Back to Barbary? Muslim Pirates and the West

Muslim pirates seize Western merchant ships and take them to their home ports. There the crews and the ships are only freed on payment of large ransoms to the pirates. This story was of only historical interest until recent years. It was the tale of the Barbary pirates of North Africa who terrorised Christian shipping in the Mediterranean Sea between the sixteenth and the early nineteenth centuries. These corsairs combined turning a profit from booty and ransoms with a holy war against the infidel.

Do modern Somali pirates have any resemblance to their Barbary predecessors and do the methods used by Western navies against the Barbary corsairs have any relevance to current anti-piracy efforts?

Originally the Muslim corsairs sailing out of ports such as Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli were genuine holy warriors. However, as the centuries passed, religious commitment became less important than the economic benefits of piracy.

Today's Somali pirates deny any religious motive is behind their actions, while Somali Islamist militants declare they are opposed to piracy. Both groups take these positions to avoid provoking direct American intervention in Somalia. As long as Somali piracy is viewed as a criminal rather than a terrorist activity, the United States seems reluctant to take any major action to suppress it.

Instead we have the bizarre spectacle of the tanker Sirius Star, the largest vessel ever captured by pirates, being taken to a Somali pirate haven while the United States Navy, the most powerful naval force in the world, does nothing except take photographs. If a religious commitment was once a good cover for the piratical activities of the Barbary corsairs, it seems today that being seen as purely secular criminals gives the Somali pirates some sort of immunity.

If modern Somali piracy has important differences from the activities of the Barbary corsairs, do the methods used in the past by Western nations against the forces of Barbary have any modern relevance?

Currently an ever-growing multinational fleet of warships is gathering in the waters off Somalia. Yet hunting small and swift pirate vessels at sea has always been a hit or miss affair, which even modern communications cannot make much more effective. In earlier centuries the fleets of Spain, the Netherlands, Britain, France, and even the infant United States believed that patrolling had to be supplemented by direct attacks on the home ports of the Barbary pirates. Only when the Barbary rulers saw their cities bombarded and their ships sunk could they be forced to at least short-term suspension of their predatory activities.

Recent United Nations resolutions give Western and other countries the right to pursue Somali pirates on both sea and land. However, the chances of Western forces making direct attacks on pirate ports do not seem great. When an Anglo-Dutch fleet bombarded the pirate base of Algiers in 1816, the action was greeted with international approval. If Western forces inflicted similar damage on a Somali pirate port such as Eyl, the modern reaction would be less favourable.

Barbary piracy began to decline during the eighteenth century less because of the actions by Western navies than because the Barbary states increasingly came to see legitimate trade with Christian Europe as more lucrative than pirate attacks. The French might claim their occupation of Algiers in 1830 was the only way to end piracy from that port, but in fact such activities had been in decline for decades.

Naval patrols and even naval or air bombardment of ports can only be short-term ways of dealing with Somali piracy. What is required for a long-term solution to the problem is the restoration of order and effective government within Somalia and the revival of legitimate economic activities which will provide income to match that from pirate ransoms.

Unfortunately such developments are unlikely to take place quickly and Somali piracy will persist in the immediate future. Preventive measures may reduce its impact, but unless the wider problems of the Horn of Africa receive more direct attention from the international community piracy will not be eradicated. It took more than three centuries to suppress the Barbary corsairs. Even the most pessimistic assessment must hope for a more speedy resolution of the problem posed by the Somali pirates.