One of the six suspected Somali pirates wait in a holding cell before they appeared in a Mombasa court on charges of piracy, Wednesday, April 28, 2010, in Mombasa, Kenya. Their case was adjourned until May 5, 2010 .
That was the dilemma discussed at the recent Istanbul Conference on Somalia, and is high on the agenda of the United Nations, NATO and the European Union.
The current anti-piracy strategy has worked well, but it is facing diminishing returns. Naval patrols off the Horn of Africa have reduced the success rate of attacks: 1 in 10 attempts succeed now, compared to 1 in 3 before. Yet the number of (reported) attacks doubled between 2007 and 2008 from 51 to 111, and doubled again in 2009 to 217. They are still on the increase.
Five years ago, most attacks were along the Somali coast; now some are carried out 1,000 miles offshore. The average ransom used to be a few thousand dollars; it has skyrocketed to $2-3 million and rising. Somali piracy will again earn about $100 million this year.
Navies from around the world protect vessels off the costs of Somalia. Is that working? To an extent yes, but at an exorbitant cost. A vessel patrolling off Somalia costs $100,000 a day. Considering that there are more than 40 vessels out on patrol, the aggregate annual operational cost is about $1.5 billion, compared to the $3 million paid into an anti-piracy trust fund especially created by the United Nations.
The effects on rich countries` economy has been negligible, as insurance rates have increased only minimally. But the impact of piracy on East Africa is devastating: It endangers lives, curbs trade, kills tourism, steals food aid, enriches criminals, funds insurgents and perverts the regional economy. The disruption has now moved to Great Lakes states that use East African ports for trade.
What can be done?
Letting the pirates go makes no sense: They are back in the water within a week (600 so far have been released following confiscation of their weapons). Shooting them on sight is fundamentally wrong (although it has happened, including recently). Transporting them to countries that own the seized vessels is impractical, given the distance and jurisdictional complexities. What else?
Patrolling off the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean must continue, and seized pirates must be brought to trial in the region: Kenya currently holds 124 pirates, the Seychelles 31 (which is 10 percent of their prison population). More pirates should, and can be tried in other countries in East Africa.
Further international assistance is therefore needed to strengthen the capacity of countries in the region — training prosecutors, refurbishing courts and prisons. This can have wider benefits: It can help police in the Horn of Africa combat drug trafficking (30-35 tons a year from Afghanistan alone), and the smuggling of guns, people, resources and electronics.
Most of all, the problem must be tackled at its source. Somalia is a high-risk environment, but not all of it is completely anarchic. In provinces such as Somaliland and Puntland, authorities have some control. They should be assisted, technically and financially, to build institutional and logistical infrastructures — coast guards, police, courts — to enforce the anti-piracy law on land.
They should also be assisted with social and economic programs to reconstruct the country and especially to provide jobs to young men otherwise vulnerable to crime.
To begin with — and this is the easy part — Somali prisons should be refurbished to enable Somali pirates to serve their sentences on home soil — even sentences imposed abroad.
Next, the judicial system in Somalia`s provinces where security has improved should be strengthened to the point (not far at all) that it can try its own pirates.
Above all, robust anti-money laundering measures are needed. Each pirate takes home $10-15,000 per successful raid. Their skiffs, in an attack formation, hold 20 to 24 pirates, which collectively amounts to $300,000 to $500,000 per attack.
Given ransom payments of a few million dollars per ship, the difference makes the criminal groups the big winners. In other words, piracy has become an increasingly profitable business — insurance companies do not mind paying a few million dollars for the ransom of a tanker whose temporary disability in the hands of pirates would cost as much per week.
It`s time to adapt the international strategy in Somalia to new conditions — dealing with the problem at its source, on land, rather than at sea.
Until a solution is found in Somalia, the pirates will keep coming.
*Antonio Maria Costa is executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime
© 2010 The New York Times Company. All Rights Reserved.
NATO, EU say reacting to rising Somali pirate numbers
By Peter Apps, Political Risk Correspondent
June 08, 2010
NORTHWOOD HEADQUARTERS, England, June 8 (Reuters) - More Somali pirates have taken to the water this year than ever before, NATO and EU forces said on Tuesday, but navies are combating them more effectively.
The Islamist takeover of a pirate haven last month seems to have had no impact on what has become a very profitable industry, they said, but monsoon conditions meant attacks would now fall sharply until September.
Alongside emerging powers such as China, India and Russia, NATO and the European Union have sent taskforces to combat piracy -- a move they believe has made the chokepoints around the Gulf of Aden much safer but pushed the problem into the wider Indian Ocean.
Currently, pirates hold 17 ships anchored at locations along the Somali coast and 357 sailors.
“We would say there has been a threefold increase in the number of pirates since 2009,” Rear Admiral Peter Hudson, commander of the European Union Naval Force Somalia (EU NAVFOR), told a briefing at his headquarters northwest of London. “I would say we are being more effective but against an increased level of threat.”
Naval forces disrupted 59 pirate groupings in the Somali basin between March and May, one of the two main piracy seasons of the year, up sharply from last year.
That could range from arresting the pirates, destroying their boats and putting them on trial in Kenya or the Seychelles to simply forcing them to throw ladders and weapons overboard and begin the long journey back to Somalia.
“A lot of it comes down to the balance of risk and reward for the pirates,” Hudson said. “The risks are very great -- not just of being caught, but all boats being overturned or dying in bad weather -- but the potential rewards are also very large .”
NO ISLAMIST CRACKDOWN
European, Russian and forces from Somalia`s semi-autonomous Puntland have all stormed ships to recapture them from pirates in recent months, but Hudson said that was not always an option.
“It depends on a variety of issues -- risk of damage to the ship, cargo, environmental impact with something like a tanker and most of all the safety of the crew,” he said.
Somalia`s Islamists have usually taken a tough line on piracy, almost eradicating it when they briefly ran Somalia in 2006-7. But their takeover of the haven of Haradheere in May did not seem to have produced any such clampdown, NATO said.
“There were three pirated ships anchored off Haradheere when the Islamists took over in May and they are still there,” said NATO force deputy chief of staff Hans Henselth. “That tells me that they are not taking any action against the pirates.”
There had also been an increase in attacks launched from Islamist-controlled areas of the Somali coast, the officers said, but without any land-based operations they simply could not tell if the Islamists were directly involved in piracy.
NATO`s Henselth said most hijackings had been of relatively ill-prepared cheaply run merchant ships failing to take advice on self protection measures and routing.
“It would not matter so much except these ships are still generating ransoms, funding piracy and making it worse for everyone else,” he said.
Piracy would only ultimately subside when greater rule of law returned to Somalia, Hudson said.
“The answer to this is not charging around the Indian Ocean with expensive destroyers,” he said. “It has to be a Somalia-based solution on land.”
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