By Daniel Kalinaki, Political Platform Reporter
Without a government in Somalia capable of patrolling the country’s coastline or netting its pirates, the response came from the European Union. The FS Siroco is part of the response; one of up to eight ships in a fleet that patrols the Gulf of Aden and the large expanse of the Indian Ocean off the East African coastline.
From the distance, as the helicopter roars through the air, the ship is a small white dot in the horizon but it grows bigger as we draw closer until, with one side-ways manoeuvre, the pilot sets us down on this small floating city that rises five storeys high.
The helipad can take four choppers and there is a hanger inside big enough for another two. Below-deck is a dry dock that can carry and set down as many as four large landing crafts, and plenty more rubber dinghies. Counter-piracy is organised a lot like the piracy it seeks to fight. A larger ‘mother ship’ carries fuel, arms, fighters and supplies, and serves as a launching pad for smaller attack crafts that go out to hit the targets.
However, in a match of firepower against firepower, the 12,000 tonne FS Siroco’s arsenal effectively meant that the pirates had brought harpoons and hunting knives to a gunfight.
The four M2HB machine-guns on board have an effective killing range of two kilometres and can spit out between 450 and 575 rounds per minute. The pièces de résistance, however, are three Breda-Mauser machineguns which can take out Captain Jack Sparrow – or his Somali equivalent – from a comfortable three kilometres, and smash holes through his skiff with their 30-millimetre rounds.
The ship also has a surface-to-air missile system to defend it against air attacks although that is hardly ever manned, seeing as the only plausible air-threat in these waters – perhaps a suicide bomber hurled at the ship from a giant catapult – is improbable.
Before the machineguns are called into play, however, a lot of the anti-piracy operations rely on collecting and analysing intelligence information. Seafarers are asked to report any suspicious crafts to a centre in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates where they are logged and analysed, before a ship or a helicopter is scrambled to the site of the reported sighting. The shipping industry has also adopted several ‘best-practices’ to deter piracy, from speeding through dangerous portions of the sea, to hiring armed private guards and having them on-board.
Successful piracy attacks dropped 47 in 2010 to 5 the following year. So effective have these combined efforts been that there has not been a successful pirate attack in the Gulf of Aden or off the Indian Ocean in 20 months, going back to 2013.
“First you had failed states, and then this part of the ocean became failed seas,” Rear Admiral Bartolome Bauza, the deputy commander of the EU Naval Force’s Operation Atalanta says, his eyes gesturing to Somalia in the distance. “These are now governed seas; now you need to sort out the failed state.”
While the threat of piracy has receded, officials acknowledge that it has not disappeared. Pirates are still holding one vessel and 50 hostages. On board the FS Siroco, the new President of Puntland, Abdiweli Mohamed Ali Gaas launches a pilot scheme to register the country’s fishermen and give them biometric IDs so that they are not mistaken for pirates.
Without a government in Somalia capable of patrolling the country’s coastline or netting its pirates, the response came from the European Union. The FS Siroco is part of the response; one of up to eight ships in a fleet that patrols the Gulf of Aden and the large expanse of the Indian Ocean off the East African coastline.
From the distance, as the helicopter roars through the air, the ship is a small white dot in the horizon but it grows bigger as we draw closer until, with one side-ways manoeuvre, the pilot sets us down on this small floating city that rises five storeys high.
The helipad can take four choppers and there is a hanger inside big enough for another two. Below-deck is a dry dock that can carry and set down as many as four large landing crafts, and plenty more rubber dinghies. Counter-piracy is organised a lot like the piracy it seeks to fight. A larger ‘mother ship’ carries fuel, arms, fighters and supplies, and serves as a launching pad for smaller attack crafts that go out to hit the targets.
However, in a match of firepower against firepower, the 12,000 tonne FS Siroco’s arsenal effectively meant that the pirates had brought harpoons and hunting knives to a gunfight.
The four M2HB machine-guns on board have an effective killing range of two kilometres and can spit out between 450 and 575 rounds per minute. The pièces de résistance, however, are three Breda-Mauser machineguns which can take out Captain Jack Sparrow – or his Somali equivalent – from a comfortable three kilometres, and smash holes through his skiff with their 30-millimetre rounds.
The ship also has a surface-to-air missile system to defend it against air attacks although that is hardly ever manned, seeing as the only plausible air-threat in these waters – perhaps a suicide bomber hurled at the ship from a giant catapult – is improbable.
Before the machineguns are called into play, however, a lot of the anti-piracy operations rely on collecting and analysing intelligence information. Seafarers are asked to report any suspicious crafts to a centre in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates where they are logged and analysed, before a ship or a helicopter is scrambled to the site of the reported sighting. The shipping industry has also adopted several ‘best-practices’ to deter piracy, from speeding through dangerous portions of the sea, to hiring armed private guards and having them on-board.
Successful piracy attacks dropped 47 in 2010 to 5 the following year. So effective have these combined efforts been that there has not been a successful pirate attack in the Gulf of Aden or off the Indian Ocean in 20 months, going back to 2013.
“First you had failed states, and then this part of the ocean became failed seas,” Rear Admiral Bartolome Bauza, the deputy commander of the EU Naval Force’s Operation Atalanta says, his eyes gesturing to Somalia in the distance. “These are now governed seas; now you need to sort out the failed state.”
While the threat of piracy has receded, officials acknowledge that it has not disappeared. Pirates are still holding one vessel and 50 hostages. On board the FS Siroco, the new President of Puntland, Abdiweli Mohamed Ali Gaas launches a pilot scheme to register the country’s fishermen and give them biometric IDs so that they are not mistaken for pirates.
Via: http://www.thecitizen.co.tz.
