Photographer: Chris Ratcliffe / Bloomberg
Photographer: Chris Ratcliffe / Bloomberg
The world’s largest shipping company has demanded a more effective military response to the increasing attacks by pirates and record hijackings off the coast of West Africa.
The number of attacks on ships worldwide jumped 20% last year to 195, with 135 crew members hijacked, said the International Maritime Bureau’s Piracy Reporting Center on January 13. report. The Gulf of Guinea was responsible for 95% of the hostages taken in 22 separate cases and for the three kidnappings that occurred, the agency said.
The attacks increased insurance and other costs for shippers operating off West Africa, with some resorting to hiring escort vessels manned by armed navy personnel. AP Moller-Maersk A / S, which transports about 15% of the world’s sea freight, said that decisive action needs to be taken.
“It is unacceptable today that seafarers cannot do their job of securing a vital supply chain for this region without having to worry about the risk of piracy,” said Aslak Ross, head of marine standards at Maersk based in Copenhagen. “The risk has reached a level where effective military capability needs to be deployed.”
The Gulf of Guinea covers a vast area of the Atlantic Ocean that is crossed by more than 20,000 vessels a year, making it difficult for governments with few police resources. Surrounded by a coast of almost 4,000 miles in length that extends from Senegal to Angola, it serves as the main route for exports of crude oil 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 information sharing and has established five maritime zones to be patrolled together, but it has only been partially implemented and most navies remain focused on protecting their own waters.
Bertrand Monnet, professor of criminal risk management at EDHEC Business School in France who studied piracy in the oil producing region of the Niger Delta in Nigeria for 15 years, estimates that a maximum of 15 bands operate offshore in West Africa, each comprising from 20 to 50 members.
Hostages are normally held for rescue in Nigeria, the regional power that has taken the lead in preventing attacks. His government plans to commission nearly $ 200 million in new equipment this year, including helicopters, drones and high-speed boats, to increase Navy capabilities.
International Intervention
Nigeria is committed to “ensuring that this threat of piracy is eliminated in our waters, so that those with legitimate shipping, fishing and oil and gas businesses can take care of their business without fear,” Rear Admiral Oladele Daji, commander of Western Nigerian Navy fleet said in an interview.
Many shipowners favor a more vigorous international effort modeled on the military response to the kidnappings off Somalia, which was the global epicenter of piracy from 2001 to 2012. Armed guards and warships dispatched by the European Union, NATO and a task force led by the US to protect ships traveling on the Suez Canal, one of the busiest trade routes in the world that connects Europe to Asia, helped to control the problem.
Nigerian special forces sail 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 – the 12 nautical miles (14 miles) off their coasts – the main naval powers could reduce piracy further into the gulf, by deploying two or three helicopter-equipped frigates, said Jakob Larsen, chief of maritime security in the Baltic and International Maritime Council, a group of shipowners based in Copenhagen. He considers such 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 stop the pirates’ criminal activities on the ground. Improving job prospects for impoverished coastal communities would reduce the threat of piracy in the long run, but it will not solve the immediate problem, said Kierstin Del Valle Lachtman, secretary general of the council.
Attacks spread
Although West African attacks initially focused on the coast of Nigeria, they spread to the waters of Benin, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Ghana, Togo and Cameroon, according to Kamal-Deen Ali, executive director of the Center for Maritime Law Accra and Security Africa and a former Ghanaian Navy officer.
The number of violent attacks in the Gulf of Guinea has remained fairly consistent over the past decade, but kidnappings of more than 10 people have become increasingly common, said Dirk Siebels, senior analyst at Risk Intelligence based in Denmark.
Pirates are operating deeper and deeper into the sea, with hijackings occurring on average 60 nautical miles from the coast in 2020, according to the IMB. The most remote occurred in mid-July, when eight pirates armed with machine guns boarded a chemical tanker off the coast of Nigeria and apprehended 13 crew members before fleeing. Only unskilled sailors remained on the Curacao Trader, which was left adrift 195 nautical miles from the coast. The crew was released the following month.
“The perpetrators of such incidents are well aware that there is almost no risk of being caught,” said Munro Anderson, a partner at London-based maritime security company Dryad Global. “This is precisely the type of incident that an international naval coalition could mitigate.”
– With the help of Gina Turner
(Updates with analyst comments in the third paragraph below the touted story.)