more in this section
Young Artists, Scientists Think Logically, Creatively
Internet Censorship, Here and Over There
It Turns Out There Is Accounting for Taste
Telework: One Idea to Hold Down Government Cost
Europe Boasts of its Solar Power Strength
The Real Revenge of Montezuma: Voyage Conclusions
Moral Panics and Rumors
Viewing Poisons at Our National Parks
If Only Yosemite Were a Video Game
Is Hosting a World Cup Like Sporting a Chanel Bag?
also by this author
Michael Scott Moore
Michael Scott Moore was a 2006-2007 Fulbright fellow for journalism in Germany, and his first novel, Too Much of Nothing, was published by Ca...
Liberals Gone Wild
A short digression on the meaning of a word that apparently has no generally agreed-upon political definition.
A ‘Two-Speed’ Europe?
Splitting the European Union into separate “achievers” and “laggards” clubs may not be a good idea, but it may be inevitable economically.
Don’t Panic. It’s Only the Internet.
International treaties aren’t the way to combat cyber sabotage.
O Frau Merkel, How Does Your Garden Grow?
A cheap euro, plus the “short work” plan, allowed the Germans to make lemonade from lemons. But tomorrow may be sour.
A Brief History of the Dollar
In living through the euro’s teething troubles, it’s worth remembering the adolescence of the American dollar.
Greatly Exaggerated: Rumors of the Euro’s ‘Collapse’
With the pan-European currency trading in the middle of its historical range, perhaps the doomsayers should reduce their caffeine intake a bit.
Germans and Inflation
History lessons address whether the European Central Bank should print more money to end the debt crisis.
How to Cap a Banker’s Bonus
Europe gets it just about right by not strictly capping pay but regulating how the payout wends its way to a banker’s pocket.
Bank Tax, We Hardly Knew Ye
A Swedish idea that creates an insurance fund for preserving big banks — but not necessarily their bosses or shareholders — needs to return from the dead.
Receive 1 year (6 issues) of our print magazine for just $24.95. Miller-McCune features polished, in-depth reports on research and solutions across the policy spectrum — from health care, education and energy to international affairs, poverty and the global economy. It's a must read for well-informed and solutions-driven individuals.
close this window
A Fishing War Off Somalia?
Despite some successes in thwarting Somali pirates, itchy trigger fingers may serve no one’s interests except for private security agencies.
When pirates attacked the Maersk Alabama for a second time this year on Nov. 18, a private security team fought them off. The reaction in the American press was instant. “Lesson from foiled pirate attack on the Maersk Alabama?” wrote the Christian Science Monitor. “Fire back.”
Some observers fell over themselves advising Spain to arm its fishing boats, because a Spanish tuna trawler, the Alakrana, had just been released a day earlier for a reported (and record-breaking) ransom of $3.3 million. The Spanish government had already changed its law in October to allow fishing vessels to carry weapons. And on Sunday another Spanish trawler was attacked by two persistent pirate skiffs. The Ortube Berria had an armed team aboard and shook the pirates only with gunfire.
“They would not give up. They would simply not give up,” the trawler’s captain said. “If we had not been armed, they would have caught us.”
The kneejerk response is: So what? It’s a dangerous world, and if ship owners and their crews want to risk an escalation with pirates by hiring private gunmen, well, firms like Xe (formerly Blackwater) are here to help.
But hiring armed teams to defend fishing boats is a delicate matter. European trawlers like the Ortube Berria and the Alakrana have been unwelcome off Somalia for years because in the absence of a strong Somali government, they’ve been known to help themselves to the fish. These fishing disputes, from some Somalis’ point of view, led to piracy in the first place.
“And now foreign fishermen are hiring private security, which is a little scary,” said Stig Jarle Hansen, a Horn of Africa expert at the Norwegian Institute for Urban and Regional Research. “Some of these companies I don’t trust. And now they will go into Somali waters,” he predicted, “and there you can have increased armed clashes not just between pirates and private security but even between full-time fishermen and private security.”
One reason for the fishing chaos off Somalia is not just a lack of local enforcement, but a failure by the Somali government to assert its “economic zone” in the water – conventionally a 200-mile band of control. Territorial waters reach 12 miles out to sea, but since a U.N. agreement in 1982, a nation’s “exclusive economic zone,” or EEZ, can extend 200 miles before the ocean becomes a free-for-all.
Like a lot of African countries, said Hansen, the Somalis never formally claimed an EEZ. “So the argument amongst some of the illegal fishermen is that this zone has not been declared. That’s why they say it’s possible to go in and fish.”
But legal experts say the argument is weak, since the international precedent of a 200-mile EEZ is so well established. The U.N. declared it enforceable as part of its 1994 Convention of the Law of the Sea.
America, at first glance, has no dog in this race. But the conflict between Somali and European fishermen is a precise echo of the so-called “tuna war” off Ecuador in the 1960s and ’70s, when Ecuador, Chile and Peru were trying to assert a 200-mile fishing zone for themselves. American tuna boats recognized a 3-mile limit. When Ecuador seized and fined an American vessel in 1963, a series of escalations – seizures, warning shots, formal trade sanctions — continued for at least eight years, until governments in the Western Hemisphere came to an informal agreement on 200-mile zones. That agreement set the precedent for the U.N.’s 1982 convention.
Europe and Africa are engaged in a similar struggle now: Illegal foreign fishing is a problem up and down the African coast. But fishermen in the Americas waged this war without large-scale piracy, without rocket-propelled grenades and without private commando teams on their tuna trawlers. The Somali situation is at risk of becoming entrenched.
“A whole entire business has grown out of piracy,” said Hansen — and not just among Somali pirate masters. “You have a lot of private security consultants, who do pirate negotiations, risk management and so on. It’s a big industry on the Western side of things, with a big interest in keeping things going.”
Sign up for our free e-newsletter.
Are you on Facebook? Become our fan.
Follow us on Twitter.
word on the street
Leave a Reply
search
follow us on:
join our newsletter:
from the source
Gas Mileage Labels Get Sophisticated
The federal government has unveiled updated designs for those informational stickers on new cars. The hope is to nudge buyers into choosing more fuel-efficient models.
California Rejects Ban on Plastic Bags
Lawmakers struck down a bill that would have made California the first state in the union to ban plastic shopping bags.
The Scientist and the Journalist Can Be Friends
Nancy Baron’s new book is an excellent guide for academic researchers on how to effectively communicate with the press, public and policymakers.
Do School Lunches Plump Up Poor Kids?
A program to ensure all American children get at least one good meal a day may lie behind their expanding waistlines. Oddly, a breakfast program does not.
An Emotional Timeline of Sept. 11, 2001
German researchers, analyzing the content of text messages sent on 9/11/01, report that while sadness and anxiety levels remained stable through the day, anger steadily increased.
