8/6/2019 SomaliPirates
2/5
www.ngoilgasmena.com 39
e lions share of attacks have occurred in the Gulf of Aden o
the Somali coast one of the worlds most important shipping
lanes
with 20,000 vessels passing through annually. ere are also 2.8
mil-
lion square kilometres of water in th is region alone, meaning
shipping
companies and their crews have the daunting prospect of trying
toreact to or predict where and when the pirates strike next. Of
course,
with the Sirius Star ransom being paid so publicly there is the
obvious
concern that handing the pirates millions of dollars to
relinquish con-
trol of a vessel will fuel more attacks and even bigger
wallet-busting
ransoms. Other young men wi ll see the huge money to be made,
round
up a gang, arm themselves to the teeth and jump in a boat.
Kenyas
foreign minister claimed that up until November 2008 the pirates
had
received over US$150 million, which can then be ploughed back
into
purchasing faster boats and increased hardware.
e big ransom payments have fuelled attacks there isnt any
real doubt about that, suggests Roger Middleton, Consultant for
the
Africa Programme at Chatham House formerly the Royal Institute
of
International Aairs. As ransoms go up it becomes a more att
ractive
business for people, but it is a very dicult position for ship
owners
to be in because who wants to be the rst not to pay a ransom,
which
impacts on the safety of your crew? Likewise, Davis is of the
opin-
ion that the pay-os are spiralling out of control. e pirates
keep
pushing, pushing and pushing for as much as they can get and
they
are quite happy to delay and start again. e industry, the
insurance
companies and negotiation teams are letting the ransoms get out
of
Pay day: Pirates secure theirbiggest booty to date off theKenyan
coast in January
www.ngoilgasmena.com 39
In early January of this year a bright red parcel attached
to
a small parachute glided gently toward the deck of a Saudi
supertanker 800 kilometres o the Kenyan coast. Onboard
the 330-metre long Sirius Star wa s a 23-man crew, a gang of
armed Somali pirates and two mil lion barrels of oil a quar-ter
of Saudi Arabias daily output. Inside the package was
believed to be US$3 million in high denomination bills. Oil
giant Saudi
Aramco is thought to have paid the ransom to release the
supertanker,
owned by its shipping arm, and its black gold, bringing an end
to a
terrifying two-month ordeal for the hostages in what was the
worlds
biggest ship hijacking. e pirates had demanded US$25 million
but
eventually settled for a fract ion of this, although US$3 mil
lion isnt too
bad a pay packet for two months work in a country as poor and
war-
ravaged as Somalia.
e hijacking of Sirius Star was the sea bandits biggest booty
to
date and there is a real fear that other f ully-laden
supertankers could be
snared by the pirates in future attacks. Indeed, most attacks
are directed
at merchant ships connected in some way to the oil industry.
Recently,
however, annual monsoons have hit the region, curtailing the
pirates
ability to ply their illegal trade, and ship owners are on
tenterhooks
amid the calm before the real storm, so to speak. e whole of the
in-
dustry is holding its breath waiting for the wind to die down,
warns
Nick Davis, a former British army pilot and Chairman of the
Merchant
Maritime Warfare Centre (MMWC) a not-for-prot organisation
ad-
dressing ship security. Between late August and December we will
see
what happens, because we dont know whether there will be this
eerie
quiet where nothing or just one or two gets hijacked, or whether
we will
have three or four ships a week taken.
8/6/2019 SomaliPirates
3/5
40 www.ngoilgasmena.com
hand, which is making the situation quite nasty because
the bigger the ransoms, the more people that want to get
involved. And there is no shortage of manpower for them
to send out and there can never be enough warships to ef-
fectively prevent it.
Numbers gameAccording to the International Chamber of Commerces
Interna-
tional Maritime Bureau (IMB), the number of attacks so far this
year o
Somalia has already surpassed the 2008 total. Last year
witnessed 111
incidents, with 42 vessels hijacked. Up until mid-May of this
year 29 suc-
cessful hijackings were recorded from 114 attempted attacks. And
while
a total of 815 crew members were taken hostage in 2008, this
gure stood
at 478 by the middle of May this year. ese guys have found a
busi-
ness model that makes a lot more money than
their traditional shing industry, and I mean a
lot, remarks Jeroen Meijer, a security consultant
for threat and safety advisors Control Risks and
former ocer in the Royal Netherlands Navy.
Keeping that business model intact is crucial,
so they constantly adapt their modus operandi.
We saw them operating in the Gulf of Aden, o
the coast of Mogadishu [Somalias capital] and we
have seen them going into the Red Sea and Omani
waters. So they are constantly adapting where they operate to
minimise
the threat to their operations.
A knock-on eect of the piracy has been a sharp rise in
shipping
costs as some shipping rms choose to avoid the Suez Canal and
navigate
their vessels thousands of kilometres further
via South Africas Cape of Good Hope. On
top of this, insurance costs have soared by as
much as 100 percent. However, there are more
than a dozen naval forces, as part of the multi-national
coalition oensive (Combined Task Force
150), exing their military muscle and patrolling the
Gulf of Aden in a bid to thwart the pirates. However, this
asymmetrical warfare has forced the pirates to scour for victims
in less
policed waters, namely the western Indian Ocean.
If they can pass under the radar of the multinational naval
armada
the pirates typically approach a target by speedboat or ski (a
shallow,
fast boat), ring on the ship until the captain submits and
allows them
to board by means of grapple hooks and rope ladders. Some pirate
gangs
are particularly well-equipped for the job in hand, says
Middleton. ey
are generally armed with AK47s, and sometimes RPGs
(rocket-propelled
grenades), while their boats generally have outboard Yamaha
engines
and they may have GPS and satellite phones.
thati
150), e
TheSomali
coaststretches
3000KM
aroundtheHorn
ofAfricaandis
thelongestofan
y
countryo
nthe
continent.
Somalia is a completely failed state with no
political structure to speak of and there is no lawenforcement
capability so these gangs operate
with total impunity
Jeroen Meijer, Control Risks
A patient game: Pirates lie in wait
