Social Privateers – Solving problems on an ocean near you?
The flag of Liberia - The second largest flag of convenience in the world. (Courtesy Flickr user Contando Estrelas)
I came across this last night while watching “Shadow Forces” on the History Channel. Are social privateers going to be the solution to some of the most dangerous threats on the high seas today? Here I was watching a rag tag group of ex-military/special forces, a few brave soles, and a rusty West African fishing boat performing fisheries enforcement boardings off the coast of Liberia, and performing them successfully too! I was blown away. The Liberian government was paying for the services of the group, in hopes of stopping or curbing the plague of illegal fishing occurring of their coast. The motley crew led by a guy named Cobus Classens, successfully seized a foreign trawler that was illegally fishing while entirely unarmed. They boarded a vessel of unknown nationality and armament, and seized it solely based on the tactic of surprise. Now don’t get me wrong, I think trying to board any ship off the coast of West Africa as an extremely dangerous endeavour, but I have to hand it to them…it did work. They were doing what a sovereign government and the international community could not – stop illegal fishing.
This YouTube clip is from a different episode that I have not seen yet. It appears that they are armed in this boarding, but it gives you an idea of what they are doing.
A Social Privateer
The general term of a historical term “privateer” has been defined as a private person that was authorized by a national government to engage as a commerce raider, interrupting enemy trade during a time of war. I term the group depicted in Shadow Forces social privateers because their focus is to do what aid agencies and poor governments can not, and they are not being employed during a period of war, but rather peace. I would also estimate they are certainly making more money through the History Channel than the government of Liberia.
Social Piracy vs. Social Privateering
Greenpeace stopping the Russian ship Mumrinskiy from unloading a potentially illegal cod shipment. (Photo courtesy Flickr user Capitan Giona)
The concept of Social Piracy may not be entirely new as you may think. Certainly we are all familiar with the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, and their tactics used to protest and even stop whaling and other activities on the high seas. I would classify the Sea Shepard’s as social pirates rather than social privateers. They are not contracted by a sovereign state, but work as a non-profit organization instead. The organization engages in what they term as “direct action” to attempt to physically stop ships on the high seas with a small fleet of ships. Their actions are also often counter to what many sovereign states believe as lawful which is why one of their ships remains seized in Canada to this day, the Farley Mowat. The organization engages in direct action and controversial interdiction at sea to stop or prevent specific actions the organization believes is or should be unlawful. Unlike typical pirates, the Sea Shepherds do not seek profit, but seek to promote and serve a social cause instead. Similar to the Shadow Force, The Sea Shepard’s also have their own cable TV show on the Animal Planet channel, “Whale Wars” which I do admit from a maritime perspective, can be interesting to watch regardless of whether you agree with their cause or not.
While attempting to disrupt Japanese whaling operations, the Sea Shepherd ship Steve Irwin collides with a Japanese harpoon boat. (Photo courtesy Flickr user guano)
The Coast Guard & Navy of the future?
Strategic naval thinkers and analysts have long been calling for a smaller, lighter, more nimble naval force, littoral in nature and cheap in price. Are social privateers showing us how it could be done? I think it is certainly worth looking carefully at how the tactics employed by social privateers could be utilized by a small Navy or Coast Guard detachment, operating quietly and covertly in a distant and dangerous port. The group depicted on Shadow Force was using a combination of local intel, high tech tools like the Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD), a Forward Looking Infrared (FLIR) camera, and a cheap, rusty, low tech ship. Many of the naval threats we are dealing with today, are emanating from small, dangerous ports, in countries with ineffective or non-existent governments. Just to list a few…piracy, illegal fishing, drug trafficking, human trafficking, illegal dumping; these are all threats that may be countered more effectively by a small force on a rusty vessel under disguise than a multi-billion dollar warship better suited for tracking objects in space. Maybe we need to stop showing up in the most fancy ship on earth, in order to deal with some of the world’s most troubling problems in the least fanciest of ports.
