The number of hijacked vessels off the coast of Somalia is at a one-year low but both pirates and anti-piracy leaders are bracing for an inter-monsoon season that could herald a new flurry of attacks.
Following the release of two Egyptian fishing boats, a German container ship and an Italian tugboat this month, the number of ships in pirate hands stands at no more than six, dipping to levels unseen since August 2008.
The ransoms raked in by pirates last year totalled around 40-million dollars, or barely a third of Christiano Ronaldo’s transfer fee to Real Madrid, but high-profile attacks have made piracy the focus of much attention.
The calm August seas last year led to a series of hijackings — including that of a behemoth Saudi oil tanker — that spread fears of major disruptions to world shipping and spurred foreign naval powers into sneding warships.
”The weather conditions have been the main reason” for the recent dip in attacks, Hans Tino Hansen, managing director of Denmark-based Risk Intelligence, told AFP.
”Another reason but of less importance is the success of the naval forces in repelling the few attacks that have been conducted in the Gulf of Aden,” he added.
The pirates themselves had the bit between their teeth, with sea conditions already more propicious to boarding their prey from small skiffs in the Gulf of Aden and storms starting to recede in the Indian Ocean.
”We are definitely set on capturing more ships and gaining more cash. I only made 9 000 dollars last year and I was banking on more,” Ahmed Mohamed Abdi, a pirate from the central town of Harardhere, told AFP.
”Foreign countries are still fishing illegally and no-one is blaming them, but when we try to recover something for the losses in marine wealth, we are accused of being bad boys,” he lamented.
Ismail Haji Noor, head of anti-piracy for Somalia’s transitional federal government, argued that some measures had succeeded in countering the thriving piracy business and that popular support for the pirates was dwindling.
”People in coastal areas now have noticed that the pirates are not heroes and have brought nothing but inflation, prostitutes and alcohol,” he told AFP.
Anti-piracy efforts by Somali authorities have included the involvement of local elders and religious leaders to turn unemployed Somalis away from one of the only profitable sectors in the war-ravaged country.
Sheikh Abdulkader Farah Nur Gaamey, an influential one-armed cleric based in the Puntland city of Garowe, was instrumental in getting hundreds of pirates to officially renounce piracy but admitted the risk some would revert to sea banditry in August was real.
”I cannot say that our efforts have been fully successful but retired pirates are reaching out to the youth and general awareness has grown,” he told AFP in a recent interview.
Noor argued that the latest developments on the ground in Somalia could also harm the unity that had been one of the main strengths of the five or six major pirate groups dotting Africa’s longest coastline.
”There are acute clanic rivalries among the different pirate groups now and I think they are less likely to work together as well as they did before.”
The pirates themselves are aware of the increased risks involved in their activity, with more than 100 pirates captured by foreign navies over the past year and facing trial abroad. Dozens were also killed.
While foreign navies have refined their tactics against the marauding sea-jackers, so too have the pirates, and Puntland’s top anti-piracy official, deputy fisheries minister Abdulwahed Abdi Hirsi, feared the coming days could witness a dramatic surge in attacks.
”Around the middle of Ramadan [expected to start within days], I think the pirates will reach to the sea because they had not been able to go out lately. I am afraid we will see a lot of attacks,” he told AFP. — AFP
