The scourge of Somali piracy has been highlighted for sometime now. The threat to the economies of neighbouring states - as mentioned above by the Minister of Defence for South Africa - is acknolwedged and the ongoing threat to the oil supply industry, and to trade in general passing through the Indian Ocean and Gulf of Aden regions, is forcing states, organizations and authorities to rethink measures for economic and shipping security. However, as the IMO urges international action against the rise of piracy, Somalia is not the only threat to seafarers. Asia and West Africa have seen an increase, indeed, the attacks on ships in Asia has been at an all time high, reports the Todayonline. The number of reported piracy and armed robbery attacks against ships in Asia for the first half of this year has reached a new high, compared to the same period over the last four years. According to regional piracy watchdog, the Regional Cooperation Agreement on Combating Piracy and Armed Robbery against Ships in
Asia (ReCAAP), 82 such incidents - 64 armed robbery and 18 piracy attacks - were recorded between January and last month. In contrast, 70 such incidents were reported in the same period last year.
ReCAAP's half-yearly report said about 84 per cent of the incidents occurred during hours of darkness when it was difficult for the crew to detect the robbers' boats approaching their vessels, as they were less alert and vigilant during this period. Fourteen incidents were reported in the South China Sea. Over at the Straits of Malacca and Singapore, 14 incidents of armed robbery against ships were reported in the first half of this year - the highest numbers of incidents in these waters in the last four years. ReCAAP said at least two different syndicates or groups of robbers were responsible for the attacks and observed that tug boats appear to be more vulnerable compared to other type of ships due to its slow speed.
The latest incident off the West African coast saw pirates seize an Italian tanker carrying a cargo of diesel
fuel in the Gulf of Guinea off Cotonou, the economic capital of Benin in West Africa, the Italian Foreign Ministry said on last Sunday, reports Reuters. The ship, the RBD Anema e Core with a crew of 23 on board, was taken in the early hours of Sunday when a number of assailants boarded. Two of the crew are Italians, the others Filipinos and Romanian.
The Foreign Ministry's crisis unit was in contact with Italian maritime officials and with the ship's operators in the southern city of Naples, a spokesman said. In the last 30 days, 5 attacks and 1 hijack have occurred in the region.
In an article by SpyGhana.com "Wake Up Ghana, The Pirates Are Coming" it stated that in recent weeks, there have been increased reports of pirates seizing ships in the Gulf of Guinea, just off the shores of Ghana including the seizure of a tanker carrying oil from Ghana. Yet, there has not been any official pronouncement on the recognition of the imminent threat to the security of our coastline in particular and the country as a whole. With the recent development of piracy off the coastline of Somalia that is causing havoc to shipping and trade through the Suez Canal and in the Indian Ocean, I was thinking the least trace of an increase occurrence of such a phenomenon in our territorial waters will be dealt with all the seriousness it deserves. It has been reported many times in international media that the Gulf of Guinea has become second only to Somalia in terms of piracy attacks in the world. This is not something we should brush aside. Already the Gulf area is home to an insurgency in Nigeria’s oil-rich Niger Delta, where they routinely attack oil facilities. The recent piracy addition is now turning the Gulf of Guinea into a region of increasing international concern. Some experts say that the waters of the Gulf of Guinea are at least as dangerous as those off the Somali coast, if not more so. Mr. Peter Pham, the Africa program director for the National Committee on American Foreign Policy, a New York think tank is reported to have said recently that while the International Maritime Board reports any movement against ships on the Gulf of Aden, they don’t keep reports from the Gulf of Guinea despite the fact that the number of attacks is believed to be equal to those off Somalia. This is really alarming [OCEANUSLive note: the IMB reports on pirate activity across the globe].
Pirate attacks on ships in the Gulf of Guinea are threatening one of the world's emerging trade hubs and are likely to intensify unless the region's weak naval and coastguard defences are beefed up soon, in a further report by Reuters Africa entitled "Pirates eye share of Gulf of Guinea riches."
Stretching from Guinea on Africa's northwestern tip down to Angola in the south, the Gulf spans a dozen countries and is a growing source of oil, cocoa and metals to the world's markets.
While piracy has yet to hit levels seen off Somalia's coast, analysts say pirates have spotted a window of opportunity with weak local maritime security structures and a craggy coastline which offers natural hideouts from which to mount attacks.
"Piracy in West Africa is fundamentally different to Somali piracy as the perpetrators are interested in stealing cargoes rather than demanding ransoms," said Paul Gibbins of maritime security company Protection Vessels International (PVI).
"It is reasonable to assume that the problem is likely to escalate if there are no resources to help police and control the situation," he added.
Impact
As the Libyan war claiming casualties as far away as the Indian Ocean, the Arabian Sea, and the Gulf of Aden? That is the implication of this week’s report from the International Maritime Organization, which says attacks on shipping by Somali pirates in those waters hit a record in the first half of 2011. Requests to NATO for more ships to patrol sea lanes have been denied. Why? The Western navies are too busy in Libya, writes Stephen L Carter in
The Daily Beast.
Two years ago, amid a great burst of media attention, the U.S. and the EU committed ships and aircraft to battle the pirates. In April 2009, President Obama drew widespread and justified praise when he ordered a military operation that resulted in the rescue of a hostage sea captain and the killing of three Somali pirates with
three bullets. The president promised to “halt the rise of piracy” in the region. French President Nicolas Sarkozy made a similar vow the previous year, after his nation’s special forces freed a pair of hostages.
Since then, the world’s attention has moved on.
Although the piracy problem largely dropped off television screens, it is growing worse. Not only are the rates of attack rising, but so are the ransoms. Indeed, piracy is one of the world’s fastest-growing businesses. A recent report from the consulting firm Geopoliticity calculates that the average ransom for a hijacked ship, which ran about $150,000 as recently as 2005, now exceeds $5 million, meaning that pirates are earning well over $200 million a year. The income of a Somali pirate, says the report, can easily exceed 100 times what he could earn from legitimate work in his country. The most powerful pirate group, known as the Somali Marines, is so sophisticated, says GlobalSecurity.org, that it “has a military structure, with a fleet admiral, admiral, vice admiral and a head of financial operations.” The gang carries out more than 80 percent
of the hijackings in the region, and evidently pioneered the “mothership” attack model, using a large boat to get small, fast skiffs into deep water. (The Somali Marines who are pirates should not be confused with the Somali Marines who are soldiers—and who freely admit that they cannot defend the coastline against the pirates).
Despite all the promises, there is, at the moment, little the West can do. Its forces are overextended. A traditional and often overlooked function of the military is to keep the sea lanes open.
In recent decades, this responsibility has fallen largely on the United States Navy, the dominant power in the world. This is one reason that President Obama’s plan to save money by greatly reducing the size of the Pentagon’s budget may prove shortsighted. Defense spending should not be off-limits when the entire country is struggling. But the $400 billion in cuts announced so far, combined with an additional $400 billion to $500
billion that the administration is said to be seeking, is far too high. The dividend from ending the Iraq War and drawing down forces in Afghanistan cannot explain the entire reduction.
Much of the money is going to come from procurement, already strained under the Bush administration, which in effect cashed in modernization programs to get war funding. Cutting the Navy will have particularly far-reaching effects. It is the Navy that polices the sea lanes: for example, battling pirates. The naval surface fleet is built around the carrier strike group, consisting of an aircraft carrier and its escort ships. By maintaining a large number of these CSGs, as they are known, the United States is able to do what no other nation can: Project power, on short notice, anywhere in the world.
Like it or not, for more than six decades the world has looked to the U.S. to keep the sea lanes open, a task, as Navy Secretary James Forrestal put it 1947, “more or less inherited from Britain” following World War II. Keeping the sea lanes open keeps world trade flowing. The job is indispensable, and nobody else can do it.
In a perfect world, an international flotilla might patrol the seas, but the world is not perfect, and only the U.S. is in a position to take on the responsibility. It may even be, in a moral sense, our duty as the only superpower.
Thus a stark choice is upon us: We can spend what is necessary to defend the seas, or we can leave them undefended.
The United Nations declaration that famine has struck Somalia will trigger a ramping up of food aid shipments by both air and sea. While this is good news for the country's starving millions, it could be bad news for commercial vessels passing through the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean, writes maritimewatch.
Protecting World Food Programme vessels from pirates is the top priority for EU NAVFOR, the European Unions anti-piracy force. More food aid for Somalia could mean more WFP vessels in need of protection and therefore fewer ships available to protect commercial shipping, which ranks lower down EU NAVFOR's list of priorities.
"The big question at the moment is what kind of demand we are going to see the World Food Programme," said a NAVFOR source. "More food aid does not necessarily mean more ships, as they could simply charter bigger vessels. Or we could organise convoys of vessels. But the figures quoted by the media suggest 10 million people will need feeding, which is a lot more than today."
The combined naval forces of EU NAVFOR, NATO and the US Combined Task Force 151 are already reduced from the levels seen in 2010. Assets in the region vary from month to month, though the overall presence of western navies is thought to have decline by around two ships.
EU NAVFOR executive officer Andy Price told an industry conference in June that there were in total around 20 navy vessels patrolling an area of sea the size of Europe, even if non-western navies were included. NATO has removed ships from anti-piracy patrol so as to contribute in the battle to oust Colonel Gaddafi in the Mediterranean.
The IMO states, in a 'Thomson Reuters: Reuters Insider' video, that "Worsening piracy raising risks to seafarers, economic costs." See the link.
And finally...