You are facing small crafts that will bounce up and down when facing the slightest ripple or wave, which doesn’t exactly enhance the pirates’ accuracy. This is pretty much why successful hijackings have dropped to zero since the implementation of armed guards became widespread. Somali pirates are not enemy soldiers. They are not trying to conquer the hill and they are not there to fight. They are the sea equivalent of a mugger. Their goal is to capture the ship in the easiest way possible and take the money. The presence of armed opponents upon one ship will make them give that one up and look for an easier target, usually after hearing the first couple of warning shots.
This does not mean they are not dangerous. There have been cases when, although the armed guards have fended off the pirates’ attempt to board in powerful ‘fuck you and your ship’ fashion, the Somalis unleashed their fury at their failure from a distance. Their fury comes in the form of 7.62x39mm rounds and RPGs.
Following the rules of engagement
Despite what you may have heard about international waters being the Wild West, maritime security teams have a very strict set of ROE that any wise team leader will stick to like it’s the word of God. After all, it is what keeps him and his team from ending up in a prison in places of the world where forced man-to-man love is the least of your worries.
This outcome is more likely than you may think. Imagine that you have an incoming skiff, and through your binoculars you see it carries ladders, weapons, the whole nine yards of piracy. To make things more interesting, they begin firing in the air. “Well, let’s shoot them!” one might rush to say. If you follow that impulse and wound one of them, what they’ll do next is drop anything that could brand them as pirates and hold on to the nets and the other fishing paraphernalia; they are mere fishermen, after all. Then they’ll wait for the warship patrolling the area, which will inevitably respond to your ship’s distress signal. If there are no visible signs of intent to commit piracy on their boat, you will have a hard time proving that they are pirates. Many teams bring cameras with them and mount Go-Pros on their helmets to have proof in questionable cases.
There are minor exceptions to these rules, but for the most part, there is an ironclad process to address potential problems. First, you use the ship’s horns and you pump up the water hoses to let them know that they have being spotted. At the same time, the ship is making evasive maneuvers to move away from the coming skiff. Then come the flares. If everything to this point has failed and they continue their approach, then comes the warning shots. The only way you can skip all this process is if your life and the lives of your crew are in immediate danger, which is not normally the case; the pirates know you cannot fire unless you are fired upon and so they hold their fire.
Yours truly has never come face to face with the scourge of the high seas. Luck? Slow season? Who knows. Most of what I’ve shared here comes from doing the job and working with old timers in the business. That does not mean that I don’t have my share of stories of whiskey tango foxtrot moments or strange encounters.
One such moment came when we had just cleared off of the Hanish Islands in the Red Sea. At the starboard side of the ship was Eritrea, at the port side Yemen, and we were heading south towards Bab-el-Mandeb to enter the Gulf of Aden. I was up on the bridge, going through my normal routine: made coffee, took a look at the radar screen, and headed out to the starboard-side wing to glance through the binoculars.
A small black object that seemed out of place caught my attention. I returned to the radar to see if it was showing anything, but that side was clear. I went back outside to keep an eye on the spot, and within two minutes, it became evident that the object was the nose of a fast-moving, small boat. And by fast, I mean really fast. And it was headed directly toward our vessel. So I picked up my radio and called the rest of the team. In seconds, all three of us were on the bridge, vested, and holding our L1A1s—the semi-auto version of the ‘right-arm of the free world,’ the FN FAL.
At a distance of about 500 meters, we could make out that the vessel was a rigid-hulled inflatable boat with three people onboard, still coming fast toward us. No weapons were visible, so the only thing to do was observe and be ready for anything. At 200 meters, they slightly altered their course and passed at 30 meters from our bow. I stayed put and the TL went to the other side. After a while the whole thing was over. Who were these guys? Probably smugglers or spotters for pirates. A few moments of distress, and then everything went back to normal. But for the security team onboard, it is events like that one that justify their presence. Even if there is no attack, having security onboard acts as a deterrent and gives the crew the peace of mind to continue their daily work.
What does the future hold for the maritime-security industry? Well, the attacks have died down. As a result, wages in the industry have diminished, forcing people with expertise to leave it in search of more profitable gigs in the private security sector. More likely than not, armed guards will continue their presence until Somalia is stabilized. That is the way of things in East Africa. Meanwhile, a new anti-piracy chapter is being written in the west, along the shores and rivers of Nigeria.
(Featured image courtesy of activegroupindia.com)
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