Are We Using Proper Safety Precautions Off Somalia?

Op-ed by Captain Jeffrey Kuhlman. Captain Kuhlman has been the Master of commercial vessels in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East for many years. He is the originator of the Castle Shipboard Security Program which, with its affiliates, Sig Sauer Academy and Nova Southeastern University, provides fused training in shipboard security and vessel defense for professional mariners and law enforcement officers.

UN sources state that most successfully attacked ships in the IRTC were those that had not properly prepared themselves and/or not reported in and out of the IRTC with UKMTO and MSC HOA. Therefore, from the perspective that operators who do not follow established and successful IRTC Best Management Practices are unsafe in their transit, the article UN Says Vessel Operators Not Using Proper Safety Precautions off Somali Coast is essentially correct.

According to the Navy Times, Mr. Carl Salicath, Norway’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and Chair of the fifth meeting of the Contact Group on Piracy Off the Coast of Somalia said, “The successful hijacks are almost exclusively on ships not complying with the Best Management Practices adopted by this group…” Though essentially correct, the UN view is perhaps too narrow. It has failed to incorporate an adequate understanding of those people in most jeopardy, the maritime ratings.

In setting up procedures to manage and police the IRTC, the UN has been central in increasing the level of safety in Somali waters for vessels that comply with those procedures. The UN Security Council has authorized naval patrols and management of an IRTC through the Gulf of Aden. The UN also authorized hot pursuit of pirates into Somali territorial waters and ashore.

There is no clear definition of safety off the Somali coast because the complexity of social and economic problems is so great. We must consider the operations of the International Recommended Transit Corridor (IRTC) as being a measurable success. However to measure safety in the entire Somali region, we must also consider piracy in the Somali Basin, the pirate/Al Qaeda terror tie, clan relationships, and money laundering and money supply operations in Europe, Middle East, and Asia, which enables the profitability of piracy.

The US Navy warned in a recent Singapore Anti-piracy Conference that ships sailing the Somali Basin must do so at their own risk due to lack of assets and narrow mission statements. Attacks are now being recorded well outside the IRTC, into the Somali Basin, and into the Arabian Sea. This is a key consideration for regional safety. When Navies cannot provide security, published best management practices may be inadequate. Ships’ companies must have a higher capability. The UN has a responsibility to promote this capability. Most acts of piracy can be turned away without the use of lethal techniques by elevating the apparent risk in a pirate’s attack to an untenable level. We must remember that the second attack on the Maersk Alabama was turned away by returned gunfire from shipboard security.

Since these are factors affecting safety on opposite ends of the safety spectrum, one positive and the other negative, and since both the IRTC and the Somali Basin must be crossed in a passage through the area, safety very much depends upon the training of the ships crews and the caginess of the ships’ Masters. Yet UN members and representatives often express little support for mariners being equipped and trained in the skills necessary to provide adequate security, even adequate enough to meet its own SOLAS and ISPS Code intentions.

This chart indicates the observed level of impact the UN has assumed for the safety of passage through Somali waters:


We can see by this chart that the UN manages well at the higher levels with the least direct contact with the threat. Where the contact is most personal and “safety” has the greatest human impact, UN enablement is the least. We should see two parallel bars.

In a recent conference on piracy held in Washington, DC, an official stood up and said, “If someone tells you that there is a tie between terrorism and piracy, demand to have him tell you where he got his information!” Well, I just happen to be one of those who believe that there are close ties. Directors of the Somali Transitional Government of the Republic of Somalia and the African Union verified these ties. In fact, they said, “The ties are well-known.” Since these knowing individual maintain that there IS a tie between piracy and terrorism, especially with Al Qaeda, safety is an issue with which the UN itself has not fully dealt in the region.

A terrorist attack is different from a pirate attack. One must assume that the attack is intended to be deadly and that the perpetrator has no fear of dying in his/her attack. We can only effectively do three things: We can change the timetable, we can change the attack environment, or we can project the defense. Projecting the defense requires that adequate force, perhaps lethal, must be used to disrupt and stop the attack at a distance. Therefore, as long as the threat of terrorist attack is present, “safety” must include its possibility.

The Somali pirates’ criminal tentacles have become so long that they have involved outside parties into their illegal operations from Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. Financial support had to be negotiated, money laundering had to take place, and a supply of goods into Somalia had to be arranged. So involved have outsiders become, that Somali piracy has become an international business. Piracy is attaining a level of accepted legitimacy that directly affects safety.

We live in a dangerous world. In it, some people live off the lives and property of others. Not until the UN and its members look pragmatically at the broader relationships in “safety” around Somalia at its most personal levels where pirate meets mariner and pirate supports family, and takes action, will Somali waters become safe; the UN is central in this responsibility. In Security Council SC/97/93 Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah emphatically stated that piracy was a symptom of wider problems and that the only sustainable solution would be an effective governance, alternative livelihoods, and stable and inclusive economic growth.