PIRATES CAN BLOODY SA WATERS, WARNS UN

Good heavens! Will someone please remind me, exactly what centuary are we living in? Clearly I am living in the dark ages - I thought pirates went out of fashion with highwaymen, although I guess highwaymen were just replaced by hi-jackers. Captain Hook appears also to have replaced cutlass with surface-to-surface missiles, rocket propelled grenades, armed helicopters and heavy calibre machine-guns such as anti-aircraft guns!

Pirates can bloody SA waters, warns UN

Graeme Hosken

November 27 2006 at 04:31AM

Ruthless sea pirates who plunder hundreds of ships each year off the coast of Africa are moving south, threatening South African waters, experts have warned. The United Nations Security Council and international maritime safety organisations have urged the Southern African Development Community (SADC) to take drastic action against gangs of heavily armed pirates.

The calls follow South African Intelligence Minister Ronnie Kasrils' warnings last year that sea piracy was creeping closer and closer to South Africa and that the country needed to "move swiftly" and establish good intelligence networks to stop pirate attacks. Between January and November, 48 ships were attacked around Africa by gangs of pirates armed with an assortment of weapons, including surface-to-surface missiles, rocket propelled grenades, armed helicopters and heavy calibre machine-guns such as anti-aircraft guns.



'Pirates are moving their operations further south'

Pirates, many of whom operate "phantom" ships disguised as vessels in distress, use intelligence operatives stationed at Richards Bay, Durban, Port Elizabeth and Cape Town harbours to feed organised crime syndicates with information detailing sailing times, destinations, routes, cargos and numbers of crew.

The warning of pirate attacks occurring in South African waters comes as the International Maritime Bureau (IMB) and International Maritime Organisation (IMO) release their statistics on world pirate attacks. According to the IMB and IMO, between January and September 174 ships were attacked by pirates worldwide. This is down from the 205 attacks in 2005. Of the 174 attacks, pirates boarded 113 vessels, hijacked 11, took 163 sailors hostage, including 14 Nigerian naval officers, kidnapped 20 sailors and murdered six.

According to the IMB, the latest attack in SADC waters took place 10 days ago when 15 pirates in a high-powered speedboat attacked a container ship waiting to berth in Dar es Salaam harbour in Tanzania. Two days before the attack, 10 Somali pirates hijacked a general cargo vessel travelling from Richards Bay to the United Arab Emirates off the Somali coast using a helicopter gunship and several specially modified speedboats. The ship was carrying charcoal. The attack took place near the port of Mogadishu.

South Africa needed to step in and help its neighbours

The IMB said a group in control of parts of Somalia dispatched several high-powered speed boats to chase the vessel. Following a fierce four-hour gunfight, the search and recovery team, who killed two pirates and arrested eight others, regained control of the vessel and returned it to its owners. Unconfirmed reports said 30 surface-to-surface missiles were seized. Tshwane University of Technology safety and security department lecturer Henri Fouche said the escalation of attacks showed it was just a matter of time before South Africa was targeted. "It is clear that pirates are moving their operations further south as they discover there are few, if any, navies operating in southern African waters, especially around countries like Mozambique, Madagascar, Seychelles, Comoros and Namibia."

This means pirates will continue to move south, coming closer to South Africa where yachts, fishing ships and cargo vessels will be attacked," Fouche said. He said another reason South Africa and other SADC countries were becoming a major target for pirates was the recent discovery of oil and gas off the Tanzanian coast and the fact that six million tons of oil were transported around South Africa's western coast every month making this "a gem" for pirates.

He said: "It is therefore imperative that we start assist our neighbouring countries to stop these attacks before they reach our shores." IMB director Captain Pottengal Mukundan said the number of pirate attacks, especially along Africa's west and east coasts, was an "extreme cause for concern". "The attacks which have taken place along the sea borders of countries such as Somalia and Nigeria are very worrying, especially with the amount of violence used," he said. "In the past, our main area of concern when it came to pirate attacks was South East Asia, but our focus is shifting to Africa where the attacks are both increasing and becoming more violent."We are worried about Africa because of the lack of naval forces and law enforcement agencies on the continent which can successfully counter these criminals," he said.

Mukundan said South Africa needed to step in and help its neighbours and other SADC countries if piracy was to be eradicated from the region's waters.He said the assistance would have to be in the form of resources, money and training.

This article was originally published on page 1 of Pretoria News on November 27, 2006