Pirates are back!

(To Giuseppe De Giorgi)
11/05/17

The phenomenon of rampant piracy in Somali waters seemed to have stopped. After a sort of truce that lasted from the 2012, at least five more episodes occurred in the Gulf of Aden in March.

The new trail of pirate raids began with the abduction of the crew of a Sri Lankan oil tanker on March 13, which was then released apparently without the payment of the ransom that had been requested. We are far from the numbers that were recorded between 2008 and 2011 with over 700 attacks on ships that passed on the waters of the Somali coast, considered the most dangerous in the world at the time. The number of pirate attacks had drastically dropped thanks to the security measures put in place by the ships: investments in security with the use of armed guards and technology had made a difference. There were also some international maritime control programs and direct aid to fishermen. In fact, it is often fishermen who have become pirates who have incurred serious economic losses due to foreign fishing vessels that illegally fish on a large scale in their reference seas. The same pirates who stormed Aris13 (photo on the right) announced that they were fishermen.

In recent times, cutting costs to the safety of ships and crews has again intensified pirate raids. Aris13 had no armed guards on board and was attacked while sailing near the shore. The situation is made even more difficult by the internal situation that Somalia is experiencing. The federal state of Puntland is no longer able to invest in military security, while in Galmudug the role of president is vacant and the government is engaged in countering a local Islamist militia. The drought is devastating the country. Thus the young become further and easy prey of the organized pirate gangs. Bands that seem to be linked to a double mandate to what happens in internal conflicts with ties with some armed groups.

In reality, as Timothy Walker explainedInstitute for safety studies, the phenomenon of piracy has never completely disappeared. The case of the Arsen13 jumped to attention because after so many years it was an assault on a large merchant ship but there were other attacks on fishing boats that have not reached the international stage. Unfortunately, the presence of military ships in the area has been progressively reduced. First the NATO mission was suspended Ocean Shield and now the British and other Nordic countries are pressing to close the Operation as well Atalanta of which Italy will soon take over the Command. Even within our Ministry of Defense there are those who want to collect our ships to allocate funds to the Army or the Air Force. It would be a serious mistake. Italy is in fact the nation most damaged by a possible recovery of phenomena, such as Piracy, which could jeopardize the security of access to the Mediterranean from the Indian Ocean.

Should merchant traffic, as it had happened in the hottest moments of piracy, resume the route of the Cape of Good Hope to reach Europe, it would benefit the British, Dutch and German ports, as a hub for entry into the Continental Europe, to the detriment of the ports of Genoa and Trieste, for large ships, while a new port, with high depths, for sorting the containers from the large draft vessels to the smaller ones, is ready on the Atlantic coast of Morocco. distribution of containers in Mediterranean ports, task now completed by Gioia Tauro. The potential negative repercussions on the induced and in general on our economy are evident. But the aerial of the Horn of Africa is important for Italy also for other important geostrategic aspects. It would be a serious mistake to imagine confining the area of ​​national interest to the Mediterranean alone, or rather to the central Mediterranean just as some would have liked recently.

The globalization of the economy has accentuated the interdependence of geographically distant countries, but involved in the same producer-consumer chain, whose element of continuity is represented by the sea and by the global flow of goods / energy resources that cross it. Today 90% of goods and raw materials transit along the lines of maritime communication and the 75% of this flow flows through a few vulnerable obligatory passages (so-called choke points), consisting of international channels and straits.

In the Indian Ocean, where the majority of world goods, 65% of oil and 35% of gas transit in terms of tonnage, ENI develops important and promising extractive activities, among which the immense gas fields are of particular interest. off the coast of Monzambico.

For Hormuz transits all the sea traffic of the Gulf countries; it is undoubtedly the most important passage for hydrocarbons in the world (about 20 million barrels a day, equal to approximately 20% of the hydrocarbons transported by sea in the world). Unlike the other straits, it is not circumvented. Once access by sea was closed, the Arabian-Persian Gulf would be isolated. Hormuz and in fact the whole Persian Gulf basin is easily undermined, something that happened during the Iran-Iraq conflict. Hence the strategic importance of Somalia, Yemen and Oman for the security of access to the Red Sea / Mediterranean for Italian interests.

Like it or not, the Mediterranean is today, even more than in the past, a geo-strategic and above all geo-economic continuum with the Black Sea, the Indian Ocean and the Arabian-Persian Gulf. That geo-political and geo-economic entity that since the 90 years has been identified with the term Mediterranean enlarged, to indicate the area of ​​direct national interest, to overcome the concept "threshold of Gorizia = central Mediterranean" of the 50 years and 60.

In this sense, however, the new Italian foreign policy is moving under the impulse of the Prime Minister and the Minister of Foreign Affairs, as shown by the intensification of relations at the highest levels with the Gulf countries, the Indian Ocean and towards the Asia. The opening towards Iran and above all the launch of the cd initiative. "Migration compact" are important elements in the recovery of the Italian initiative to become more important in the region.

It is therefore time to align the "vision" of the Defense with that of national foreign policy (see the "migration compact"). The current disconnection is, in my opinion, one of the problems that will necessarily have to be solved in order to acquire timeliness and resilience in our action, towards the countries with which we want to grow in breadth and depth the political, commercial and security relations.

We must review military planning and proceed without further delay to the consequent reconfiguration of our military instrument and its use, especially for peacetime operations.

In a nutshell, the Italian naval presence in Somali waters must increase, not only in terms of anti-piracy but also for “capacity building” activities for the benefit of local maritime forces, in the context of a more incisive Italian role in the region.

(photo: US Navy / Raxanreeb.com / Navy)