Off the coast of Somalia, a sailor on board French ship the FS Sirocco observes two dhows through binoculars, establishing that they are bona fide fishing vessels.
If the coast of Somalia’s autonomous Puntland State is still home to pirates, they take to the seas a lot less frequently than they used to.
The presence of an international armada and the deterrents put in place by shipping companies have reduced piracy off the Somalian coast and in the Gulf of Aden to practically nothing, but the threat is still very present.
Photo: AFP
According to the European anti-piracy fleet Atalanta, the last capture of a major vessel by pirates dates back to May 2012. Since then, several vessels have been attacked or targeted, but the pirates have not managed to seize any of them.
They have been able to capture a handful of dhows — traditional sailing vessels — with the aim of using them as mother ships for launching attacks on other vessels, but the booty these yield pales in significance compared with that taken from the vessels seized when piracy was at its peak: Catches in those days included two supertankers, each carrying close to 2 million barrels of crude oil, and a Ukrainian cargo ship loaded with arms.
The Sirocco has not made any major catches either in its four months as Atalanta’s flagship, except for five pirates arrested in mid-January on board an Indian dhow they seized in a vain attempt to board a tanker.
Since then, the ships that make up the fleet have confined themselves to patrolling, keeping a watchful eye on the zone.
“The economic model of piracy has been broken,” said Etienne de Poncins, the head of EUCAP-Nestor, a EU mission that aims to beef up the security capacities of Somalia, Djibouti, Kenya, the Seychelles and Tanzania, and enable them to carry out surveillance of their own territorial waters.
When Somalian piracy was at its peak in 2011, the International Maritime Bureau counted 237 attacks attributed to pirates in the Indian Ocean, from the Somalian coast across the Sea of Oman.
Last year, the bureau recorded just five, all of which failed.
“At sea the phenomenon is under control, but the pirates are still there. They can be seen on the coast,” De Poncins said.
By arresting numerous pirates over the past few years, Atalanta and its allies — NATO, China and Japan, which have all deployed considerable means in the region, a shipping route key to world trade — have had a dissuasive effect.
A raft of measures taken by the shipping sector have also contributed to the decline of piracy: The presence of armed guards on board, the use of barbed wire, an increase in navigation speeds and navigating as far from the coast as possible.
Experts say pirates have never managed to seize a vessel protected by armed guards or sailing at a speed of more than 18 knots (33.3kph), but these measures are expensive, so much so that the World Bank said “piracy imposed a hidden tax on world trade.”
“Piracy costs the global economy roughly US$18 billion a year in increased trade costs — an amount that dwarfs the estimated US$53 million average annual ransom paid since 2005,” the bank said last year.
“It’s expensive, so the day when the shipping companies say: ‘That’s enough,’ the whole thing can kick off again quite quickly,” De Poncins said.
EU Naval Force officials say that given that attacks are becoming rare, ship owners and captains are starting to let their guard down, reporting that ships are again navigating at slower speeds and sailing closer to the coast to save fuel.
“We are becoming victims of our own success,” said Lieutenant Michael Quinn of Atalanta, adding that “the conditions on the Somali[an] coast have not changed and industry must not relax.”
The EU Naval Force’s mandate applies only to the sea; it is not authorized to launch land attacks on the pirates who still control large sections of the Somalian coast, notably in Puntland.
EUCAP-Nestor’s mission, which complements Atalanta’s, is therefore to “go ashore and train coast guards so that the countries of the region can be in a position to manage and control their maritime waters, but also to help them put legislation in place,” De Poncins said.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last