ABOARD A YEMENI COAST GUARD VESSEL - Somali pirates plying the Gulf of Aden in speedboats equipped with grenade launchers and scaling ladders have launched what the maritime industry calls the biggest surge of piracy in modern times, sending shipping costs soaring and the world's navies scrambling to protect the main water route from Asia and the Middle East to Europe.
Pirates from the failed African state of Somalia have attacked at least 61 ships in and around the Gulf of Aden this year, 17 of them in the first two weeks of September alone, according to the International Maritime Bureau's piracy reporting center in Malaysia. That compares with 13 attacks in the area for all of 2007.
"In my time here, I must say, this is the most concentrated period of destabilizing activity I have seen in the Gulf of Aden," said British Commodore Keith Winstanley, deputy commander of the Combined Maritime Forces, whose members have confronted the pirates repeatedly since mid-August. The coalition, headquartered in Bahrain, includes the militaries of the United States and 19 other nations.
The latest hijackings include the capture off Somalia on Thursday of a Ukrainian cargo vessel with 33 Russian-made T-72 tanks aboard, as well as ammunition. As of Friday, the Somali pirates were holding 14 oil tankers, cargo vessels and other ships with a total of more than 300 crew members, demanding ransoms of $1 million or more per ship.
Worldwide, pirates attacked 263 vessels in 2007, up from 239 in 2006, according to the piracy reporting center. Southeast Asia, including the shipping lanes of the Malacca Straits, was long one of the world's busiest places for pirate attacks. Better cooperation by nations in the region has helped reduce attacks, however, as attacks by pirates based in Somalia and Nigeria have climbed, the center said.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy has been a leader in efforts to rally an international coalition against the Somali pirates, after twice sending French commandos this year to rescue French yachts captured in the Gulf of Aden.
Overtaken by hijackers armed with automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades, targeted crews seldom try to fight off the pirates.
"Between the time you see them and the time they control the ship, it takes 15 minutes, maximum," said Patrick Marchesseau, captain of the French luxury yacht Le Ponant, hijacked in April with its 30 crew members as it headed to the port of Aden, in Yemen.
Marchesseau at first ordered his crew to use the yacht's fire hose against the pirates, he recounted by telephone from France. "As soon as they started to use their Kalashnikovs," however, the crew surrendered, Marchesseau said. "We were not there to risk our lives."
Marchesseau said the hijackers were Somali men, most in their 20s, chewing night and day on wads of khat leaves, which act as a stimulant. The pirates told the hostages they were moderate Muslims, not armed religious extremists, and intended no injury.
"We just want the money," Marchesseau quoted the pirates as telling him.
The pirates freed the crew of Le Ponant after the yacht's owner paid more than $1 million in ransom, Marchesseau said.
At least 22,000 ships pass each year through the Gulf of Aden, including tankers carrying 4 percent of the world's daily oil supplies. Nearly one-third of the world's containerized cargo, as well as almost half of the world's bulk cargo, goes through the Indian Ocean and on to the Gulf of Aden and the Suez Canal, ferrying goods from India, China and elsewhere to the West.
The pirate attacks have pushed up shipping costs, increases that will be passed on to consumers. Ransom payments alone in the Gulf of Aden could surpass $50 million this year, according to Lloyd's List, the maritime industry's newspaper.
The hijackings have increased insurance costs tenfold this year for shipping in the Gulf of Aden and are creating an underwriting specialty devoted to Somalia piracy alone, Lloyd's List said.
For the shipping industry, the alternative to the Gulf of Aden is rounding the Cape of Good Hope at the bottom of South Africa, a route that is thousands of miles longer. For that reason and because operating costs for giant vessels can run $20,000 to $30,000 a day, according to Noel Choong, head of the International Maritime Bureau's piracy reporting center, the world's ships continue to run the Gulf of Aden, and the hijackings continue.
"We hope the international community does something about it, before it gets out of control," Choong said.
International waters are generally unpoliced. But in mid-August, the U.S.-led maritime coalition set up a secure shipping lane through the Gulf of Aden with a heavy presence of vessels and aircraft from Western navies. Pirates have hijacked vessels even inside the security area, however, according to Choong and Winstanley.
European Union leaders, spurred by Sarkozy, gave provisional approval last week for a naval mission off Somalia. The French are also circulating a draft resolution in the U.N. Security Council urging nations to contribute warships and aircraft to the fight against piracy off Somalia.
On Friday, a Russian warship that had been dispatched to the Gulf earlier in the week rushed to intercept the Ukrainian vessel that was captured off Somalia on Thursday.
Worldwide, pirates attacked 263 vessels in 2007, up from 239 in 2006, according to the piracy reporting center. Southeast Asia, including the shipping lanes of the Malacca Straits, was long one of the world's busiest places for pirate attacks. Better cooperation by nations in the region has helped reduce attacks, however, as attacks by pirates based in Somalia and Nigeria have climbed, the center said.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy has been a leader in efforts to rally an international coalition against the Somali pirates, after twice sending French commandos this year to rescue French yachts captured in the Gulf of Aden.
Overtaken by hijackers armed with automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades, targeted crews seldom try to fight off the pirates.
"Between the time you see them and the time they control the ship, it takes 15 minutes, maximum," said Patrick Marchesseau, captain of the French luxury yacht Le Ponant, hijacked in April with its 30 crew members as it headed to the port of Aden, in Yemen.
Marchesseau at first ordered his crew to use the yacht's fire hose against the pirates, he recounted by telephone from France. "As soon as they started to use their Kalashnikovs," however, the crew surrendered, Marchesseau said. "We were not there to risk our lives."
Marchesseau said the hijackers were Somali men, most in their 20s, chewing night and day on wads of khat leaves, which act as a stimulant. The pirates told the hostages they were moderate Muslims, not armed religious extremists, and intended no injury.
"We just want the money," Marchesseau quoted the pirates as telling him.
The pirates freed the crew of Le Ponant after the yacht's owner paid more than $1 million in ransom, Marchesseau said.
At least 22,000 ships pass each year through the Gulf of Aden, including tankers carrying 4 percent of the world's daily oil supplies. Nearly one-third of the world's containerized cargo, as well as almost half of the world's bulk cargo, goes through the Indian Ocean and on to the Gulf of Aden and the Suez Canal, ferrying goods from India, China and elsewhere to the West.
The pirate attacks have pushed up shipping costs, increases that will be passed on to consumers. Ransom payments alone in the Gulf of Aden could surpass $50 million this year, according to Lloyd's List, the maritime industry's newspaper.
The hijackings have increased insurance costs tenfold this year for shipping in the Gulf of Aden and are creating an underwriting specialty devoted to Somalia piracy alone, Lloyd's List said.
For the shipping industry, the alternative to the Gulf of Aden is rounding the Cape of Good Hope at the bottom of South Africa, a route that is thousands of miles longer. For that reason and because operating costs for giant vessels can run $20,000 to $30,000 a day, according to Noel Choong, head of the International Maritime Bureau's piracy reporting center, the world's ships continue to run the Gulf of Aden, and the hijackings continue.
"We hope the international community does something about it, before it gets out of control," Choong said.
International waters are generally unpoliced. But in mid-August, the U.S.-led maritime coalition set up a secure shipping lane through the Gulf of Aden with a heavy presence of vessels and aircraft from Western navies. Pirates have hijacked vessels even inside the security area, however, according to Choong and Winstanley.
European Union leaders, spurred by Sarkozy, gave provisional approval last week for a naval mission off Somalia. The French are also circulating a draft resolution in the U.N. Security Council urging nations to contribute warships and aircraft to the fight against piracy off Somalia.
On Friday, a Russian warship that had been dispatched to the Gulf earlier in the week rushed to intercept the Ukrainian vessel that was captured off Somalia on Thursday.
The U.S. 5th Fleet in Bahrain on Monday urged the private shipping industry to do more itself against the pirates. That would include shippers considering hiring private armed security escorts, Winstanley said.
Ultimately, "the root cause is ashore, in Somalia, and there's obviously a limit as to what influence navies or the commercial shipping sector can have about that," Winstanley said.
Somalia has been without a functioning government since 1992, and the country is in the hands of rival armed clans. Since 1993, when 18 U.S. servicemen died capturing two Somali clan leaders, the West has largely regarded Somalia as a graveyard for any Western military missions to restore order.
In Yemen, across the Gulf of Aden from Somalia, a regional commander of Yemen's five-year-old coast guard thought of the big weapons and fast ships the Somali pirates were amassing with their millions of dollars in ransom, and he worried.
"The French know how to deal with them, killing one of them. This is very nice," said Lotf al-Baraty, chief of the Yemeni coast guard's Gulf of Aden region.
Yemen has 1,200 coast guard personnel in the Gulf of Aden but no vessel longer than about 75 feet.
Like scores of private and military commanders on duty at any one time in the Gulf of Aden, Baraty has listened helplessly to distress signals from hijackings in progress. Since it would take any Yemeni ship hours to reach the scene, "we can do nothing," Baraty said.
On patrol in the Gulf of Aden, 20-year-old Ahmed al-Gunaid, commanding officer of a Yemeni coast guard vessel, kept a watchful eye on passing ships. Fretful ship captains in the vicinity called repeatedly, asking Gunaid's crew to check out unknown vessels around them.
In a year of patrolling, Gunaid said, he had been close enough to respond to a distress call only once, when the pirates attacked a Japanese oil tanker. But by the time his ship reached the tanker, the pirates had been gone for two hours.
That was just as well, Gunaid said toward the end of the day's patrol, as the sinking sun cut a white path across the Gulf of Aden. "I know if I'm in combat with them ... three or four RPGs, and I'm done." |
