MaritimeAs maritime security rises, pirate attacks are down
In the past four years Somali pirates have attacked 800 ships and taken 3,400 people hostage. Now shipping companies which regularly go through the Indian Ocean are fighting back by hiring private security, and the scales have tipped
In the past four years Somali pirates have attacked 800 ships and taken 3,400 people hostage. Now shipping companies which regularly go through the Indian Ocean are fighting back by hiring private security, and the scales have tipped.
In the past two years the number of successful pirate attacks has dropped from forty-nine ships in 2010 to twenty-nine ships in 2011. This year the number continues to fall. ABC reports that the number of incidents in the first six months of the year has dropped from 163 in 2011 to sixty-nine this year.
The drop in attacks is due to the increased presence of international naval ships as well as shipping companies hiring armed guards.
“To date not a single ship with privately contracted armed security personnel abroad has been pirated,” Assistant Secretary of State Andrew Shapiro told ABC News. “Not one.”
The shipping industry is now spending almost $1 billion per year on private armed security. About 50 percent of commercial ships that go through the Indian Ocean have armed guards aboard them.
With that much money changing hands, many private security firms are now getting into the anti-piracy business, but the use of these companies, mostly American, is controversial, with critics questioning the addition of violence to a region already exclusively known for it.
Tom Rothrauff, president of Trident Group Inc. was a Navy SEAL, and so are all of his guards. Rothrauff has a training facility which simulates the conditions of being on a ship, and he takes his recruits out into the Atlantic Ocean to test their shooting skills.
Rothrauff said that not only are the Somali pirates’ arsenals “very sophisticated” with rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) and AK-47 machine guns, but “they’re getting better”
“They can terrorize the crew into complete submission,” Rothrauff told ABC News. “They are good at what they do. They are skilled and they’re getting trained so it’s not a cake walk. It’s not a joke.”
The pirates themselves have little else to do to earn money in an improvised land where job opportunities are nonexistent, but violence is high. One incarcerated pirate told BBC that pirating ships is just a form of taxation.
“We catch a ship, tax some taxes, and then release them without harming or killing them,” he said. “There’s nothing wrong with that.”
The pirate’s claims are not true however, as many hostages are brutalized, staved, and some are killed.
“I want Americans to know that it’s out there, it’s real,” former Marine Joe Alvarado, now a team leader for ESPADA Logistics and Security Group, Inc told ABC News. “It’s not pirates of the Caribbean. It’s no longer guys with sabers. It’s real life. It’s a real threat.”
Members of the UN Monitoring Group for Somalia and Eritrea sent a letter to the UN Security Council in June about the threat of private companies potentially selling weapons in the region.
“The unmonitored and largely unregulated activities of Private Maritime Security Companies (PMSCs) off the coast of Somalia,” said the letter. “may represent a new potential channel for the flow of arms and ammunition into the region.”
The Monitoring Group says the firms are now leasing arms and have brought 7,000 new weapons into the region and should be subject to international regulation.
