Photographer: Chris Ratcliffe / Bloomberg
Photographer: Chris Ratcliffe / Bloomberg
The world’s largest shipping company demanded a more effective military response to pirate attacks and kidnappings off the coast of West Africa.
The number of attacks on ships worldwide rose 20 percent last year to 195, with 135 crew hijacked, the International Maritime Bureau’s Piracy News Center reported on January 13th. report. The Gulf of Guinea accounted for 95% of the hostages taken in 22 different cases and the three kidnappings that occurred, the agency said.
The attacks have increased insurance and other costs for carriers operating in West Africa, and some are resorting to hiring manned escort boats by armed naval personnel. AP Moller-Maersk A / S, which transports about 15% of the world’s shipping, said decisive action needs to be taken.
“It is unacceptable today that seafarers cannot perform their jobs to ensure a vital supply chain for this region without having to worry about the risk of piracy,” said Aslak Ross, head of standards. sailors from Maersk, based in Copenhagen. “The risk has reached a level where effective military capability needs to be deployed.”
The Gulf of Guinea comprises a vast expanse of the Atlantic Ocean crossed by more than 20,000 vessels a year, making it difficult for governments with few resources to monitor. Bordered by a nearly 4,000-mile-long coastline stretching from Senegal to Angola, it serves as the main route for crude oil exports and imports of refined fuel and other goods.
Twenty-five African governments, including all those bordering the Gulf, signed the Yaoundé Code of Conduct in 2013 to combat piracy. It aims to facilitate the exchange of information and establish five maritime areas to patrol them together, but it has only been partially implemented and most navies remain focused on safeguarding their own waters.
Bertrand Monnet, professor of criminal risk management at the EDHEC Business School in France, who has studied piracy in the Niger Delta region, Nigeria’s oil producer, for 15 years, estimates that a maximum of 15 gangs operate in West West Africa, each consisting of 20 to 50 members.
The hostages are often taken as a rescue in Nigeria, the regional headquarters that has taken the initiative in preventing attacks. His government plans to commission nearly $ 200 million worth of equipment this year, including helicopters, drones and high-speed vessels, to increase naval capabilities.
International intervention
Nigeria is committed to “ensuring that this threat of piracy is removed from our waters so that those who have legitimate businesses in shipping, fishing and oil and gas can do their business without fear,” he said. said Rear Admiral Oladele Daji, commander of the Western Fleet of the Nigerian Navy, said in an interview.
Many shipowners favor a more muscular international effort based on the military response to the kidnappings off the coast of Somalia, which was the global epicenter of piracy from 2001 to 2012. Armed guards and warships sent by the European Union, NATO and a U.S.-led task force on protecting ships crossing the Suez Canal, one of the busiest trade routes in the world linking Europe with Asia, helped control the problem.
Nigerian special forces are sailing to intercept pirates during a joint exercise off the coast of Lagos.
Photographer: Pius Utomi Ekpei / AFP / Getty Images
If national governments focus on their territorial waters – 12 nautical miles (14 miles) from their shores – the major naval powers could reduce piracy in the Gulf by deploying two or three frigates equipped with helicopters, Jakob said. Larsen, head of maritime security at the Baltic and International Maritime Council, a group of shipowners based in Copenhagen. He considers this support unlikely because sea routes are not as strategically important as those on the east coast of Africa.
“There is little international appetite to get involved in Nigeria’s security problems,” he said.
The Liberian Council of Shipowners urged the Nigerian authorities to suspend criminal activities on the land of the pirates. Improving the employment prospects of impoverished coastal communities would reduce the long-term threat of piracy, but the immediate problem will not be addressed, said Kierstin Del Valle Lachtman, general secretary of the council.
Propagated attacks
Although the attacks in West Africa were initially concentrated off the coast of Nigeria, they have since spread to the waters of Benin, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Ghana, Togo and Cameroon, according to Kamal-Deen Ali, executive director of the Accra-based Maritime Law Center. and Security Africa and a former naval officer from Ghana.
The number of violent attacks in the Gulf of Guinea has remained fairly constant over the past decade, but kidnappings of more than ten people have become increasingly common, said Dirk Siebels, senior analyst at Risk Intelligence with its in Denmark.
Pirates are increasingly operating at sea, with kidnappings averaging 60 nautical miles offshore by 2020, according to the IMB. The farthest occurred in mid-July, when eight pirate machine guns with firearms boarded a chemical tanker off the coast of Nigeria and seized 13 crew members before fleeing. Only unqualified sailors remained on the Curacao merchant, which was adrift 195 nautical miles from the coast. The crew was released the following month.
“The perpetrators of these incidents are well aware that there is almost no risk of being caught,” said Munro Anderson, a partner at London maritime security firm Dryad Global. “This is precisely the kind of incident that an international naval coalition could mitigate.”
– With the assistance of Gina Turner
(Updates with analyst comments in the third paragraph following the history posts.)