The New Pirates: Modern Global Piracy from Somalia to the South China Sea

MODERN GLOBAL PIRACY FROM SOMALIA TO THE SOUTH CHINA SEA

‘This is a masterful tome, intellectually robust and commendably pragmatic. It should be on the required reading list of politicians, senior naval and military officers, legal advisors and shipping owners. If only they were better informed, we would strike a blow at this dreadful phenomenon.’

Andrew Palmer is CEO of Idarat Ltd. and of Idarat Resilience JLT. He has spent much of his life dealing with international business, in the Middle East, Russia, Asia, Africa, Australia and North America as well as Europe. He is a member of Chatham House and holds an MBA from the Lord Ashcroft International Business School, Anglia Ruskin University.

Commodore Pat Tyrrell, OBE, Royal Navy

www.newpirates.info

‘Andrew Palmer has written the first, and so far only, book that gives an in-depth analysis of the modern scourge of piracy on the high seas.’

Major General Julian Thompson, from the foreword to this book

These ‘new’ pirates are far from the brutal but romantic figures of popular legend. They are sophisticated operators who have undergone training courses, have advanced weaponry, are radar equipped with electronic tracking devices, have access to onboard advance information, run a highly organised system of motherships and fast-moving skiffs and even form companies enjoying covert state support with access to international finance. But actions can be as horrific as any historical episode of piracy, with crews being murdered and whole cargoes seized.

The threat is growing; the International Maritime Bureau (IMB) recorded 217 attacks from Somali pirates in 2009. Somalia is considered as the nest of piracy but hotspots include not only the Red Sea region but also the whole Indian Ocean, West Africa, Latin America, Southeast Asia, and the South China Seas.

MODERN GLOBAL PIRACY FROM SOMALIA TO THE SOUTH CHINA SEA

Professor Jack Spence OBE, King’s College London

ANDREW PALMER

ISBN 978-1-84885-633-2

Andrew Palmer here provides the historical background to the new piracy and examines its impact on the shipping and insurance industries.

He also assesses the efficacy of the UN and the IMB, international law and advanced naval and military measures in combatting this threat to international order. Palmer shows how the ‘new’ piracy is rooted in the geopolitics and socioeconomic conditions of the early twenty-first century where populations live on the margins and where ‘failed states’ can encourage criminal activity and even international terrorism.

9 781848 856332

ANDREW PALMER

www.ibtauris.com

Jacket image: Armed Somali pirate, January 2010.

MOHAMED DAHIR/AFP/Getty Images.

Foreword by Major General Julian Thompson

www.ibtauris.com

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‘The New Pirates will become the definitive work on the subject and be an invaluable intellectual asset for scholars, students and practitioners in government and the armed services. The author has worked on anti-piracy programmes and is an acknowledged expert in encountering this threat to maritime security.’

Piracy is a significant global threat to international seaborne trade – the life-blood of modern industrial economies and a necessity for world economic survival. The pirates of today are constantly in the world’s news media, preying on private and merchant shipping alike. Their targets range from small private yachts – with harrowing stories of individuals faced with seemingly impossible ransom demands – to huge oceangoing tankers and container ships transporting oil and gas, or consumer goods from the new industrial giants in Asia.

Andrew Palmer is CEO of Idarat Ltd. and of Idarat Resilience JLT. He has spent much of his life dealing with international business, in the Middle East, Russia, Asia, Africa, Australia and North America as well as Europe. He is a member of Chatham House and holds an MBA from the Lord Ashcroft International Business School, Anglia Ruskin University. His website is: http://www.newpirates.info

‘This is a masterful tome, intellectually robust and commendably pragmatic.

It should be on the required reading list of politicians, senior naval and military officers, legal advisors and shipping owners. If only they were better informed, we would strike a blow at this dreadful phenomenon.’

– Commodore Pat Tyrrell, OBE Royal Navy ‘Andrew Palmer has written the first, and so far only, book that gives an in-depth analysis of the modern scourge of piracy on the high seas.’

– Major General Julian Thompson, from the foreword to this book ‘The New Pirates will become the definitive work on the subject and be an invaluable intellectual asset for scholars, students and practitioners in government and the armed services. The author has worked on anti-piracy programmes and is an acknowledged expert in encountering this threat to maritime security.’

– Professor Jack Spence OBE, King’s College London

THE NEW PIRATES MODERN GLOBAL PIRACY FROM SOMALIA TO THE SOUTH CHINA SEA

ANDREW PALMER

Foreword by Major General Julian Thompson

Published in 2014 by I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd 6 Salem Road, London W2 4BU 175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010 www.ibtauris.com Distributed in the United States and Canada Exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan 175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010 Copyright q 2014 Andrew Palmer The right of Andrew Palmer to be identiďŹ ed as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act 1988.

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Every attempt has been made to gain permission for the use of the images in this book.

Any omissions will be rectiďŹ ed in future editions.

References to websites were correct at the time of writing.

ISBN: 978 1 84885 633 2 eISBN: 978 0 85773 493 8 A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library A full CIP record is available from the Library of Congress Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: available Printed and bound in Sweden by ScandBook AB

TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Illustrations Acronyms Acknowledgements Foreword

vi vii x xi

Introduction 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

1

Piracy: The Background The Political Development of Somalia Stateless Territories and Clandestine Networks The Pirate Coast The Geography of Piracy Pirate Operations The Impact on the Shipping Industry Legal and Insurance Issues Vessel Defence Are There Answers?

7 17 71 93 131 163 205 229 263 289

Notes Bibliography Index

319 357 369

v

CHAPTER 2

THE POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT OF SOMALIA

SOMALIA: SOCIETY AND CLANS In order to understand fully why Somalia has evolved into an ideal base for piracy it is necessary ďŹ rst to look at Somalia’s history since independence, and the origins of the modern country. The Somali people occupy a large region in the Horn of Africa, which includes Somalia, the so far independent state of Somaliland, the Republic of Djibouti, the Ogaden (or Somali) territory of Ethiopia and parts of northern Kenya. There is also a large, and growing, diaspora, with Somali communities in Nairobi, Kenya, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, the United States, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Sweden, Italy, Australia, and a number of other countries. The current Somali elite has strong ties to the diaspora, because this group is better educated and wealthier than the Somalis living in Africa and have become an important source of investment funding for the country.

Historically Somalis have had a reputation as traders and merchants, and Somali seamen settled in European ports from the nineteenth century. The homeland of the Somalis is mainly semi-desert on the plains, and apart from the settled farmers of the south, the majority of Somalis have been pastoral nomads, with small populations of traders and artisans living in longestablished towns, such as Mogadishu. The Somali territories are backed by the Golis and Ogo mountain ranges, which rise to a height of over 2,000 metres, and are linked in the west to the Ethiopian highlands1; rainfall from this area ensures that Somaliland is normally well-supplied with water.

17

THE NEW PIRATES

Central Somalia, known as the Haud, has no permanent water; this area includes the provinces of Nugaal, Mudug and Galguduud.

In the south the land is well-watered by Jubba and Shebelle rivers, which rise in the Ethiopian highlands; in a small way they are to Somalia what the Nile is to Egypt. The Italians selected the Shebelle valley for plantations and started building irrigation systems in 1919.2 Initially cotton was grown, and in 1926 banana cultivation was introduced by Italian settlers. The Shebelle flows east to Balad, then south where it normally evaporates in a series of marshes near Jilib, although when in flood its water reaches the Jubba River.

The Jubba River, which is navigable from the sea to Bardera, enters the Indian Ocean near Kismaayo, a port that has seen fierce fighting between militia groups over the last few years.3 This area is by far the richest arable zone in Somalia, and late President Siyad Barre rewarded his supporters with farmland in this area.

Ioan Lewis, the historian of modern Somalia, says that Somalis belong to the Hamitic ethnic group; they have connections with the Oromo and Bantu tribes and also with Arabia. He also notes that the largest element of the Somali population (Samale) consists of four principal groups of clans or ‘clan families’: these comprise the Dir, Isaq, Hawiye and Darod, which Lewis says are all ‘primarily pastoral nomads’. There are also a number of subclans. The Dir clans, the Ise (or ‘Esa’) and Gadabursi, live mainly in Somaliland and Djibouti, but can also be found in the Harar province of Ethiopia. Lewis states that the Isaq, who were originally a sub-clan of the Dir, live mainly in the centre and north of Somali, but also move into the Ogaden.

He says that the largest of the Somali clan families are the Darod who occupy the eastern part of Somaliland, and what is now known as Puntland, the provinces of Bari, Nugal and Mudug, together with most of the Haud and the Ogaden (the Ethiopian Somali province) with a presence in the south of Somalia and north-eastern Kenya. The other Samale clan family are the Hawiye, whose territories traditionally stretch north into Mudug, and include Hiraan, Galguduud and the area around Mogadishu (Muqdisho).

Lewis adds that the Sab tribes, the Digil and Rahanweyan (or Digil Mirifle), are separate from the Samale, and tend to be cultivators, having settled mainly in the well-watered river valleys of the Jubba and Shebelle.4 The Sab tribes have developed a distinctive variant of the Somali: AfMaymay. In addition some Somalis are the descendants of Bantu slaves, who live mainly in the southern river valleys. Other minority groups, who have a caste-like position within Somali society, are those who engage in occupational activities: these groups include the Midgans, Tumals and Yibirs 18

THE POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT OF SOMALIA

and are collectively known as sab. The Digil Mirifle also include many whose ancestors were non-Somalis – foreign craftsmen and traders who were adopted into, or joined, the clan.

Among pastoralists there is a fierce sense of independence. The traditions of Somalia are overwhelmingly those of a nomadic society, one in which camels have been of critical importance. In fact, Lewis says, ‘on a social as well as economic transactions the pastoralists operate on a camel standard’.

Wedding gifts are therefore calculated in terms of camels and the blood price for a man’s death is 100 camels, 50 for the life of a woman. The price for injuries is calculated in the same manner.5 Somali pastoralists learn their genealogies by heart and, in this way, understand which groups to identify with; but the most important single linkage is to their ‘diya-paying group’, the group of men who pay and receive blood money, which varies in size from a few hundred to a few thousand.

Lewis says: ‘It must be appreciated that the nomadic Somali are a warlike people, driven by the poverty of their resources to intense competition for access to water and grazing.’6 Apart from the farming areas of the southern rivers and the north-west, where millet is cultivated, Somali pastoralists have dominated the country and their concept of territory is determined by the migration of the livestock, which is moved constantly to graze on new pastures. The Somalis have in the main not owned their country, but have occupied such parts of it as they need for the moment. The normal Somali pastoralist is known as a warenleh, or spear-bearer, a warrior.7 Those who are learned in religion are known as sheikhs, but normally these men have no political power; Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed, formerly president of the Transitional Federal Government (TFG), is an exception.

In summarizing the impact of Islam on the Somali character Lewis says: [W]hile the Somali draw many of their distinctive characteristics, especially their strong egalitarianism, their political acumen and opportunism, and their fierce traditional pride and contempt for other nations from their own traditional culture, they also owe much to Islam.

And it is typical of their mutual dependence upon these two founts of their culture that the highly pragmatic view of life and, as it must seem to some, fatalistic trust in the power of God and His Prophet. Above all, Islam adds depth and coherence to those common elements of traditional culture which, over and above their many sectional divisions, unite Somalis and provide a basis for their strong national consciousness.8 19

THE NEW PIRATES

The Somalis are Sunni Muslims, of the Sha’afi School of Law, and traditionally Sufism has been an important element of their faith. It is often claimed that Somalis are not attracted to religious extremists and that AlShabaab (or ‘Harakaat al-Shabaab al-Mujaahidiin’ to give it its full title) accordingly has little appeal to the Somali Muslims. While this may be true, it is also important to remember the history of Somalia’s national hero, Sayyid Muhammed Abdille Hassan, and his jihad against the British in the early twentieth century. Like modern Islamists he was strongly influenced by Wahhabi ideas from Saudi Arabia. The idea of a jihad against foreign forces is therefore not a new concept in Somalia. However, Lewis says that, fundamentally, ‘Somalis are staunch pragmatists, valuing what can be shown to produce results.’9 Somalia, for most of its history, has therefore been dominated by a pastoral majority, who looked down on the inhabitants of the small towns that grew up on the coast for the purposes of trade, and on those who chose to practise settled farming. The concept of territory has consequently been fluid; the Somalis follow their grazing animals in search of water and fodder. Somali society has never been dependent on urbanization and has retained its pliable view of territory. Leimsidor refers to ‘the transnational nature of Somali society’, which he says is, ‘a factor informing almost every aspect of Somali migration and central to Somali society in general [. . .] For Somali society, however, the term implies a society in which ethnic and clan identities supersede legally determined national identities and borders to the point in which legal status, physical barriers, and conventional categories of self-identification are rendered almost irrelevant’10 (Figure 2.1).

A BRIEF HISTORY OF SOMALIA TO 2008 Living on the edge The fundamental and historic issues in Somalia are that the territory is arid and agriculture is marginal. Any change in the weather, particularly a period of drought, can rapidly have dire consequences; faced by drought people can either die, or migrate. Somalia has therefore lacked resilience, and individuals of necessity have a dependency on the clan or sub-clan for survival; it is not a land where an individual can survive for long without the support of the larger group. Conflict is also a part of inter-tribal relationships, as raiding is an effective survival technique for the strong, when times are tough.

20