Photographer: Chris Ratcliffe / Bloomberg
Photographer: Chris Ratcliffe / Bloomberg
The world’s largest shipping company has called for a more effective military response to growing pirate attacks and abductions off the coast of West Africa.
The number of attacks on ships globally rose by 20% last year to 195, with 135 crews abducted, the International Maritime Bureau’s Piracy Reporting Center said in a January 13 statement. report. The Gulf of Guinea accounted for 95 percent of the hostages taken in 22 separate cases and all three hijackings that took place, the agency said.
The attacks have increased insurance and other costs for shippers operating outside West Africa, with some resorting to hiring escort ships led by armed naval personnel. AP Moller-Maersk A / S, which carries about 15% of the world’s shipping, said decisive action must be taken.
“It is unacceptable nowadays that sailors cannot fulfill their tasks of providing 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 must be deployed.”
The Gulf of Guinea covers a vast area of the Atlantic Ocean that is crossed by more than 20,000 ships a year, making it difficult for police to resource governments. Surrounded by a nearly 4,000-mile-long coastline stretching from Senegal to Angola, it serves as the main art for crude oil exports 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 the exchange of information and has established five maritime areas for joint patrols, but has only been partially implemented and most ships remain focused on protecting their own waters.
Bertrand Monnet, a professor of criminal risk management at EDHEC’s business school in France, who has studied piracy in the Nigerian oil-producing region of the Niger Delta for 15 years, estimates that a maximum of 15 bands operate off West Africa, each comprising 20 to 50 members.
The hostages are usually held for ransom 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 naval capacity.
International intervention
Nigeria is committed to “ensuring that this threat of piracy is eliminated in our waters so that those with legitimate business in shipping, fishing and oil and gas can operate without fear,” Rear Admiral Oladele Daji, commander of The western fleet of the Nigerian Navy said in an interview.
Many shipowners favor a more muscular international effort based on the military response to the diversions off Somalia, which was the global epicenter of piracy from 2001 to 2012. Armed guards and warships sent by the European Union, NATO and a working group led by The United States has helped bring ships traveling through the Suez Canal, one of the busiest trade routes in the world linking Europe to Asia, to bring the problem under control.
Nigerian special forces are sailing 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 shores – the major naval powers could further reduce piracy in the gulf by deploying two or three helicopter frigates, Jakob said. Larsen, head of maritime security at the Baltic and International Maritime Council, a group of shipowners in Copenhagen. He considers that such support is unlikely, as sea routes are not as strategically important as those on the east coast of Africa.
“There is little international appetite for involvement in Nigeria’s security issues,” he said.
The Liberian Shipowners ‘Council has urged Nigerian authorities to disrupt criminal activities on the pirates’ shores. Improving employment prospects for poor coastal communities would reduce the long-term threat of piracy, but will not address the issue immediately, said Kierstin Del Valle Lachtman, the council’s secretary general.
Widespread attacks
While attacks in West Africa were initially concentrated off Niger, they have since 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. from Accra. and Security Africa and a former naval officer from Ghana.
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, a senior analyst at Risk Intelligence in Denmark.
Pirates are working deeper and deeper, while the abductions took place on average 60 nautical miles offshore in 2020, according to IMB. The farthest took place in mid-July, when eight machine guns with armed pirates boarded an oil tanker off the coast of Nigeria and confiscated 13 crew members before fleeing. Only unskilled sailors remained on the Curacao Merchant, which was left at a distance of 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 firm Dryad Global. “This is exactly the kind of incident that an international naval coalition could mitigate.”
– With the assistance of Gina Turner
(Updates with analyst comments in the third paragraph below.)