Swine flu's out and pirates are back in

If my Google News Alerts are any indication, since we've decided that swine flu is not going to develop into a lethal pandemic, some media focus has returned to pirates. The debate over arming crews has leapt to the forefront of the coverage. As Somalia's Deputy Prime Minister Abdirahman Aden Ibbi repeated his call for a Somali coast guard, delegates to this week's maritime security conference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia oppose both arming sailors and hiring private security guards:

"We are against the arming of seafarers in the fight against pirates. We are also against armed private security guards," said Pottengal Mukundan, director of the London-based International Maritime Bureau, or IMB. "We think it can be counter-productive," said Mukundan, whose organization monitors piracy worldwide and has urged greater international efforts to combat a spate of attacks off Somalia and in the Gulf of Aden. "Pirates will upgrade their weapons. Only a few ships will have armed security," he told reporters ...

Tim Wilkins, Asia-Pacific manager for ship owners' association Intertanko, said that arming vessels would increase fatalities, which until now have been low despite the large number of attacks. "We would certainly not advocate arming of the crew. It is not the answer. Seafarers are not trained to use guns. They are trained to navigate ships," he said. "We believe it will escalate the problem. At the moment, the pirates are not killing the seafarers. They only hijack and kidnap the sailors. Arming the crew will put their lives in danger."

Mukundan said armed crews would also create legal problems as ships passed through different territories or entered ports. "A vessel may need to go into coastal waters. But they may not be allowed in if they have private armed guards on board," he said. "There is also the question of who is in charge of the armed guards. Is it the ship captain or the guard themselves?" he said, adding that rather than reacting to attacks, it was better to focus on shutting down pirate networks.

Richard Farrington, chief of staff of the European Union Naval Force, said armed guards would be of uncertain quality and would operate in a hazy legal environment. "It is an unregulated industry and you get what you pay for. I think there are significant legal difficulties - their rules of engagement, their training, their competence, their identification of their targets."

Top Israeli maritime security expert and owner of Defender Security Group Igal Hasson disagrees with this assessment, however, and notes that concerns about legal problems while in ports could perhaps be circumvented by locking up weapons:

"Your average cargo vessel has very high sides, and can only be accessed at the stern. That's a small area that can be protected by as few as two to four guards, provided they're trained and armed with scope-mounted assault rifles," he said.

On the high seas, Hasson said, the snipers would be legally entitled to shoot to kill as soon as the "means and motivation" of the pirates were established -- for example, if they were armed or bearing down on the ship in a threatening manner.

Like the conference delegates, Hasson also recommends non-lethal measures, including an electrified fence. Another non-lethal anti-piracy tool that has received some press coverage in the last few months is the LRAD, an acoustic cannon that fires 150 decibels of sound in the direction it is aimed. I've recently discovered the amazingness of Ted Talks and so was intrigued by this talk by the inventor of the LRAD. However, as the Danger Room blog notes, the LRAD has a mixed track record in warding off pirate attacks.

Like the Kuala Lumpur conference attendees, Galrhan at Information Dissemination opposes the use of private security forces on board ships, but rather than echoing their call for exclusively non-lethal means of maritime defense, he advocates using US Naval forces:

What is the US Navy's role in defending freedom of navigation anyway, and can anyone wearing a Navy uniform say with a straight face it is to protect the sea lines of communication or freedom of navigation when our governments own policy suggests they are willing to give up that freedom so easily?

Sound maritime strategy during a period of peaceful globalization must be built on a fundamental necessity to insure freedom of navigation for trade, particularly in the parts of the world that are disconnected, like Africa. Piracy is compounding the global economic slide for countries like Egypt, that rely heavily on income from the use of the Suez Canal. Kenya is also suffering, as ships instead take a longer route around Africa and many smaller ships are avoiding port in Kenya where normally they would take on fuel or provisions. These carry economic consequences in a part of the world where economy is the strategy to bring peace and stabilization to a very poor region of the world.

He goes on to advance the argument from commercial IR liberalism that economics is driving world peace, implying that the US government has a security interest (what would Jutta Weldes say?) in protecting maritime commerce. There's a couple problems with this post, however, most notably that the burden of proving that a US naval presence would be a functional deterrent to piracy. Furthermore, while ransom payments are costly, the chance of a given ship being successfully hijacked remains low. However, Galrhan's call for a comprehensive approach to the problems in Somalia is well taken, particularly as the governmental failings of that state are becoming worse and worse.