Counter Piracy Conference Dominates This Week As Somali President Asks for Funds to Eradicate Piracy Within a Year As Puntland Force Loses Funding
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23 - 29 Jun 2012 Talk talk; Freedom gained and freedom unheralded - Counter piracy conference dominates this week as Somali president asks for funds to eradicate piracy within a year as Puntland force loses funding. Somalia and Somaliland come together after 21 years. Pirates attempt surprise attack by hiding under blankets leading up to an attack. South African couple tell of the trauma of captivity. Pirates release two dhows but no details given on circumstances. Piracy causing environmental impact through vessel oil spill; only summer monsoon has a measurable effect on attacks. Gulf of Guinea is the second piracy front. So is it the military which are saving our seafarers, or is it the increased use of armed guards? Or perhaps both… Sri Lanka considers piracy as a serious security problem which must be addressed and dealt with forcefully including greater cooperation and information sharing, similar vein to Dubai conference. Japan warships visit India as they share converging views on the maritime areas of anti-piracy, humanitarian assistance, disaster relief, information sharing. India will need to devise its own response to the challenge of piracy in the Indian Ocean. Indian city to establish a special trauma management care unit for seafarers and their families, affected by Somali piracy. Heightened diplomatic tension suggests that combating piracy might at times be used as a means to demonstrate goodwill and diffuse tension between political rivals says report. Djibouti opens new Naval Operations Centre. Presentation states that 220 Maritime Security Companies are in business now with 75% based in the UK. British investigator, killed by car bomb in Yemen, doubted that an oil tanker, the Brillante Virtuoso, had come under attack from Somali pirates armed with guns and grenades. Luxury charter motor yacht reportedly evades pirates in the Gulf of Aden. British tourist kidnapped from Kenya, states 'never seen this man before' in court case. MVs Albedo and Iceberg 1 crews continue to suffer as speculation on release rumbles on. Social media, open-source security and improving information sharing. Contents: Regional Activity; Released by Pirates; Pirates in Court; Private Security; International Response; Piracy Cost; Seafarers' Plight; And Finally...; Piracy Incidents; Situational Map The OCEANUSLive website will transition to a subscription service for registered users in the coming months. Notification will be passed to all users. Early bird, company/goup, and other discounts will be available upto that time. News and editorial webpages along with the Weekly Newsletter will remain free. East Africa Somalia's president on Wednesday accused the international community of refusing to fund the creation of local security forces capable of tackling piracy and al Qaeda-linked militants and urged them to pay up, reports Reuters. "The international community spends millions of dollars (because of piracy) and when you ask them to contribute to building forces on the ground they evade our request," Sheikh Sharif Ahmed told Reuters in an interview on the sidelines of a conference on piracy in Dubai. Somalia has been mired in civil strife, grinding poverty, Islamist militancy and maritime piracy since warlords toppled military dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991, leaving the African nation without an effective central government. Ahmed said he thought international donors such as the United States were reluctant to contribute funds because they were concerned that the money would be embezzled and said he was willing to allow them to pay and train such forces themselves to allay such fears. "If they (donors) are willing to help ... we can give them the chance to come and do the training, to give salaries to soldiers by themselves," he said. Read more. Seven Indians on board a fishing boat have gone missing from Masirah waters in Oman and may have been kidnapped by pirates, a media report has said, according to Jagran Post. According to the report, coast guards in the country have been informed and the hunt is on to locate them despite adverse weather conditions. The missing Indians are all said to be from Tamil Nadu. "They went for fishing as usual but have not returned yet. What I suspect is that they been hijacked by pirates," Saeed Rashid, owner of the fishing boat, told Times of Oman newspaper. The boat reportedly went missing from al-Ashakara coast on Thursday evening. "They went to fishing to the inner sea. What we learnt is that they ran out of fuel and were stranded in the sea. They might have been kidnapped from there," Rashid said. Read more. [OCEANUSLive comment: Since this report, NATO Shipping Centre has stated a dhow with 7 crew members has been released from pirate control on June 25. The Omani dhow, Shamsi, was hijacked June 20 and is believed to be the vessel in this case, although it has yet to be officially confirmed]. An oil leak this week contaminated coastal areas near Ras Al-Ara, near the Bab Al-Mandab strait on the Red Sea, reports Yemen Times. According to Murad Al-Halimi, the deputy director of the General Authority of Maritime Affairs, the oil overflowed from a Somali ship’s fuel tank as it traveled from Dubai to Somalia. A Somali businessman, he said, owns the ship. Al-Halimi said the oil spill occurred following the ship’s run-in with Somali pirates nine miles off Yemen’s coast, near Ras Al-Ara and close to Bab Al-Mandab. He said international forces rescued the ship after pirates attacked its fuel tank. Yemeni Coast Guard forces in the Red Sea received a notice Friday from the Regional Center for Piracy Information Exchange, established to combat privacy and led by the Ministry of Transportation, that Ras Al-Ara district has been exposed to environmental contamination. Yemeni Coast Guard forces discovered dead fish in Al-Hodeida from the oil spill. After informing the General Authority of Maritime Affairs about the dead fish, a committee to check the fish for contamination was established. The committee found that the fish flocked to the port basin and, unable to escape the ship rotations, they died. An investigation of the oil spill is in progress. Danger Room journalist Richard Wheeler reports that the world may see a brief respite from costly, often lethal Somali piracy as we head into the summer months - Smithsonian Mag.com. The evidence is in a joint New Zealand–Australian study, Climatic controls on piracy in the Horn of Africa Region, 2010—2011. Unlike previous reporting, which proposed that both summer and winter monsoons reduced pirate attacks, Climate Controls on Piracy finds that only the summer monsoon has a measurable effect on attacks… The researchers found that while waves and wind during the winter monsoon was roughly twice that of non-monsoon months, this was not enough to deter pirates from operating in the Indian Ocean. Which means that now, when the pirates are mostly back on land, there could be a choice time for military incursions into Somalia. Commodore Ben Bekkering, the Commander of the NATO task force off Somalia, has opened a Twitter and Facebook account. In grasping the medium of social media networking, the Commodore has very quickly established a welcome presence that demonstrates to the shipping community the day-to-day issues, use of resources and facets of NATO's Ocean Shield operation. The posts on Twitter and Facebook show a more personal account than the standard fare from military media. One of his latest 'tweets' - Maritime Situational Awareness patrol by HNLMS Evertsen(Pic courtesy of @Oceanshield - Cdre Bekkering) shows his team conducting a routine check on a dhow in the high risk area. The curious case of a reported attack. The luxury yacht, US-owned, Malta-flagged Lauren L, usually host luxury events, cocktail parties or large private gatherings at the Cannes film festival or the Monaco Grand Prix. It is often seen sailing to and from Greece. It can accommodate 48-50 guests and permanently carries a Swiss-trained doctor, and has a helicopter landing pad. But what was it doing going through the Gulf of Aden? Was it a luxury adventure charter? If the report is accurate, the yacht was attacked in the Gulf of Aden, but managed to evade a pirate attack with the aid of an embarked armed security team. The last question on this case... why did it not simply increase speed of its undoubtedly powerful engines and avoid the need for the use of weapons? West Africa The [Nigerian] Federal Executive Council (FEC) is expected to deliberate on a contract for the design and construction of fast moving security patrol boats (FPB) -Business Day. In what seems like a strategy to improve the nation’s marine security, the plan contained in a memorandum by the minister of transport, Idris Audu Umar, stated that the water craft were pegged with specifications described as “17 meters and 32 meters Manta MC ASD” for the Lagos pilotage district. The Nigerian Navy reportedly purchased and commissioned several of these craft last year. These craft are specifically designed for coastal security and patrol missions, in law enforcement, coast guard and counter insurgency, as well as naval operations in coastal areas, with designs for very high acceleration, as the name implies. With the clear concerns of marine security in Nigerian waters, the FPBs are built in consideration of new specifics arising in requirement of safety of sea routes and protection of ships from attacks of pirates. The vessels also focus on illegal drug trafficking, terror, performing search and rescue duties and safety at sea. Read more. The Gulf of Guinea has become the second pirate base after Somali, reports Voice of Russia. This came in a statement for reporters in Moscow by the Russian Naval Chief Victor Chirkov.