Maritime Security in Southeast Asia

The Challenges of the Jolly Roger: Industry Perspectives on Piracy

47 the national bureau of asian research NEIL A. QUARTARO is an attorney with Watson, Farley & Williams (New York) LLP and an Adjunct Professor at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Relations. He can be reached at . NOTE  The views expressed herein are solely those of the author. The Challenges of the Jolly Roger: Industry Perspectives on Piracy Neil A. Quartaro Originally published in Sheldon Simon, John Bradford, James Manicom, and Neil Quartaro, “Maritime Security in Southeast Asia: U.S., Japanese, Regional, and Industry Strategies,” National Bureau of Asian Research, NBR Special Report, no. 24, November 2010.© 2012 The National Bureau of Asian Research. This PDF is provided for the use of authorized recipients only. For specific terms of use, please contact . EXECUTIVE SUMMARY This essay presents viewpoints from nonstate stakeholders in the marine transportation system regarding the problem of piracy in the Gulf of Aden (GOA) region compared to piracy in the Strait of Malacca. MAIN ARGUMENT Although the concerns of individual actors within each group of stakeholders may vary, there is a growing consensus that the response to piracy in the GOA region must be significantly more robust than the response to piracy in the Strait of Malacca. Part of this growing consensus stems from the differing nature of the GOA attacks, which impose significantly higher costs on vessel owners, charterers, and crew members than attacks in the Strait of Malacca. Further fueling the belief that stakeholders must take aggressive action is the fact that providing armed security details to vessels transiting the GOA region has proven very effective, with no such vessels having been captured. However, the Strait of Malacca experience does provide some useful lessons that apply to piracy in the GOA, most notably the creation of a central information center to coordinate between commercial vessels and military assets in the area and the involvement of local states to assist in preventing attacks and punishing attackers where feasible POLICY IMPLICATIONS • If ships carrying armed security details continue to avoid capture, this practice is likely to become a standard security response for many vessels transiting the GOA. However, the presence of armed guards raises many public policy issues, including the unintentional importation of armed guards’ weapons into jurisdictions where these weapons are not permitted; the potential to increase the level of violence used to capture a vessel; and the legality of an armed response by private persons in international waters. • If stakeholders in the marine transportation system respond aggressively and proactively to the threat of piracy in the GOA, national governments with military assets deployed in the area are likely to continue the current high level of engagement. However, these responses are essentially prophylactic in nature, given that they do not address the root cause of the problem, which is the failure of Somalia to function as a normal state. • Assuming that the current high level of coordination between stakeholders and information sharing centers created by nation-states continues, the ability to prevent and deter attacks in the GOA region will likely continue to improve. Somali pirates are aware of this coordination and its resultant success and are responding by attacking ships farther away from Somalia. This raises the specter of Somali-organized pirate attacks in waters far from Somalia, thereby diluting the effectiveness of the current response. 49 THE CHALLENGES OF THE JOLLY ROGER u QUARTARO P iracy is not a new problem for maritime commerce, though it has been rare in modern times. Yet there has been a recent upswing in attacks, commencing in the mid-1990s with ship boardings and robberies in the Strait of Malacca region and continuing today, most notably off Somalia. Piracy has many forms, and so there are varying definitions. One of the broader definitions, supplied by the International Maritime Bureau (IMB), is that piracy is “the act of boarding any vessel with an intent to commit theft or any other crime, and with an intent or capacity to use force in furtherance of that act,”1 which is a suitable definition for this article. To put the piracy problem in perspective, over 400 attacks took place worldwide in 2009, with 217 in the Gulf of Aden (GOA) off Somalia. South America saw 37 reported attacks, while Nigeria had 28 attacks. Indonesia and the South China Sea accounted for another 28 attacks, while the Strait of Malacca saw only 2. The attacks off Somalia have been...