Global IssuesSOMALIA: Piracy Threatens Aid Effort
Pirate attacks in East African waters this year have disrupted the delivery of much-needed food aid to Somalia. With millions of lives at stake, U.N. World Food Program officials said the commencement last week of a European Union naval escort mission should help guarantee regular food shipments in the early months of 2009.
While Somali piracy has been a local problem since at least the late 1990s, only this year have pirates extended their reach deep into the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean, endangering major international shipping. Pirates have hijacked around 40 large vessels since January. The U.N.-led aid effort to Somalia -- one of the biggest humanitarian campaigns in the world -- is one victim of this surge in hijackings.
Periodically this year, WFP has found it difficult to get food into Somalia by sea -- at a time when demand for food aid is only growing.
WFP spokesman Peter Smerdon said that the number of Somalis relying on U.N. food assistance increased this year to 3.25 million, around 40 percent of the population and a 75 percent increase over 2007. Fighting between the occupying Ethiopian army and its Somali allies on one side, and Islamist militant groups on the other, has killed thousands since the Ethiopian invasion in late 2006. Combat has disrupted agriculture and displaced hundreds of thousands of people.
To avoid Somalia's 300 militia-manned checkpoints, 90 percent of the roughly 150,000 tons of food WFP has sent to Somalia this year went by sea to the ports of Mogadishu or Merka, according to the U.N. And to keep down costs, the U.N. said it prefers to send the food on a roughly monthly basis in large vessels carrying as much as 10,000 tons at a time, rather than relying on more frequent trips by smaller ships.
But the big freighters are more valuable prizes for pirates, who can get $1 million or more in ransom for a vessel and its crew.
'Because of the pirate issue, the big ship owners were not that much willing to come to Mombasa to take WFP food to Somalia,' said Lemma Jembere, WFP's chief logistician in Mombasa. 'They did not want to risk a pirate attack.' To mitigate the threat to its food ships, the U.N. since late 2007 has relied on warship escorts. Denmark, France, Canada, The Netherlands, NATO and the E.U. have all contributed forces to the escort mission, but at times WFP has struggled to find willing military contributors. The expiration of Canada's commitment to the escort mission sparked a minor panic in June, when WFP official Peter Goossens warned that 'without escorts, our whole maritime supply route will be threatened.' The Netherlands eventually sent a frigate to take over, followed by NATO.
On Dec. 14, the E.U. assumed responsibility for providing escorts. That mission is slated to last several months. No WFP ship has been hijacked while under military escort. But even when escorts were not available, food still had to go to Somalia. In those cases, only the owners of small vessels would accept WFP's contracts, Jembere said. 'Smaller ships, they [are willing to] take risks.'
Plus these days pirates sometimes overlook small vessels in favor of focusing their resources on hijacking larger, faster and more valuable ships in deeper water, Jembere added. But relying on smaller ships alone, reduced the amount of aid that could be delivered over a given period.
The small freighter Semlow, with an 800-ton cargo capacity, is a veteran of the Somalia circuit. While on contract for WFP in 2005, she was attacked by pirates and held for 110 days.
Fifty-year-old Juma Mvita, currently Semlow's chief engineer, was aboard the freighter when she was hijacked. He said the first thing he did when he was released was go to his mosque to pray. 'At that moment, I decided never go to sea again,' he said. 'I don't know how I got back into this situation.'
As NATO assumed responsibility for escorts beginning in November, WFP and its habitual shipping partners were feeling more confident in the longevity and effectiveness of military protection for U.N.-contracted vessels. With that, Jembere said, the big-ship owners once again offered up their freighters for the Somali aid run.
But Jembere said he kept the smaller ships, including Semlow, on contract 'as additional capacity.' On Dec. 14, the British warship HMS Northumberland, flying an E.U. flag, escorted Semlow from Mombasa to Mogadishu, laden with several hundred tons of split peas and other foodstuffs.
Edward Kalendero, Semlow's 51-year-old captain, said he had misgivings about working for WFP in pirate-infested waters, even with HMS Northumberland riding shotgun. 'If we can get a job other than this one, we do it.' But work is scarce, Kalendero said, so he continues sailing to Somalia.
Jembere, for his part, said he was optimistic -- that with escorts guaranteed by the E.U. and large ships returning to the Somalia circuit, it would become easier in coming weeks to maintain a steady flow of food aid to starving millions. Still, he said, his deepest worry is that for some reason, WFP might lose the warships, again making food ships easy prey for Somali pirates. 'That would be a logistical nightmare,' he said.
© Inter Press Service (2008) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service