Somali Sea Raiders: Pirates Not Corsairs

The Samho Dream is the third supertanker to be captured by Somali pirates in less than two years. These ships are the largest vessels ever captured by pirates. Yet are the Somali sea raiders really pirates? The Arabic media use a word to describe them which means 'corsair' rather than pirate, apparently conferring a higher status upon them.

The intention is clearly to associate the Somalis with the Barbary corsairs of North Africa who were a menace to European shipping from the sixteenth century to the early nineteenth century. Their victims called them the 'Barbary pirates', but there is good reason to see them as different from pirates, just as there is good reason to deny the label 'corsair' to the modern Somali pirates.

The corsairs of the Ottoman regencies of Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli and the independent kingdom of Morocco were in part Muslim holy warriors, carrying on a campaign against Christian ships and coasts. Although also Muslims, the Somali pirates have never claimed to be carrying on a holy war at sea. Indeed they deny all links to the Islamist militants operating in Somalia lest such an association unleash the full wrath of the United States upon them. The Somali pirates are criminals not terrorists.

Pirates operate outside the law, the enemies of all nations as it used to be said. The Barbary corsairs operated under the control of the rulers of their home ports. European states could make treaties with, for example, the government of Algiers to stop corsair attacks on their ships. There is no effective national government in Somalia and the pirates are not even subject to the remaining regional governments in that country. The clan-based Somali sea raiders are true pirates, unfettered by any law, national or international.

For the Barbary corsairs the ships and cargoes they captured were less important than the passengers and crew aboard the vessels. During the period they were active, the Barbary corsairs captured more than a million European and American Christians, who either paid ransom to regain their freedom or remained as slaves. For the Somali pirates the ships and cargoes are more important, being held until multi-million dollar ransoms are paid. The crews aboard the captured vessels are less important, although threats to their safety may encourage reluctant ship owners to pay up.

The reduced importance of the human captives is a sign that the Barbary corsairs and the Somali pirates operate in very different political and economic worlds. The Barbary corsairs lived in a time of emerging European nation states. A French merchant ship, for example, was based in France and had a French crew. To capture it was to invite retaliation from the French government and its navy. Today the international shipping industry is very different. In the age of globalization a ship may be owned in one country, fly the flag of another, and have a crew drawn from any number of countries. It might be said that this modern diversity is reflected in the multi-national composition of the anti-piracy fleet of warships now assembled off Somalia, but the multiplicity of national interests involved in vessels captured by the pirates is a source of weakness not strength.

The celebrated Maersk Alabama incident in 2009 was very much the exception which proves the rule. To have an American warship save the all-American crew of an American-flag merchant ship was an echo of an earlier, simpler time. Generally merchant ships captured by the Somali pirates cause as many international complications as does the successful interception of suspected pirate craft by warships on anti-piracy patrol.

Thus it can be argued that the Somali pirates are not the heirs of the Barbary corsairs. Perhaps we should be glad of this. It took European and American states more than three centuries to defeat the Barbary corsairs. One can only hope that today's international community can curb the activities of the Somali pirates in a rather shorter period of time.