Abdul Hassan, 39, is nicknamed “the one who never sleeps”
Photograph: Veronique de Viguerie/Getty Images
In February of 1998, Richard Maybury warned of Loose Cannons, His concern was over the trade routes in Indonesia. He wrote,
For centuries, piracy was a deadly obstacle to world trade, until the U.S. and British navies undertook a massive effort to wipe it out. By 1950, the task was nearly complete. The main exception was and still is the waters around Indonesia where poverty, contempt for western governments and a maze of thousands of islands have foiled all efforts.
Foreign Affairs in May/June 2007 wrote,
Oil bound for China, Japan, and the West Coast of the United States from the Middle East must also transit the Strait of Malacca and the Strait of Singapore, both of which carried 11.7 million barrels per day in 2004. These passageways are the chokepoints where the potential for the disruption of tanker traffic by terrorist attacks or naval blockades is greatest.
Now these latest acts of piracy were off Kenya and Somalia, have prompted this defeatist attitude:
Roger Middleton, a Horn of Africa specialist at the Chatham House think-tank, said that the capture was a crucial escalation. “Now that they have shown they are able to seize an enormous ship like this, it is beyond a military solution. You won’t fix this without a political solution.”
The WSJ reported in Pirates Exploit Confusion About International Law
The key problem is that America’s NATO allies have effectively abandoned the historical legal rules permitting irregular fighters to be tried in special military courts (or, in the case of pirates, admiralty courts) in favor of a straightforward criminal-justice model. Although piracy is certainly a criminal offense, treating it like bank robbery or an ordinary murder case presents certain problems for Western states.
To begin with, common criminals cannot be targeted with military force. There are other issues as well. Last April the British Foreign Office reportedly warned the Royal Navy not to detain pirates, since this might violate their “human rights” and could even lead to claims of asylum in Britain. Turning the captives over to Somali authorities is also problematic — since they might face the head- and hand-chopping rigors of Shariah law. Similar considerations have confounded U.S. government officials in their discussions of how to confront this new problem of an old terror at sea.
Here’s to another lovely little war!
Tags: Energy, The War, trade by MoverMike
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