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By Ali Osman
Tuesday, December 02, 2008
It is clear that dozens of navy vessels cannot deal with the out of control piracy in Gulf of Aden and the coastal waters of Somalia. The security of the area is left with the ship owners and few nations that have much to lose if the area becomes unusable for commercial vessels. It seems the world is saying that, the Ship owners understands the best the security risk and they are the best to deal with as they are the ones who loses out time/money if their vessel is hijacked.
This line of reasoning is deficient. The ship owner would secure the ship and the cargo up to its money value. For example, if a ship costs 1 billion dollars, then you would assume the owner would ensure the vessel up to 1 billion plus the maximum capacity that it can carry. However, let us assume God forbid, a vessel carrying dangerous chemicals or Petroleum was hijacked and in the process got damaged and spilled all that into the sea. The society at large and those communities close to the area would experience horrific damages by the thousands and the environmental damage could be in the billions.
It is true the owner could be sued, but they are not risking more than their companies are worth. They can hire top notch lawyers to argue the danger was not foreseen. Their government can bail them out. The ship could be owned a small subsidiary that has no asset other than the ship and would easily go under bankruptcy protection.
My point here is we cannot expect the ship owners to take the risk of protecting their vessels. It is not practical and it does not make business sense. The society at large and the institutions like the United Nations should subsidize the security. All the communities that such an accident impacts should contribute to assist stopping this piracy. Specially, Somalis, we cannot remain mere spectators as this would have devastating impact to our people and environment.
Here is what can be done. Instead of sending few navies from India, US and few European Union countries, they should coordinate all these navies under the United Nations and they should compliment with Somali locals to patrol the coastal areas where these navies cannot go in. Unlike the common wisdom, Somalis are the most to lose if such an accident were to materialize. You cannot fight piracy only in the sea because pirates live in the land. There must be specialized local police force that is empowered to fight this scourge which endangers many countries in the region as well as global transportation and commerce.
The mandate of this naval force should include the prevention of illegal fishing and waste dumping. The locals are not interested in piracy but when fish, lobsters, shrimp becomes extinct due to over fishing they would not mind having pirates as their interest somehow merges. The Indian navy recently sunk a Thai fishing trawler thinking a pirate mother ship. Fishing trawlers should be treated as pirates. The illegal over fishing and waste dumping is the original mother ship of this piracy and we cannot expect disparate naval forces would deal with problem of this magnitude. The United Nations should step in and take its responsibility. If the UN failed to build a Somali government that can deal with this piracy, then it should not fail to deal with the mayhem at sea by coordinating the naval forces that are already present and the local Somali communities that would be impacted if an accident were to occur.
Ali Osman
E-mail: [email protected]