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More research needed on piracy in Asia
Investing in field research — which requires academically collecting human intelligence — is becoming tricky for researchers
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span>Investing in field research — which requires academically collecting human intelligence — is becoming tricky for researchers. This is due to the rising demand for expertise on TV and in newspapers as well as to the increasing pressure caused by constraints on funding and rankings to produce and publish research within institutes and think tanks.
Note the patience that Claude Levi-Strauss had to accord in his fieldwork on indigenous tribes in Brazil in the 1930s, and TE Lawrence’s sacrifices to be accepted by the Arabic tribes during World War I.
Today, it is much more tempting to rely on secondary sources knowing that social networks and the inflation of Track 2 meetings can facilitate access to reports and comments. Of course, tweets and posts are a fantastic opportunity to get brilliant insights and relevant comments from highly esteemed scholars. However, this methodology can lead to Pierre Bourdieu’s “circular circulation of information”, when members of a community repeat the thoughts or analysis of each other.
It can also result in an overreliance on organizations, which publish papers according to their own — even if legitimate and well-intentioned — agenda. This trend seems to be particularly true in the field of maritime security.
Thankfully, new actors such as NGOs are beginning to emerge from Africa. Since the success of the Asia model in securing sea lanes like the Straits of Malacca and Singapore, since the first Information Fusion Center in Singapore in 2009, other such centers in Madagascar and India have followed suit.
This is accompanied by the rise of NGOs such as the self-funded One Earth Future Foundation, which is now working in Asia on a Bay of Bengal maritime security report and a “Maritime Security Index” by expanding its focus beyond Africa. These initiatives follow the release of an in-depth report on the Sulu-Sulawesi Seas and a maritime policy workshop earlier this year.
Some other NGOs working on illegal fishing and diplomatic mediation are also invited to academic meetings where they bring feedback from the field.
Moreover, there are still avenues for researchers to conduct field research — in kampongs as well as in archives, ministries, bases or headquarters — as a complementary way to diversify sources, beside the very useful threads online and the well-informed NGOs.
As for maritime security along the strategic Straits of Malacca and South China Sea, see for example the Raja Ali Haji Maritime University (UMRAH) in Tanjungpinang, Riau, which offers a venue to centralize NGOs and foreign scholars involved in field research in the Riau Islands.
Furthermore, it is critical for the researchers to sustain their own network based on previous field research. That was advised by Jean Malaurie when he started to work on Inuit people in the 1950s: To follow the destiny of these communities in the long term is insightful, rather than moving from one topic or area to another according to the trends in the media or chancelleries.
As an example, two recent meetings with an actual pirate introduced by a former contact in the Riau Islands brought a very updated view about hijacking and siphoning in the South China Sea. He explained how his gang, comprising seven people from different ages and ethnic groups, is now spread across the Indonesian archipelago, from big cities in Java to small islands off Sumatra. Batam, the former criminal hub, is now too dangerous for them.
There is nothing like mafia, triads, pyramidal or formal organization, as he cited. As a leader of his “freelance gang” of “sea henchmen”, he works for foreign business people, who get intelligence partly from shipping companies or through their wide network.
When these people decide to hijack a ship, they contact these groups, which are on a stand-by mode. As revealed through chats over coffees, they fix the meeting point via Whatsapp in one of the Riau Islands, where another small team is in charge of the logistics and equipment such as masks, oil and machetes that are used more often than guns.
Then, the “pirates” can quickly embark from a pelabuhan tikus (literally “mouse haven”, i.e. informal or illegal port) on a sampan and later board a small tanker.
Discreetly, they move to the South China Sea, off Natuna Island or even near Vietnam, according to the informant pirate in Indonesia. From there, his gang targets tankers which are already involved in illegal trafficking.
Indeed, some local actors enjoy access to subsidized fuel that can be sold on the black market, cheaper than the one in petrol stations.
For this reason, victims do not intend to report to official agencies like the Information Fusion Center, International Maritime Bureau or Information Sharing Center for fear that this could impact their business profits. To finish the operation, another crew takes over and completes the operation to siphon and later sell the fuel.
In short, field research can produce an accurate global picture of key developments, but only if you take some precautions such as confirming the exact profile of the interviewees through posing precise questions about the context.
Afterwards, researchers can make sense and draw lessons from these conversations. At this stage, field research without comments through social networks and seminars can be rendered useless and dangerous in the case of wrong conclusions.
This has become the main mission of the One Earth Future’s Stable Seas Program in Asia: to amalgamate these two equally important approaches of collecting relevant information and drawing concrete lessons.
It may require intellectual and professional effort to constantly shift focus from the field to the academic fora, but this “methodological harmony” or melting pot, especially between international relations and anthropology or geography, promisingly echoes the Indonesian (and European) motto: “(intellectual) unity in (methodological) diversity”!
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Coordinator of the Southeast Asia Observatory, within Asia Center(Paris), and adjunct fellow at Research Institute on Contemporary Southeast Asia (IRASEC, Bangkok), Institute for Strategic Research (IRSEM, Paris) and the French Naval Academy.
