Modern Maritime Piracy

Genesis, Evolution and Responses

Robert C. McCabe

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351671514
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

This book examines the complex phenomena of modern maritime piracy.

The work offers a cutting-edge analysis of modern maritime piracy in the two most pirate-prone regions – southeast Asia and northeast Africa – from the late twentieth century to the modern day. These case studies present a detailed exploration of how regional and international governments responded to upsurges of piracy and how responses have evolved over the course of the past 40 years. This analysis reveals the results of these efforts and what effect, if any, suppressing piracy at sea had on tensions and instability ashore. The book transcends a simple narrative, providing detailed and extensively researched case studies of contemporary manifestations and responses at the strategic, operational and tactical levels. New insights are offered, such as the role of external navies in the repression of piracy in northeast Africa before the well-documented escalation in 2005. In addition, this book constructs a comparative analytic framework to gauge the effectiveness and shortcomings of modern attempts to counteract piracy, which reveals lessons learned, future policy projections and wider implications. This analysis adds new classifications, innovative concepts and scholarly depth to the field of maritime security studies, naval history and theory and international relations.

This book will be of much interest to students of naval history, maritime security, strategic studies and international relations.

Part I
Introduction

Introduction

Sir William Blackstone declared in his Commentaries on the Laws of England of 1893 that ‘the pirate has declared war against all mankind; all mankind must declare war against him’.¹ Despite its somewhat sensationalist overtones, such heightened awareness of criminality at sea was not unique to the nineteenth century. Maritime piracy has experienced regular periods of substantial growth and decline since the earliest days of transoceanic trading motivated frequently by political, economic and socio-cultural changes ashore. Indeed, as Blackstone suggested, piracy emerged as a significant impediment to the consolidation of European colonial and mercantile ambition during the nineteenth century predominantly in the waterways of Southeast Asia and the southern Mediterranean Sea. By the late nineteenth century, attacks on European merchant trade had been suppressed in these regions and in some areas, eliminated entirely.

For the majority of the twentieth century, maritime piracy was a ‘micro-maritime’ concern for western governments, dwarfed by ‘macro’ events such as the First and Second World Wars. It was not until the early 1980s that the International Maritime Organization’s (IMO) Maritime Safety Committee (MSC) highlighted that piratical attacks had escalated to such an extent that the situation was ‘alarming’.² Indeed, officials from the International Maritime Bureau (IMB), a specialised division of the International Chamber of Commerce, noted that maritime piratical attacks were regularly reported during the late 1970s in West African waters and in the Gulf of Thailand.³

With this in mind, this book consists of three key areas of examination carried out under a broad interdisciplinary framework that encompasses historical analysis combined with an examination of contemporary military practice, policy level discourse, international relations and maritime law. Methodologically, this book intentionally avoids incorporating an overarching theoretical framework in the case studies, in an attempt to produce a more holistic and exploratory analysis at the political, strategic, operational and tactical levels. It does however, explore the utility of theoretical perspectives on piracy more generally in Chapter 6 and directly addresses the question whether an all-encompassing theory is even possible in trying to trace manifestations and responses to a crime that takes radically different forms over time, in different contexts and in different locations.

First, this book illustrates how the escalation of maritime piratical activity in the late twentieth century created a distinct ‘revival’ by considering the modern historical context of piracy, in particular the late nineteenth century. This section briefly explores the maritime climate relative to piracy in the southern Mediterranean and Southeast Asia between 1800 and 1900 focussing on escalation, manifestation and responses to position the latter case studies on modern piracy in Chapters 2–5 within a historical framework. In addition, it illustrates how the escalation of piracy in the twentieth century was contextually diverse to piracy from previous eras.

In terms of historical context for the case studies on Northeast Africa in Chapters 4 and 5, the Southern Mediterranean Sea/North African coast is selected as the nearest proximal waterway to experience manifestations of piracy during the nineteenth century. Prior to the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, the waterways that bordered the Northeast coast of Africa were not established trading routes and therefore had not witnessed the profusion of piratical attacks as was the case in the southern Mediterranean. In addition, during the nineteenth century the coastline of present day Somalia was securely under British control deterring potential maritime criminality and disorder in the region. From 1869 to 1884, following the opening of the Suez Canal, coastal Somaliland was under the control of the Turkish viceroy of Egypt. Within three years, the region was under the direct administration of Italian, British and French colonial programmes that declared protectorates in 1887. This divided the country into British Somaliland to the east, Italian Somaliland to the south and Abyssinia and French Somaliland to the west. The resourceful colonial presence maintained tight control over maritime boundaries, which deterred illicit maritime activity such as piracy.

The historical analysis in Chapter 1 establishes a foundation for an examination of the maritime climate between 1900 and 1914, the interwar period and post-Second World War when, it is argued, ‘micro-maritime’ threats such as piracy faded in terms of strategic importance. Merchant vessels were frequently targeted by belligerent navies during the First and Second World Wars. This was, however, a ‘guerre de course’ intent on the destruction and disruption of seaborne trade rather than the acquisition of merchandise for private gain.⁴ Due to a lack of reliable statistical information available to gauge levels of piratical ‘incidence’ between 1900 and 1979, a quantitative methodological approach is employed to instead gauge levels of ‘interest’.

This approach collates and charts occurrences of piracy in the selected works of noted maritime theorists such as Alfred Thayer Mahan and Julian Corbett alongside contemporary journals and newspaper articles. What is particularly relevant is the maritime climate that emerged following the Second World War and how it was conducive to a resurgence of piracy in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Three core themes emerge from this chapter. First, that piracy never entirely disappeared (a theme that also materialises in the case studies). Second, that the attention to or perception of maritime crimes, like piracy, were subject to contemporary trends and often out of sync to actual incidents; and finally, that the strength of naval presence was one of the core explanatory factors for the occurrence of piracy.

Next, this book traces the development and evolution of counter-piracy initiatives since this resurgence through comprehensive case studies of Southeast Asia and Northeast Africa. This represents the core qualitative research methodology in this work. Statistically, Southeast Asia accounted for the largest percentage of maritime piracy attacks worldwide between 1979 and 2005. In 1993 alone, incidents of piracy and armed robbery against ships in Southeast Asia accounted for over 73 per cent of the global total.⁵ By 2005, this trend was reversed as attacks in the Gulf of Aden and in the Somali basin escalated considerably. In 2009, Somali pirates were responsible for around 80 per cent of all incidents of maritime piracy worldwide.⁶ It should be noted that piracy manifested itself differently in each region in terms of origin, severity, modus operandi and economic impact, which is evident in the case studies.

These major case studies present a detailed exploration of how regional and international governments responded to upsurges of piracy and how responses evolved over the course of the last 40 years. This analysis reveals the results of these efforts and what affect, if any, did suppressing piracy at sea have on tensions and instability ashore. Each region is examined initially in isolation under a thematic framework that critically incorporates landward and seaward initiatives alongside the progression and utility of international maritime law. This analysis also addresses a broader question – how did the international legal framework evolve and how effective or otherwise was it in suppressing modern piracy?

Chapter 2 traces the initial resurgence and responses to piracy in Southeast Asia beginning with attacks on Vietnamese boat refugees in the Gulf of Thailand and South China Sea in the late 1970s and 1980s. This is followed by an analysis of alternative regional incidents up to the beginning of the Asian financial crisis in 1997, focussing predominantly on robberies against merchant shipping in the Straits of Malacca and Singapore. A more pervasive and organised form of piracy evolved after 1997 that peaked in 2000 with 259 attacks reported in Southeast Asian waters, chiefly Indonesia, that included incidents of Phantom Ship fraud.⁷ In addition, this chapter challenges the orthodoxy of the genesis of modern Southeast Asian piracy, in particular the misconception that the modern rise of piracy in Southeast Asia occurred after the Asian financial crisis of 1997.

Chapter 3 analyses the emergent maritime multilateralism in Southeast Asia after the Asian financial crisis of 1997 that culminated in the signing of the ReCAAP agreement in 2006 and explores how changing perceptions of global security after September 2001 resulted in an evolution of internal Southeast Asian security engagement. It illuminates how external state interest in Southeast Asian security ushered in a new era of regionalism and cooperation in the suppression of piracy that resulted in a steady decline in attacks from 105 in 2005 to 59 by 2008.⁸ Between 2009 and 2015, attacks against shipping escalated once again in the region. The intricacies of this new wave of piracy are examined alongside renewed efforts by littoral states to combat maritime criminality, which ultimately led to a reduction in armed robberies against ships in 2016.

Chapter 4 introduces the development of the phenomena of maritime piracy off the Horn of Africa and establishes why piracy and armed robbery at sea did not emerge as a ‘macro’ security threat before 1991. This is accomplished through analysing the political and security climate from decolonisation in 1960 to the collapse of General Siad Barre’s military regime that lasted from 1969 to 1991. This analysis establishes the root causes of contemporary Somali piracy and frames it within the wider and disordered political, economic and social context ashore. Furthermore, it illustrates the direct connection between the collapse of the state structure in Somalia and the escalation of maritime piracy after 1991. New insights and themes emerge such as the role of external navies in the repression of piracy before 2005, the impact of the Cold War, and that piracy incidents were occurring along the coast of Somalia throughout the twentieth century. Critically, this chapter illuminates the failure of regional and international states to confront maritime insecurity along the coast of Somalia – either politically or militarily – before 2005, which ultimately facilitated the upsurge.

By 2005, the Somali pirate infrastructure had evolved into organised criminal enterprise and a calculable threat to shipping transiting the Gulf of Aden and the Somali Basin. Chapter 5 illuminates this threat and focuses initially on chiefly non-military initiatives launched to counteract these pervasive acts of piracy between 2008 and 2013. This includes the formation of industry Best Management Practice (BMP), the proliferation of Private Maritime Security Companies (PMSC) alongside legal and jurisdictional potenci...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Acknowledgements
• List of abbreviations
• PART I Introduction
• PART II Southeast Asia
• PART III Northeast Africa
• PART IV Conclusion
• Index