Understanding and Managing the Somali Piracy Challenge

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As long as men have gone down to sea in ships, there have been pirates. Today, acts of piracy take place in waters off the coasts of South America, Asia, and Africa. But it is the surge in attacks on merchant vessels off the coast of Somalia that have brought piracy into the contemporary headlines. The data make clear that the activity and reach of Somali-based pirates is growing, but while the number of attempts is up, the percentage of those that lead to a successful boarding of a ship are down significantly in relative terms and the overwhelming majority of ships transiting the region do so unmolested by pirates. The problem is a serious one and on its current trajectory is likely to grow more so, but it can be made manageable if governments and the maritime industry are willing to set realistic objectives and collaborate in creative ways.

Both realism and collaboration have been slow to take root. The range of prescriptions for addressing modern-day piracy being advanced by government officials on the one hand, and the maritime industry on the other, generally exceed what each can reasonably accomplish. For instance, many ship owners want more to be done to remove the safe havens for pirates ashore, pointing to the liability and cost issues associated with playing a more active self-defense role in responding to the piracy threat at sea. But experts on Somalia are widely pessimistic about the prospects of restoring the rule of law or developing new economic opportunities that will chip away at the incentives for Somali pirates to attack shipping in the Red Sea and Indian Ocean. At the same time, the U.S. Navy has protested that the span of potentially pirate-infested waters are too vast to routinely patrol with limited naval forces and have called upon shipping companies to essentially take care of themselves by hiring armed private security forces to protect their vessels.

In the end, the persistence of piracy in the 21^st Century is symptomatic of a larger and growing problem that is bedeviling the international community. It highlights the extent to which the ungoverned backwaters of the planet can directly and adversely affect the operations of mainstream networks that support global economic life. It also points to the inherent limits of protocols that place the primary burden on sovereign states to police the global commons while at the same time making clear that this is not a job that can be simply turned over to the private sector to manage. Like so many of the contemporary challenges associated with globalization, tackling the piracy issue will require a hybrid approach that draws on a mix of public and private sector capabilities and incentives. It will also require scaled-backed expectations. Piracy has plagued mariners since time immemorial and eliminating it is no more of an achievable goal than eliminating crime. The best that can be done is a policy of containment that effectively limits piracy to being a localized nuisance.

This paper has four objectives. First, to place the contemporary piracy issue within an historical context. Second, to examine how the piracy situation in recent years has evolved off the Horn of Africa. Third, to assess the strengths and weaknesses of the proposals that have been advanced to address the Somali piracy issue. Fourth, to propose a way forward for making the Somali piracy issue a more manageable risk.

1.  Piracy Then and Now

Reports of piracy can be traced back to the earliest days of recorded history. In 700 B.C., Homer described early raids on coastal communities by pirates in the Iliad and Odyssey. In 150 B.C., Sicilian pirates controlled much of the eastern Mediterranean Sea. Rome, which was consumed by civil wars at the time, was incapable of curtailing the threat until 67 B.C., when Pompey led a successful naval expedition to crush the Sicilian pirates.

After the collapse of the Roman Empire, pirates once again besieged the trade routes through the Mediterranean. In the 8^th century Vikings from northern Europe routinely conducted raids along the coastal areas in North America, Europe, the Mediterranean, North Africa, and along inland waterways including the Volga River. Captives from local populations were often taken as slaves and sold.

During the 17^th and early 18^th centuries, piracy had something of a heyday. Pirates operated in the Red Sea attacked ships belonging to the Dutch, French, and British East India Companies. As the Netherlands, Great Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, and Denmark raced to create far-flung colonies, they issued letters of marque, authorizing attacks on the shipping of their enemies by privateers who were allowed to profit from the captured cargo. The Caribbean played host to the famed pirate captains Edward Teach, Henry Morgan, Mary Read, and Bartholomew Roberts. In the Far East, Filipino, Malay, and Chinese pirates plied the Malay Archipelago and the South China Sea by the thousands. Along the North African coastline, hundreds of sailing vessels accosted European vessels, seizing cargo and kidnapping the passengers and crews for ransom, or selling them into slavery.

Piracy entered a period of decline when Great Britain decided that it was disruptive to maintaining its increasingly sprawling empire. With a large navy to police global sea lanes, throughout the 18^th century, pirates were increasingly hunted down, arrested, and often summarily hung. [2] But pirate ships and crews from the North African states of Tripoli, Tunis, Morocco, and Algiers (the Barbary Coast) continued to capture the merchant ships of lesser powers including those of the young American republic. In 1800, the United States was paying about 20 percent of total federal revenues to the Barbary States, as ransom and tribute. [3] It was the threat of piracy to American shipping interests in the Mediterranean that led to the creation of the U.S. Navy in 1794 and ultimately the invasion of Tripoli by U.S. Marines in 1805.

Pirates continued to operate off the coast of China in the early 1800s, from bases in what is now Fujian and Guandong provinces. These pirate operations were finally suppressed in 1820 by a revitalized Chinese navy, that joined with other navies throughout the 19^th Century in eliminating havens for pirates that threaten the flow of commerce.

In modern times, piracy is enjoying something of a renaissance for three reasons. First, there are a number of weak or failed coastal states that can serve as a sanctuary from which pirates can operate. Somalia, Nigeria and Bangladesh, some of the most active pirate hotspots [4] , also rank highly on the Failed States Index, all within the highest quintile.[5]

Second, there is more shipping to target. Ships carry 90-percent of world trade by tonnage which is loaded and offloaded at over 6,500 marine terminals around the globe. [6] While modern ocean-going vessels dwarf in size those of just a generation ago, they are outfitted with technologies that allow them to be managed by small crews. Commercial vessels the size of an aircraft carrier often carry as few as two dozen sailors. Like an iceberg, fully-loaded oil tankers and bulk carriers ride low to the water with the bulk of the mass beneath the surface. Since the height of the vessel relative to the water is relatively low, these ships are vulnerable to being boarded by a small boat with a handful of men who can cast a grappling hook with a line or use a ladder to quickly scamper aboard before they can be intercepted by the crew. And while the amount of shipping has been growing, the routes along which much of it moves is dictated by geography which funnels the bulk of that traffic through a few chock-points like the Suez Canal, Bab el Mandab in Gulf of Aden, the Straits of Malacca, the Panama Canal, and the Strait of Hormuz providing a steady supply of potential targets to be attacked. [7]

Third, the downside risk of attacking a modern merchant marine ship has been declining. The vast majority of the world’s merchant marine sail under so-called “flags of convenience” such as Panama, Liberia, and the Marshall Islands and are manned by sailors primarily from the Philippines, Indonesia, and India. [8] These countries possess no real means to provide protection for the ships and crews that sail the world’s oceans. The owners, marine underwriters, and insurers of the ship and its cargo are rarely from the same nation the ship is registered under. Their interests are fundamentally commercial.

Not surprisingly, pirates are capitalizing on this situation. Some are engaged in hit-and-run style assaults against ships in harbor, typically targeting cash and other things of value that can be carried away. Others board and rob ships transiting on the high seas then escape back into small boats with their loot. Then there are attacks where the pirates actually seize control of the vessel, killing the crew or holding them as hostages. [9]

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, there was a sharp rise in the incidence of ship theft in the Southeast Asian region that extends to the South China Sea in the north and Indonesia in the south. [10] The region contains the most heavily trafficked sea lane in the world - the Malacca Strait. Approximately fifty thousand ships pass through the strait each year carrying one quarter of the world's sea trade. [11] Over 80 percent of Japan's oil transits through the Malacca Strait. [12] Armed pirates would chase a vessel in small boats, scramble aboard, and commandeer the entire vessel. The prize they were seeking was the cargo and sometimes the ship itself. The crew members were generally seen as expendable so these attacks often resulted in loss of life.

The region responded with a series of initiatives aimed at promoting cooperation against piracy. In 2004, Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore began joint sea patrols followed by air patrols in 2005. In 2006, the Regional Agreement on Combating Piracy and Armed Robbery took effect. The agreement, signed by 14 Asian nations, established a piracy Information Sharing Center in Singapore and established a framework for cooperation against piracy. Though piracy has not been eliminated in Southeast Asia, multilateral efforts have helped significantly reduce its scale. [13]

2.  Somalia Piracy

In Southeast Asia, the governments in the region demonstrated both the will and the capacity to work together to rein in the piracy scourge. In East Africa and around the Gulf of Aden, regional players have made similar multilateral attempts to stem the growth of piracy. In 2009, 17 regional governments signed onto the Djibouti Code of Conduct, a protocol for information sharing and cooperation against piracy similar to Southeast Asia’s ReCAAP treaty. [14] Unfortunately, the lack of maritime capacity among Somalia’s neighbors has limited their ability to translate regional cooperation into an effective check on piracy.

Somalia’s strategic location and unique geography have also made it nearly ideal for piracy to take root and prosper. Off the Somali coast lays one of world’s busiest shipping lanes, where vessels transit to and from the Mediterranean Sea via the Suez Canal. Each year around 20,000 ships pass through these waters which are 18 miles at its narrowest point. [15] Many of these ships are carrying the oil that supports the energy needs of the global economy. On any given day, an average of 3.3 million barrels of oil passes through the Gulf of Aden[16], or approximately seven percent of the world’s daily consumption. [17]

Somalia has a total of 2,050 miles of coastline of which over 1,200 miles face the Indian Ocean and over 800 miles face the Gulf of Aden. [18] It is one of the world’s poorest countries. For nearly two decades it has been engulfed in a civil war which has left it without an effective central government to enforce the rule of law.

But Somalia also has an ample supply of capable mariners, descended from generations of coastal fishermen. The continental shelf that lies off this poor nation’s coast line provides relatively shallow water that is rich in phytoplankton and zooplankton which have historically supported large fishing stocks. Many native Somalis, primarily from the Puntland State, have earned their livelihood by fishing these waters. During the 1980s, there was a network of some 50 villages for which fishing supported approximately 8,000 families. By in large, this fishery activity was carried out using motorized fishing crafts and canoes generally under 10 m in length. [19]

From 1969 to 1991, Somalia was ruled by the military dictator, Mohammed Siad Barre who allowed foreign fishing fleets to operate in Somali waters in return for licensing fees. A small coast guard was maintained to regulate them. [20] However, by the mid-1990s with the collapse of the central government, these patrols came to an end. Foreign fishing firms continued to fish and there were growing incidences of poaching and overfishing. By one international estimate, Somalia was losing tens of millions of dollars annually to illegal fishing. [21] In response, some Somali sailors took matters into their own hands, arming themselves and creating something of a clan-based coast guard militia to go after vessels entering into Somali waters. [22] These quasi-militias ultimately devolved into outright pirates operating from the ports of Bosaco, Qandal, Caluuula, Bargall, Hobyo, Garad, and Mogadishu. [23] Many of these pirates are young men between the ages of 20-35 years old. [24]

By one estimate, when the weather can support small boat operations, up to 1,500 pirates are out hunting for ships on any given day. [25] The favored targets are slow moving vessels with speeds of less than 15 knots and are low to the water. [26] These vessels are relatively easy to board. The pirates objective is not steal the cargo, but to hold the ship and its sailors hostage for ransom. As such, they generally eschew acts of violence beyond what it takes to intimidate the master and crew to surrender control of the vessel. [27]

At first glance, Somali pirate operations may appear to be relatively primitive. Attacks are launched from skiffs with outboard motors and may involve using a wooden pole, ladder, or line that is modified to grasp a lifeline or deck fitting. The pirates then scramble aboard vessel, round up the crew at gunpoint, and seize control of the vessel. [28] Once the attack is underway, it may take as little as 15 minutes from beginning to end to execute. [29]

The simple nature of the attack belies an increasingly sophisticated financial, logistical, and organizational infrastructure to support these operations. An attack typically involves several skiffs who swarm the vessels on both sides making it difficult for a small merchant marine crew to successfully fend off all the pirates. Because the targeted ships are often transiting hundreds of miles from shore, the skiffs and their crews need to be supported and resupplied by a larger vessel that serves as a mothership. [30] The boats are usually outfitted with satellite phones, sophisticated navigation technology, and weapons that are costly. As a result, these ventures necessarily involve investors who provide the upfront capital. [31]

When pirates succeed at gaining control of a vessel from its crew, they sail it back to a Somali port where an intermediary begins the process of negotiating a ransom from the ship owner and the insurance underwriter. [32] Typically negotiations last several weeks at the conclusion of which a middleman may receive a cash payment in a neutral location such as Dubai or it is delivered by boats or air drop by a security contractor. [33] Once the ransom is received, the pirates will be contacted to release the vessel and crew.

A successful attack of a large merchant ship typically yields payoffs of $1-2 million. [34] Estimates of total ransom paid to Somali pirates in 2008 was between $50 million to $130 million. [35] Roughly one-fifth of the profits from successful attacks are returned to the investors, one-fifth is reinvested in future operations, and thirty percent of the profits go to paying bribes. The remaining one-third is then divided among the dozens of pirates who support and carry out the operations. [36]

Somali pirates have attracted considerable international attention largely because of several high profile attacks. One of particular note was the assault on the 10,000-ton luxury cruise liner Seabourn Spirit on November 5, 2005. The cruise ship was bound for Kenya when it was attacked 100 miles off the coast of Somalia with rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) and automatic weapons. [37] The crew was able to use a “Long Range Acoustic Device” that created a painfully noisy sound wave to hold the pirates at bay long enough for the ship to pick up speed and ultimately escape. [38] With 161 passengers and 151 crew onboard, the potential danger the attack posed to so many individuals set off alarms in many of the world’s capitals. [39]

In September 2008, pirates successfully seized the Ukranian ship Faina and its cargo of 33 T-72 tanks. The ship and its 20 crew members were held for ransom. [40] Then two months later the massive 318,000-ton Saudi-owned oil tanker Sirius Star and its cargo of 2 million barrels of oil valued at $100 million was seized along with the 25-member crew. [41] The tanker was taken 420 miles from the African coast and held for two months before a reported ransom of $3.2 million was paid and it was released. [42]

Most famously was the April 9, 2009 assault on the 17,000-ton U.S. flagged cargo ship, Maersk Alabama. The attack took place 240 nautical miles southeast of the Somalia port city of Eyl will en route to Mombasa, Kenya with relieve supplies for Kenya, Uganda, Somalia. After four pirates successfully boarded the vessel, the ship’s captain, Richard Phillips persuaded the pirates to take him hostage and leave his crew unharmed. The pirates agreed and took Captain Phillips aboard the ship’s lifeboat for the return trip to Somalia, asking for a $2 million ransom. The lifeboat was pursued by the US destroyer Bainbridge that tried to convince the pirates to surrender. The pirates repeatedly threatened to take the captain’s life setting up a confrontation that ended when U.S. Navy SEALS sharpshooters aboard the Bainbridge shot and killed 3 of the pirates. [43]

The media reporting surrounding the kidnapping and rescue of Richard Phillips captivated the attention of the American public and elevated the long-simmering piracy problem into a major political issue in Washington. The attack took place just 79 days after the start of the Obama Administration. The possibility of an American being held hostage in Somalia resurrected memories of the captive U.S. servicemen during the failed U.S. intervention effort in Mogadishu during the first term of the Clinton administration. Had the pirates been able to reach the Somali coast, the incident would have fueled the impression of presidential weakness as the world’s most powerful navy was shown to be impotent in the face of a few young Somali men. The circumstances that led to a successful outcome in this instance will almost certainly not be replicated. Worried that they did not have enough fuel in the lifeboat to make it ashore, the pirates allowed themselves to be towed by the Bainbridge. The destroyer’s crew then slowly drew the tow line in so the lifeboat was close enough that the sharpshooters could be confident of their shots without putting the Phillips at risk. Future pirates will not make the same mistake again.

Table 1*




Table 2**

*Source: “Piracy and Armed Robbery Against Ships Annual Report: 1 January 2008 – 31 December 2008,” ICC International Maritime Bureau, January 2009 and “Piracy and Armed Robbery Against Ships Annual Report: 1 January 2009 – 31 December 2009,” ICC International Maritime Bureau, January 2010

** “Success” is defined as pirates’ability to board a ship.

3.  Options for Managing Somali Piracy

The range of prescriptions for addressing Somali piracy generally falls into three categories. First, is an indirect approach which views piracy as a subset of the larger challenge of stabilizing the Somali state. Second are government-centric efforts to apprehend the pirates. Third are maritime industry-centric defensive measures. In general, governments have been calling for industry to play a larger role in protecting themselves while industry has been insisting that governments do more to address piracy in the region. Advocates for a more assertive international intervention into Somalia often leverage the piracy issue to make their case.

a.  Fix Somalia

On its face, linking the piracy to the broader enterprise of addressing the deeply dysfunctional condition of the Somali state seems straightforward. The logic is essentially this: there was no real piracy threat before the collapse of the Siad Barre regime in 1991; after civil war broke out, piracy became an issue; restore governance and order to Somalia and the pirates will no longer have a safe haven.

There is little question that pirates have benefited from disorder in Somalia. But the prospect for bringing stability to that war torn and desperate nation is not good. As Council on Foreign Relations President Richard Haass noted in the forward of a March 2010 Special Report on Somalia, “Even among failed states—those countries unable to exercise authority over their territory and provide the basic services to their people—Somalia stands apart.” [44] All of the international attempts over the past two decades to bring about the creation of a viable central government capable of exercising control over the competing clans in Somalia have failed. The Transitional Federal Government formed in 2004 has been unable to provide even the most rudimentary services to this beleaguered country. As a result Mogadishu is a capital in name only. Even the nominal security that exists there is provided not by government forces but by a weak African Union peacekeeping force.

Somalia remains desperately poor. Forty percent of Somalis live in extreme poverty (less than a dollar a day) and almost 75 percent of households subsist on less than $2 a day. Nearly two-thirds of all young people in Somalia are unemployed, more than one in ten children die before reaching the age of five, and 40 percent of Somalis are illiterate. [45] An estimated 3.2 million Somalis now rely on international food assistance to survive. [46] In short, there is no shortage of potential recruits to be drawn into the piracy trade.

Power is dispersed among Somali clans and opposition groups that have no shared interest in national governance. Large parts of southern Somalia remain under control of the Shabaab, a militant Islamist group which has aroused considerable concern by the United States and other western powers. The fear is that Shabaab will provide a safe haven for al-Qaeda training camps for terrorist who will launch attacks in the region and beyond. But Somalia’s Muslim community is diverse and has been largely unwilling to defer to the leadership of a radicalized group. As a result, the Shabaab’s hold over territory is relatively weak and even within Shabaab there are considerable fissures. [47]

In short, Somalia is a truly desperate country for which there is no near term or medium prospect for a turn around. Any nation-building effort would be prolonged, problematic, and expensive. There is little evidence that the United States and Europe would be willing to invest in the considerable resources that such a campaign would require. Counter-insurgency efforts that are undertaken in absence of a broader development strategy will only incite further anti-Western sentiments within the region, bolstering the recruitment of al-Qaeda affiliated groups or potentially strengthening the hand of clans with the closest ties to pirate networks. It will also be extremely difficult to for external actors to decipher which clans serve as a useful buffer against extremist groups and which actors are aiding and abetting them.

In the end, Somalia will continue to operate as a weak, poverty-ridden, decentralized state built around localized powerbases for the foreseeable future. Pirates will be in a position to capitalize on this political and economic instability to establish and maintain bases for their operations.

b.  Reroute ships

Redirecting shipping traffic away the Horn of Africa would clearly deprive Somali-based pirates of potential targets. But such a measure would dramatically alter the flow of global shipping and would carry a steep price tag. Since its opening in 1869, the 119-mile long Suez Canal has provided an alternative to the long and at times perilous journey around the southern tip of Africa via the Cape of Good Hope. Were a ship that originated from Saudi Arabia and destined for North America transit around the Cape of Good Hope instead of via the Suez Canal, it would add 2,700 miles to the voyage. That is the equivalent of driving nearly coast to coast in the United States. According to the U.S. Maritime Administration, this added distance would add $3.5 million to the fuel cost of voyage each year. The added cost would be considerable higher for European traffic steaming to the Far East. Going around Africa instead of through the Mediterranean Sea would raise the annual cost by as much as $90 million and add nearly 6 days to each transit. In addition, because of this extra time involved with a longer trade route, an ocean carrier that maintains a scheduled delivery service would need to increase the size of their fleet to make up for the shortfall in annual cargo capacity. [48]

Egypt would be the biggest loser should traffic be routinely diverted from the Suez Canal. With an average toll of $250,000 per ship, the Canal is a major source of foreign currency for Egypt, behind only receipts from tourism and remittances. In 2008, fees from ships using the canal totaled $5 billion dollars. These fees are used by the Egyptian government to subsidize such staples as bread for Egypt’s impoverished masses. [49] With a GDP of $443 billion in 2008 and a population of over 77 million, Egypt is one of the poorest countries in the Middle East. The loss of Canal revenues would add to an already severely stressed Egyptian economy at a time when it may soon be facing a presidential transition challenge. [50]

c.  Arm merchant ships

When it comes to protecting a modern ship from waterborne pirates, it would seem that there is a simple and an age-old solution: shoot back. This can take one of two approaches. First is to arm the crew. Second is to hire private armed guards. Unfortunately, as with nearly everything associated with the maritime industry, what on its face seems simple, turns out to be very complex.

Arming a crew faces a number of hurdles, the most significant being that most countries, the United Nations International Maritime Organization, and insurance providers discourage the arming of seafarers. There is no international legal or policy framework to guide merchant mariners and insurance interests on this issue. Some countries have explicit legal prohibitions against commercial vessels entering their territorial waters with firearms. If firearms are found upon arrival, the owners, masters, and crews are subject to criminal sanctions and the vessels to detention and fines. With current international and industry guidance uniformly discouraging the private carriage of firearms by vessels, if a sailor was injured in a firefight with pirates, the ship owner could face civil or even criminal liability under the laws of the vessel�fs flag state, the country of which the injured seafarer is a national, and the country in whose territorial waters the incident takes place. Even injuries or deaths of the would-be pirates could expose shipowners and the master of the vessel to sanctions should the victims or their families claim they were merely fishermen or otherwise wrongly attacked. Finally, the absence of legal and operational certainty may translate into the resulting liability being uninsured. Current insurance coverage in the face of acts of piracy could be denied if a ship owner places firearms onboard a vessel against international and industry recommendations, or if the ship owner is determined to have failed to satisfy the standards of care with regard to the carriage and use of weapons. [51]

Even if these liability issues are overcome by diplomatic, legislative, regulatory and industry actions, there are some practical issues associated with arming the crew. First is the sheer size of a modern vessel and their small crews. A large oil tanker can be the size of three football fields which is large area for a handful of seafarers to successfully protect in the face of a determined assault by pirates. Second, is the challenge of providing crew training to safely and expertly handle firearms and keeping those skills honed. Third, the crew must be willing to accept the danger of fighting the pirates even though they know that Somali pirates have historically treated their hostages well and that ship owners are obligated to pay them for their time that they are detained.

Given the challenges associated with arming seafarers, the U.S. Department of Defense has been an advocate for the shipping industry hiring armed contracted security teams. But hiring armed teams does not resolve the liability issues for ship owners. Because of these issues and the risk that such teams may end up escalating piracy violence leading to injuries or deaths, underwriters might actually charge more for insuring vessels that carry armed security teams than for those vessels that do not. [52]

Even if insurers were willing to reward ship owners with lower premiums for vessels that carried armed crews, they can only marginally offset the cost of a security contract. Typically these contracts involve a 10-day minimum engagement that starts with flying security contractors and their equipment to meet the vessel at a port outside the danger zone, the transit through the dangerous area, and disembarking the team at the end of the voyage. While the piracy drove up insurance rates to $20,000 per voyage in 2009, Western security contractors typically charge a shipping company as much as $50,000 to $100,000 for a single voyage or $300,000 to $600,000 per year. [53] But insurers have raised concerns about the standards, rules, and vetting of security firms and the associated liability implications. [54]

d.  Adopt non-lethal defenses

According to the U.S. Department of Defense, 78 percent of the attacks on shipping where the pirates were unsuccessful in seizing control of a vessel were as a result of actions taken by the crews of the ships under attack. [55] Ships that were seized by pirates typically had five vulnerabilities. First, they operated at a slow speed, usually below 15 knots. Second, their main deck was low to the water. Third, the captain and crew aboard the merchant vessel did not have the plans and procedures in place or did not train in advance to repel an attack. Last, the vessel did not have an adequate lookout to sound an alarm of an unfolding attack in time to mobilize a timely response. [56]

Pirate skiffs operate at speeds of 25 knots and often carry out attacks at first light and last light.
The pirates typically use small arms fire and Rocket Propelled Grenades (RPG) in order to try and intimidate a vessel to reduce speed so that it can be boarded. But if the vessel is operating at full sea speed, it can generally outrun a pirate skiff. Wind and sea state can be a very effective ally in assuring a safe journey. Pirates are not able to operate skiffs at sufficient speeds when the wind strength is above 18 knots and wave heights are above 7 feet.

Ships transiting the Gulf of Aden and the northwest Indian Ocean can benefit by maintaining contact with the UK Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO Dubai) office in Dubai and providing positioning and intended journey information. By monitoring the position of merchant ships, UKMTO can provide early warning to vessels of suspected or actual piracy activity in their vicinity.

Ships can institute a number of self-protection measures which have been found to be helpful in deterring and preventing attacks. First, they can review their anti-piracy plan, briefed crew members on their duties, sound the alarm and drill the response to a piracy attack. Next, they can post additional lookouts for detecting potential pirate activity within their transit area. Additionally, they can remove external ladders and lines, install barriers such as barbed wire and fencing on the main deck, and secure hatches to limit access to crew and control spaces to make it more difficult for pirates to board and take control of the vessel. At night, ships should limit their lighting so that are more difficult to detect from a distance. Captains should vary their routes, maintain good communications with maritime security authorities, and have pre-prepared messages that they can transmit in an emergency. Ship can also institute active defense measures ranging from rigging fire hoses and activating noise devices to repel boarders. Finally, ships can establish a safe room to protect crew members while they await external naval assistance in the event pirates succeed at getting onboard.

e.  Provide naval escorts

During World War II when merchant shipping was targeted by German submarines, convoys were created to protect them. The concept was a simple one. Ships would be assembled at a common gathering point and transit en masse flanked by armed naval vessels who would respond to any attacks that might occur throughout the transit.

Replicating the convoy approach for vessels transiting the Gulf of Aden and the northwestern Indian Ocean has not been well supported by the shipping industry and the U.S. Defense Department. Ship owners worry about the delays associated with assembling a convoy and the fact that it can make the transit only as fast as the slowest vessel. The Pentagon worries that convoys would place an enormous demand on the limited number of naval ships and personnel it has available to operate in the region. The U.S. Navy argues that providing convoys would likely come at the expense of carrying out other counter-piracy patrols and that ship security should be the responsibility of ship owners. [57]

But Canada, NATO, and European Union naval forces have been providing escorts for humanitarian assistance destine to the Horn of Africa, arranging the groups for transits based on speed. [58] The food relief shipments and humanitarian supplies support an estimated 3.2 million people or roughly one-third of the Somali population. [59] Both Russia and China routinely provide naval escorts for vessels operating off of Somalia. [60]Between December 2008 and November 2009, Chinese naval vessels provide protection for 1,110 merchant ships. [61] The United States could clearly do the same for U.S. flag vessels that number less than one per day. [62]

f.  Attack the pirates:

The international community has built a naval presence in the region to respond to the piracy threat. The Contact Group for Piracy off the Coast of Somalia was created in New York City on January 14, 2009 under United Nations Security Council Resolution 1851. It currently numbers 28 nations Australia, Belgium, China, Denmark, Djibouti, Egypt, France, Germany, Greece, India, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Republic of Korea, The Netherlands, Norway, Oman, Portugal, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Somalia TFG, Sweden, Spain, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States, and Yemen), and 6 international organizations (African Union, Arab League, European Union, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, United Nations Secretariat and International Maritime Organization). [63] The European Union maintains a dedicated naval effort called Operation Atalanta. Collectively, at any given time more than 30 naval vessels to patrol the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean for pirates. These combined maritime forces also send representative to monthly Shared Awareness and Deconfliction (SHADE) meetings in Bahrain to plan a coordinated effort. [64]

Despite this naval presence in the region, Somali pirates are capable of operating in an area of more than a million square nautical miles and their vessels often can be hidden in plain sight by blending into ordinary shipping. This creates a serious patrol challenge. Further, since executing an attack can be done in as little as 15 minutes, getting naval or law enforcement assets on scene in time to prevent a ship and crew from being captured is difficult if those assets are some distance away.

4.  The Way Forward

In theory, the most effective way to end the Somali piracy scourge would be to deny pirates the safe haven that two decades of chronic instability has provided. However, it will take many years to overcome the myriad issues associated with a civil war that has destroyed its institutions and has torn asunder its social fabric. Somalia has no effective central government, is embroiled in crime, plagued by ethnic and tribal conflict, and suffers from endemic corruption. While efforts should continue to be made to address these chronic problems, anti-piracy efforts should not be anchored to them. Indeed, to take a linear approach that makes the goal of rescuing Somalia from its failed-state status the prerequisite to resolving the piracy issue is to effectively provide the pirates something of a free hand in interim.

The best way forward for managing the Somali pirate problem is to pursue close international and industry collaboration on a “Swiss-Army knife” or multi-tool approach to confronting piracy at sea. The goal should be to discourage investment in piracy by elevating the risk of losses for current and would-be investors and reducing the prospects for their gains. While there is a seemingly abundant supply of would-be Somali pirates, those pirates are not able to operate at long distances from shore without the substantial resources it takes to run a mother-ship and support eight to twelve pirates at sea for extended periods of time. Pirates need boats, fuel, food, water, technology, weapons, and ammunition. The standard payoff formula divides the profits derived from paid ransoms roughly three ways: one third to the pirates, one third to suppliers and corrupt officials, and one third for the investors. The overhead expenses associated with supporting piracy operations eat into profits when the number of successful attacks that yield ransoms drop off. The interception and confiscation of piracy assets at sea is another direct cost. While pirates may try to make up for their losses by attempting to extract higher ransoms, if successful hijackings of a vessel become akin to winning the lottery, at some point investors will start looking for opportunities that have the potential to yield a better return.

In 2009, only 22 percent of attempted attacks on vessels succeeded in hijacking those vessels. One year before the success rate was 40 percent. This decline makes clear that Somali pirates are not ten-feet tall. Non-violent defenses that make it difficult for pirates to intercept and board a vessel are often effective. Vessels capable of operating at speeds of 25 knots are difficult to intercept with a small boat. If potential pirates are detected early enough (at ranges of 5 miles or more) a modern merchant ship can almost always out run them. When wind conditions produce rough seas, skiffs have to operate at lower speeds. Providing training to merchant vessels on the most effective defensive tactics, techniques, and procedures is a relatively low-cost effort that can pay big dividends.

A second helpful anti-piracy tool is for naval forces assigned to the region to aggressively go after the motherships that support attacks well offshore. While it hardly ideal, captured pirates could be simply released once they are returned to shore. Given the almost limitless potential supply of Somali pirates, arrests and prosecutions should be secondary to the tactical goal of confiscating the tools of their trade. Capturing these assets should be the priority since it imposes significant direct losses to piracy investors.

For slower, low-lying, and more vulnerable vessels transiting the Gulf of Aden, a system of naval convoys should be considered as an option to drive down the number of successful attacks. The majority of the fifty vessels per day that typically transit the Gulf of Aden, are not attractive targets for pirates because of the high speeds they can maintain and the height of their decks above water. These vessels should be allowed to make transits without being escorted. Two times a day, convoys through the Gulf of Aden could be organized for the relatively small number of vessels that operate at slower speeds. The escort could be provided by small boats much like the way the U.S. Coast Guard routinely provides security for LNG shipments arriving in Boston, Massachusetts. These small boats and their crews could be supported by three naval vessels positioned on either side of the Gulf and near the middle of the transit route. The ships would have helicopters that could be launched to provide back-up support should the pirates try and penetrate the convoy. Similar convoys should be routinely provided for the humanitarian cargoes that support foreign relief assistance that is shipped to the Horn of Africa, including Djibouti and Somalia and other countries in East Africa or South Asia.

Individually and collectively these sea-based counter-piracy efforts will not always be successful. However, they can achieve the goal or limiting piracy to a localized coastal threat. By eroding the return on investment for those who finance pirate operations further from shore, the potential threat to global shipping that transits the major shipping lanes in the Indian Ocean can be substantially reduced. In the interim, the long-term effort the stabilize Somali and reintroduce the rule of law can proceed.

For the foreseeable future, piracy will remain one of the hazards that the international community and maritime industry will have to manage. The approaches to dealing with the piracy threat will require an ongoing commitment to confront it and must be tailored to the local and regional environment in which it manifest itself. As the threat evolves, the tactics used to address it must also evolve. While the goal of eradicating piracy will always be illusive, much more can and should be done to address it.

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