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n early January of this year a bright red parcel attached to a small parachute glided gently toward the deck of a Saudi supertanker 800 kilometres off the Kenyan coast. Onboard the 330-metre long Sirius Star was a 23-man crew, a gang of armed Somali pirates and two million barrels of oil – a quarter of Saudi Arabia’s daily output. Inside the package was believed to be US$3 million in high denomination bills. Oil giant Saudi Aramco is thought to have paid the ransom to release the supertanker, owned by its shipping arm, and its black gold, bringing an end to a terrifying two-month ordeal for the hostages in what was the world’s biggest ship hijacking. The pirates had demanded US$25 million but eventually settled for a fraction of this, although US$3 million isn’t too bad a pay packet for two months’ ‘work’ in a country as poor and warravaged as Somalia. The hijacking of Sirius Star was the sea bandits’ biggest booty to date and there is a real fear that other fully-laden supertankers could be snared by the pirates in future attacks. Indeed, most attacks are directed at merchant ships connected in some way to the oil industry. Recently, however, annual monsoons have hit the region, curtailing the pirates’ ability to ply their illegal trade, and ship owners are on tenterhooks amid the calm before the real storm, so to speak. “The whole of the industry is holding its breath waiting for the wind to die down,” warns Nick Davis, a former British army pilot and Chairman of the Merchant Maritime Warfare Centre (MMWC) – a not-for-profit organisation addressing ship security. “Between late August and December we will see what happens, because we don’t know whether there will be this eerie quiet where nothing or just one or two gets hijacked, or whether we will have three or four ships a week taken.”
The lion’s share of attacks have occurred in the Gulf of Aden off the Somali coast – one of the world’s most important shipping lanes with 20,000 vessels passing through annually. There are also 2.8 million square kilometres of water in this region alone, meaning shipping companies and their crews have the daunting prospect of trying to react to or predict where and when the pirates strike next. Of course, with the Sirius Star ransom being paid so publicly there is the obvious concern that handing the pirates millions of dollars to relinquish control of a vessel will fuel more attacks and even bigger wallet-busting ransoms. Other young men will see the huge money to be made, round up a gang, arm themselves to the teeth and jump in a boat. Kenya’s foreign minister claimed that up until November 2008 the pirates had received over US$150 million, which can then be ploughed back into purchasing faster boats and increased hardware. “The big ransom payments have fuelled attacks – there isn’t any real doubt about that,” suggests Roger Middleton, Consultant for the Africa Programme at Chatham House – formerly the Royal Institute of International Affairs. “As ransoms go up it becomes a more attractive business for people, but it is a very difficult position for ship owners to be in because who wants to be the fi rst not to pay a ransom, which impacts on the safety of your crew?” Likewise, Davis is of the opinion that the pay-offs are spiralling out of control. “The pirates keep pushing, pushing and pushing for as much as they can get and they are quite happy to delay and start again. The industry, the insurance companies and negotiation teams are letting the ransoms get out of
Pay day: Pirates secure their biggest booty to date off the Kenyan coast in January
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