by EMMA HUGHES
‘Skiffs’ are no match for military vehicles. PHOTO/Official U.S. Navy Imagery, under a CC license.
This week the Combating Piracy Conference has been taking place in London, behind closed doors. This industry-organized event brings together representatives from European Union, NATO and oil and shipping companies.
At a time when austerity is cutting into the public purse, and the armed forces, oil and shipping companies have been using the conference to call for military resources to be allocated to protecting their own commercial interests.
And it’s not so hard for them to do. In the lexicography of evil the word ‘pirate’ comes just below ‘terrorist’. The ‘war on piracy’ fits a familiar trope – with a clear enemy, against which any amount of force is acceptable.
The reality is more complex. Even at its height, fewer than one per cent of tankers travelling through the Gulf of Aden were hijacked, and the number is now far lower. Yet British oil companies have managed to exaggerate the dangers for shipping off the coast of Somalia and pressed government ministers into granting them a vast, hidden military subsidy, physically embodied in Navy frigates, drones and helicopters.
Since 2008, when the crude tanker the Sirius Star was hijacked, a vast area of the North-West Indian ocean, in particular the Gulf of Aden, has been heavily militarized. Warships, helicopters and drones patrol the ocean creating an intense naval deployment that can easily overpower the small and basic ‘skiffs’ used by Somali pirates.
The causes of piracy in the regions are varied. They include: the heavy US military presence in the area and support for corrupt warlords; the loss of local fisherfolk livelihoods due to illegal over-fishing by international trawlers; and the dumping of toxic waste by European companies in the sea off the Somali coast.
On the agenda at the conference was Vessel Protection Detachments (VPDs). Oil and shipping industries have been lobbying for the British Navy to provide teams of military personnel, so called VPDs, aboard commercial vessels – effectively acting as private security guards.
Some other countries are already letting corporations use their military personnel on ships. The Dutch government plans to deploy 100 VPD teams of ten people each, at the estimated cost of $29 million. The shipping companies will only pay half, effectively gaining a subsidy of $14.5 million.
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