Suppression is not the same as eradication
THE would-be hijackers of product tanker Hellas Aphrodite (IMO: 9722766) have thankfully left empty-handed.
But there will be more attacks.
Warnings of a pirate action group returning to the seas were issued on Monday, some by this very publication, and the news that shots had been fired at a vessel off the Somali coastline were greeted with grim predictability by many on Thursday morning.
The fact is, Somali piracy has never been beaten, only suppressed.
As we have reported this week, the conditions for an attack have been brewing, as have concerns of the involvement of the Houthis and al-Shabaab with Somali piracy.
Links between the groups have been highlighted in UN Security Council Panel reports.
One member state reported that al-Shabaab had held multiple meetings with Houthi representatives in Somalia in 2024, requesting advanced weapons and training. In return, al-Shabaab would reportedly increase piracy activity in the Gulf of Aden and off the Somali coast to further disrupt shipping.
Links with the Houthis might not constitute a direct line of communication, but could well be enough to embolden would-be hijackers in the region.
After all, a group that has successfully disrupted shipping for the best part of two years is not a bad friend to have.
However, it is important to remember that pirates are businessmen at their core, not terrorists. The goal of boarding a ship and all the risk that entails is to extract ransoms, either for the crew or the vessel.
If a kidnap or hijacking can be credibly linked to have Houthi or al-Shabaab involvement, then a ransom payment is illegal under the legal codes of most nations.
The failure of this particular group of would-be hijackers could of course signal the advent of a wave of attacks. We have already seen another suspicious approach of a commercial vessel this morning.
But let’s not forget: the hijack failed.
Ultimately, shipping’s defensive mechanisms worked and the crew was rescued by an Operation Atalanta naval vessel on Friday November 7.
The latest iteration of the industry’s Best Management Practices on how to deter piracy in the Red Sea, Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean, which stipulate the design of a vessel’s citadel, came into their own.
Vessel citadels should have food, water, access to reliable communications and, crucially, should not be designed with a guarantee of military or law enforcement response.
The one on board Hellas Aphrodite certainly worked. Reports of crew surrendering to the pirates were proven to be incorrect. The crew sheltered inside and the pirates could not extract them in the time before Atalanta arrived on the scene.
But BMPs are just one link in a chain of suppression that has so far kept piracy at bay for the last ten years or so.
The efforts of international navies and efforts on shore in Somalia are equally, if not more important, than BMPs.
Any chink in this armour and the pirates will return.
It’s reasonable to suggest that the naval mission to protect shipping against piracy is simply not as well-resourced as it was 10 years ago.
This is a big area of ocean we are talking about, and there are now other threats to consider — of that the Houthis have made quite sure.
But the third link in the chain could be the most vulnerable.
Funding from the UAE to the authorities of Puntland (a semi-autonomous region in Somalia) has been redirected to the fight against Islamic State in Somalia.
The Puntland Maritime Police Force (largely bankrolled by the UAE) has achieved real success in suppressing pirates on land and escaped the clutches of chaos and corruption that has enveloped so much of the rest of Somalia.
And that perhaps is the biggest structural problem shipping has in its fight against piracy.
Somalia is a very poor and volatile place. It has not had a properly functioning government since the early 1990s. The opportunity to earn a year’s salary in one single sortie will always be tempting if the prospects on land are sufficiently dim. The threat of losing life and limb has not quelled the stream of young men willing to pilot a small skiff hundreds of miles offshore.
Hellas Aphrodite is a success story for shipping’s best management practices. It shows that we’ve come a long way from 2010 and have fairly effective ways of defending seafarers against pirates, even when they’re on board.
That failure might dissuade any immediate repeat efforts, as will the presence of EU Navfor and perhaps Indian naval vessels in the area.
But shipping can only really defend itself, it cannot go on the offensive.
Until piracy is no longer an attractive line of work, it will only ever be suppressed, not beaten.
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