Battles on the High Seas--Combating the Scourge of Global Piracy

Captain Robert Ford is Senior Data Analyst for Maritime Administration, part of the Department of Transportation. Captain Ford will be speaking at IDGA’s 10thAnnual Maritime Homeland Security Summit coming up April 30thto May 2nd. IDGA: First of all, I wonder if you can tell me about your current role and area of responsibility? RF: Well the Maritime Administration is a promotional organization for the U.S. Maritime Industry. Because of that we deal with U.S. flag carriers—promoting them, working with them, hearing their concerns, and that’s the objective. I work quite a bit with company security officers either with counter piracy issues, counter terrorism issues, and overall safety and security issues for ships. We follow and track how the ships are doing with the issues and we don’t just follow U.S. flag, we follow foreign flag, because that gives us an idea of what’s going on with the worldwide industry. The Maritime Administration issues advisories on safety and security concerns for the industry. [eventPDF] IDGA: Stating with a really broad question, I wanted to ask you generally about the global state of piracy. Are there any particular areas of concern right now, particularly areas of risk or threat? RF: There’s two that come right up. Of course one is the Somali piracy that covers an area larger than the size of the United States out off the coast of India into the Strait of Hormuz, the Southern Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden, that’s one area. The second area is the Gulf of Guinea off the west coast of Africa, Nigeria and places like that. We have a system called MarView and through that we can track merchant ships, but we get a great deal of our information on what is happening in that region through the Office of Naval Intelligence. They can either send us unclassified information or classified information, but we can’t actually, we just don’t have the resources here to do that but ONI [Office of Naval Intelligence] does. You have also NATO which is out in the region and you also have EU NAVFOR [European Union Naval Force] and we work collaboratively with all of those groups. IDGA: You’ll be discussing U.S. maritime security capacity building, developing sustainable solutions. What does sustainable solutions mean within this context? RF: What we hope, when you look at Somali piracy it started in 2008—or 2008 is when it exploded—you have started out with things like, well, increase your speed, do certain things which are called best management practices, and as it’s evolved now where you have armed security teams onboard ships, you have up to best management practices version four, the IMO [International Maritime Organization]will continue to be more involved in actions to suppress piracy and for the ships to use self- protection measures, and so its not going away and sustainable mans in the long run you don’t say we’ve solved the problem of piracy in Somalia and it’s all fine and we’ll just go back to the way things were, well that’s not going to happen. IDGA: It’s not just a matter then of focusing on any current issue or threat, it’s a matter of how do we go forward with a sustained program? RF: Correct. It’s going to be, we have guidance, IMO circulars, the industry produced the best management practices. A lot of this has been a whole new learning curve for the industry, so security will be a major issue. You had prior to September 11thyou didn’t have what was called an international port and facility security code—we have that now from the IMO and it really was a whole new venture for ships to get involved in, because of the concern that ships could be used to bring in terrorists or carry weapons of mass destruction and piracy obviously came after that, so the issue is that it’s brought the industry into an area in which in many ways it was not an issue and also lacking probably, to take proper security measures. IDGA: In acting proper security measures is there sometimes a question of safety being compromised? What is the balance there? RF: Yes, when I worked for the Liberian Registry for a few years, and after I left I did some freelance work for them, and I had to investigate a collision in the Straits of Molokai and piracy had been an issue there and we will still sometimes hear of incidents of armed robbery, but they barrel bolted their doors, their super structure, their house doors from the inside, and because of it when they abandoned the vessel from another door they tried to gain reentry so they could get to their fire pump, fire equipment, and they couldn’t because that one particular door was barrel bolted, and that’s why when I do the presentation, I always try to include that. They basically don’t rob Peter to pay Paul. You have to keep the focus on all because if you don’t this is what can happen. IDGA: Let’s see if we can dig down deeper and talk about some of the specifics about current efforts here in terms of current anti-piracy tactics, techniques and procedures that seem to be the most effective. Do they evolve quite a bit over time? Are there new approaches that you’re seeing now or is it something that tends to be just a question of sustained effort as we mentioned before? RF: They’ve evolved. You started out with you put a dummy on the stern which makes it look like there’s a crew member back there, to rigging fire hoses, which was the real basic anti-piracy measure, and we do these anti-piracy assessment on ships for U.S. flagged ships, MARAD, and the Naval Criminal Investigative service go on board ships and they will basically look at their hardening techniques and tactics and as time has gone on they’ve now implemented a new system called Citadels where the crew can go on Citadels and wait out before they can get help from a naval asset in the region, but the most controversial evolution was to the privately contracted armed security providers which the U.S. flagged ships definitely led the way in that but so many other countries were very much against it and there’s only a few, I’d say less than one handful, that are still against it, to put private teams on-board. So that’s where we are right now, it’s a combination of things implement the best management practices and all involved, you have the naval assets in the region and the armed security teams, and those three items have been credited for the drop in success of attacks. The number of attacks are still up but the success is down, way down. IDGA: What’s the primary issue with private teams? Is it a question of oversight? There was a number of issues and one—obviously there’s always a concern of liability. You have the liability for the insurance companies if a crewmembers gets hurt or killed, you have the liability if they mistakenly shoot at a fisherman, which happened recently. You have are the security teams trained and you have what’s referred to as Blue on Blue shootings such as a Navy team responds to an incident and the armed security team on board doesn’t realize what’s happening and they shoot at a responding Navy team. That has been a very big concern. From the standpoint of where it’s going now as far as the IMO and having guidance and standards for these teams, the big issue was the poorly trained teams that may get a contract to go on a ship, and there are some horror stories out there. Where a couple of guys with a shot gun show up and say we’ll be your team, just pay us this, and obviously they have no training and no proper equipment, so it’s taken a while. At the next Marine Safety Committee meeting at the IMO in May it will be a major topic as to the IMO’s responsibility in if it is the IMO’s responsibility, and do they have the expertise to pursue developing standards for these security teams. IDGA: I guess the fact that there’s been a drop in the success of attacks would speak to the idea that what’s happening right now is working. RF: Yes, but we had an unclassified brief the other day from NATO and from MSCHOA (Maritime Security Safety Center Horn of Africa) and what they’re concern is that a lot of attempted takeovers are not being reported and they say they have enough proof from their end because they are seeing out there that the attacks are definitely up, but the tactics that are being taken are working. The concern is that the fact that there appears to be—and it’s just an appearance—that attempts are down when they’re not that people will start letting their guard down. That governments will say no, we don’ need these Naval assets out there and the ships will say, we have an armed team, we don’t need to do best management practices or we don’t need an armed security team. Everything has shown success, unfortunately it’s human nature to let your guard down, and that’s the issue that has to be continued to be hit upon is no, this is not the time to let your guard down. IDGA: I think you mentioned just now that there’s a question of whether or not there’s under-reporting going on. What would drive that? I’m not sure I would understand the motivation behind— RF: Paperwork. Plain and simple, paperwork. I worked on ships and ships crews are cut to the bone. They have enough paperwork as it is. I think it would also probably be the concern that….the way an attack is determined by organizations like NATO and MCSHOA and even RONI, the pirates have to fire at the ship with an RPG or an AK-47 for that to be confirmed as an attempted attack. Now, if I’m riding through the region and I see a skiff coming after me with a ladder and trying to catch me and I take a few maneuvers or my armed security team may fire warning shots and they back down, that may be considered a suspicious approach, but that would not be considered an attack. So they might think, if they’re not going even to consider it an attack, why should I report it? I’m just speculating, and it’s also based on some informal discussions I’ve had with some ships captains, but I can understand. Why go through all this paperwork nightmare and exercise if it’s not going to be recorded as an attack in the first place? IDGA: Sure, that’s understandable. Is there any methodology or process that would try to focus on preventing the attacks in the first place? RF: That whole issue really revolves around the muti-million dollar question: how do you stop this? Pretty much everyone agrees that the place to stop this is on land. There are groups in Somalia today, there are NGO’s, there are the U.S. Office of Drugs and Crime, there’s a trust group from the contact group on piracy off the coast of Somalia that are working there. An interesting statistic I heard, and it’s also an outreach to the Somali community, especially the youths that are a part of the attack team: you have a thousand Somalis imprisoned around the world due to pirate attacks, also—we heard a statistic that really blew my mind away—for every two Somali youth that leaves to go out on a skiff and try and become a pirate, only one is returning now. Those are the types of statistics and outreach that they’re trying to say, is this really worth it? IDGA: Sure, and have that information and publicize it to the greatest extent possible, right? RF: Exactly. Captain Robert Ford will be speaking at IDGA’s 10th Annual Maritime Homeland Security Summit, to be held April 30-May 2, 2012 in Norfolk, Vir. For more information on the event, visit www.MaritimeHSSummit.com, or call 1-800-882-8684.

Battles on the High Seas--Combating the Scourge of Global Piracy

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