High tide for Piracy

Somali pirates are getting bolder and striking at will, threatening commerce and putting seafarers at risk more than ever before. The scourge is costing the international economy between $7 and 12 billion per year.

If you thought piracy had ended with the antics of Long John Silver in Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel Treasure Island, or the hep cutlass brandishing Johnny Depp in the Pirates of the Caribbean blockbusters, think again. It’s gun-totingly real and its sweeping impact is being felt here in the Middle East, all the way from the dreaded coasts of Somalia to the northern Arabian Sea.
Four attacks in the Arabian Sea region in the first two months of the year have set alarm bells ringing.
This follows the highs of 2010 when more mariners were taken hostage than any other year since the phenomenon was closely tracked. Seventeen ships from the UAE were also attacked. Violent incidents at sea occur on a daily basis as the perpetrators become more brazen in their mode and range of operations.
For a start, here are the stats: 1,181 seafarers were captured and killed eight and a total of 53 ships hijacked, 49 of them off the coast of Somalia.
Sinking further into figures cannot be helped with ships reporting 445 attacks in 2010, a 10% jump over the previous year.
The ransom paid to pirates in 2010 shot up to $5.4 million per ship from $3.4 million in 2009, according to the One Earth Future foundation. It averaged $150,000 per ship in 2005.
The pirates’ operating area from their launch areas along the Somali coast continues to expand to the East, towards the coast of India. ‘‘The affected surface area is approximately 2,177,500 nautical square miles,’’ according to the Royal Navy’s Lieutenant Commander Susie Thomson, of the Combined Maritime Forces (CMF). The CMF is a 25-navy coalition based in Bahrain tasked with combating piracy in Gulf waters.
Somali pirates are travelling as far south as the Mozambique Channel and as far east as 72° East longitude in the Indian Ocean, an operating range International Maritime Bureau says is unprecedented.
Should we be alarmed by this near and present danger to shipping? Yes, says Captain P. Mukundan, Director of the International Maritime Bureau’s (IMB) Piracy Reporting Centre. “These figures for the number of hostages and vessels taken are the highest we have ever seen,” he says.
The IMB has monitored piracy for almost two decades and the sustained increase in recent years have caught mariners and sea monitors by surprise. “The continued increase in these numbers is alarming,” he says.
“As a percentage of global incidents, piracy on the high seas has increased dramatically over armed robbery in territorial waters,” according Captain Mukundan, while releasing the IMB’s piracy report.
Pirate activity off Somalia accounted for 92% of all ship seizures last year with 49 vessels hijacked and 1,016 crew members taken hostage.
Combined Maritime Forces (CMF) figures until early January show 34 vessels and 765 mariners under the control of the criminals. ‘‘The number of mariners held hostage has increased considerably over the last three months; part of this increase is due to the greater length of time ransomed mariners are detained by pirates before release,’’ says Lt-Commander Thomson, speaking to this newspaper.
Hijackers are known to be currently holding hostages from Algeria, Bangladesh, Burma, China, Croatia, Georgia, Germany, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Jordan, Kenya, Montenegro, Mozambique, Pakistan, Phillipines, Romania, Russia, Serbia, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Syria, Taiwan, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkey, Ukraine, Vietnam and Yemen.
As navy patrols increase in the area, pirates have also adapted their tactics to strike deeper.
‘‘They are reaching further away from their camps in Somalia by using ‘mother ships’ as bases from which to attack ships,’’ says Lt-Commander Thomson.
Such ‘mother ships’ make it difficult for naval vessels to impede activity of the criminals, admits the CMF official.
The region has 2.5 million sq miles of sea space with more than 40% of the world’s energy passing via the Strait of Hormuz (25 million barrels daily). Approximately 11% transits the Suez Canal (4.2 million barrels daily), and nearly 10,000 ships transit the regional waterways daily.
Incidents have been contained in the Gulf of Aden area, partly due to Best Management Practices’, issued by the shipping industry, to give ships, their captains and crew the best chance of avoiding and countering piracy attacks. Intensified patrolling by navies have also pushed back the buccaneers.
Coordination between navies under CMF and the European Union Naval Force for Somalia (EU NAVFOR), NATO and international maritime agencies have curbed the phenomenon to some extent, but more needs to be done, feel experts.
The Shared Awareness and Deconfliction Event (SHADE) in Bahrain brings together counter-piracy forces in the Gulf of Aden and the Somali Basin. It includes representatives of international law enforcement bodies, the shipping industry, Combined Maritime Forces, EU NAVFOR, Maritime Security Centre Horn of Africa (MSC HOA), the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and other international naval forces.
‘‘SHADE provides a forum in which the various military elements engaged in counter-piracy operations in the region can discuss their successes and challenges, share best practices and co-ordinate forthcoming activities,’’ says Lt-Commander Thomson.
Such collaborations help in checking the surge of piracy, but cannot root it out. The menace from sea robbers must be viewed as an issue of global interest that needs to be dealt with using a collaborative, international approach to resolution, according to experts.
The challenge lies in creating a global framework to tackle the menace which encompasses economic, legal and political issues. Only Seychelles and Kenya currently provide a judicial framework for coalition piracy cases, but their scope is limited.
An international legal framework and special courts to try these cases are vital to stop these modern fiery buccaneers from disrupting trade in the oceans. World attention, however, is focused on the remnants of a downturn.
The weary wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have only compounded the problems, not to forget the wave of rising unrest in North Africa. The big question is: who will venture out to murky seas in this hour of crisis on land?

Balloon theory and the big squeeze

In an interview to Khaleej Times, Royal Air Force Wing Commander Paddy ‘O Kennedy of the 26-member European Union Naval Force for Somalia, says Somali pirates are now tracking their prey and attacking them further from their normal hunting grounds. The naval force for Somalia has, however, been successful in fulfilling its UN mandate to ensure World Food Program ships are secure in the waters. He also rules out a terrorism-piracy link.

Are Somali pirates striking farther out into the sea, moving away from the coasts?

In a word, yes.There are two theories behind this.Firstly, they are moving away from Somalia as a result of the ‘Balloon Theory’ — we (counter-piracy forces) have increased security around the coasts of Somalia to such an extent that we have ‘squeezed’ them outwards into more remote areas where we are currently thin on the ground (Mozambique Channel, Eastern Indian Ocean and the North Arabian Sea).They are also following the prey — as merchant vessels transit further from Somalia to feel ‘safer’, the pirates are following them and attacking much further from their normal hunting grounds.
How differently (operational changes) are you going to handle the situation this year after last year being one of the highest for pirate attacks according to IMB reports?
Our priorities (and therefore the way we operate) haven’t changed and probably won’t change in the near future. We will continue to protect World Food Programme (WFP) ships which is our mandated priority from the UN.We will continue to secure the Gulf of Aden and we will continue to try and deter / disrupt the pirates with any other assets we may have.However, we constantly assess the way we do business and we have to change anything to adapt to a particular situation then we can and we will.
It’s all good to contain piracy at sea, but what good is it when the situation in Somalia remains the same, where lawlessness rules?
We have always said that piracy will never be solved at sea.The answer to piracy has and always will lie ashore in Somalia.When Somalia is able to police itself and has functioning systems of law throughout the country then there may be a chance of addressing the underlying issues.The EU is already working on a comprehensive approach to address some of these issues — the EU Training Mission in Uganda (EUTM) is a great success and is certainly a major step in the right direction.

How closely do you coordinate with NATOand the CMF?

Very closely indeed.We communicate on an hourly basis at staff level and hold regular meetings at higher command level.We also attend the Shared Awareness and Deconfliction (SHADE) meetings which are held every eight weeks to discuss policy issues with each other and independant deployers (Russia, India, China etc).

Any advances in the arms they possess, for instance rocket-launchers?

We regularly see attacks using small arms, automatic weapons (AK47s) and Rocket Propelled Grenades (RPG)s.They fired 6 RPGs at one ship recently — it escaped.
Do you see a larger role of the Al Qaeda?

There is no evidence of any connection between piracy and terrorism. —allan@khaleejtimes.com

allan@khaleejtimes.com

Allan Jacob

• allan@khaleejtimes.com