Petraeus Says Shipping Industry Should Consider Armed Guards

Maritime shipping companies can’t rely on naval forces to protect them from pirates and should consider employing armed guards, the top U.S. commander in the Middle East said today.

Shipping companies must “get more serious” about defending themselves in the waters off East Africa, also stringing concertina wire along railings and unbolting boarding ladders, Army General David Petraeus told a House panel.

The U.S. military uses armed guards on many of the commercial ships that carry military cargo, he said, noting that sailors can’t protect themselves with fire hoses if the pirates are carrying rocket-propelled grenades.

“It is important the maritime industry get more serious about this problem,” Petraeus said during a hearing today of a House committee that controls military construction spending.

Pirates attacked 61 ships off Somalia in the first three months of 2009, up from six a year earlier, according to the International Maritime Bureau. The seas off Somalia accounted for more than half of the 102 attacks worldwide. Armed gangs succeeded in hijacking 14 ships so far in April, a monthly record, the bureau said yesterday.

The industry has viewed the threat “as a business proposition,” he said. The companies reason that “less than 1 percent” of ships transiting the area is pirated, and if one is hijacked, “we have insurance,” the ship “parks off Somalia,” and the company negotiates a price to recover it, he said.

“Well, that price is going up, and, of course, the violence is going up,” Petraeus said. “And the pirates have moved farther and farther and farther out.” They originally were in the Gulf of Aden, just south of Yemen and off the Horn of Africa, he said. “Now they’re as far out as 450 nautical miles off the coast of Somalia proper.”

“There is now no way the limited number of vessels” from North Atlantic Treaty Organization , the U.S., the European Union and other coalition maritime forces can safeguard the thousands of vessels that transit an area so vast, he said.

Combating piracy leaped toward the top of the U.S. agenda when American sharpshooters, acting on President Barack Obama’s orders, killed three pirates to free a U.S. ship captain taken hostage off Somalia’s coast last week.

Source: Bloomberg.com