Pirates and the future of 4GW
October 22, 2008 | by Charlie Edwards | More on Conflict and security | One comment
William S Lind suggests that beyond Afghanistan, the Fourth Generation future belongs neither to al Qaeda nor to the Taliban but to two more sophisticated models, Hezbollah and the Latin American drug gangs (I would add other criminal networks and piracy too). He writes:
Both can fight, but fighting is not primarily what they are about. Rather, both are about benefiting their members with money, services, community, identity, and, strange as it may sound, what passes locally for good government. Even the drug gangs’ governance is often less corrupt than that of the local state. Both of these 4GW models can fall into the fatal error of alienating the local population, but the tendency is not inherent. While Hezbollah is religiously defined, it seems to appeal well beyond the Puritans, which means it can give orders Puritans will not obey. The drug gangs’ principal faith is in making money, and few faiths are more broadly latitudinarian. In Iraq as elsewhere, the fading of the al Qaeda model is being balanced not by the rise of a new state but by the adoption of other models of 4GW. So far, as best I can determine, no foreign intervention in a Fourth Generation conflict has succeeded is re-creating a real state (you can add Ethiopia in Somalia to the long list of failures).
With that in mind it is depressing to read that the newly appointed commander of Nato’s anti-piracy patrol off the coast of Somalia says it will be difficult to defend ships from pirate attacks. This at a time when Nato is sending seven frigates to support US navy vessels already there, and India and several European countries have said they will also mount anti-piracy patrols.
“The time that a pirate unveils himself to the time that he’s onboard ship is such a short period of time,” says Admiral Mark Fitzgerald
Cynics might suggest that this is a careful piece of expectations management (think about the failure of SOCA as another example of how a Government over promises/ but under delivers), but it’s no wonder that NSAs (non state actors) are able to leverage considerable influence in proportion to their size and capabilities when the bureaucracies are not necessarily constrained by current laws/rules but by process of implementing them. The rules of engagement are still being debated by Nato - and if I were a betting man I would suggest that such rules are unlikely to be in place before the NATO task force has to respond to its first attack.
In his interview with the BBC Admiral Mark Fitzgerald also raises a rather more worrying issue*. Given how busy the sea lanes are, he asks: How do you prove a guy’s a pirate before he actually attacks a ship?
Some possible suggestions below:
*TiC
Related posts
- Some pirates are better than others
- The future of the Royal Navy?
- The case for piracy
- Piracy or taxation?
- Look, it’s really not easy being a pirate, don’t make it any harder…
I’m not an expert on 4GW but you’d think that an exclusion zone around a ship would solve most of the problems of definition - e.g. if you’re next to the ship and you’re not suppose to be, we’ll introduce you to our latest retained consultants: blackwater.