Curse of the high seas

IN THE speedboat lie AK-47 assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades.

The scene is repeated across the world every week. Unlikely as it seems in the technologically advanced 21st century, the age-old stealth of pirate gangs, now coupled with modern-day firepower, enables them to hunt and gather with impunity.

"People dived onto the floor or went into their bathrooms when they realised we were under attack," said Norman Fisher, a 55-year-old lawyer from London. Fisher was a passenger on the Seabourn Spirit, a luxury cruise liner which was targeted by pirates 100 miles off the coast of Somalia this month. "One of the pirates was waving an AK-47 rifle. He started firing the gun towards the ship, and it was also about then that I realised the guy in front of the pirate boat was carrying a rocket launcher. The captain came on ... telling everyone, 'Stay inside, stay inside, we are under attack.'"

The Spirit, equipped with the latest anti-terror technology, eventually outran the pirates. Not everyone is so lucky. Across the world 100 seamen are currently being held for ransom. Vessels and their crews are being captured almost daily. And yet the international community seems unable, or unwilling, to stop the piracy. The chasm that exists between national governments and international waters is the breeding ground for a crime that is allowing criminal gangs to demand hundreds of thousands of pounds in ransom money.

The pirates' modus operandi is simple: machine guns, body armour, mobile phones and eavesdropping devices have replaced cannons, crushed-velvet coats and the telescope. Targets are aplenty.

It is a crime that stretches from the east African coast of Somalia to the narrow Malacca Straits, between Indonesia and Malaysia, and the South China Sea. These shipping routes are filled with the tankers, freighters and tugs that carry nearly a quarter of the world's trade destined for Japan and China.

The International Maritime Bureau's (IMB) 2004 piracy report found 325 attacks worldwide. While that was down from 2003, the piracy incidents have become more violent: 30 crew members were killed in 2004, compared to 21 the previous year.

There were 93 incidents of piracy in Indonesia's waters alone - a quarter of all the attacks worldwide. The piracy is estimated to cost the shipping industry $15bn a year.

The problem is endemic. The Malacca Straits has continued to see acts of piracy increase this year despite co-ordinated naval patrols between Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia.

And in the past seven months Somalis have added their name to the world piracy map. Gangs from the war-torn state have attacked 32 boats and continue to hold the crew of at least seven ships captive.

Maritime authorities are not only worried that the number of attacks off Somalia's eastern coast has jumped from last year, when only two were reported, but also that the pirates are becoming more aggressive and skilful.

Travelling in fast, highly manoeuvrable fibreglass speedboats with an armoury capable of challenging a small army, let alone the crew of a container ship, the raiders are more agile than heavily-laden ships carrying oil or food that cannot outrun them.

Most previous attacks in Somalia have centred on fishing boats close to shore in the Gulf of Aden to the north of the country. But the attack on the luxury cruiseliner Seabourn Spirit last week has highlighted their growing confidence.

In the past 12 months the criminals have moved further south and struck further out to sea. The pirate gangs, most likely based in Somalia's largest city, Mogadishu, use para-military tactics to strike at vessels unable to defend themselves.

"Somalia is rapidly reaching the point where it becomes an international centre for maritime criminality," said Captain Pottengal Mukundan, director of the IMB, based in London. "It is a non-existent state incapable of policing itself."

Until 2003, the IMB's Piracy Reporting Centre in Kuala Lumpur recommended ships stay at least 50 nautical miles from the Somali coast. This guidance was changed to 100 miles. After last week's attack British ships are now being told to stay 150 miles clear.

The surge in piracy comes 14 years after the fall of Somalia's last effective central government. Most of the country is split between warlords, clan elders and Saudi-sponsored Islamic clerics. Peace talks in neighbouring Kenya, in 2004, led to a "transitional federal government", but it has imploded because of rivalries between the prime minister and the president, on one side, and warlords, some of whom are cabinet ministers, in Mogadishu.

Given the troubled politics of the region it is not surprising that Somalia has become one of the most difficult maritime areas to police. Its coast is 1,880-miles long yet it has no navy. Unable to control his own ministers, let alone the bandits who roam Somalia's plains and pirates who cruise its seas, prime minister Ali Mohammed Gedi has appealed to the international community to patrol the coastline, with little effect.

A combined naval task force, including ships from the United States, Germany, France, Britain and Italy, remains hundreds of miles away in the Gulf of Aden near the Horn of Africa. It is engaged in the global War on Terror, searching for terrorists moving equipment by sea, conducting people trafficking operations, or planning maritime attacks, and cannot be diverted. Perversely, it is the presence of international forces north of Somalia, in the aftermath of the Iraq war, that may have contributed to pirates spreading their activities further south in the past year.

Most of the criminals are not interested in the cargoes ships carry. They just want to use them and ship crews to extort money from international shipping operators. The 100 seamen currently being held hostage were working on ships registered in Thailand, Taiwan, Malta and Ukraine.

Capt Mukundan said: "They usually want a ransom in return for the crew members. Companies are paying out because they do not want the death of 20 or more people on their consciences."

Other criminal gangs are prepared to force the crew off the ship and sail it to port to be given a new identity and a paint job.

Recent examples of Somalian piracy includes raids on ships carrying supplies for the UN World Food Programme. One of the most notorious but successful attacks happened on June 23, when 10 seamen on the MV Semlow left the Kenyan port of Mombasa for Bossaso in Somalia.

Having passed through Somali waters the ship, loaded with 850 tonnes of rice and food aid for victims of the Asian tsunami, was 35 miles offshore when it came under machine gun fire. Three fibreglass speedboats carrying 20 raiders armed to the teeth with pistols, AK47s and rocket-propelled grenades circled the vessel. The Semlow had no time to issue a distress signal. Pirates hooked a metal ladder to the 58m boat and climbed aboard.

After stealing $8,500 from the ship's safe they forced the crew to head towards central Somalia, where the ship dropped anchor within sight of land. Three days after the hijacking the Semlow's captain was told to radio the ship's owners in Mombasa and give them two telephone numbers: one for a mobile phone, the other for a satellite phone.

Inayet Kudrati, a director of the Motaku Shipping Agency, which has had three of its four boats hijacked this year, then took a call demanding that he pay $500,000 if he wanted to see the ship and the crew again. Without the money to pay the ransom there was a stand-off as diplomats from Kenya, Sri Lanka, Tanzania and the UN took over the negotiations. But the pirates were not rushed into conceding defeat. While the Semlow crew survived on fish and rationed water the pirates ate well, having bought goats and potatoes from the mainland.

Their fortitude was rewarded six weeks later when the shipping company eventually paid $135,000 for the crew and the boat's release.

Although it has been seen as a strategic error, last week's failed attack on the Seabourn Spirit has done nothing to dilute the pirates' ambition. Four more ships were targeted by invaders in the three days that followed. "One of those attacks succeeded," Capt Mukundan added. "The ship was only carrying sugar but the owners paid out a substantial sum."

If anything, the criminals are becoming increasingly ambitious. Although any coastline further than 12 miles offshore can be considered international waters, pirates are now using so-called "Mother Ships" to venture far beyond the 100 and 150-mile zones deemed "safe" by maritime authorities. "A speedboat can only go so far before it runs out of fuel," said Capt Mukundan. "They are using bigger ships as a staging post to conduct their operations and we think this is giving them a range of up to 390 miles offshore. The money they have gained from past ransoms will have allowed them to buy impressive boats."

But last week's attack on the 10,000-ton Seabourn Spirit has exposed pirates' limitations, according to maritime security experts. Gavin Simmonds, a defence adviser at the Chamber of British Shipping, said: "They usually go for slow-moving vessels that they can capture quickly but they made a mistake by attacking such a highly-equipped ship.

"For a start, the Seabourn Spirit was so big there was no conceivable way the pirates could have got onboard unless the crew had thrown a rope down to them. They have probably also given away vital clues about their operation. If the US intelligence services are looking at this part of the coast they are likely to have tracked the boat through its satellite systems and be some way towards identifying who is responsible."

The International Chamber of Commerce, meanwhile, has appealed for more naval protection in the area. Although the British frigate HMS Campbeltown is in the Gulf, the Royal Navy is reluctant to commit it to Somali waters. An MoD spokesman said: "We are aware of the piracy issues that have been raised since the Seabourn Spirit was attacked but we have to take a long term view on our resources. Our ships already have vital tasks to perform. We will not tolerate piracy anywhere but it would take longer than a week to make such a strategic decision."

Germany, however, has decided to help. Its navy will be keeping the nation's leading cruise ship, MS Deutschland, under observation using ship and aircraft-borne radar and spy-satellites to protect the vessel and its crew. The navy also has a frigate on station near the Horn of Africa, with 220 German marines based in Djibouti as part of a Nato anti-terror mission.

Hans-Ulrich Kossel, a spokesman for the ship's owners, Deilmann Shipping Company, said: "It doesn't mean that we shall be shadowed by a frigate for the whole duration of the voyage. But it does mean that the navy will be observing us by radar."

But the anarchy that persists in Somalia means that the rebels are unlikely to notice or care. The waters offer them easy prey.

Simmonds said: "The pirates are increasingly behaving like paramilitary units, while the government is totally unable to stop them. More and more of these groups are getting their hands on the AK47s and RPGs that are easily purchased in Mogadishu. The pirates may not have taken over the country, but they have taken over the sea."