To the Shores of Tripoli: Wars Without End - And How They End

We are told that the present 'war on terror' is a potentially endless conflict. Critics have ridiculed the idea of making war on an abstract noun. Yet this is not a novelty. The present struggle against 'terror' is comparable to the worldwide fight against 'slavery' in the nineteenth century or the centuries-old effort to suppress 'piracy'.

Indeed the latter conflict may offer some parallels to the current 'war on terror'. Today the principal terrorists Western nations have in mind are Islamist ones. The most powerful and dangerous pirates in the past were those associated with the Muslim political entities known as the Barbary states. From the start of the sixteenth century to the early nineteenth century, the Barbary pirates terrorised the Christian nations bordering the Mediterranean Sea and even operated on the Atlantic coasts of northwestern Europe.

The Barbary pirates were based principally at Tripoli (Libya), Tunis (Tunisia), Algiers (Algeria), and Rabat/Sale (Morocco). The long-running Christian-Muslim conflict had been carried on at sea in the Mediterranean before, but generally the Christians had managed to retain the upper hand for most of the time. This situation changed during the sixteenth century and Muslim power at sea increased dramatically. In part this was due to the growing strength of the navy of the Ottoman Empire, but even that force was very dependent on naval assistance from the Barbary states.

The stimulus that converted North Africa into perhaps the most important base for pirates in the world was provided by the final defeat of Islam in Spain and Portugal at the end of the fifteenth century. Thousands of Muslim refugees fled to North Africa, thirsting for revenge against the Iberian Christians. Piracy seemed to offer the easiest and most effective way of achieving this.

Of course these Muslim corsairs did not see themselves as pirates. Instead they saw themselves as warriors for the faith, carrying on a maritime jihad against their Christian enemies. If such activities also brought economic benefits in terms of plunder and ransoms, then so much the better.

During the sixteenth century Spain was the principal enemy of the Barbary states and Spanish naval and military forces sought to curb the activities of the Muslim corsairs. The Spanish failed in several attempts to capture Algiers, and although they took control of Tunis several times, they could not keep control of it for more than a few years.

In the first half of the seventeenth century the Barbary pirates enjoyed their heyday. Spanish power was declining, while the growing maritime powers of France, England and the Netherlands did not yet have navies strong enough to inflict serious damage on the Barbary states. This was the period when theBarbary pirates broke out of the Mediterranean into the Atlantic, raiding as far away as southern England and Ireland, Iceland, and the Newfoundland fisheries.

Only after 1660 did the French, English and Dutch navies begin to make serious efforts to suppress the Barbary pirates. However, they soon came to realise the limits of their coercive powers. A port like Algiers could be bombarded from the sea, forcing the release of Christian captives and obtaining promises of good behaviour from its rulers, but such attacks had little long-term impact on the problem of piracy. Once the Christian warships disappeared over the horizon, the Barbary pirates could return to their depredations. Also, the European naval powers spent more time fighting each other than chasing pirates. When they were at war, the Barbary pirates could be active without fear of retribution.

Even in the eighteenth century the Barbary states still posed a considerable maritime threat. Rather than waste money on ineffective punitive naval expeditions against their pirate strongholds, even major European naval powers were prepared to make deals. In return for immunity from pirate attack for their merchant ships, these maritime powers gave 'gifts' to the rulers of Barbary, though still threatening naval bombardments if the pirates went back on their word. The lesser maritime states had unashamedly to pay 'tribute' to the Barbary pirates to buy a measure of immunity. To keep the pirate business going, the rulers of the Barbary states were careful never to be at peace with all the European maritime states at any one time.

Even as he prepared for the battle of Trafalgar in 1805, Admiral Horatio Nelson still sought to appease the Barbary states, less to curb their pirate attacks than to get supplies for his fleet from their ports. The infant United States had initially been forced to pay tribute to the Barbary states, but their continued threat to American merchant shipping eventually led to the creation of the United States Navy. Soon US sailors and marines were sailing 'to the shores of Tripoli' to wage war against the pirates from that port. Somewhat later America had another short war with Algiers. The Barbary rulers were forced to make concessions to the Americans, but as in the past there was no assurance these would continue after American warships withdrew.

At the Congress of Vienna in 1815 at the end of the Napoleonic wars, the European powers agreed that they would concert their efforts so as to achieve a final solution to the problem of Barbary piracy. The following years saw more French, British and Dutch bombardments of Barbary ports, but whatever the impact of external force, the decline of Barbary piracy after 1815 was also due to internal changes within the Barbary states themselves.

In the mid-eighteenth century the ruler of Morocco had decided that corsair attacks on Christian shipping were no longer worth the effort. Normal trade with European powers brought greater benefits. Morocco steadily withdrew from the corsair business, and even in ports such as Algiers and Tripoli the number of pirate vessels had considerably declined by 1800 and their activities had been brought under more direct government control.

Although the French claimed that one of the motives for their 1830 invasion of Algeria was to suppress piracy, corsair activity from Algiers had dropped to a very low level by that date. Nevertheless the fear of providing an excuse for invasion by the ever more powerful European powers led the remaining Barbary states to end their last links to piracy. By 1840 Tunisia and Libya were out of the business. The end of piracy may have bought the remaining free Barbary states a reprieve from European conquest for a time, but they fell eventually: Tunisia to the French in 1881; Libya to the Italians in 1911; and Morocco to the French and Spanish in 1912.

To most Europeans living on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and even eighteenth centuries a decisive victory in the war with the Barbary pirates must have seemed an impossible dream. Yet in the first half of the nineteenth century this 'endless' war was terminated, with the Muslim states ending their predatory activities. There were two main reasons for this outcome. First, an external factor, the ever-growing military and naval power of the European states, who would eventually come to rule all the Barbary states for a time. Secondly, internal changes within the Barbary states made piracy seem no longer an attractive activity in political or economic terms. Even in ideological terms, the intensity of Christian-Muslim conflict had diminished and trade with the infidels seemed more attractive than maritime holy war.

Does this 350 year struggle against the Barbary pirates have any lessons for the current war against terror? Perhaps. The United States and its Western allies can clearly deploy massive military forces as an external hammer to strike any Muslim state that seems to be supporting terrorism. However, given the bitter past history of relations between the Christian West and the Islamic world, to rely solely on the application of external force is likely to be counter-productive, breeding more terrorists rather than stamping them out. Internal changes within Muslim countries will be more important in draining away popular support for Islamist terrorism.

One view has it that Barbary piracy only came to an end when the Barbary states were occupied by the European powers. However, as we have already noted, pirate activities were largely suppressed before the Europeans invaded. It was Muslim governments that ended the threat. As it is clearly impossible in this day and age for Western countries to occupy Muslim states on the excuse of suppressing terrorism, it is even more true today that the suppression of illegal activity must be carried out by the internal policies of Muslim governments.

One significant difference between the present war on terror and the earlier war against Barbary piracy is the perception of the time the struggle will take. War against the Barbary pirates was just part of a Christian-Muslim conflict that had been going on for centuries, an existential struggle which might continue for further centuries into the future. Europeans were not expecting any quick victory over the Muslim corsairs. They fought to destroy them, but for much of the time they were forced reluctantly to put up with their activities as one of the costs of maritime trade.

Today, Western perceptions are different. Despite the rantings of Osama bin Laden, few Westerners see the war against terror as a war with Islam. Indeed while Western troops fight in the heart of the Islamic world, their home governments allow a steady stream of Muslim immigrants into Europe and North America. Yet it is this reluctance to see the present conflict as just another round in the ancient Christian-Muslim conflict that makes Westerners impatient and unwilling to see the war on terror as a long-lasting struggle.

The war on terror has lasted barely seven years and already the long-term commitment of many Western nations to the struggle is being questioned. If this 'endless' war is ever to be brought to a successful conclusion, the first thing that Westerners must accept is that it may well be a conflict that will last for several generations at least. If such a long-term commitment can be sustained, 'terror' may one day be as much a part of the unhappy past as 'piracy' and 'slavery'.