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Updated Thursday, November 12, 2009 10:04 am TWN, By Jonathan Saul and William Maclean, Reuters

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Pirates showing long-range menace

Ironically the development appears to stem partly from security improvements aboard. Responding to expert advice, many crews now take a wide variety of measures to resist boarders, so as to buy time to allow naval forces to come to their rescue. Such steps can include installing barbed wire coils, using fire hoses, sailing the vessel in a zigzag pattern and speeding up. But taking such steps in remote waters may have little use since there are few naval forces active there to rescue them. Foreign navies are deployed mainly off Somalia's north coast in the Gulf of Aden. Since the turn of the year they have operated convoys as well as set up and monitored a transit corridor for ships to pass through vulnerable points. These measures have also deterred pirates, but they only have an effect where naval forces are present.

“In contrast, on the east coast of Somalia, there is practically no naval effort except for probably a few ships belonging to the (U.N.'s) World Food Program and maybe a few more,” said Cyrus Mody, manager with London-based watchdog the International Maritime Bureau (IMB).

John Dalby, chief executive of MRM, which provides security personnel to merchant vessels in the region, said it was going to be impossible for navies “to police the whole of the western half of the Indian Ocean.”

“We are stressing to governments that we just can't see this problem institutionalized — that people just accept piracy in this area as a way of life,” the ICS's Mason said. “To us that is unacceptable. We need to call on governments for a bit of fresh thinking on how we are going to really deal with this problem.”

A regional analyst who declined to be identified due to the sensitivity of the topic said pirates had become better at using Global Positioning Systems navigational aids and had mastered the logistical challenges of refueling and re-supplying their craft in remote waters.

The pirates would seek big vessels like oil tankers, the analyst said, as this was “a way of ensuring you get a bigger ransom. There is an incentive to go for a bigger ransom because the payment structure is built on a percentage basis.”

James Burnell-Nugent, former commander in chief, fleet, of the British navy, told Reuters: “The navies have done a fantastic palliative job of addressing the symptoms. The Gulf of Aden is a lot safer than it used to be.”

“But the root causes of this menace, which lie on land, have not yet been addressed. The 1,000-mile radius (of Monday's attack) is a warning sign to the (shipping) industry at large.”

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