The Death of a Pirate

Reactions to the death of the pirate, killed by armed privately hired security guards while defending the Almeezan, vary from a staunch anti-criminal response of “He's had his just deserts” to sympathy for the pirates' predicament that piracy is the only avaiable means of earning their living, albeit in an illegal manner, and so mourning this individual's untimely death.

The attack took place on Tuesday 23rd March in the Indian Ocean closer to the Indian shoreline than that of Somalia.  The Al Meezan, a Panamiana flagged, UAE owned cargo ship, had transitted the IRTC  successfully but the pirates came at her twice using sufficient force to justify armed defence by the guards during which one of the pirates was shot and killed.  Until now, pirates have not set out to kill ships' crews.  A dead crew memeber is worthess in financial terms whereas a live one can be ransomed.  Neither have the various counter-piracy forces aimed to kill the pirates.  This was an accident which occurred in defence.  However, the net result remains one dead man.

To assess the change of scene in the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean, let us go back to March 24th 2009 when five ships arrived in the Gulf of Aden to head NATO's counterpiracy “Operation Allied Protector”. 22,000 ships transit the Gulf of Aden annually, making up 90% of the world's trade transported by sea, with 50% of the world's containers passing through the Inidan Ocean.   In August last year “Operation Ocean Shield” was launched as an enhanced counter-piracy campaign and this has just been extended to 2012.

Now, according to Thomas Countryman, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in the US State Department’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, “more than 20 nations…(are)… maintaining an international naval force in the Gulf of Aden. On any given day there is an average of about 17 naval ships on patrol in the Gulf of Aden. They have created an internationally recognized transit corridor that provides security for about 30,000 cargo ships that transit that corridor every year.”  This is an astonishing league of differing nations and a diplomatic triumph.  As Countryman put it at the Foreign Press Centre in Washington on March 19th:  “we have melded U.S., European Union, NATO and a number of ships from other countries, including from Russia, China, South Korea and Japan, that work together not under a unified international command but with a shared awareness and deconfliction system that allows the ships from different countries to work together.”  Countryman was keen to emphasise that the venture is based on coordination not command and as such is “fairly unprecedented.”

This emphasis on international cooperation and use of the word “deconfliction” are indicative of a greater sensitivity being shown to areas of conflict and another reason why last week’s death of a pirate is a backward step in dealing with the Somali pirate issue.  Yes, there has been much more pro-active counter-piracy activity demonstrated towards the Somali pirates in recent months but it has not always been aggressive and certainly not violent.

Statistics show that in 2008 33 hijackings took place.  This figure dropped to 19 in 2009.  As Rear Admiral Hank Ort of the Dutch Navy, and Chief of Staff at NATO in Northwood, UK put it:  “This last year has been a busy one for NATO ships in the region.  We have, together with our maritime partners, actively disrupted and prevented pirate attacks on innocent vessels…  Since the NATO mission began, there has been a significant drop in successful piracy incidents in the Gulf of Aden.”

Alongside the action of capturing pirates and preventing attacks on shipping, NATO is pursuing a different tack, attempting to reassure local shipping that NATO is present to preserve their, the local ships’ safety.  Captain Chris Beesely, Royal Marine, leads boarding parties with the aim of:  “Interacting with local seafarers (which) not only helps encourage them to get back to sea but it also helps us get a better understanding of their pattern of life.  That means we can quickly identify if something is different from the norm and act accordingly.”  The campaign is a mixture of “Hearts and Minds” combined with preventative propaganda. 

A further example of this was the rescue by US McFaul last week of a skiff full of Somali men, women and children who, after four days of being stranded roughly 100 miles from Somalia, had no food and very little water.  The US McFaul catered to the immediate needs of the Somali sailors and families and made plans to return them home. It has to be admitted however, that the US McFaul had first of all ascertained that there were no signs of pirate paraphernalia in the skiff and these people were genuine cases requiring help. As one of the elders in the group, Abdulrahman Ali Barhaaye, said: "We gave up hope until we saw (the US McFaul). We are alive, hopeful, and glad to be here."  Such an incident spreads a huge amount of positive counter-pirate propaganda locally.
 
Thomas Countryman, who shows an acute understanding of the average Somali pirate, made the point “It is not hard in a place like Somalia” (with its lack of government and social and economic chaos ensuing from a political vacuum) “to find young men who are willing to risk their lives in an unfamiliar environment — the sea — in an unfamiliar enterprise — hostage taking for ransom — and who face the risk of violence or being apprehended and put in jail.”  To kill these men achieves nothing except bringing opprobrium on the security forces, be they privately employed or part of the international counter-piracy mission. What is most important, he said, is to distinguish between the young men who go to sea to commit piracy and the crime bosses who make most of the money from piracy.

To the head of the organized crime ring, the young men sent out as pirates to hijack a ship are canon fodder along with the skiffs and the Kalashnikovs they carry. As Countryman said. “The primary profits go back to the individual who has financed the venture. Some of it trickles into the Somali economy. We believe that much more of it floods out of the Somali economy,” to be harvested in the equivalent of the masterminders’ Swiss bank accounts.  The death of the pirate killed by the guards of the Al Meezan will mean nothing to the ringleaders, but it could make the young pirates trigger happy on their next attack.  Already according to Andrew Mwangura , spokesman of the Kenya-based East Africa Seafarers Assistance Programme:  "Captors of the MV Rim (hi-jacked early in February) are … threatening to kill the hostages."  This was announced a few days ago, along with the $3 million ransom demand for the ship and is a disquieting shift in the pirates’ language of ransom demand. 

Fear of an increase of violence from the pirates was articulated by E.J. Hogendoorn, head of the Horn of Africa programme at the International Crisis Group’s office in Nairobi, when commenting about the recent sharp increase in number of pirate attacks and successful hi-jackings in March this year.  He told the Christian Monitor: “This could be the beginning of a violent period. If (the pirates) see guys with shiny barrels pointing at them, they might fire first.”
The International Maritime Bureau is quite clear about its advice to ship owners to use only unarmed guards.  The IMB Code of Best Practice suggests defence by implementation of non-violent measures such as running razor wire around the ship’s hull, blocking gangways and staircases giving access to the ship’s bridge etc.  If force is needed to repel pirate boarders, then fire hoses combined with other non-lethal devices might be used. 

These guidelines are excellent for shipping proceeding at a reasonable pace with sufficient engine power and versatility to outrun the skiffs. Indeed, IMB statistics prove that those vessels carrying out their suggestions and also reporting in to MSCHOA (Maritime Security Centre Horn of Africa) to exchange local intelligence and conditions, are at much less risk than those ships failing to register.  However, there are circumstances when the use of armed guards is the only answer.  Take the case of an oil rig being towed through these pirate-infested waters by two ocean going tugs.  The maximum speed is likely to be in the region of 5.5knots, which renders the oil platform a sitting target.  Such transports are also likely to occur outside the monsoon season when the pirates are at their most active.  EUNAVFOR and NATO warships’ presence will be hugely welcomed but of course these ships cannot crawl along just to guarantee one oil rig’s arrival in South Africa from the Arabian Gulf.  Logistically the Indian Ocean is so immense that 100% policing is impossible.  It is to be hoped that the pirates do not become gun-happy with a disregard for the value of human life.

The question of the pirates’ value of human life has been heightened by the plight of Paul and Rachel Chandler, kidnapped off their yacht in the Indian Ocean last October. Having demanded a ransom in excess of $4 million for the couple, stalemate seems to be the current situation with the Chandlers unable to raise the funds and the pirates needing their costs paid of keeping the Chandlers alive.  It seems their survival still remains a priority with their captors although it would appear they are not as valuable as initially hoped.

However, yachts are vulnerable as they cannot get up enough speed to outrun pirate skiffs.  Orchid, a Yacht Security Firm, and Ecos Risk Management told “The Yacht Report” that roughly between 8 and 10% of the yachts they have transitted through the Indian Ocean, have been attacked since 2008.  Both companies fear that ocean-going yachts may be seen as an increasingly lucrative source.

This was born out in the case of the 60m Lurssen motor yacht Linda Lou yacht in March this year.  Approached by pirates on her way to the Abu Dhabi yacht show, the crew and owners of the Linda Lou were saved by NATO assistance which was near enough to intervene in time.

The Linda Lou was lucky.  The fate of the Chandlers remains uncertain.   Any escalation of arms and resulting deaths is to be resisted but it is hard to see how it can be prevented in the face of the sophisticated weapons wielded by the pirates and the need to defend vessels in this huge area containing some of the world’s busiest shipping lanes.

March 31st  2010