Slow Progress in War against Piracy
The following is a guest blog from the law offices of Schechter, McElwee, Shaffer & Harris in Houston, Texas.
The international naval coalition that's patrolling high-risk piracy areas off the Somali coastline and the Horn of Africa is not exactly an organized coalition. There is no single commander overseeing the efforts of the navies that are involved in the antipiracy efforts, and there are rarely any meetings of all the parties involved in these efforts. Instead, the commanders rely on Internet chat to keep each other briefed about their plans and progress.
There are an estimated 30 to 40 warships involved in counter piracy efforts on any given day. Most of these warships belong to the EU, the US and NATO countries, and antipiracy efforts are conducted without any regard to the flag of the vessel that is being hijacked. These efforts have seen some success. There has been heavy naval patrolling the Internationally Recognized Corridor in the Gulf of Aden, and this has led to a remarkable drop in the number of successful pirate attacks. Since July last year, only three ships have fallen victim to pirates in this area.
Identifying pirate groups is not really as sophisticated as we believe. All it can take is long ladders hanging off the side of the boat for naval personnel to determine that a boat is full of pirates, and not fisherman. It's common to find fishermen in the area armed to the teeth with weapons for protection, but fishermen don't need long ladders.
However, the biggest obstacle to preventing pirate attacks has been time. Once an aerial survey locates a pirate ship and reports to command that a ship has been hijacked, it can take up to three days for help to arrive. Once counter piracy personnel manage to enter the hijacked ship, they usually get the pirates to dump their equipment aboard and take them in for trial.
Unfortunately, it seems like these efforts will have to continue, at least in the high-risk piracy areas in the region. It doesn't look like the piracy industry in Somalia is going to run out of unemployed youth anytime soon. In fact, experts believe that more numbers of unemployed youths in Somalia are joining the piracy industry.
The Maritime Piracy Lawyers at Schechter McElwee Shaffer & Harris represent injured maritime workers from the Maersk Alabama hostage incident and have represented maritime workers in pirate cases for over 45 years. We handle claims for offshore workers involved in accidents throughout Texas, the United States, and worldwide. If you are a Jones Act seaman, offshore platform worker, Longshoreman, crewboat worker, dock worker, or other maritime employee who has been injured on the job, contact SMSH today.
