Here's how sick the Indian government is of the pirates that increasingly menace its commercial ships: it's mulling over a plan to authorize armed guards to protect the decks.
No firm decisions have been made yet. But it appears that rather than hiring armed private guards to protect ships flying the Indian flag, Mumbai is looking to station government personnel aboard its merchant vessels, similar to the Sky Marshals aboard its private aircraft.
The move comes amidst a series of series of reforms announced by the Indian government early this month to confront its growing piracy problem. India's drafting a new law to prosecute captured pirates, in line with th United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. And though it's never been shy about getting violent with pirates, India is also reportedly loosening up the rules of engagement procedures for its navy to allow a larger range of offensive actions.
India's Sky Marshals are drawn from its elite counterterrorism police force, the National Security Guards, and deployed on select airline routes viewed as vulnerable to terrorism. But since the pirates' vast area of operations in the Indian Ocean places a huge amount of Indian maritime traffic at risk, it's not clear how Indian would decide which ships would get a "Sea Marshal" aboard.
Somali pirates used to be active primarily in the Gulf of Aden. But as international anti-piracy task forces like the EU's Navfor and the U.S.-led multinational Combined Task Force 151 patrols started to mess with the piracy trade in the region, pirates simply moved eastward and into the Indian Ocean.
Since then, pirates have been creeping ever closer to the Indian coastline. A quick look at International Maritime Bureau's 2010 piracy map shows that attacks closer to India than Somalia are hardly uncommon anymore. Last month, Somali pirates attacked a tanker only 40 nautical miles off the coast of India (armed guards on board reportedly repelled the attack).
As Somali piracy has increased in range, lethality and frequency over the years, a number of ships have turned to private security to fend off the seaborne kidnappers. It's a solution endorsed by U.S. Central Command, too, which has called it "a great trend" and egged on shipping companies to "get more serious" by hiring the companies. The notorious mercs from Blackwater tried to get in on some of the action, but have since reportedly preferred to fight piracy on land via private militias.
It's not clear if other countries will follow India's lead in stationing troops aboard merchant ships. But India's aggressive new approach to piracy, amidst increasingly violent behavior on the part of pirates, is an indication that the escalating piracy war isn't likely to diminish any time soon.
Photo: Flickr/Deepak Gupta
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