Private Navies/Marines

The Malacca Straits. More on the rise of private militaries...

Gangs in fast launches armed with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades, some backed by sophisticated criminal syndicates, have murdered mariners, kidnapped crew, and even hijacked ships and steered them to ports run by corrupt officials where they have their cargoes unloaded. Afterwards, the vessels are repainted, ready for sale on a shady international market. But now the level of violence has escalated to the point where Lloyd’s Market Association has designated the Malacca Strait a warzone, classifying the waters as a high-risk area for war and terrorism on a par with Iraq for insurance purposes.

In an attempt to control the alarming rise of piracy, shipping companies are being forced to turn to a radical new solution – private navies. As many as five companies have set up in the last year, including three British firms and an American security company. Other security firms are now trying to get into the lucrative new market, where the price of missions to protect cargo ships starts at US$50,000. Heavily armed special forces veterans are among the Western ex-military personnel, some with experience in Iraq or Afghanistan, who will either ride shotgun on the vessel or patrol alongside it in their own craft. Some even claim to be able to rappel out of helicopters to recapture ships or oil rigs hijacked by pirates.

A new TAZ: There are around 12-15 pirate gangs operating in the strait, based in lawless parts of southern Thailand and Indonesia, each about 50-men strong and some with links to terrorist organisations, such as Jemaah Islamiah or the Achenese insurgent group GAM. The growing Islamist insurgency in Thailand, where gangs have lopped the heads off Buddhists and government supporters, has given the pirates a new base to operate from.

Comments

[Valdis]

John, where do you hear about these events? They are obviously NOT on 24 hour cable news channels. What else are we missing?

[John Robb]

Valdis, I cast a wide net and have a big network of smart people like yourself. ;->

[Jon]

Um, the irony is that "private navies" are far from being "a radical new solution." After all, "privateers" were, precisely, private military forces the flourished before the nationalization of naval warfare. So from privateers to pirates, and back to privateers...

[John Robb]

Jon, that is precisely the problem. The world that produced the 30 years war wasn't a very nice place.

[Jon]

"The world that produced the 30 years war wasn't a very nice place."

Indeed. But the question is how novel today's developments are. How much does what we are seeing now constitute distinctly new forms of warfare, insurgency, politics, etc.? And how much is it a return or continuation of historic processes that have perhaps been long overlooked?

No simple answer, of course. But I was just pointing out that your source over-stated the novelty in this particular case.

[John Robb]

Jon, totally understand your precise critic of this article. However, there is an underlying theme I think needs to be addressed.

Everything has roots in something else. For example: Is the Internet something new (emergent properties) or is it merely another application of widely deployed networking technology?

[Jon]

John, I agree absolutely. And I'm not trying to suggest that there's nothing new under the sun. On the other hand, the tendency is often to overstate novelty, rather than think through historical parallels. Indeed, of course, it's only by thinking historically that you can really grasp novelty.

The internet's a good example. We can best judge what's new about it by comparing its impact and operation to that of (say) the telegraph in the nineteenth century or the telephone at the turn of the twentieth. Many of the same hopes, fears, and desires were expressed about these earlier technologies as have been raised by the Internet.