IHS Analysis - Politics & Piracy

Introduction
For a number of years, the rim of the Indian Ocean has
been a source of significant security instability. In the
Horn of Africa (HoA) region, this instability has been the
subject of media and analytical focus since initial
attempts at international intervention in the early 1990s.
However, perhaps not until 2008 and the ascendancy of
piracy as an international security concern did the region
receive appropriate levels of international political focus.
The pirate threat impacted on global security in a number
of ways, putting at risk World Food Programme
shipments into Somalia, as well as threatening wider
international shipping and the strategic security of the key
global sea lines of communication which cut across the
Indian Ocean.
Since 2008, the international counter-piracy campaign –
headed by a coalition of the world’s navies under the
banners of the European Union Naval Force (EU
NAVFOR) Operation ‘Atalanta’, NATO Operation ‘Ocean
Shield’ and the United States-led Combined Maritime
Force operations – has wrestled, in an often ugly political
environment, with the challenge of finding a strategic
solution to the piracy problem.
In political terms, the navies’ record appears mixed. In the
last two years, the naval task forces together have been
behind 280 separate disruptions of pirate activity.
However, there have been some particularly difficult
years, with attacks peaking in 2011, when attacks and
successful hijackings numbered 237 and 28 respectively.
By the middle of 2012 and into 2013, however, a number
of different political strings had been tied together to
generate an effective counter-piracy strategy, applied at
sea and ashore, which has eliminated almost completely
– at least in the short term – the number of successful
attacks. In fact, the last successful hijacking occurred in
July 2012.
April 2013
IHS
Analysis: Politics & Piracy
Dr Lee Willett
IHS Jane's Defence Weekly
© 2013 IHS 1 ihs.com

IHS Analysis: Politics & Piracy
This does not mean that the threat of piracy has been
removed completely, however. Consideration must be
given to the possibility that a number of the underlying
causes of piracy remain, and that the problem may
resurface if appropriate levels of international effort do not
continue to be applied.
Naval presence and tactics
At any one time, perhaps as few as two dozen ships from
the international naval community have been present on
station in the HoA region. With a requirement to police
around 8.3 million km2
of ocean and to be able to reach
any ship by sea or air within 20-30 minutes of the ship
coming under attack, some have argued that perhaps as
many as 70 ships would be required (with three times this
number needing to be in the operational rotation to
maintain the 70 ships on station). However, despite this
lack of coverage relative to the requirement, the ships
have made a significant strategic contribution at sea and
ashore.
The counter-piracy campaign demonstrated how naval
forces can be used to exert influence at a place and time
of policy choice through presence in international waters,
even if the circumstances ashore are not conducive to
external engagement. When the international community
decided to address the piracy problem, despite the truism
that the solution to the problem always lay ashore,
establishing naval task forces to deter attacks at sea gave
nations the opportunity to respond quickly to the
emerging crisis. Drawing on the UK’s already-established
operational command-and-control structure at its
Permanent Joint Headquarters in Northwood, EU
NAVFOR ships arrived on station within six weeks of the
political decision to stand up the operation. They were
followed quickly by the NATO and US task forces, as well
as a number of national task groups.
First, the navies established the Internationally
Recognised Transit Corridor (IRTC). Running parallel to
the northern shore of the Gulf of Aden, the IRTC provided
a relatively secure convoy route through what was
originally the most at-risk area, and the navies
demonstrated the ability to provide an effective combined
constabulary capability.
However, while the IRTC may have helped to reduce the
risk in the Gulf of Aden, at that time the lack of focus on
addressing matters ashore resulted only in the
development of the ‘balloon effect’, in which the naval
pressure in the Gulf of Aden merely forced the problem to
bulge out into other regions. As the incidence of piracy
attacks picked up, the international community reacted
with the establishment of UN Security Council Resolution
1816, which permitted international warships to pursue
pirate ships into the 12 n mile limit of Somali territorial
waters.
The campaign also provided navies with the opportunity
to demonstrate one of the key advantages of the use of
naval force at sea in the pursuit of international security,

that of the force multiplying effect, which can be provided
when navies work together. Chinese, Indian, Iranian,
Pakistani and Russian navies, for example, have been
alongside those of the traditional Western powers to
support the greater international good as well as national
interest. The navies also established effective waterspace
management arrangements to enable them to maximise
the presence and coverage of their ships.
Reacting to the changing tone of the international piracy
debate, by early 2012 the navies were ready to take the
fight to the pirates in a more proactive manner by
conducting carefully targeted strikes against pirate
logistic dumps. EU NAVFOR conducted its first air strike
ashore on 15 May 2012, an operation which may have
been in part a policy tool aimed at demonstrating new
approaches in solving the problem, as European
governments sought more tangible evidence of progress
as the question of renewing ‘Atalanta’s’ mandate (which
runs until December 2014) came up once again. Debate
has continued, nonetheless, as to whether the strikes had
the intended and perceived effect. Ultimately, only a
limited number were carried out, perhaps because the
navies needed to consider how to distinguish pirates from
other Somali citizens and how to avoid the risk of
resentment at external interference.
The piracy issue first hit the headlines in late 2008 as the
international commercial shipping industry raised at the
highest levels of the global security community its
collective concern at the growing threat of piracy.
Today, given the challenges facing the navies in providing
coverage at sea over such large distances and given
arguments that the commercial sector should take greater
responsibility for its own security, the role of the
commercial sector in providing security at sea remains
one of the most contested elements of the debate.
Initially, there was significant resistance from
governments and the shipping industry alike to the idea of

embarking armed guards on ships, for a number of
reasons. However, as the piracy problem escalated, so
did the intensity of public and political debate on this
matter. A small number of nations had already been
permitting the use of armed teams aboard ships sailing
under their flag. Perhaps the pivotal decision, however,
was taken by the UK in October 2011, when it allowed
UK-flagged ships to embark armed teams.
Since this strategic shift in the policy debate, the use of
armed teams on ships transiting the HoA region has
increased significantly: at the same time, the number of
successful attacks has dropped, prompting arguments
that the deterrent effect of the presence of armed teams
has seen no ship carrying a security detachment being
pirated.
The shipping industry continues to face the challenge of
the affordability of such a security presence at a time
when a number of economic pressures are weighing
down on commercial shipping business models. The
private security companies which provide the armed
teams are facing economic pressures of their own as,
while demand may still be high, there is arguably a
surplus in supply.
While governments and industry continue to work
together on guidelines for the use of force at sea by
commercial organisations, perhaps the most critical
question remains as to what extent the gap is being filled
by private security because of continuing reductions in
naval force levels, in particular within many Western
navies.
The commercial sector also contributes to the delivery of
effective security at sea by the implementation of best
management practice. Sparked by the piracy threat,
governments, industry, and the international maritime
security community produced the Best Management
Practices (BMP) counter-piracy handbook.
The shipping community argues that ship masters who
adopt the BMP principles have an increased chance of
deterring and surviving a pirate attack, and it has been
argued that 70% of the ships transiting the HoA’s high-
risk areas are implementing its principles.
However, the effectiveness of the BMP process in
educating mariners and reducing the risk of piracy in the
HoA raises the question: given increasing levels of piracy
in other parts of the world, should these best
management principles have a wider geographical remit?
Developments ashore
While there was initial nervousness within the
international community about becoming embroiled
ashore in what is potentially an extremely difficult set of
circumstances – and with politico-strategic lessons from
Afghanistan and Iraq fresh in many Western political
minds – as the piracy problem continued largely unabated
despite the best efforts of the world’s navies it became
clear that action was required ashore.

While the international community has endeavoured to
break the piracy model by pursuing both the major
criminal figures underwriting the pirates’ activities and the
ransom money which flows to them, perhaps the major
breakthroughs ashore have come in the form of the
establishment of indigenous capacity to deliver maritime
security and effective criminal justice.
One of the primary problems confronting the international
counter-piracy effort has been the inability to prosecute
pirates in Somalia, other regional states, or Western
counties, with only a handful of cases having been
brought to court so far. Added to this is the limited effect
of operational strategies such as ‘catch and release’,
under which captured pirates are denied their pirate
paraphernalia but returned to their communities.
With the overall aim of enabling governments and peoples
to take greater responsibility for their own security, today
a number of international organisations – including the EU
(through its CAP Nestor programme, launched in
December 2011, and its Somalia-based EU Training
Mission), NATO, and the UN Office of Drugs and Crime
(UNODC) – have made significant progress in working
with regional states to develop self-sustainable national
coastguard and naval capacities, to develop information-
sharing mechanisms, to enable the development of
greater political, economic and social infrastructure
ashore, and to build sustainable governance and judicial
constructs.
As part of international support for the judicial process,
the UK is funding the basing of two Crown Prosecution
Service prosecutors in the Seychelles and announced this
year the injection of a further GBP2.2 million (USD3.3
million) into the international funding pool to support the
building of judicial capacity in the region.
Navies, pirates and politics
Along with the international desire to secure sea lines and
protect international trade, a number of nations arguably
saw the advent of Somali piracy as a grand strategic
opportunity to increase national influence in the region.
There are a number of interesting examples here. First,
the piracy problem – and in particular the hijacking in
September 2008 of the Ukrainian cargo ship MVFaina , a
Belize-flagged ship reported to be transporting 33
Russian-made T-72 tanks to Kenya – saw the arrival on
station of the Russian Federation Navy (RFN), in one of its
first significant overseas deployments since the collapse
of the Soviet Union. A number of the RFN’s principal
warships have contributed to national and coalition
taskings.
Second, despite playing a primary role in the
establishment of ‘Atalanta’, France also increased its
direct national interest in the region in a number of other
ways. France’s possession of dependent territories in the
Indian Ocean means that it is regarded by some regional
states as a legitimate international actor in the region. Yet

the piracy issue saw a couple of key developments from
France’s perspective.
Under Operation ‘Amethyste’, the French Alindien task
group established a national presence at sea in the
region. Furthermore, the French government has
promoted a number of multinational counter-piracy
initiatives ashore on the African continent, such as the
development of a regional maritime security training
centre in Djibouti. This has led some to ask whether such
developments have rivalled the US-led regional maritime
security operation based out of the US Central Command
(CENTCOM) headquarters in Bahrain.
Moreover, France has been increasing its footprint in the
region as a whole, establishing naval-basing access in
Djibouti and the United Arab Emirates. France’s increased
naval presence in Djibouti and the UAE gives Paris
increased strategic presence around two of the world’s
key strategic choke points: the Bab Al Mendeb and
Hormuz straits.
The international piracy campaign has seen the arrival in-
theatre of a sustained presence from China’s People’s
Liberation Army Navy (PLAN). China’s primary strategic
aim is to secure access to resources to fuel its people
and access to markets for the products they produce.
This is mandating an increasing presence in a number of
different regions around the world, including the
Mediterranean, the Arctic, and South America, as well as
the Indian Ocean. In other words, an increasing Chinese
presence in the Indian Ocean was perhaps inevitable,
regardless of its desire to support national and
international interests within the counter-piracy campaign.
For some time now, China has been working with a
number of littoral states in the Indian Ocean to develop
infrastructure ashore, such as in Myanmar, the
Seychelles, Sri Lanka, and – more notably in recent years
– Gwadar in Pakistan. There are also recent reports of
China considering options to build a logistics base in
Djibouti, with its piracy task group having made a number
of resupply calls to the port in the last few years.
Developing basing access in Djibouti, Mynamar, and
Pakistan would give China strategic presence at the three
main access points into the Indian Ocean and, thus,
increase politico-strategic influence.
The established presence of a Chinese naval task group
in the Indian Ocean has raised a number of strategic
questions. China has recently recognised publicly the
inevitability of its own rise to become a ‘maritime power’.
However, some nations – perhaps the US globally, and
India in the Indian Ocean in particular – continue to watch
the growing Chinese naval presence with a wary eye. On
the other hand, the piracy operation demonstrated
another truism about the role of navies as an international
political tool.
Navies, operating as they do on a daily basis on the
world’s high seas and being in effect a primary
international public face of their governments, learn to co-

operate at a tactical and operational level when deployed
in the same waterspace and when pursuing the same
interests, even if relations between their parent
governments are not close. While the Chinese task group
initially deployed to the HoA to protect Chinese-flagged
ships, the PLAN learned very quickly that they could also
make a wider contribution to the international counter-
piracy operation by protecting any ship at risk within the
vicinity of their task group, no matter what flag.
Chinese commanding officers also learned that they
could also turn to fellow sailors for supplies. The big
question with regard to the Chinese naval presence in the
Indian Ocean remains: to what extent has the piracy
operation simply provided a window of opportunity for
China to establish a more permanent presence in the
region, and what does this mean for its relations with
regional states, especially India?
China’s presence in the area has wide-reaching
implications: it has provided a platform from which China
has been able to project naval power to support national
interests in the Mediterranean region. Chinese ships on
counter-piracy tasking were deployed to evacuate
Chinese nationals from Libya in 2011. In 2012, during the
Syrian crisis, ships diverted to conduct exercises in the
Black Sea with the Russian Navy. These ships also made
a number of port calls, for example to Istanbul; Turkey
appears to be a nation with which China is looking to
develop closer ties.
Given the economic instability in Southern Europe, the
strategic volatility in North Africa and recent resource
finds in the Mediterranean, the growing importance of the
Mediterranean may be reflected in a growing Chinese
maritime presence. Once again, the key question is: what
does this means in politico-strategic terms? For example,
the purchase of a pier in the commercial port of Piraeus,
Greece, by state-owned Chinese shipping company
Cosco in 2010 passed largely unnoticed in the
international political and analytical communities, with
only broadsheet business rather than news pages
covering the issue. How much consideration is being
given to the strategic implications of growing Chinese
maritime relations with a number of key NATO states?
Piracy containment
Despite recent success in containing the piracy problem,
the question remains as to whether this success is
sustainable, especially in the face of competing
budgetary pressures and policy priorities in Western
capitals. The Economist reported that, among other
things, the pirates may be waiting for ‘the international
community to tire of an expensive policing operation’. UK
Foreign Office Minister Alistair Burt reinforced this risk
earlier this year, arguing that “it is by no means ‘mission
accomplished’. Progress is fragile and reversible”.
Political focus on the piracy problem was sparked by a
number of nations seeking to protect economic interests,
while also taking the opportunity to improve grand

strategic political influence in the region by filling a power
vacuum created by a lack of governance ashore and at
sea. However, at a time of enduring global economic and
political crisis, and at a time when strategic interest in
other regions is developing, such as in West Africa, the
question remains of whether the nations responsible for
coming together to head off the piracy issue will be able
to sustain the required levels of naval and wider political
investment in theatre. Simply, the sustainability of the
current success remains too short-term at this time to
assume that the problem has gone away.
Despite global perceptions of a generic decline in
Western naval strength, the counter-piracy campaign has
still been mounted and led by Western navies. Yet these
Western navies are facing significant challenges. The
UK’s position in meeting its enduring global requirements
with a reduced number of surface ships in particular is
well documented. France’s last defence White Paper was
produced in 2008 prior to the global financial crisis, and
the next one – which was due out in 2012 – is still to
appear, at time of writing.
Meanwhile, the impact of sequestration on US Navy
(USN) operations is still to be fully understood but, in
announcing delays to several major ship deployments,
the service is playing the highest of high stakes with its
own political leaders as it attempts to demonstrate to
Capitol Hill how US national interests will be affected if
sequestration goes ahead.
Such pressures have raised questions over whether the
Western navies will have the capacity to maintain the
limited number of ships on station in the medium term,
and to retain the primary role in suppressing piracy at
sea. Moreover the major Western navies would struggle
to find capacity to support any increase in operational
levels in these areas without reducing existing
commitments.
Despite reinforcing the UK’s commitment to ‘stay the
course’, Minister Burt argued that “the situation off
Africa’s western seaboard is becoming increasingly
serious”. If other priorities become more acute, is there a
risk that nations may shift their naval forces to other
maritime arenas before the Somali piracy problem has
been demonstrably solved in the longer term?
This analysis is abridged. The full analysis was first
published in IHS Jane’s Defence Weekly and represents
one aspect of IHS naval reference, analysis, forecasting
and maritime domain awareness capabilities.
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IHS Analysis - Politics & Piracy

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