Fighting Gulf of Aden piracy

The dramatic continuing standoff between US naval warships and Somali pirates demanding a US$20 million ransom for a hijacked Ukrainian ship loaded with Russian tanks has again focused the world's media attention on piracy in the Gulf of Aden.

Attacks in Somali waters have more than doubled since last year, and the severity of the crisis has refocused government attention on finding solutions to the problem. To date, these solutions have included the unilateral deployment of French, Russian and Malaysian naval vessels to the Gulf of Aden to deal with direct threats to their citizens and commercial fleets. Yet a number of other interesting anti-piracy security developments have also been tabled.

First, two new multinational naval efforts to provide anti-piracy patrols have been established along the East-West corridor of the Gulf of Aden.

Second, and more provocatively, an economic and diplomatic window seems to have been opened for private security firms offering anti-piracy services off the horn of Africa.

Whereas the economic window has been created by sky-rocketing insurance rates for vessels transiting the Gulf of Aden, an apparent diplomatic window has been facilitated by recent pronouncements on private security from senior western naval personnel dealing with anti-piracy operations in the Gulf.

Allied maritime security and "escorts"

Recently, there have been two separate multinational naval initiatives set up to protect commercial shipping transiting the gulf. On the one hand, a "maritime security patrol area" has been set up to provide a shipping lane patrolled by a coalition of allied naval vessels as well as aircraft from Combined Task Force 150.

On the other hand, earlier this week, the European Union's Brussels-based anti-piracy "cell" announced that two French naval vessels had been deployed to the Gulf of Aden to offer escort services to commercial shipping.

By publicly posting their positions and departure times, these French corvettes are offering the security of their proximity to any vessels that are willing or able to sail at this timetable. Moreover, this east-west (and back again) escort service is simply the vanguard of a larger 10-country EU naval force expected to be deployed to the Gulf of Aden by the end of the year.
 
The creation of the maritime security patrol area and the EU escort service are clearly positive developments and have been welcomed by the international shipping community. However, some analysts have been skeptical of the ability of these public efforts to effectively provide security in the Gulf of Aden to commercial shipping in its entirety.

Without a more aggressive set of rules of engagement to deal with the pirate mother ships used in this recent spate of highjackings, fears remain that pirates will have plenty of opportunities to attack unprotected ships.

Worryingly, this concern seems to be backed up by reports that ships - including a Hong Kong-registered tanker - have recently been hijacked while transiting within the maritime security patrol area.

As one maritime security analyst told ISN Security Watch: "Coalition forces have had these pirate mother ships in their sights and have simply chased the small pirate speedboats away from their target vessels. This will never solve the problem, and in the meantime the West will continue to play by Marques of Queensberry rules and accomplish nothing."

Calls for private security

Naval rules of engagement aside, the limitations of the multinational naval coalition's ability to provide security for the sheer numbers of an estimated 20,000 commercial ships transiting the Gulf of Aden has been acknowledged publicly.

Just over two weeks ago US Vice Admiral Bill Gortney, the Combined Maritime Forces Commander stated that "the coalition does not have the resources to provide 24-hour protection for the vast number of merchant vessels in the region."

While this admission was not surprising in itself, his proposed solution for dealing with the threat of piracy has been. Noting that public security efforts cannot guarantee safety in the region, he told media sources that "the shipping companies must take measures to defend their vessels and their crews," and went on to urge commercial shipping firms to employ security teams to deal with the threat of piracy.

British Commodore Keith Winstanley, deputy commander of the Combined Maritime Forces in the region, later publicly underscored these remarks, stating that these security measures "would include shippers considering hiring private armed security escorts."

In a move seemingly timed to take advantage of these recent public pronouncements - as well as the reported tenfold increase in insurance rates for ships transiting the Gulf of Aden - one London based private security company has teamed up with a brokerage firm to offer private security services designed to lower insurance rates in the Gulf.

Mike Maloney, an insurance broker involved in the deal, told ISN Security Watch that their private security partner's ability to place an armed security team on board a client's vessel had convinced a number of insurance underwriters to offer preferred rates to ship owners that took advantage of these private security teams.  

Other private security companies have also taken renewed interest in the possibilities of using security teams to provide anti-piracy services off of the coast of Somalia.

Tom Ridenour, the director of maritime security services for the private security company Blackwater Worldwide, told ISN Security Watch that while putting a security team on board a client's vessel may be part of the solution, this technique should also be supplemented with broader defensive security measures.

"Ideally, an on-board security team would also be supplemented with a mobile private security force placed on small and fast interceptor vessels that could impose itself between the client's ship and the attacking pirates before they could pose a threat to the crew," he said. 

The skeptics

Others, however, remain skeptical of Commodore Winstanley's call for shipping firms to hire armed private security personnel for their commercial fleets. Cyrus Mody of the International Maritime Bureau (IMB) told ISN Security Watch that while they have received requests for advice from shipping companies considering hiring armed private security services, the IMB maintained its policy of not advocating the use of weapons.

"We feel putting weapons on board will only escalate the potential for violence," Mody said.

He also argued that this would open up an extremely complex legal issue regarding oversight over the use of force at sea.

"Hypothetically, if an armed security team exchanged fire with pirates and someone was killed, who would be held accountable? Would it be the ship master, or ship owner, or the private security team? What jurisdictions would be involved? Would it involve the vessel's flag state and the law of the nation in whose water the incident took place?"     

Dominick Donald of Aegis Defense Services agreed with these concerns, arguing that the multi-jurisdictional legal issues surrounding a potential use of lethal force by a private security team against pirates - even in self-defense - had yet to be clearly hammered out.

"More to the point," he told ISN Security Watch, "the use of armed private security on board commercial vessels would not stop piracy…it would simply displace it to other unprotected vessels."

As yet, it is difficult to speculate on the extent to which the higher echelons of the US and UK naval defense establishments have cogently considered a form of public-private cooperation - or responsibility sharing - in protecting the private sector from piracy in the Gulf of Aden.

Moreover, assuming that the costs of these services will mount into the tens of thousands of dollars - the rate for such services in the Malacca Straits three years ago - it is also likely that only a very small percentage of the commercial maritime industry would be willing and able to pay for such private security services.

However, the possibility for a growing role for private maritime security in anti-piracy work should not be discounted.

In a curious parallel, these recent pronouncements from western naval personnel are in some ways reminiscent of the early and ad hoc calls by Coalition forces in Iraq for the private sector to provide their own private security in the face of a growing insurgency and an over-stretched coalition force.

If the public sector's unwillingness to eliminate this piracy threat is matched by a willingness to advocate giving the private sector the responsibility to provide their own security solutions, we may yet witness the rise of the private naval company.