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Oliver North
November 28, 2008
WASHINGTON -- Piracy has long been the consequence of disorder.
America's first foreign war -- undeclared but authorized by Congress --
was waged by President Thomas Jefferson against the Barbary pirates. It
is instructive history for those who believe that the problem of Somali
piracy can be solved the same way.
By the late 1700s, the European powers were incapable of maintaining
maritime law and order, and Islamic piracy became a flourishing
enterprise in the Mediterranean and along the Atlantic coast of North
Africa. Despite "tribute" payments to the "governments" in Algiers,
Tunis, Tripoli and Morocco by the British, French and new American
governments, merchant mariners were at risk of being taken hostage for
ransom and having their ships and cargoes sunk or stolen.
By the time of Jefferson's inauguration, in 1801, American ransoms and
"tributes" amounted to more than $1 million per year -- nearly
one-fifth of the U.S. budget. Jefferson pledged to end the payments and
dispatched -- with congressional approval -- the nascent U.S. Navy to
protect American-flagged merchant vessels and prosecute a naval
campaign against the pasha of Tripoli. It almost worked.
In February 1804, U.S. Navy Lt. Stephen Decatur succeeded in boarding
and destroying a captured U.S. combatant -- the USS Philadelphia -- and
liberating surviving members of the ship's imprisoned crew. A year
later, a small party of U.S. Marines and mercenaries led by U.S. Marine
Lt. Presley O'Bannon conducted an intrepid overland expedition to
assault Derna and force the surrender of the Tripolitan leader, Yussif
Karamanli. The Mameluke sword he surrendered to O'Bannon is
memorialized to this day in the dress swords worn by Marine officers
and by the line "to the shores of Tripoli" in the "Marines' Hymn." It
seemed like a glorious victory for American arms. But it wasn't.
Though Jefferson had pledged "not 1 cent for tribute," the treaty
ending what came to be called the "First Barbary War" provided $60,000
in ransom for the 300 or so American citizens being held by the
defeated government. Jefferson and Congress acquiesced because of the
value they placed on American lives. It was a precedent that I came to
know well.
By 1984, Beirut, Lebanon, was the most lawless place on the planet.
Organized terror cells and "freelance" criminal gangs routinely took
Westerners hostage and held them for ransom. Those they couldn't "sell"
were often killed. Then Hezbollah -- the radical Islamic terror group
organized and operated by the theocratic government in Tehran, Iran --
began snatching Americans. There were no military options, and more
than a dozen diplomatic initiatives failed to win the release of any of
those being held.
Then in 1985, President Ronald Reagan -- at the behest of his chief of
staff, Don Regan -- met personally with the families of Americans taken
hostage in Beirut. After hearing directly from the anguished wives,
children and other loved ones of those being held, we were ordered to
"do what's necessary" to obtain their release. That meant paying
ransom. And that's what we did, not directly to the hostage holders but
to those who controlled Hezbollah: the Iranians.
Though the initiative resulted in the release of three of the hostages,
it also reinforced the idea, begun in the 1700s, that Westerners in
general -- and Americans in particular -- will pay ransom for their
citizens. That lesson has been learned well by pirates armed with
AK-47s and RPGs sailing from lawless, chaotic Somalia.
Thus far this year, there have been more than 300 attacks against
merchant ships and commercial fishing vessels off the Somali coast.
Sixty-five craft have been hijacked, and more than 300 crewmen have
been taken hostage. Shipping companies and insurers are estimated to
have paid out more than $40 million in ransoms for the release of
ships' crews and cargoes, and insurance rates have reached more than
$30,000 per day. NATO, the Indian navy, the Persian Gulf powers, Russia
and the U.S. all have deployed combatants to the area. It hasn't
worked. In fact, the piracy is getting worse. On Nov. 18, the same day
an Indian naval frigate sank a pirate "mother ship," three other
vessels were hijacked.
The U.N. Security Council has resolved to impose new sanctions on
"those who support piracy." The European Union promises to dispatch a
naval task force in December to the Gulf of Aden. Unless shippers and
commercial fishermen agree to convoy their vessels, these measures are
all but meaningless. Everyone knows that the only reasonable long-term
solution to the piracy problem is re-establishing the rule of law in
Somalia. And everyone -- including the pirates -- knows that's unlikely
to happen for years. Advocates of using military force to "clean out
the pirates' nests ashore" apparently have forgotten global media
opprobrium over collateral damage and civilian casualties. Posting a
battleship offshore might send the right message, but we don't have
them anymore.
The only reasonable short-term solution is having well-armed security
personnel on merchant ships plying these dangerous waters. Because
there are insufficient numbers of these men in the armed forces of the
nations involved, it will have to be "privatized." Insurers and
shippers may not like it, and the global disarmament lobby may find the
concept of armed "security contractors" offensive, but until pirates
have to pay a terrible price for trying to seize a vessel at sea, they
are unlikely to stop.
