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Shippers want more help vs. hijackers

Merchant shippers increased their appeals to the world’s navies in early December after another escalation in pirate attacks off the Horn of Africa. The U.N. Security Council responded Dec. 2 by passing a resolution that supported counterpiracy missions, but its real-world effects remain unclear.

The same day, a swarm of 12 to 20 small pirate boats attacked a group of five cargo vessels running in an informal convoy. Merchant sailors were trying to repel the pirates with fire hoses when the Italian destroyer Luigi Durand de la Penne rushed to their aid and scattered the attackers.

Within the preceding week, pirates chased and fired on two cruise ships packed with vacationers as they passed off the Somali coast.

“We are fighting with our backs to the wall,” said Per Gullestrup, CEO of Danish ship owner Clipper Projects.

Nikos Tzanetakos, an officer aboard the Greek tanker Ellivita, told the Reuters news service Dec. 2 that the Gulf of Aden has become a “route of terror.”

One of Gullestrup’s ships, the bulk cargo carrier CEC Future, was hijacked Nov. 7 and remains in pirate hands with its crew. Pirates in small boats later accosted the Ellivita, but when its crew put up a sign warning that it was protected by “high-voltage cables,” they broke off their attack, Tzanetakos said.

Shippers are fed up, Gullestrup told Navy Times. He urged the U.S. and European governments to step up their efforts to guard the thousands of merchant vessels that pass each year through the Gulf of Aden. To prevent more hijackings, Gullestrup said he wants the U.S. and world navies to form more convoys, station armed sailors aboard civilian vessels and sink the “mother ships” from which pirates launch their attacks.

He rejected the notion that shippers would rather take their chances with pirate attacks off Somalia than risk delays to meet prearranged military escorts. If coalition navies ran more regularly scheduled convoys up and down the Horn of Africa, Gullestrup said, his ships would alter their schedules to meet them.

Navy officials have said their ships can’t be everywhere at once and have called on commercial shippers to take on security detachments, among other measures.

Varied approaches to safety

Much of shipping industry is changing its behavior to deal with the rash of attacks off the lawless Somali coast. The maritime newspaper Lloyd’s List reported Dec. 3 that ship owners in London were considering changing the registries of their ships, either to their own nations or to those with navies patrolling off Somalia.

For example, a Finnish-owned tanker might fly the flag of Finland, rather than its normal “flag of convenience,” such as Panama, so the ship could appeal for help from a warship belonging to the European Union. Naval patrols should theoretically respond to distress calls from any ship, no matter its flag, but owners are betting they’ll get an edge by flying European flags. France, which has ordered two missions to rescue French captives from pirates, likely will be a popular choice for a new flag, according to Lloyd’s List.

Still, not every firm in the very heterogeneous shipping world is changing its policies or appealing for help. B.J. Talley, a spokesman for Maersk Line Ltd., the largest operator of U.S.-flagged cargo ships, said his company’s container ships are fast enough and have high enough freeboards to be less vulnerable to hijackings. Fast, modern container ships have so far been mostly immune from attacks off Somalia.

On the other hand, company officials at the parent Maersk line, based in Denmark, haven’t decided what to do about their fleet of international-flagged tankers, spokeswoman Mary Ann Kotlarich said. Those slower, low-freeboard ships probably will either wait for a navy escort or take the long way around the southern tip of Africa, she said, which is safer but adds time and expense.

A few international navies in early December announced they would join or step up their participation in the fight against piracy. At the same time as the passage of the U.N. resolution, a squadron of four European ships was dispatched to the Horn of Africa, and a top Chinese admiral said he thought the People’s Liberation Army Navy should send a ship to protect Chinese-flagged traffic off Somalia.

As for the U.S., Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead told a naval conference in Chile on Dec. 2 that he didn’t believe the Navy should change its normal operations in the area. He repeated that U.S. warships couldn’t be everywhere and that civilian mariners had an obligation to protect themselves — especially, he acknowledged, since the danger seemed to be worsening.

“Enemies to peace and free trade — such as pirates, illegal traffickers and terrorist groups — grow more sophisticated every day and have become more dispersed around the world,” Roughead said.

Consequence delivery

Gullestrup told Navy Times he thought the U.N. resolution was a step in the right direction because the international warships stationed off Somalia needed a formal mandate to chase pirates. They also need new strategies for protecting merchant vessels, he said.

“The current regimen doesn’t work,” he said. “Just patrolling doesn’t work, as long as ships keep getting hijacked. It seems to us, if we could use our assets better, we could improve the immediate security position.”

Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Thad Allen also praised the U.N. Security Council resolution as a step forward.

Allen told Navy Times that he thought the world needed to create a “consequence delivery regime” — in which pirates could be apprehended, tried and sentenced — to dissuade further hijackings. Before any attacks take place, governments must agree on who will hold pirates taken captive, what evidence can be used to prosecute them and who will carry out their sentences, Allen said.

The Security Council resolution moved toward that goal by invoking a 1988 regulation, the United Nations Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Acts against the Safety of Maritime Navigation. Passed after the hijacking of the cruise ship Achille Lauro, the law sets down rules by which member nations can prosecute people for crimes on the high seas. Almost all the hijackings in the Gulf of Aden fall under this rule, Allen wrote on his official blog.

But it could take weeks for the resolution to pay off in the sea lanes off Somalia, where, as Roughead repeated, commanders say there is just too much water for them to watch at once. And the U.N. maritime safety rule was written with the assumption that high-seas criminals would be taken to the authorities of the nearest coastal nation and then extradited to the government whose ship was involved in the crime. But Somalia has no functioning central government — one reason piracy has exploded in the area.

When allied ships do get a chance to nab pirates, they don’t always take it: The captain of the Danish frigate Absalon complained Dec. 3 to Danish reporters aboard his ship that he hadn’t received permission from U.S. commanders to bring aboard eight pirates after they tried to board a merchant vessel. Danish TV showed Danish sailors interrogating the pirates with a Long Range Acoustic Device, then letting the pirates go.