IKLE/RADEMAKER: Coddling pirates aids terrorists

COMMENTARY:

“Hurray for the Pirate King! And it is, it is a glorious thing to be a Pirate King.” Indeed, this passage in “The Pirates of Penzance” opera by Gilbert and Sullivan fits the jolly good life of today’s pirates in Somalia. With their ransom money, the pirates in ungoverned Somalia buy expensive automobiles, build luxurious villas and purchase weapons for attacking more ships.

Yet, the cheerfulness will end. Unless the ransom payments stop, the continuing influx of millions of dollars will lead to a catastrophic empowerment of global terrorism. Somalia is already well-nigh impossible to control by counterterrorist forces. With a continuing influx of millions in ransom money, it will become a fortress for launching global terrorism. It is high time that governments seeking to fight terrorism begin to grasp this menacing dynamic.

Money is essential to fuel international terrorism. Without Osama bin Laden’s wealth it is unlikely the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks would have succeeded. Those attacks required complex training to achieve the near simultaneous hijacking of four airplanes.

To block financial transfers to terrorist organizations, the U.S. Treasury Department and its foreign counterparts have established systematic programs in accordance with United Nations Security Council mandates. But if the shipping companies keep paying ransom to Somali pirates, this program will be bypassed. The pirates conspire with the ship owners to keep the size of the ransom payments secret and avoid bank transfers by having the payments made in cash.

Our strategies to fight piracy are inept and ill-informed. A significant naval force in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden has been trying to end the piracy, but it has been largely useless because of the reluctance of participating nations to use effective force. This cowardice is masked by frivolously imagined legal constraints. For example, the British Foreign Office warned the Royal Navy not to detain pirates, lest it violate their human rights and provoke claims for asylum in Britain. What an appalling lack of political will - fearing claims for asylum by criminals caught in flagrante delicto!

The British were not the only coddlers of pirates. A German frigate, in order to help other ships about to be attacked by pirates, used its helicopter to shoo away the speedboats of the pirates. Yet all the pirates escaped safely, because the German rules of engagement did not provide for fighting pirates.

Recently, Germany and France tried to implement more effective measures, but they still have not found a solution for punishing captured pirates. Thus, last week a French warship captured pirates before they could attack a Panamanian freight ship. But the French turned these captives over to the Somalian “authorities,” which means the pirates were set loose and are now free to plan their next attack.

In December, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice promoted an even more absurd initiative. She urged the U.N. Security Council to adopt a resolution authorizing nations to pursue pirates into the territory of Somalia, provided Somalia’s government gives its approval. But as U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warned, Somalia’s government might soon collapse. And indeed, it did collapse and no nation has been willing to send forces into Somalia.

Somalia has become the best base in the world for global terrorism. In Somalia terrorists will be better protected than in Afghanistan. After Sept. 11, 2001, U.S. forces rapidly conquered Afghanistan and closed bin Laden’s terrorist training sites. By contrast, in Somalia U.S. forces in 1993 tried to support relief operations but had to withdraw after painful setbacks. Mark Bowden’s book “Black Hawk Down,” made that humiliating episode hard to forget.

Thirteen years later, in 2006, Islamic extremists captured Somalia’s capital Mogadishu and established a new government, the strangely named Islamic Courts Union. With U.S. support, Ethiopian forces drove out these Islamic extremists. But Ethiopia has now abandoned this mission because the continuing violence and guerrilla warfare made it too costly. Meanwhile a new fundamentalist movement with links to al Qaeda, the Shabaab militia, seeks to impose a ruthless, Taliban-like order in Somalia.

Our military leaders have not forgotten the humiliating way in which the Somalis defeated U.S. forces in 1993. And every foreign policy expert who keeps an eye on Somalia will recall the recent failure of the American-supported Ethiopian intervention in Somalia. With these memories, it is hard to imagine that senior officials in Europe and in the U.S. Defense Department would recommend another military intervention in Somalia.

Should international terrorists acquire both a safe haven in Somalia and ready access to millions in pirate-generated money, we would suffer a catastrophic setback in the global war against terrorism. Somalia has a 2,400-mile coastline, stretching from south of Mogadishu on the Indian Ocean all the way to Djibouti on the Red Sea. Its proximity to such countries as Kenya and Saudi Arabia makes it a much better location for terrorism than the land-locked Afghanistan or mountainous western Pakistan.

To prevent this, we must quickly put an end to piracy. We must not shrink from using force commensurate to the threat. This, in turn, will require a clearheaded understanding of the applicable principles of international law, not the pettifoggery that has characterized the approach of many countries up until now.

In fact, two principles of international law vest the international community with all the authority it needs to respond to pirate attacks: the right of self-defense, and the long-established principle of universal jurisdiction to prosecute and punish pirates.

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