodes.  

The Navy doesn’t win if they chase wild geese across the Indian Ocean.  It costs them $1 Million a day to steam a carrier around and launch & recover aircraft.  We have 15 ships of the line on pirate duty off the Puntland coast.  

And the USMC doesn’t win when they go ashore to mop up.  

Ship owners, crews and shippers will all lose.  

In the end, these all make the region a better place for terrorists to hide.    

The #1 reason that I think Somalia is so important is not piracy.  It’s because I believe that OBL and al-Qaeda will flee there if it gets too hot in Pakistan.  

In Iraq, AQI was evicted more by the efforts of the locals than by our Army.  On the other hand, al-Qaeda endures in the mountains of the Hindu Kush precisely because the locals are supporting them.  

Today, fair or not, many Somalis blame the US and the West for their troubles.  

We can turn that around.  

We must turn that around.  

It would be much easier to repair those relationships now, before al-Qaeda or al-Shabaab sink their fangs into the region and the people, rather than waiting until after.  

That explains my interest in the issue, as well as why I’ve been posturing like an expert on it.  I’ve really just been passing on what was recently taught to me.  

I welcome your response.  

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