Maritime pirate advances in the Gulf of Guinea have sparked a growing debate on both the weaknesses of many (but surely not all) government responses in West Africa, as well as on the overwhelming need to quickly reinvent policy and operational prescriptions different in many key respects from those solutions that have worked so well in the fight against Somali marauders.
As German Rear Admiral Jurgen
Ehle, the head of a European Union military working group for West Africa,
told Agence France-Presse earlier today, the Somalia situation
and problems faced by West Africa are “totally different.”
The deadliness of the
threat was again front and center yesterday when it was announced that six sea
pirates died in a gun duel with the Nigerian Navy, a dramatic codicil that came
little more than a week after its sailors killed 12 other armed thieves.
The uptick in repression took place as African littoral states sought to
“fine-tune” efforts against pirates, while the Nigerian Air Force promised to
deploy its war planes against them.
The newest battles and other
attention helped to underline the critical importance of West African states
signing, in June, a Code of Conduct concerning
the prevention of piracy, armed robbery against ships, and illicit maritime
activity. Just five days ago, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon reiterated the
call on Central African leaders combat those threats, by taking advantage of
the “unique opportunity to find concerted and innovative solutions to [these
and other] problems that threaten peace and security in the Central African
sub-region.”
Yet the recent good
news about pirate suppression out of Nigeria, in particular, was not welcomed
uncritically by some on watch in the fight against the burgeoning threat to
merchant trade and economic progress. Some critics said privately that the
stories were likely part of a coordinated effort by the Lagos government to
help in their fight with the U.S. Coast Guard concerning the level of the
former’s compliance (or lack thereof) with the International Ship and Port
Facility Security (ISPS) Code.
In his most recent Piracy
Daily column, Fending Off
Pirates: Depending on West African States to Help Won’t Count For Much, Dr.
John A.C. Cartner ably enumerated the problem echoed by Rear Admiral Ehle. As
Cartner showed, most of the countries on the West African coast shockingly lack
those naval, coast guard and/or custom institutions and practices to deal with
the threats ahead, as well as the financial resources to effectively do so.
Although West African
piracy occurs in a region in which vessels carry almost 30 percent of U.S. oil
imports, and where recent discoveries of offshore oil promise even greater
international commercial presence, the great majority of piracy takes place in
territorial waters, necessarily largely off-limits to foreign naval vessels.
(The problem is not peculiar
only to the African continent, now under often-deadly siege by clandestine
filched-oil marketeers; the sovereignty of nations weighs heavily around the
world in official diplomatic, and thereby also practical/operational,
considerations. As an InsideCostaRica.com article
noted today, even though officials on the USS Rentz merely sought to
hand over three prisoners — two Costa Ricans and one Nicaraguan — to Costa
Rican authorities, together with nearly a ton of cocaine worth $78 million
seized from their ship, a Costa Rican legislature vote was needed to allow the
guided-missile frigate to dock in national waters.)
At the same time, while the
possible presence of international navies—so key to calming the seas around
East Africa—offers only circumspect opportunities in West Africa, international
organized crime elements of the piracy trade in and around Nigeria are
significantly greater.
Failed states like Somalia, in
this sense, arguably provide less institutional protection to evil doers through
corruption and social conflict than do West Africa’s better-organized and often
barely-disguised official partnerships with seaborne criminals. (See, for
example, the article in this week’s Financial Times, “Theft
and disruptions knock Nigeria oil output to a four-year low,” in which it is
noted that the theft of oil has grown into a vast and lucrative enterprise
involving well-connected Nigerian officials and security personnel.)
State-owned Offshore Patrol
Vessels, where they exist in waters that nearly rival in size the expanse of
the Gulf of Mexico, are only as useful as those who guide their use, an iffy
proposition due to widespread corruption and other official failures of
accountability.
At the same time, private
maritime security companies (PMSCs) that engage contracted armed security
personnel (PCASP) face problems both similar and quite distinct of those found
in the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean, where as senior U.S. officials have
noted, they have played an exceedingly positive role.
The lessons learned off the
coast of Somalia include, to some extent at least, how sovereign nations can
avoid clashes over thorny issues such as Rules for the Use of Force), the
extent to which operational best practices can result in real savings for owners,
and which are the essential seafarer and security operator training programs
necessary to assure that PCASP teams are truly part of the solution.
Cultural education and critical
understanding about the customs and courtesies for those aboard shipping vessels
remains key, and relations with local port authorities are arguably even more
important—if that was somehow possible—than it is to the east.
PMSCs’ supporting role in West
Africa will surely highlight skills that in some regards were lesser
considerations when facing Somali pirates: the protection of waterways
and port facilities; the specific needs of ships, oil rigs and other maritime
systems, and spot-on contingency plans for improving readiness and responses.
Risk analysis remains key, but
port and pipeline security appear noticeably in greater need, particularly as
in many countries in the region, arson, sabotage and vandalism are already grave
problems, particularly within the context of simmering ethnic and
religious tensions.
Unlike Somalia, shore-side
access by criminal elements figures among the top threats faced by local and
international maritime authorities alike, while corruption among those local
officials working hand-in-glove with transnational organized crime appears many
magnitudes greater than that across the continent in the east.
In all of this, the
good news is that those close to the evolving story say that some West African
leaders are quietly—and to the extent that they can, effectively—putting their
houses in order to better face the coming storms.
Piracy Daily looks
forward to bringing that good news to the fore in the weeks and months ahead
(as well as providing necessary reporting on the often more dramatic bad apples
in the news cart), since supporting those at their stations on the front lines
can, without doubt, help consecrate a better tomorrow.
________________________________________________________________________________________________
Martin Edwin Andersen 2013, all
rights reserved; “New and old challenges posed by the pirates of the Gulf of
Guinea” may be copied and distributed with attribution to Martin Edwin Andersen
and Piracy Daily.
The opinions expressed herein are solely those of the author.
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