In Depth

Piracy Expert: Maersk Alabama One Slice of a Huge Pirate Problem

Roger Hawkes of Global Industries discusses why some of the debate around piracy this month is misplaced, and how piracy has been a problem for years

By Joan Goodchild, Senior Editor

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Is the discussion constructive? And are the issues being talked about relevant to the real problem?
The whole discussion about whether merchant vessels should be armed or not is not a decision the government has to make. That is a decision the industry has to make. There is nothing really preventing vessels or operators from employing armed security now. In fact, it is done in a number of places all over the world. It is a decision the operators of the vessels have to make based on a standard risk assessment or an operational risk management model of the pros and cons and the threats. It is not something that is new.

Now you have whole-sale debate going on about whether vessels should be armed as if there is a decision that could be made by the public or the government somewhere and then instantly all vessels are armed. That's not how it's going to work. It has to be the vessel operators that make that decision.

I'm interested to see what all the debate is going to yield: How we think we are going to change the fight against piracy. What the government thinks they are going to do. The Navy has only so many resources. The way international law works, there is only so much navies can do in the prevention at sea of an issue. What I would like to see more is discussion of the prevention of piracy and dealing with the root cause of it than trying to increase the way we fight piracy. Somalia and the Gulf of Aden are only a piece of the global piracy problem.

Piracy has also been a problem in the Strait of Malacca, in Southeast Asia. But it is often heralded as a place where efforts to stop piracy have worked. Why is that?
The jury is out on why it is a success story. There are a few theories. One is that the governments are co-operating, they are sharing info and working together. It is a unique part of the world because you have Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, a few island countries, that all share jurisdictional territorial waters. It has historically been easy for the pirates to hide and go back and forth between people's waters and avoid navies or patrols that were out there. But there has been a great improvement in the surveillance of the straights, the use of technology, information sharing and treaties between the governments themselves. That surely has something to do with it.