Today piracy is seen as a romantic idea. Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley have welcomed us all into a world of excitement and swashbuckling love on the high seas. In reality, however, piracy isn’t like that. Instead, it thrives on corruption and instability, accounting for a multimillion-dollar business in some of the poorest areas in the world. Piracy is a real issue facing our society. In 2010, the number of confirmed pirate attacks was 445 – costing millions and endangering thousands of lives on the affected ships.
Generally, pirates target cargo ships. This is because the motivation for them is strictly financial. Pirates wait until they see a ship that looks easily accessible, usually, one that is lying low in the water. Ships that lie low are easy to latch a ladder onto, making it easy to board. Once the pirates see a ship that they identify as a good target they will send a smaller boat – a boarding party– either from shore or from a larger “mother ship.” Once the small boat arrives at the target ship, they will attempt to board it. Depending on the group and their aims, they will either rob the ship or, more commonly, steal it and hold the crew hostage for ransom.
I know what you’re thinking – if piracy is such a big issue, why do we not hear more about it here in Australia where we are surrounded by water, and where $1.2 billion worth of trade moves through our ports on any given day? Why is piracy not a big deal here? Why do we not hear about it every day? Because piracy does not just happen. It requires a specific set of circumstances to survive as an industry – a set of circumstances that we are lucky enough not have in our country.
Requirement one to be a successful pirate: a good location
To operate as an effective pirate group, you need to be near a major shipping channel that requires big ships to come close to shore. You cannot effectively hijack ships if only one container ship comes past your town every few weeks. This is where the first problem with being an Australian pirate comes in. Container ships do not cruise past Melbourne on their way from Europe to America. While one shipping route does pass far north of Queensland, connecting Indonesia with Australia and New Zealand, there simply is no need for ships to pass Australia. Because they don’t, then, it makes it an unprofitable area.
Similarly, if ships can flee in any direction, it is going to be a lot harder to effectively hijack and board them. While Australia is bordered by the Indian and Pacific oceans – allowing for hundreds of thousands of kilometres of the wide open sea – other shipping lanes are far more restricted. During the early 2000’s, one of the most pirated areas was in Indonesia’s Strait of Malacca. The Strait is an 890 km long stretch of water that connects the Indian Ocean to the Pacific ocean, running between Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia. The Strait itself narrows to only 2.8 km through the middle – making it one of the narrowest channels in the world. Despite this, however, the shipping lane is jam-packed, with an average of 94,000 vessels carrying an estimated 25 percent of the world’s traded goods.
On top of this, the Strait is also a prime pirate territory for geographical reasons. Ships are forced to come close to land, making it easier for you to identify them and board them. And, if you miss out on the first ship that comes by, you’ve got another 93,999 ships to give it another shot since they need to traverse the region. It is for these reasons that the Strait has seen extensive piracy, with the International Maritime Bureau anticipating that, in the early 2000’s, the Strait alone accounted for 40 percent of the world”s reported pirate attacks.
Requirement two to be a successful pirate: an established but corrupt infrastructure
One of the biggest misunderstandings about the operation of piracy is that for it to thrive, pirates require mayhem and total state failure. This is wrong. If you are struggling to survive, you cannot pursue an effective piracy endeavour. This is because pirates are too preoccupied trying to make it through their daily life. Similarly, if there is a total collapse of the state, you cannot make it as a pirate because there is no infrastructure or market for you to sell your goods. As mentioned above, a pirate’s primary objective is profit. To achieve this, they need to sell any cargo that has been stolen from a ship and, depending on the type of ship that has been pirated, they need to be able to repaint the ship and sell the vessel itself. In order to achieve this, then, there needs to be local authorities that can be ‘bought off’ – meaning that you need corruption and lots of it.
The Corruption Perceptions Index ranks Australia as the 13th least corrupt country in the world, meaning that governance is relatively strong here and that there is a strong border protection agency with public institutions that are often hard to buy off. Thus, you cannot take the boat that you just pirated to the local port in Adelaide and pay the men at the Port Authority to turn a blind eye while you repaint and rename it.
Somalia, on the other hand, is ranked 176th on the same corruption index (out of 176). The Gulf of Aden, north of Somalia, forms the entrance to the Red Sea and to the Suez Canal, making it one of the most important trading routes in the world. Somalian piracy rates have peaked at 160 confirmed incidents annually. However, it has been met with a strong multinational response known as Combined Task Force 150 (CTF 150). This task force comprises a coalition of 20 countries. Until last year, CTF 150 had totally eradicated piracy in the region, as boats needing to navigate the area would request an escort, which would then be provided by one of the task force members.
But why should I care about piracy?
Piracy is an issue that affects the world over. In 2011, the non-for-profit Oceans Beyond Piracy (OBP) estimated that the indirect costs of piracy were between $6.6 to $6.9 billion USD. Now, however, the World Bank anticipates that the cost could actually be as high as $18 billion USD annually. Such indirect costs include insurance, naval support, legal proceedings, re-routing of slower ships, and individual protective steps taken by ship owners. These costs all flow on to make shipping and logistics more expensive. Another way of looking at how these cost impact ordinary people every day was highlighted by the International Growth Centre (IGC). The IGC anticipate that, for every $120 million seized by pirates in Somalia, the cost to the shipping industry and to the end consumer is between $0.9 and $3.3 billion USD. And that is only looking at Somali piracy. On top of this, there is the innumerable cost of the thousands of men and women who get taken hostage by pirates every single year.
How do we stop it?
Stopping piracy is a complex issue, and requires changing the way we think about the problem. The current approach involves two things: First, to prevent or deter piracy with naval patrols and convoys, such as the Combined Task Force 150. As previously mentioned, these convoys escort cargo ships passing through the Gulf of Aden to protect them from pirates. While an approach like this works well for a small confined area, in general, it is not an effective response to piracy off the Somalian coast. The coast of Somalia sits on the Indian Ocean, where there are waters that are too vast, and where there are too many cargo ships. It thus remains a tempting option for Somali pirates, despite the increased risks of being caught. The second part of the current approach involves placing armed guards on cargo ships. Unfortunately, this is not an effective response as it is more expensive and it costs millions more in insurance, wages and fees for shipping companies, all of which are then passed on to consumers.
Finding and backing strong governments in areas prone to piracy is the most effective way to stop pirates. These governments can then use their on-shore law enforcement to stop the pirate activity. Moreover, strengthened institutions would make it harder for pirates to sell stolen goods. But achieving this will not be easy. Returning to the Somalian example, the country has not had a functional central government for the better part of 20 years. However, there were options, as in 2006, the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) government put an end to piracy during its six month period of governance. The ICU was undoubtedly motivated by a desire to show the international community that it wanted to bring law and order back to the country. And if the ICU could achieve this feat in such a short period, a strong government could achieve it too.
To be sure, CTF 150 and other military options are helping by providing necessary short-term targeted assistance, but these choices cost millions of dollars and are not sustainable throughout the entire ocean. They need to be used in partnership with other approaches, namely, state building and industry quashing.
