By Jake Allen

Although there were many who agreed with yesterday’s rant about the  piracy problem off the coast of Somalia I did take some heat from a few readers. Perhaps some of that heat was justified and in rereading the post it does read as more angry than I certainly am.

The truth is I have long been level-headed realist when it comes to dealing with this piracy problem. Note I said, ‘dealing’ with the problem and not ‘solving’ the problem. The solution, of course, will come some day when Somalia is able to establish a functional government which can provide services for its people and stand up a working coast guard to both defend its territorial waters as well as enforce laws prohibiting piracy. But as that day is not likely to arrive soon let’s put aside solutions and discuss counter measures which can deal with the realities in the interim.

The death of these teenage pirates is indeed tragic but we must remember that 19 year-old men are responsible for their actions.  They  chose at multiple junctions not to release the hostage.  In fact it has been reported that they were surprised to learn that the ship was crewed by Americans.  The decision not to retreat at that early stage turned out to be a poor one.  But in the subsequent days they were offered many other chances to lay down their arms and release the hostage.  Perhaps, as I will touch on below their death may serve to bring into balance the calculations taken by other pirates as to whether or not piracy is worth the effort.

While we celebrate the hostages successful release let us also not forget that what is required to prevent future events of this type is a total approach to the problem. Killing  pirates or those suspected of piracy on-site is no more a winning strategy by itself  than relying solely on water cannons or other non-lethal approaches.  Furthermore navy patrols alone are not the answer. Nor is arresting and prosecuting every armed “fisherman” found off the Somali coast.  The complexity of the challenge requires us to adopt a coordinated and comprehensive strategy.

Before we look at that strategy let’s  just revisit the business case from the pirates perspective so that we can understand and ultimately change his calculations. There are basically only 4 outcomes which pirates are able to achieve.

1. Success: Ransom paid out
2. Failure: Return to shore empty handed
3. Failure: Arrested and tried in a court-of-law for piracy
4. Failure: Lost or killed at sea

With that said.  Let’s look at what each stakeholder here can do to contribute to an increase in outcomes 2, 3 and 4.

Ransoms: Part of the problem here and the driving force behind the piracy market is the fact that shipping companies willingly and often too quickly payout multimillion dollar ransoms. Certainly if you were a hostage this is precisely what you would want to occur but the problem with this is that it only encourages more attacks as more and more pirates enter the ‘lottery’ in an effort to get some easy money. Were carriers and insurance companies to stop paying ransoms this market would disappear over night. Desperate people might resort to other types of crime but piracy-for-ransom would effectively end. Ransoms may be warranted but they need to be drastically curtailed and reduced in size through tough and often long-drawn out negotiations. Ransoms are money in the hand of pirates, but it needs to be hard- money and not easy-money.

Naval escorts: The navies of the world do need to maintain an active presence in the region but let us be realistic about what effect they can have.  Yesterday’s successful recover of Captain Phillips notwithstanding we can already see a game of whack-a-mole developing where pirates simply have moved out of the Gulf of Aden and are now more active in the western Indian Ocean. The navies are a critical element to the equation but they alone are not capable of dealing with this problem. At best they will serve as a deterrent when they are in a particular geographical area but only a 911 emergency responder to areas where they are not. Already with the rescue of Captain Phillips the U.S. Navy has set a precedent for getting involved post incident. Will that continue? What if the next Captain is not an American? How will these decisions be made? What kind of signal will that send not only to the pirates but to our allies?

Armed guards aboard: As indicated the Obama administration is presently making the new realities clear to the shipping providers. It will be made to them in no uncertain terms that they are going to have to shoulder more ownership for the security of the ship, cargo and crew. It is understandable, based on some of the cowboy firms we have seen performing armed security in Iraq and Afghanistan, that many are hesitant to introduce more guns to this theatre. But there are a number of practical realities of the maritime environment which make it ideally suited to the use of PMCs. For one the list of potential clients is knowable and likely 80% of shipping traffic in this area is conducted by 20% of the companies. Governments could step in here and provide a list of ‘authorized suppliers’ of security services and forbid carriers from using security companies who are not on the approved list. This of course opens the whole discussion around the definition of ‘qualified’ but in all honesty this is a discussion that has been necessary for a long, long time. The bottom line is that a viable deterrent must be co-located at the point of the attack.

Prosecution: The U.S. entered into an agreement with Kenya earlier this year whereby pirates caught in international or Somali waters could be transported to Mombasa for trial. To date this mechanism has not proven effective. Mostly due to evidential complications of documenting and proving acts of piracy. While these challenges will not disappear this legal framework needs more throughput. We cannot stop simply because it’s too hard. We need to understand clearly what evidence will be required at trial for a successful prosecution and ensure that the navies and law enforcement are able to document that evidence and protect the chain-of-custody in such a way that trials are both fair but also effective.

We can control the proportions...

One way to think of this problem is in the shape of a pie where we have control over the proportionality of the 4 pieces or outcomes.   To date the Trial/Prosecution portion is far too small while conversely the Ransom Payout piece is far too large. While Killed/lost at sea may preferably always be low in percentage terms it must be a real enough possibility to factor into the pirates business case.

The bottom line is this is business for pirates and to counter this we need to make the business model less appealing if not very difficult as compared to other choices one makes about how to spend their time.  That can only be done through a coordinated effort of both commercial, private and state security mechanisms each working in concert to mutually support eachother.

By Jack Kelly, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

By JOHN W. MILLER and PAULO PRADA at The Wall Street Journal

BRUSSELS — This week’s pirate attack on an American vessel in the Indian Ocean has renewed a fierce debate in the shipping industry: Should sailors carry guns?

Many sailors support the idea. But ship owners and naval officials tend to say armed crews would only add to the volatile mix in a hostile environment.

A similar issue came up after the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center. As part of the bill in 2002 that created the Department of Homeland Security, Congress approved a measure that allowed trained pilots to carry handguns. When the measure was being debated on Capitol Hill, the pilots union lobbied aggressively for it, but airlines and airport operators strongly opposed it, fearing that it could lead to accidental shootings.

Industry experts say sailors aboard the Maersk Alabama, the cargo ship boarded by pirates Wednesday, are among the best trained in the world. The ship’s owner, a U.S. subsidiary of A.P. Moller-Maersk AS, routinely ships cargos for the U.S. government and the Pentagon. The company says the crew doesn’t carry firearms.

Many sailors say arming ships would help deter such attacks. “Give me mounted machine guns,” says Russell Davies, a captain with Cyprus-based ship operator Interorient Marine Services, who has experienced a pirate attack.

“A lot of our guys would like the idea of having a gun,” says Mark Bowman, a spokesman for the Maryland-based Seafarers Union, representing 82,000 U.S. sailors. But union leaders oppose it.

Pirates operating in East Africa often release crews unharmed after receiving big ransoms. So, for the $400-billion global shipping business, paying the ransoms is still seen as a lesser evil than allowing guns aboard.

Marseille-based CMA-CGM SA, the world’s third-biggest container shipping company, says arming sailors could deter pirates, but it could also end up in more bloodshed: “If the pirates flee, everybody will say you were right,” says Gen. Pierre de Saqui de Sannes, top security adviser for the company. “But if it ends in a bloodbath, it’s a total disaster.”

Jurisdiction isn’t clear in international waters, making a fatal shooting aboard a complex legal matter. Lawsuits associated with firearm accidents would add a further financial risk.

Many ports would balk at allowing in armed commercial ships. The U.S. government worries commercial shipping with armed sailors could pose a terrorism risk in U.S. ports.

Shipowners also maintain that unless they arm seafarers with heavy weaponry, they’d be no match for pirates, who have been known to carry rocket-propelled grenades and automatic rifles.

Earlier this year, U.S. Navy officials credited stepped-up vigilance and other measures that don’t involve weapons for contributing to a drop-off in attacks.

Some navies advise ships to keep fire hoses under pressure so they are ready to blast pirates trying to climb onto ships. Some vessels deploy so-called “long-range acoustic devices” that deploy targeted blasts of sound that can injure assailants’ hearing.

By Mark Mazzetti at the New York Times

WASHINGTON — The Indian Ocean standoff between an $800 million United States Navy destroyer and four pirates bobbing in a lifeboat showed the limits of the world’s most powerful military as it faces a booming pirate economy in a treacherous patch of international waters.

Driven solely by economic gain, not politics or religion, the band of pirates who captured an American merchant ship’s captain on Wednesday are an unconventional foe for the American military. In recent years, they have shrewdly extorted millions of dollars from international shipping companies; to help negotiate the captain’s release, the Navy turned for advice on Thursday to an F.B.I. hostage rescue team, practiced in a patient approach. (more…)