As the threat posed by maritime piracy continues in several parts of the world, there is a growing debate among different governments, private sector analysts, non-governmental organization advocates and others about how bad the situation truly is; where and to whom it is the most challenging, what more needs to be done, and how much the private security industry actually benefits from this type of reporting.
Like the
famous phrase “beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” different people find the
same threats to be of varying degrees of worry. Yet the bottom line is that
piracy’s frequency and growing transnational criminal reach, the people it
hurts, and the impact on the trade and commerce that they prey upon means that
professional analyses remaining holding the key to a common response.
One key
area where various beholders cross their swords of opinion can be found the
chat rooms and professional groups sustained on the Internet, be they by
maritime professional organizations, or social sites like Linkedin.
Having
been a counter-piracy analyst for the Department of Defense for more than six
years, and now in my work for a private maritime security company (PMSC), many
of the seemingly conflictive threat analyses make sense given the various
perches from where they are written.
For
example, the International Maritime Bureau (IMB) and other commercial reporting
organizations do an excellent job at receiving reports directly from the
vessels themselves and ensuring they are reported as soon as possible. Many
government and non-government agencies alike look to these reports as great
sources of information due to the intimate means of communication they have
with the mariners out at sea.
However,
sometimes looking at just the stats that they compose for their quarterly and
yearly reports can be misleading without context. Many incidents go unreported
due to some vessel owners not wanting to publicize that one of their own had an
incident involving pirates. Other times, the vessel may be a local fishing
trawler close to shore that is not even registered and when pirates hijack it
with the intent of using it as a mother ship, no one is there to report it—or
even realize that it is missing—until it is used by pirates to capture an
even-larger vessel. Since the IMB can only report what they receive, you won’t
find those numbers in their reporting.
On the
other hand, many incidents reported are not always related to piracy. Many
fishermen still like to navigate those waters in and around the Somali coast
and often times will approach a passing vessel to protect their nets or may
even tail the vessel for a time in the hopes of catching any potential fish
left behind from the wake. These fishermen may also carry firearms with them as
a means of protection which can often be misinterpreted by transiting vessels
nearby. The IMB does a good job of acknowledging many of the reports as only
suspicious approaches when no pirate related equipment was observed, but often
times there may not be enough sufficient evidence to support either way.
Government
organizations such as NAVCENT and the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) can
usually provide additional insight to each incident by using various sources of
analysis and can give more accurate statistical data. But just like the IMB and
other commercial organizations, the lack of reporting can still make providing
accurate information very difficult.
Many in
the shipping industry believe that some PMSCs use this type of statistical data
to their advantage by providing their own analysis to support the need for
their services. Obviously, PMSCs benefit from this type of reporting; it would
be naive to think otherwise. But even back in 2009 and 2010, when Somali piracy
was at its worst, less than one percent of vessels transiting the Gulf
of Aden were attacked. Those are extremely low odds of a vessel getting
hijacked, but the perception was always much higher because no one ever reports
a safe transit. As a result, companies, and especially insurers, now just do
not want to take that chance, even with the number of hijackings off the Horn
of Africa down to practically zero. However, it needs to be noted that it is
not the PMSCs that are telling them they need armed guards embarked on their
vessels; rather, it is the insurers or the charterers.
That one
often-repeated statement—"No vessel with armed security has ever been
hijacked by Somali pirates"—has become the biggest advertisement/marketing
tool you could ever have for the PMSC community (not to mention the fact that
it is free) is all that really matters in their eyes.
Plus,
the decision to hire a PMSC is made before they ever contact one, and it
should be noted that any intelligence reports they read that influences their
initial decision likely did not come from a PMSC. The bottom line: A company’s
CSO whose only inputs come from a PMSC vendor telling him/her that s/he needs
to embark armed security on her/his vessel probably is not a very prosperous
CSO anyway.
As the
senior threat analyst for the AdvanFort Company (www.advanfort.com), I compose a pre-transit
risk assessment for each one of our client vessels, tailored to their exact
route in order to include all factors ... weather (monsoon seasons), lunar
phase for night transits, historical analysis of previous attacks in the vicinity
of their route over the past 30 to 60 days, as well as historical data of
attacks along that route in previous years.
If I
assess a minimal threat during a transit, it is my job to inform them of that.
But I also put at their disposal all the resources and knowledge that I can for
them to use. And if they feel that the next time around they won't need armed
security for that same transit based on the information I have provided them,
then that is the decision they can make with confidence.
Critics
of the PMSC community are right that many companies put out these reports to
show off their "intelligence skills" when really they are just using
basic summaries of recent attacks; this is true in both West and East Africa.
Reading through several different ones, one finds that they all look basically
the same.
In
putting out AdvanFort’s weekly report that I’ve gleaned from various sources—
including ONI and the IMB—I work overtime to ensure that the final product
cannot be seen as merely meant to scare or advertise, but rather to inform. In
fact, most of the time I tend to downplay most of the so-called attacks that
have occurred recently; basically trying to apply my skills as an intelligence
analyst to our corporate and other friends and colleagues, but on a much
smaller scale, of course.
As the senior analyst at AdvanFort's Threat Analysis Center,
Andrew Moulder, a former armed crime/piracy analyst for the U.S. Office of
Naval Intelligence (ONI), heads the company's research department.