Combating Gulf Of Guinea Piracy – Between ‘Devil’ and the ‘Deep Sea’

Since 2012, the Gulf of Guinea has emerged as one of the most pirate-infested waters in the world, posing an urgent security threat to the maritime environment. While the total number of piracy incidents world-wide has fallen in recent years – owing in main part to the decrease in the number of attacks by Somali pirates following a concerted international naval campaign – attacks on the west coast of Africa have witnessed a steady rise, now accounting for nearly a fifth of all attacks.1 With an assault on local shipping nearly every second week, piracy in West Africa is today a burning issue on the global maritime agenda.

Fighting pirates on Africa’s west coast, however, is a vexed undertaking. To begin, attacks in the Gulf of Guinea follow a different template from that one observed in the waters off Somalia. On the east coast of Africa, pirates captured ships and crews for ransom, venturing deep into the Southern and Western Indian Ocean. In contrast, attacks on the Gulf of Guinea have been localised, with assailants targeting cash and cargoes of fuel. But this has also meant that assaults are better planned, with gangs working to a precise strategy including short attack-spans and fool-proof get-away methods. Using superior intelligence, gang-members have been remarkably efficient in carrying out the attacks, mostly in the dead of the night on anchored cargo ships and oil tankers.

Importantly, piracy on the West coast has rarely mirrored Somali attacks, with a low incidence of actual hostage-taking. On the contrary, Gulf of Guinea pirate have been more inclined to incapacitating the crews of the hijacked vessels – sometimes by tying them up, putting them on a boat and setting them adrift. The downside of this approach is that with little incentive to keep the ship crews safe, attackers have also displayed a high propensity for violence. Armed resistance by ships’ crews, therefore, has been met more often with machine gun fire and machete attacks than any form of calculated empathy to maximise bargaining capacity.

Piracy watchers also point out that attacks off the West African coast are hard to investigate and track. Often the targets happen to be regional smugglers operating on vessels with silent transponders and forged crew identities. Expectedly, many of such boats do not report pirate attacks. Incidents in recent years have reportedly stretched all the way from the Ivory Coast to Angola, even though it is Nigeria where the root of the problem is said to lie. Most acts of piracy are committed in Nigeria’s seas, by local gangs. African maritime experts point out that piracy in West Africa is linked to the region’s dysfunctional oil industry and the violent politics of the Niger Delta, where most of the oil is produced. Needless to say, there has been hesitation on the part of some Western African states to share information with Nigeria, based purely on the suspicion of supposed links between Nigerian criminal networks and the political and military elites.

African Initiatives

To be sure, the regional response to pirate attacks has been encouraging. The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Commission has played a leading role in forging a joint response to the piracy threat. In March this year, the organization inaugurated a multinational maritime coordination centre (MMCC) for a maritime zone christened Pilot Zone E. The commissioning of the centre marked an important milestone in the implementation of the ECOWAS Integrated Maritime Strategy (EIMS), particularly since Pilot Zone E is considered as one of the most sensitive security hot-spots in West Africa, spanning a vast region comprising Benin, Niger, Nigeria and Togo. 2

The MMCC is an outcome of the Yaoundé summit in June 2013, where ECOWAS, in conjunction with governments of the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS) and the Commission of the Gulf of Guinea adopted a common policy to respond to maritime insecurity in West African waters. Now, for the first time in many years, regional maritime forces are able to coordinate counter-piracy activities, including patrols, information sharing, training and security drills. The new pilot zone E is meant to work in combination with multinational maritime coordination centres being set up in other sensitive zones (F and G), with each zonal centre reporting developments to the Regional Maritime Security Coordination Centre of West Africa.

Meanwhile, regional governments have initiated independent security measures. Nigeria, for instance, has ramped up anti-piracy and oil theft measures in the southern Niger Delta region, with one local newspaper even reporting more than 84 ships conducting illicit activities had been intercepted by local maritime forces in 2014. 3 Similarly, the navies of Ghana, Togo and Benin too have expanded coastal security efforts. In January this year, a spectacular effort by the Ghana navy resulted in the repossession of the hijacked Nigerian oil tanker, Mariam, and arrest of eight heavily armed attackers. 4 Importantly, West African states are now establishing maritime authorities responsible for coordinating state action at sea, and equipping themselves with patrol boats and remote surveillance systems to monitor their respective maritime domains.

Despite commendable progress, however, ECOWAS is yet to finalise its maritime security architecture. While the installation of the Regional Maritime Security Coordination Centre of West Africa has been encouraging – especially the interface established between the Interregional Coordinating Centre (ICC) and various RMSCCs in West and Central Africa – the ECOWAS commission is yet to designate host countries for the future multinational maritime coordination centres in Zones F and G, which will be established based on the lessons learnt from the centre in Zone E. 5

The International Response

The international community and maritime industry have been supporting regional efforts to fight piracy, but most endeavours have been limited to support from the US, European Union and the International Maritime Organization. Among Asian nations Japan and China have provided some rudimentary support, but as regional observers point out, material resources in terms of naval assets and hard-surveillance capabilities have been sorely lacking.

For many international maritime forces, the problem is that anti-piracy operations around the Horn of Africa have strained their existing resources. The high-intensity engagement with Somali pirates has resulted in an attenuated mission focus and an aversion for extended patrol missions.

And yet, the main reason for the international community’s reluctant to get involved in fighting pirates on Africa’s western coast is the absence of pirate attacks on the high-seas With almost all of the reported incidents taking place within the maritime territorial limits of coastal states – where domestic laws apply and only national law-enforcement agencies are authorized to act – international forces are left with little legal and operational freedom to participate in maritime operations.

In addition, the propitious set of conditions in the waters off Somalia that enabled a robust international response has been conspicuous by its absence in West African waters. The nature of piracy in the Gulf of Guinea precludes measures such as intense patrols by international navies, the deployment of armed guards on ships, and the movement of ships in protected convoys through an internationally recognized corridor, making it harder for maritime forces to effectively tackle pirate attacks. To make matters worse, countries like Nigeria and Cameroon have refused to allow merchant ships to bring armed guards into their territorial waters, even going to the extent of arresting crews of ships that attempt to do so.

>India’s Stakes in West African Security

India has so far kept away from the collaborative anti-piracy effort in the Gulf of Guinea. The consensus in New Delhi seems to be that West Africa is too physically distant and politically insignificant for India to be seriously involved in the anti-piracy effort. But with growing reliance on energy supplies from West Africa that could soon change.

According to recent reports, North American shale oil output has been fast displacing West African crude. Consequently, there is growing possibility of bigger markets opening up in Europe, India and northeast Asia. Indian supplies from Nigeria and Angola already make up for nearly a fifth of the total oil import. But recent reports suggest that oil imports from West Africa are poised to nearly double in the near future. 6 New Delhi would therefore be well advised to pitch in with greater financial, training and technological assistance.

India’s biggest contribution, in fact, could be in naval capacity building efforts. Courtesy its participation in the IBSAMAR exercises, the Indian navy has been involved in security efforts off Southern Africa since 2008. Indian naval ships played a prime role in escorting vessels, both Indian and foreign, from the Gulf of Aden. The IN’s experience of working in coordination with other maritime tasks forces from NATO, EU, Russia, China, Japan and other nations to suppress Somali piracy, renders it apt to partner existing security initiatives in the Gulf of Guinea. Moreover, with the development of closer ties with ECOWAS, there is a greater regional expectation of training and capacity-building aid from New Delhi. Indeed, by allocating resources, providing expertise, and supporting regional efforts for combating pirates, India could play an important role in the creation of a sustainable maritime security architecture for West Africa.

• 1. “IMB warns of West Africa piracy threat”, ICC Commercial Crime Services, March 7, 2014, at https://icc-ccs.org/ news/911-imb-warns-of-west-africa-piracy-threat, (Accessed on March 16, 2015).
• 2. “A huge step forward in tackling piracy in the Gulf of Guinea”, This is Africa, March 19, 2015, at http:// thisisafrica.me/huge-step-forward-tackling-piracy-gulf-guinea/, (Accessed on March 23, 2015).
• 3. “Nigerian Navy Arrested Over 84Vessels For Maritime Offences In 2014”, Leadership, January 11, 2015, at http:// leadership.ng/news/401165/nigerian-navy-arrested-84-vessels-maritime-offences-2014 (Accessed on January 27, 2015).
• 4. “Ghana’s navy frees hijacked tanker, arrests pirates”, Reuters, January 18, 2015, at http://www.reuters.com/ article/2015/01/18/us-nigeria-pirates-ghana-idUSKBN0KR0VD20150118 (Accessed on January 27, 2015).
• 5. See Note 2.
• 6. “India Doubles Oil Import from Nigeria, Angola”, First Africa News, March 16, 2015, at http://firstafricanews.ng/ index.php?dbs= openlist&s= 17459, (Accessed on March 23, 2015).