Somali Piracy Declines While West African Piracy Spreads
Washington — Piracy off the coast of Somalia has fallen steeply since 2011 as a result of a U.S.-led international campaign, but it is flourishing along the coast of West Africa.
Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs Andrew Shapiro told a congressional subcommittee April 10 that Somali pirates captured 10 vessels in 2012, compared to 34 in 2011 and 68 in 2010. The last successful Somali pirate attack on a large commercial vessel occurred nearly one year ago on May 10, 2012.
“The trend is clear,” Shapiro said. “The progress that has been made is real and remarkable.”
He said the U.S.-led international campaign against Somali piracy has disrupted the pirates’ “business model.”
“Pirates today can no longer find helpless victims like they could in the past, and pirates operating at sea now often operate at a loss,” he said.
Shapiro attributed the decline in Somali piracy to four factors: an international campaign coordinated by the United States involving more than 80 countries and international organizations; placing armed security teams aboard merchant ships and using security measures such as razor wire and passing through pirate-infested waters at maximum speed; tracking the financial flows from piracy operations, leading to the capture and jailing of pirate kingpins; and supporting the formation of a responsible government in Somalia capable of controlling its territorial waters.
“Once Somalia is capable of policing its own territory and its own waters, piracy will fade away. To that end, the United States continues to support the newly established government in Mogadishu,” Shapiro said.
The assistant secretary said that on the other side of the continent, specifically in the Gulf of Guinea, piracy and other forms of maritime crime are on the rise, and it is not easy to use the same tools there that were effective against the Somali pirates.
“While in Somalia, we faced an absence of government, in the Gulf of Guinea the exact opposite holds true. There are many sovereign governments, with varying degrees of capability, but all with their own laws, their own interests,” Shapiro said.
The Gulf of Guinea region is an important source of oil, cocoa and metals for world markets, and ships operating there are vulnerable targets, according to the International Maritime Organization (IMO), a U.N. agency.
In May, Cameroon is planning to host a regional meeting for the purpose of adopting an IMO Code of Conduct “to repress piracy, armed robbery against ships and other illicit maritime activity off the coasts of west and central Africa,” according to a statement by IMO chief Koji Sekimizu.
allafrica.com