New thinking in the fight against marine piracy: financing and plunder, pre-empting piracy before prevention becomes necessary.

AuthorWilliamson, Hugh R.
PositionEnd Game: An International Conference on Combating Maritime Piracy

Contemporary piracy has been a serious regional problem since the 1980s. In addition to the seizure for ransom of vessels off the Horn of Africa, attacks against the refugee "boat people" in the Gulf of Thailand, hijacking of yachts in the Caribbean, the armed robbery of vessels in the Straits of Malacca, and the seizure of oil tankers in West Africa are all "piracy-like" criminal activities, even if they do not fit the classical legal definition of maritime piracy. Rather than focus on one specific outbreak, the Dalhousie Marine Piracy Project has undertaken a global study of a business model of contemporary piracy and studied potential identifiers for potential outbreaks, as well as weak points that may be exploited to suppress piracy in the future.

CONTENTS I. INTRODUCTION II. PIRACY: THE DEFINITIONAL PROBLEM III. THE EMERGENCE OF CONTEMPORARY PIRACY: FROM OPPORTUNISTIC TO ORGANIZED CRIME IV. THE PIRACY CYCLE V. THE PIRACY BUSINESS MODEL: WHEN OPPORTUNISTIC BECOMES ORGANIZED VI. THE PIRACY INDICATORS MODEL VII. IDENTIFYING POSSIBLE OUTBREAKS VIII. ESTABLISHING A PRE-EMPTIVE STRATEGY IX. CONCLUSION I. INTRODUCTION

While much of the global concern surrounding marine piracy is a result of the outbreak in the Horn of Africa, the origins of contemporary piracy were evident several decades earlier. During the 1980s there were attacks on Vietnamese boat people in the Gulf of Thailand marked by extreme violence and a series of armed robberies on ships transiting through the Straits of Malacca that were notable for the size of the targeted vessels. (1) This drew some attention to what was formerly thought as a historical anachronism. While there have always been sporadic attacks on commercial shipping around the globe, it is the forms of contemporary piracy which have highlighted the inadequacies of the current system in dealing with serious crime at sea.

The Dalhousie University Marine Piracy Project (DMPP) was launched in 2011 to examine modern piracy on a global basis. It was not restricted to any particular geographical area, class, or vessel. The objective was to identify vulnerable regions and to recommend suitable pre-emption or prevention strategies to lessen the problem and deal with the more serious consequences. The aim was not to duplicate work done by other organizations, but to identify where new or different strategies might provide a more effective solution.

Antipiracy activities tend to fall under three main categories. The first includes actions to prevent pirate attacks, which involves actions by security forces and protection measures by ships. The second is the prosecution and punishment of pirates and their associates, which includes law enforcement and criminal justice activities. The third involves the strategies for the pre-emption of piracy, which is a far more difficult task since it attempts to keep "pirates" from becoming pirates in the first place.

There may not be many new or innovative solutions to the prevention of pirate attacks, or the prosecution and punishment of pirates. Naval and security forces are well versed in the operational requirements, ships have been provided with both the guidance and training to avoid or hinder successful piracy attacks, and most criminal justice systems have the legal means, if not necessarily the political will, for effective law enforcement. However, it may be that providing better employment alternatives for potential pirates and decreasing profitability for piracy offers a more successful solution to avoid future outbreaks.

This article argues that antipiracy efforts should be channelled into pre-emptive strategies. First, piracy is essentially a profitable business, and efforts to combat piracy should focus on vulnerabilities in its business model, thereby preventing piracy's evolution into a sophisticated, organized enterprise. Second, this article explains DMPP's piracy indicators model, which evaluates current piracy trends in order to predict which other countries are susceptible to a piracy outbreak. Finally, it concludes that regional and international cooperation is required in order to develop an effective pre-emptive strategy to predict outbreaks of piracy and prevent its escalation.

  1. PIRACY: THE DEFINITIONAL PROBLEM

    In the initial development of the study, one of the most difficult tasks was determining the limits of the subject matter. The problem with the definition of piracy is that it is both legally constraining and operationally vague. There have been numerous and very detailed analysis of the definition of piracy; however, for the purpose of the DMPP study, and this article, a working definition was chosen to allow the inclusion of piracy and piracy-like activities, while excluding those which were felt to be largely unrelated, or a distraction to the problem at hand. (2) The project definition was as follows:

    Piracy is the actual or potential deliberate criminal interference with the rights and freedoms of the seas which target marine craft and persons for economic gain. (3) The hallmark of this piracy definition is that it includes illegal activities at sea carried out to obtain money, plunder booty, etc. by theft. This was seen as the motivation for piracy, but not necessarily the motivation for the individual pirates. The purpose of piracy is direct economic gain by the pirates, whether it involves the taking of valuables, ransom or extortion payment, or taking property for later use, such as seizing a yacht to be used for smuggling purposes. For this study, piracy does not include politically motivated actions, and would normally not include activities such as: political terrorism; illegal radio broadcasting (pirate radio); IUU fishing (pirate fishing); environmental activism (ecoterrorism); drug smuggling; slavery; mutiny; or hijacking. While these activities may be associated with piracy, they are not its primary motivation, nor would they necessarily be the primary source of financial return. In short, piracy is a criminal activity for financial gain.

  2. THE EMERGENCE OF CONTEMPORARY PIRACY: FROM OPPORTUNISTIC TO ORGANIZED CRIME

    There have been at least six independent outbreaks of contemporary piracy, starting in the 1970s. These have all resulted in a serious threat to mariners and those working, voyaging, or in the case of refugees, escaping at sea.

    The first notable outbreaks were the attacks by local Thai fishermen on the ethnic Vietnamese boat people who were fleeing post-war Vietnam. (4) While the refugees were not rich, what they had of value they carried with them in the form of gold or cash, making them attractive targets. They had no protection, and they were often crowded in large numbers on small vessels crossing the Gulf of Thailand. The Thai fishermen were able to rob, assault, and murder the refugees with relative impunity until international pressure forced the Thai government to take police action. (5) By modern comparison, the payoff to the pirates was small, but during a time of economic collapse in the local fisheries, this represented a substantial source of money.

    During the same period, local criminal gangs, possibly including fishermen, were engaged in what can be described as "breaking and entering" on ships transiting through the Straits of Malacca. (6) The pirates would board the ships from small boats, usually at night, armed with knives or possibly handguns. The pirates would force the captain to open his safe, which often contained a sizable amount of cash. They would also steal any valuables from the crew, and then leave the ship. In addition to the danger of violent assault on the crew, sometimes the ship would be left with no one at the helm while transiting one of the most congested waterways in the world.

    Contemporary piracy in the Caribbean was believed to be related to drug trafficking, with smugglers hijacking yachts or other small vessels to use for the transport of drugs to the U.S. (7) The exact numbers are not known; however, the suspicious disappearance of yachts and their crews with no other reasonable explanation resulted in an increase in patrols by the U.S. and regional Coast Guards. (8) While still considered a potential problem, changes in drug trafficking patterns have reduced the likelihood of these incidents. However, there continues to be a local problem with piracy against small fishing vessels on the Guyana coast, targeting fish catch and vessel equipment. This problem is sufficiently serious that the Government of Guyana has established a compensation fund to reimburse fishermen for stolen catch. (9)

    Piracy in the Indian Ocean falls into two major categories of activity. There is an ongoing and serious situation involving attacks on local fishing vessels off the Bangladesh coast. (10) These incidents are largely unreported outside the local press unless they involve a substantial loss of life. This is considered a local issue, and the Bangladesh government is reluctant to label it as piracy in order to avoid increases in insurance rates. (11) These attacks have involved the theft of catch and equipment, and some ransom demands from the families of the fishermen. Because they have not involved commercial shipping interests, the international shipping community has largely ignored such attacks.

    The better-known Somalia-based piracy off the Horn of Africa has attracted most of the world's attention, as the major targets are international commercial vessels. The objective of the pirates was to hold ships and crews for ransom. This represented a major innovation in modern piracy, since the ransom amounts were quite large--to the order of several million dollars--where the pirates were generally unconcerned...

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