25 March 2024 (Lloyd's List) - THE successful rescue of the hijacked bulk carrier Ruen (IMO: 6706400) by air-dropped Indian commandos on March 23 came as an unexpectedly impressive show of force from a navy not previously noted for its prowess in such operations.
The fact that 35 pirates were not only taken into custody with no casualties, but will now be prosecuted in India, sends an unambiguous message to the four separate pirate groups known to be stalking the Indian Ocean for further hijacking opportunities.
But it will probably not be enough to stop them.
At least two ships have been shot at by pirate groups in small skiffs in the days since the Ruen operation despite an unprecedented deployment of 22 naval assets from the Indian Navy now on counter-piracy duties.
Multiple senior government officials and several security analysts have told Lloyd’s List they fully expect to see further hijackings by Somali pirates before the monsoon season effectively stops pirate activity in mid-May.
If, as is expected, a multi-million dollar ransom can then be secured, it is expected that piracy activity will quickly escalate and then return in October when the monsoon season closes.
Given the current Western naval focus on protecting shipping lanes from the Iran-backed Houthi threat, and the collapse of counter-piracy structures that were established in the wake of the last wave of Somali piracy from 2008-2011, expectations of a sufficiently robust international response capable of stemming a resurgent piracy threat, are low.
There is also limited capacity available to commercial shipping in terms of private security in the event that the Somali piracy resurgence grows as rapidly as anticipated.
At the height of the last wave of Somali pirate attacks there were 472 private maritime security companies in operation, each offering a seemingly endless supply of trained military experts. That expertise was often lower than advertised, but as navies eventually caught up with the threat and piracy started to wane by mid-2012, the security gold rush collapsed and most firms either went bankrupt or were subsumed into larger companies that themselves then closed shop as demand evaporated.
Today there are fewer than 20 so-called PMSCs operating and significantly fewer that are sufficiently trusted by shipowners to provide armed security teams.
There have been more than 20 attempted hijackings since November, which have driven up prices for armed security guards and kidnap and ransom insurance. But demand for armed security teams has spiked over the past two weeks, according to security firms.
While demand is being tempered by the drop in traffic through the Red Sea due to the Houthi attacks, a full-scale return to regular pirate attacks could quickly overwhelm the capacity now available.
The floating armouries established to supply the security companies over a decade ago remain fully stocked, but the availability of trained crew to deploy on ships and then return to the armouries for the next run is limited and will not be spun back up quickly.
To some extent the same lag in counter-piracy operations from governments is going to be equally problematic to restart in the event of a sudden surge.
Several senior industry voices and a handful of security analysts have raised the alarm about resurgent piracy. But governments have been reluctant to spare scarce warships from the Red Sea.
Partly that stems from an initial misreading of the piracy threat that conflated attempted hijackings with the nearby Houthi attacks.
The attack on Zodiac Maritime chemical tanker Central Park (IMO: 9725823)on November 26 last year was initially cast, even by naval intelligence, as a Houthi-linked event in the wake of the capture of Galaxy Leader (IMO: 9237307) a week previously.
The fact that three of the Central Park attackers captured by US forces turned out to be experienced Somali pirates, who had previously been jailed for piracy, did little to dispel the misinformation that drew links between Iran, the Houthis and Somali pirate gangs.
Smuggling routes and legitimate trading links between Iran, Yemen and Somalia are well established. But no UN Security Council intelligence has ever drawn a direct link between Houthi activities and those of Somali pirate gangs, though such gangs have had protection by jihadist group Al-Shabaab.
Weapons smuggled by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force into Yemen are often offloaded in Somalia, with Bosaso a favoured circuit-breaker transhipment hub to let Iran deny that it supplies the Houthis. At no point, however, has that relationship been linked to the resurgence in Somali piracy.
The coincidence of timing is merely linked in the sense that the Somali pirates are reported to be taking advantage of the distraction provided by Houthi strikes several hundred nautical miles to the north to get back into piracy after lying dormant for nearly a decade.
The more significant issue is the near-total collapse of counter-piracy structures in the region.
Since 2009, an international coordinating body — the Contact Group on Piracy off the Coast of Somalia — was the vital multi-stakeholder body steering counter-piracy operation. Participation in the group’s activity has seen a steady decline and in 2022 the group was reformed as the Contact Group on Illicit Maritime Activity. While the group has met once in 2023, it lacks a clear mandate, and by January 2023 has not addressed the return of piracy.
The fact that the US naval forces who caught the Somali pirates from the Central Park eventually handed them back to the Somali government, apparently unwilling to prosecute, is indicative of the confusion and lack of bandwidth to deal with the issue.
Regional institutional frameworks, such as the Djibouti Code of Conduct steered by the International Maritime Organization or the regional maritime security system operated by the Indian Ocean Commission (known as Mase) have been strengthened in the past decade.
But Christian Bueger, a professor of international relations at the University of Copenhagen, said their focus was mainly on capacity building. They lacked a strong link to the international community and they did not have the diplomatic or operational capacities to coordinate a response to any resurgence of piracy, Bueger said.
In the meantime the Indian Navy is leading the limited counter-piracy charge and pursuing a double-pronged diplomatic attempt to force Somalia to once again allow foreign navies into its territorial waters.
The 2008 piracy crisis led the UN Security Council to allow navies to “enter into the territorial waters of Somalia for the purpose of repressing acts of piracy and armed robbery at sea”. That authority, however, expired in 2022, making it very difficult to retake hijacked ships.
What lured Ruen out of its anchored position on the Eyl coast into open seas, allowing the Indian commandos an opportunity to overwhelm the pirates, remains unclear. The working theory is that pirates, who had been negotiating a ransom demand since the vessel was first taken, were attempting use Ruen as a mothership to take more ships. Given the availability of hijacked Iranian dhows for that job it seems an odd decision, but whatever the rationale it left the pirates vulnerable.
Security experts suggest that the same mistake will not be made by those holding the Bangladeshi bulker Abdullah (IMO: 9132923), hijacked on March 12 in the Indian Ocean and held in Puntland ever since as pirates haggle with owner Navibulgar over the ransom.
Twenty-three Bangladeshi seafarers remain as hostages on the vessel.
While the Indian navy’s operation to secure Ruen has won praise for deterring would-be pirate groups, Bangladeshi government officials have already urged against military action to free Abdullah. Security experts have pointed out that any operation close to the Somali coast would be far more likely to end in death or injury.
While no details regarding Abdullah ransom negotiations are being released, several of the original pirate kingpins from 2008-2011 were never captured and those negotiating today will be well aware of both the tactics and prices that can be commanded.
The UN estimated the economic costs of acts of piracy committed in Somalia over a decade ago at between $1bn-$16bn. That very broad estimate includes additional fuel costs as a result of rerouting, an increase in insurance cost of $20,000 per trip, fewer available tankers and increased charter rates. Added to that are the large ransoms paid by shipowners to pirates, ranging from $500,000 to $5.5m.
Ransom payments from the most recent Somali piracy wave ended up totalling around $160m according to the UN, but the same estimates published several years after the piracy was contained estimated that the hijackings decreased export between Asia and Europe by 11%, resulting in a loss of $28bn.
While such numbers are not immediately being considered a natural conclusion to this latest resurgence, and analysts are quick to point out that direct analogies to 2008 are at best problematic, most agree that there is now a short window of opportunity to prevent the problem from escalating.
If the Indian Navy can hold off any further hijackings before May and governments can prepare a suitably robust response to bolster India's efforts before October, then the escalation may yet be averted. However, security experts think that unlikely.
“Piracy is a high-risk business endeavour, but if it proves lucrative and viable it will continue,” said Bueger.
“While one should be cautious not to draw strong analogies to 2008, the set up of causes has many parallels which now make a further wave of incidents likely.”
