Can a 'private navy' see off Somalia's pirates?
Escorted convoys are a step towards tackling Indian Ocean pirates – but only security in Somalia can eradicate them
o Dan van der Vat
o guardian.co.uk, Monday 21 February 2011 17.00 GMT
The pirates of the Indian Ocean, based on the lawless shores of Somalia in east Africa, become more dangerous as the months go by. But they may soon face a new challenge from a privately organised "convoy escort programme" (CEP) after the manifest failure of international conventional naval forces to deter them.
The pirates are probably not quaking in their seaboots, because they still have the upper hand in their campaign to fleece shipping companies, their insurers and even private individuals on yachts whom they suspect of being rich. Paul and Rachel Chandler from Britain, though not wealthy, were held for more than a year. Last week, a private yacht with four Americans aboard was seized off Oman on the way to the Suez canal. But the serious money lies in big ships, notably tankers, and their often immensely valuable cargoes. This month a tanker with £125m in oil aboard was stormed and two seamen died in a hail of bullets.
The insurance industry, which has a strong incentive to take action, is a prime mover behind the CEP, one of several developments that show there is nothing new under the sun when it comes to countering attacks on shipping. Piracy is at the most obviously illegal end of a spectrum that includes attacks on commercial vessels in warfare, governed by the laws and conventions of war, via submarine campaigns (less so) and hijacking for political purposes (not legal at all).
One of Britain's first naval heroes, Sir Francis Drake, was a pirate in all but name, stealing gold from Spain on behalf of a syndicate headed by Queen Elizabeth I, which yielded £47 for each £1 invested. Buccaneers did the same but without privateer commissions, and some became out-and-out pirates in the Captain Kidd mould, roaming the world from the Spanish Main to the Indian Ocean. The British and Dutch fleets attacked the Barbary pirates based around Tunis and Algiers in 1816, and finally the French colonised most of north Africa in 1830.
The same mistakes are being made today as in both world wars, when Britain twice came close to defeat at the hands of German U-boats. Shipowners took the view, then as now, that organising convoys was hugely complicated and a waste of time and money. It took years for it to sink in that a ship arriving late was worth rather more than one that did not arrive at all. With as many as 160,000 individual sailings per year in the region where the pirates operate, it is argued that convoy is simply impractical. But the virtue of convoy, a body of ships with armed escort, is that an attacker must take on the escort to get at the ships. And nowadays computers can help.
Patrolling millions of square miles of sea, as a scratch international fleet of warships is doing now, is nearly useless. That can be left to reconnaissance aircraft. When pirates use speedboats capable of 50 or more knots, even the fastest frigate cannot get to the scene in time unless it happens to be only a mile or two away.
The pirates have hugely increased their range of operation by launching their speedboats from a long-range "mother-ship" (usually hijacked). Putting armed guards on individual ships has been tried, but may lead to a "shoot first" approach by the pirates, resulting in deaths among attacked crews.
To solve the growing menace of piracy one could go back even further in history. In the last years of the Roman republic, Pompey the Great, Julius Caesar's ally and later rival for power, was awarded the widest commission against piracy on record. In 68BC he was given the Roman fleet, control of the seas and of all land within 50 miles of the Mediterranean coast and told to wipe out the rampant piracy of the time, a constant threat to Rome's grain supplies. It took two years and Pompey was awarded a triumphal entry into Rome in 66BC. But the settlement, made up of quiet deals as much as naval and military action, soon unravelled.
It is tempting to consider amphibious operations along the lawless Somali coast, destroying pirate vessels and their bases and freeing the hijacked ships and their crews. But the "collateral damage" among captives and local people would be immense. So would the expense. The only long-term solution is the restoration of law and order in Somalia as a whole, with a government strong enough to clean up its own backyard.
In the short term, a modern convoy system looks like the only means of stepping up the level of protection against a threat that costs seaborne commerce hundreds of millions of dollars a year. The CEP, a semi-official, public-private partnership of close-escort vessels equipped with fast rigid inflatable boats, is a step in the right direction. But it will need co-ordinated support from governments, shipping companies, insurers and the navies already on the ground to have an effect. That is clearly asking a lot. Meanwhile, if you want your ship back, pay the ransom.
Can a 'private navy' see off Somalia's pirates? | Dan van der Vat | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk
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Convoying would certainly make sense. As I suggested to Zichao a while ago, the dominance of air power seems to have shifted emphasis and interest away from naval strategy, but arguably the fundamental pricniples of naval war have not much changed. It seems to be, from my perspective anyway, an intriguingly neglected field.
Can a 'private navy' see off Somalia's pirates?
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