Tuesday August 23, 2022
In 2009, in one of the most high-profile cases, later turned into a film, a US-flagged ship, the Maersk Alabama, was hijacked by Somali pirates. The crew was eventually rescued by the US Navy. © AP
Piracy in the waters off Somalia is no longer a threat to
global shipping, an industry group said on Monday, after more than a decade of
efforts to prevent the attacks that disrupted trade and drove up costs.
The group of six international shipping organisations, which
includes the International Chamber of Shipping (ICS) said from the start of
next year the Indian Ocean would no longer be considered high risk as there had
been no attacks on merchant vessels off Somalia since 2018.
“This announcement is a testament to nearly 15 years of
dedicated collaboration to reduce the threat of piracy in the Indian Ocean,” it
said in a statement.
A vital thoroughfare for energy exports from the Middle East
to Europe, the coast of Somalia was deemed high risk after piracy and ransom
demands surged from 2008 and peaked three years later. Just under 10 per cent
of global seaborne petroleum trade goes through the Gulf of Aden, the waterway
between Yemen and the Horn of Africa, according to the US Energy Information
Administration.
In 2009, in one of the most high-profile cases, later turned
into the Hollywood film Captain Phillips, a US-flagged ship, the Maersk
Alabama, was hijacked by Somali pirates. The crew was eventually rescued by the
US Navy.
John Stawpert, senior manager of environment and trade at
ICS, said removing Somalia’s designation as a high risk area would probably
reduce the number of private armed guards — who are often former servicemen —
deployed on ships travelling through the region.
“It’s very strange to be standing here saying piracy is
suppressed when we went through so many years of them being able to operate
indiscriminately,” he said.
However, insurance premiums for voyages in the region are
influenced by separate security assessments made by the Joint War Committee, a
marine insurance advisory board whose guidance is watched closely by
underwriters.
Dimitris Maniatis, chief commercial officer at Seagull
Maritime, a private maritime security firm, said that private guards together
with naval deployments had helped to reduce piracy.
About a third of all daily shipping in the world passes
the north-east edge of Africa, where the water narrows to a chokepoint between
Yemen and Djibouti on its way to the Suez Canal and the Red Sea. Djibouti is
home to a handful of military stations including from the US, France, and China’s
first overseas military base, whose presence has contributed to the diminishing
of piracy in the area.
Operation Atlanta, the EU’s first naval operation, and the
Combined Maritime Forces, a 34-nation maritime coalition focused on
counter-terrorism and counter-piracy that operates out of Bahrain, were among
the naval deployments that helped combat piracy in the region.
In December, the UN Security Council said there were no
successful pirate attacks off the coast of Somalia last year, noting that
“joint counter-piracy efforts have resulted in a steady decline in pirate
attacks and hijackings” since 2011. It added that there had been no
successful ship hijackings for ransom since March 2017.
However, the UN warned that “suspicious approaches towards
merchant vessels in the region were observed . . . indicating that progress
achieved in combating piracy could be reversed if not consolidated.”
Maniatis, of Seagull Maritime, added that the Somali clans
that had been engaged in piracy operations were now focused on smuggling
weapons and people in and out of Yemen and on the coal trade with the Arabian
peninsula after the risk-reward for piracy had become less attractive. “I don’t
anticipate any immediate rebound of Somali piracy anytime soon,” he said,
adding that “we need to see what the insurance industry will say about this.”
The Gulf of Guinea off west Africa has since emerged as the
world’s biggest piracy hotspot. In 2020, 95 per cent of kidnapping incidents of
ship crew members occurred while they transited through west African waters. A
UN resolution in May called on countries in the region to adopt tougher
measures to combat piracy.
While piracy in the Gulf of Guinea plummeted in the first
half of the year, with only 12 incidents reported — down from 50 in the same
period in 2018 according to the International Maritime Bureau — security
insiders worry that it will not continue to be suppressed in the region.