Published 11 Jan 10

International Desk

By Abigail R. Esman
World Defense Review columnist

What Umar Farouk Abdulmuttallab and the Pirates of Somalia Can Tell Us About Osama Bin Laden and Guantanamo Bay

The intelligence is in place. The military stands prepared. The mission is launched. Dutch Naval forces, on behalf of the entire European Union, capture 13 Somali pirates, terrorists of the high seas. Two weeks later, they set their prisoners free again - with all the fuel and food they needed for a safe and comfortable trip back home.

Though the story was quickly lost amid the drama of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the so-called "Christmas Bomber" who (allegedly) tried to blow up a Delta Airlines flight between Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport and Detroit on Christmas Day, this actually happened.

On December 3, the Dutch Navy frigate HMS Evertsen captured the pirates, who had attacked an Antiguan merchant ship in the Arabian Sea. Part of the EU's Atalanta program to fight piracy off the coast of Somalia, the Dutch mission was performed on behalf of the entire European Union - that is, until it came time to bring the pirates back to shore. Despite the risks the Dutch military had taken to capture the 13 men, no European country - including their own - was willing to accept them as prisoners in their territory. And despite previous agreements with Kenya and the Seychelles, both these countries begged off as well, each for its own reasons, leaving the HMS Evertsen crew no choice: remain forever at sea, held hostage there by their own prisoners, or release them.

The issue points, actually, to a number of problems, not the least of which is the obvious matter of international security - what happens when you capture a pirate ship (or terrorist group) only to pat everyone on the back and send them home again? There is, too, the matter of what message this sends to the military itself, those men and women we ask to risk their lives to save us, and whose work we then essentially trash, because no one - no one - is willing to take on the lesser risk of prosecuting the prisoners they take? Is this what we have spent so many billions of dollars for in the so-called "war against terror"? Is this what so many of our young men and women have died for? Not long after the Somali pirates were released, Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard was attacked in his own home in Denmark by an axe-wielding Muslim terrorist who, as it turned out, happened to come originally from Somalia.

This is not entirely coincidental. As Stephen Brown recently noted on FrontPageMagazine.com, "In the past, al Qaeda and Islamists in Somalia have both praised Somali piracy as part of the 'fight against the West.' A leader of a Somali Islamist group called the pirates 'part of the mujahedeen.'" According to Brown, "Al Qaeda claimed responsibility for the surge in pirate attacks in 2008. It called the campaign to seize ships and hold them for ransom a justifiable 'new strategy', since 'fighters who aspire to establish the caliphate must control the seas and waterways.'"

Further, the Washington Post noted in October, 2009 that Somali-American recruits for jihad are on the rise, largely through Shabab, a Somali terrorist group with ties to Al Qaeda. A senior US counterterrorism officer told the Post that "we've measured the numbers of Somali Americans that go back to Somalia to fight in the dozens." How many of these Somali Americans are now going to be as likely to join the pirate groups - the ones who are apparently so easily released, rather than being sent off to appropriate penitentiaries like Guantanamo Bay (or those that will replace it)? If Somali pirates are being used by Al Qaeda, and if their numbers are increasing, Europe must not, cannot, refuse to incarcerate, prosecute, and convict them when they are captured.

But it seems they are.

And so, I began to wonder: If we actually ever captured the elusive Osama bin Laden, would we keep him captive - or would we set him free, too?

Meantime, the arrest of Abdulmutallab and the discovery of his previous connections to the Yemen-based Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has heightened the discussion of what to do with Guantanamo Bay's remaining detainees as well - and well it should. Current plans include one that would send these suspected offenders - about half of whom are of Yemeni origin -- back to Yemen for "rehabilitation"; but now that "rehabilitation" is starting to look more and more like "re-radicalization," even some of the most staunch supporters of the plan to close Guantanamo are starting to have second thoughts.

This latest episode with the Somali pirates only adds to those questions, at least for me. But if not Yemen - where? Will America make the same sloppy mistake that Europe did, now, too? (Inspired, perhaps, by the pirates episode, I keep thinking of the old seaman's shanty, "What Shall We Do With the Drunken Sailor?" and wonder if, in fact, that's not the theme song for our handling of terrorists since 2001: proposed solutions like "shave his belly with a rusty razor," "Put him in the scuppers with a hose-pipe on him" and "Heave him by the leg and with a rung console him" sound almost too familiar. But I digress.)

In all honesty, until this incident with the Pirates of Somalia, I had more than my share of reservations about bringing the Guantanamo Bay suspects to US shores (if indeed we close the camps at Gitmo after all). Now, I admit, I'm no longer quite so sure we have any truly responsible other choice.

But will our allies be as brave?

— Abigail R. Esman is an award-winning author-journalist who divides her time between New York and The Netherlands. In addition to her column in World Defense Review, her work has appeared in Foreign Policy, Salon.com, Esquire, Vogue, Glamour, Town & Country, The Christian Science Monitor, The New Republic and many others. She is currently working on a book about Muslim extremism and democracy in the West to be published by Praeger in 2010.

Visit Esman on the web at abigailesman.com.

© 2010 Abigail R. Esman

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