A.P. Moller Maersk Hires Security - Vessel for Anti-Piracy

The private sector is looking into force protection options, and it would appear A.P. Moller Maersk is shopping. For the FY 2010 budget, US private shipping interests attempted to impress on Congress the seriousness of their concerns, but Congress was unable to find a consensus solution. It isn't just the US though, the EU has also been unable to offer more than the naval presence in the Gulf of Aden. Unable to continue at the pace of politics, A.P. Moller Maersk has taken it to the next level.

Danish shipper A.P. Moller Maersk has hired out soldiers and a warship from Tanzania to protect its fleet in pirate-ridden waters off the coast of Africa, and now other shippers are expected to follow suit.

Maersk hired the warship through former special forces soldiers working for firm Guardian GBS security in December 2008. The ship was charged with protecting the Brigit Maersk tanker from pirates. It is unknown how much the shipping company paid for the service.

‘The waters east of Africa are a grey zone because developing countries don’t have resources to fight pirates. It’s a temporary solution that a shipper has hired a warship from another country, but there’s no alternative,’ said Jan Fritz Hansen, vice-president of the Danish Shipowners’ Association.

Steffen Jacobsen, technical director at Maersk Tankers, said the company checked first to make sure the move was legal.

This is a dangerous road the shipping companies are beginning to travel down, but with insurance costs continuing to go up, it was expected. In previous analysis I have noted the shipping industry was looking at a number of solutions for dealing with piracy, including private security companies. This analysis was mine in October 2008.

The French are already using private contractors for these purposes. This is the next logical step based on those calls. Unless the citizens of the US are ready to push the US Navy to make this a top priority, something that requires political action, this is seen as one of the limited but cost effective ways for the shipping industry to respond.

An author at the USNI Blog attempted to use this quote (today ironically) to suggest an example of "irrational press-release-fueled exuberance" but that author is consistently blinded by his dislike of me personally to give credible analysis on timely subjects on that forum. There is a slow but deliberate escalation taking place in regards to piracy off the coast of Africa, and the absence of a political solution by global political leaders is prompting the gigantic shipping industry to take matters in their own hands.

The charter of a ship is part of the escalation. It is very difficult to protect a tanker, because shipping companies do not like the idea of putting arms and ammunition on a 300,000 ton tanker filled with flammable materials. The need to get an escort vessel has been discussed since mid-2008 when piracy was beginning to ramp up, which is about the same time Blackwater was preparing to get into the sea security escort business. While the Blackwater brand is too toxic for companies to work with, other global security companies do not have the same media profile, and will be hired to fill this role.

This is an example where legal ambiguity fighting pirates is exacerbating the problem. Naval forces are having trouble developing evidence of piracy absent 'an act of piracy' for trials in a court of law, even in courts like Kenya that do not have a high threshold of evidence. This has resulted in a catch and release system, where naval forces have caught pirates but have been forced to release folks caught in sea on little boats with RPGs and machine guns. Apparently it is legal to fish with RPGs and machine guns, so as long as they faint being a fisherman or dump their arms before capture, the evidence threshold is not met and pirates go free.

Well, the unfortunately reality is that now the private security folks are going to be able to take advantage of the same ambiguity in the legal details of piracy. Private security can respond to attack with lethal violence of their own, which will likely result in the highly trained security personnel killing pirates. No problem - if a machine gun is used to kill pirates, it will simply be tossed overboard and replaced with a new one, and the evidence trail disappears.

There will almost certainly be law suits against the security companies, but the law in several countries protects security personnel from lawsuits of those killed in a pirate action, and just as there has been a huge absence in developing credible evidence against pirates - private security companies are going to find plenty of legal protections in the anti-piracy line of work. In other words, with a few cameras to capture video of an enemy attack and a few bullets in self-defense, the piracy violence has the potential to become a kill zone where international legal ambiguity thrives because governments punted on taking responsibility themselves.

Once pirates start dieing in piracy, it is unclear what will happen. Will piracy fade away, or will violence escalate? People are treated as an inexpensive resource in Somalia, and the ransoms tend to be lower when the crew of a captured ship is harmed, so these are questions that can only be learned instead of assumed. If pirates start killing crew members, it might be that people blame private security companies and the shipping industry for escalating violence, but in that moral triangulation one must first excuse the act of piracy itself. Just as pirates are acting out in desperation of their countries situation, the shipping industry is doing the same on behalf of their employees and business partners.

The shipping industry has spent a year working over the global governments, and to date almost no legal changes of consequence has been taken. Piracy may soon become a lethal line of work for those in Somalia seeking such a career, but it won't be because governments took action - rather because they decided not to take action at all.