The picture above courtesy of the Associated Press is a picture of an Iranian fisherman embracing an American soldier. Yes you heard right. American. Iranian.
We all certainly could do with more of this kind of scenes in 2012. It's my first blog post for the year and I say thank you to all the readers and followers of this blog in the previous year. I really do wish you a very successful year ahead.
Now back to the Americans and the Iranians.
Granted the Iranians and the American's are hardly best of friends. But the incident last week precisely on January 6, 2012 where suspected pirates aboard an Iranian fishing vessel were captured, on the North Arabian Sea at dawn, by US Navy ship, the USS Kidd, led howbeit temporarily to a feeling of camaraderie between the two sides.
The fascinating story of that rescue can be found here. By all means draw whatever morals and conclusions you would from that incident (and I assure you there are plenty in view of the continued intrigues that characterizes 'Irano-American' relations). My interest is purely of course from a Shipping and Maritime perspective.
Reading the story of the capture which admittedly was brought to my notice for the first time in a Facebook post by the Dean of the Faculty of Law, National University of Singapore, Simon Chesterman, it immediately struck my mind that in the war against piracy, the key to the Iranian rescue which was the ability to converse in another language (Urdu) between the Iranians and the US rescuers which left the pirates dependent on their captors could tentatively form a blueprint for future rescues.
Admittedly this may sound over-simplistic at first blush and may not have a very tenuous practical base, but my initial thoughts are worth exploring further.
But first let's take an excerpt from the New York Times report of the incident by C.J.Chivers.
"Then the Kidd appeared. First it was a gray dot on the horizon. But it was moving fast, directly toward them.
Now it was the pirates’ turn to feel fear. They quickly threw over more rifles and their remaining rockets for the launcher they had ditched, but had to keep a few rifles to maintain control over the fishermen.
Then the Kidd pulled alongside. The sailors called Captain Younes on the radio, but at first spoke to him only in English and Arabic. Just as with the French, the captain could give no information away.
Then the Kidd switched to Urdu. Captain Younes, without his captors’ realizing what he was saying, asked for help and gave permission for the Americans to board — a critical point of protocol given the tensions between the United States’ and the Iranian governments.
When the loudspeaker ordered that any weapons be put on the wheelhouse roof, Mr. Abdulkhaled told the pirates his lie: the Americans had said they were about to attack. The pirates’ resistance suddenly ended. “That is when they started shaking,” he said.By the next morning, after the Navy had decided to take the pirates aboard the Kidd and transfer them by helicopter to the Stennis, it was the pirates who were compliant and deflated."
From the excerpts, it is glaring that the multilingual capabilities of the Iranian Captain and the US rescuers was the most important element in the rescue. Equally important was the Iranian captain's presence of mind to tell a necessary lie and exploit the situation.
It was famously used in Babel to sow seeds of discord and halt the most ambitious construction project ever, as the ambitious builders could scarce understand themselves the moment their speech was confounded. (Genesis 11: 5-8). Can Babel's multilingual blueprint be deployed to curb piracy?
It was famously used in Babel to sow seeds of discord and halt the most ambitious construction project ever, as the ambitious builders could scarce understand themselves the moment their speech was confounded. (Genesis 11: 5-8). Can Babel's multilingual blueprint be deployed to curb piracy?
What is in the idea of using multilingualism as a tool for curbing piracy? First I would take the demerits. The number one reason why this idea may not work is because it is impractical to require every sailor and potential rescuer to be versed at least conversationally speaking in many languages.
Secondly what if the pirates themselves know all the languages that both rescuers and captors know? In other words, the Iranian rescue may have just been sheer coincidence or luck.
Also requiring sailors to be multilingual is an exercise in futility as there exists hundreds of languages and so on and so forth.
Be that as it may the Multilingual idea may not be all hokum. There already exist an international framework on the regulation of shipping that tries to set standards for Sailors-The International Convention on Standards of Training, Certification and Watchkeeping for Seafarers (or STCW), 1978. The STCW sets qualification standards for masters, officers and watch personnel on seagoing merchant ships. STCW was adopted in 1978 by conference at the International Maritime Organization (IMO) in London, and entered into force in 1984. The Convention was significantly amended in 1995 and has also been recently amended in 2010 in Manila (The Manila Amendments" which came into force on 1st January, 2012). These amendments have been described as 'necessary in order to keep training standards in line with new technological and operational requirements that require new shipboard competence.'
Some of the amendments include new grades of certificates of competence for Able seaman in both deck and engine and new and updated training and refreshing requirements.
Thus what I have in mind is that under amendments to the STCW for instance, we could require that Captains over time acquire competence in say five major international languages as part of their mandatory training regime. Though this requirement does not guarantee that there would be more rescue missions along the Iranian lines, but it does at least broaden the scope of rescue options.
The demographics of the pirates are well known. It is a notorious fact that they operate in certain areas like the Gulf of Aden for Somali pirates, the Strait of Malacca and Singapore and many other smaller pockets. A multilingual requirement need only emphasize proficiency in languages outside that commonly spoken and understood by these pirates to be effective.
Even if you still insist my idea remains a hard sell, at least we could take the very basis of my multilingual competence idea (which is to dramatically increase rescue operations such that the gains in bringing pirates to book would result in a significant drop of their activities and thereby curb piracy) and refine it a bit, to develop a range of universal body signals or gestures by a Captain of a ship, which when spotted by a potential rescue operation would have the effect of implied permission to board such vessels. By this I am referring to non verbal communication of a universal nature. A sort of non verbal rescue code if you will.
All that needs to be done is to ensure that the training attains a certain level of security clearance that minimizes the likelihood of pirates having access to these rescue codes and provide that the rescue codes be periodically updated via refresher courses.
And lest we are bothered about the feasibility of such a course, we would do well to remind ourselves that as at 2011, the STCW Convention had 155 Parties, representing 98.9 percent of world shipping tonnage. Thus attaining universal consensus on applicability of such codes is not within the realm of impossibility.
It is an idea worth toying with. Call it unconventional warfare if you must. Just because it is unconventional does not mean it is a dud. Innit?
