- instead of giving pirates a free ride back to shore accomplishing nothing, leave ‘em floating. You may not have marine jurisdiction over the particular sea area, but that also means you don’t have a absolute saying that you have to give them a lift back to shore. If you see another boat come to pick them up, move your boat into the way and block them by accident.

Pirates are not dumb, you can’t just go sinking ships in international waters. They know the profit of cargo and will calculate their ransom based on a percent margin of the final profit of whatever cargo is on the ship. So sinking these ships will lose a lot more money than just paying them off- sorta like an international mob “for protection.”

I mean, ideally.

Blame my lack of imagination, but I cannot think of any way we can arrest (and try in a court) a significant number of Somali pirates, without a lot of rounding up and shooting, and quite possibly exchanging gunfires and missiles and the likes. I predict that the overall result will be either like 1) summary execution, 2) a demonstration of inefficiency of international forces, or both.

So, the ideal solution is infeasible. At least until someone first builds a sensible government in Somalia, but now I’m replacing a big problem with even bigger problem, ain’t I?

I think this is why Radiolaire and others urge to think from their viewpoints, not because they are agreeable and pleasant guys, but because there is no other practical solution. Well, we can say they’re assholes, perhaps they really are, but that doesn’t solve anything.

(Disclaimer: my knowledge of Somali pirates is way lower than most commenters and probably zero, so you can safely ignore whatever I wrote here. Well, I just had to vent. Thank you.)

On the same coin, we find that the US has been particularly incompetent in its own realms fighting piracy. All along the coasts of Central and South America, pirates have for years been capturing boats, killing the occupants and using the vessels for drug shipments. Many of these activities have been perpetrated by the right-wing militias bent on fighting for control of resources and wealth. At best, the US interdicts at a rate of 7% or so. Not very productive really. Hell, now these folks have stolen tourist submersibles (and began to make their own) and small naval vessels of other countries. But really, let us keep our energy focussed on Africa, where people don’t die and corporations are being forced to pay off some of their profits (certainly much more important).

Now *that* would be a good subject for a reality show.

Sincerely,
A friendly Somali warlord

Most of the pirates in question live extremely lavish lives, they don’t impart their windfall upon the masses in pursuit of economic equality. The people in question are selfish and greedy, even worse human beings than the ‘evil imperialists’ in question because the horror is all around them in an immediate vicinity and yet do nothing about it.

This is easy money for them. The only reason they have any support as of yet or haven’t been dealt with in far harsher ways is that they haven’t started killing hostages. Believe me, when people start refusing to pay they will start killing hostages. Then any glamor of what they’re doing will disappear, military force will become a more pressing concern and so on.

It’s not an apology or an excuse for the pirates to ask the question “why”? It’s a responsibility to do so, if you are concerned about the situation. I think Sean, while being a darling, is shortsighted to say they are just thugs. Regardless of what fate he believes they deserve.

I mean, one either wants this problem to disappear again – pirates off our mental radar – or, one wants the problem to be solved. If you want it to be solved, you better figure out what the causes are.

I’m grateful for the post and the comments.
All the best,
Jennifer

(Sean, you’re not part of this description. At last somebody sane…)

Yes, what they want is “just money”. To do what? Your deed, as readers of a science blog, should be to be curious, to ask yourselves questions to think things through. They want money, but not to buy themselves drugs, or a porsche, or a new swimming pool.

Oh, and stop thinking about what would make a “rational economic sense”. After the general failure of the financial sector this year, I though people would stop thinking that ordinary people take sound, extremely rational economic decisions, and that you can manipulate them by changing the incentives.

You have to understand people’s motivation when they resort to armed action. Full-scale military retort never solved terrorism, the same way death penalty doesn’t improve your safety on the streets. Sure, people who have been victim of an assault want revenge (except when they’re Dukakis), but that is precisely why we have an independant judicial system where the punishment is decided by a third party.

Something that DOES make economic sense is for a group of starving Somalis to try to make a buck where they can: on the open seas. I think one factor that is being overlooked is that Somalia doesn’t just not have a government, there is no economy to speak of either, and therefore no way to earn money or buy food. Though it may not seem the noblest of trades to us Westerners, I certainly can’t fault these men for finding a way to feed their people. As was already said, they treat their prisoners well and in general accept a much smaller ransom than they could conceivably bargain for. Honorable? No. Thugs? Maybe. Reasonable? I think so.

I am not being the dogmatist here. I am neither ignoring the plight in which these people find themselves, nor using that plight as an excuse for their piracy. And I do not think that the world divides cleanly into “noble fighters against imperialist aggression” and “subhuman animals who should just be killed.” There is a middle ground, and being sensitive to the conditions of others does not imply that it is inappropriate to label criminal activity as such. Thugs are thugs, whether they are Somali pirates, IRA terrorists planting bombs in London, Hamas guerrillas firing rockets at Israel, Israeli checkpoint guards humiliating Palestinian workers, American soldiers torturing Iraqi prisoners, or Halliburton executives siphoning away piles of money that was meant for supplies. Thugs come in many forms.

It shows a real lack of understanding of human nature and critical analysis that led to bad actions such as the Iraq war. By dehumanizing these people (“thugs”) and ignoring the plight which led them to these criminal actions, you’re not really being a scientist, but a dogmatist. Why not just kill them all and be done with it, like the Indians tried?

Okay, maybe they are just thugs. The world would be better without them. Now what? Perhaps we could just kill them off, letting their wives and children to starve? Somehow I feel that it won’t make that particular searoute much safer ten years from now…

“We don’t deal with terrorists/thugs/whatever” is, IMHO, not a fruitful approach if you are interested in reducing the amount of human misery, or even reducing the amount of human misery in your own nation. (How many American soldiers were killed in Iraq by now?)

No prisoners.