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Arab States Set Up an Anti-Pirate League

By Benjamin Joffe-Walt, The Media Line news agency

A consortium of Arab states have set up a joint anti-piracy naval force to prevent the spread of piracy from the Gulf of Aden into the Red Sea and Gulf.

11 countries met Monday to set up an all-Arab Navy Task Force to deflect the growing threat Somali-led piracy poses to Arab shipping routes, namely oil and gas exports which pass through the Gulf of Aden and Red Sea to the Suez Canal on the way to the Mediterranean Sea.

Royal Saudi Naval commander Lieutenant General Prince Fahd bin Abdullah told journalists one of the goals of the force would be "to discuss joint Arab coordination with multinational forces operating in the region to combat piracy and to agree on the mechanisms of the Arab contribution."

The force, to be initially led by Saudi Arabia, will include naval forces from Bahrain, Djibouti, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Sudan, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen.

The communique issued at the end of the meeting indicated that the size, nature and scope of the forces assigned by each country would be at their discretion.

Arab states have voiced concern over what they perceive to be the increasing encroachment of foreign navies into their regional waters under the guise of anti-piracy efforts.

At a piracy conference in the Saudi capital Riyadh, Arab diplomats argued that protecting the Red Sea from pirates was the "primary responsibility" of Arab states and stressed the "importance of the exclusion of the Red Sea from any international arrangements, especially the fight against sea piracy."

"The presence of international naval forces without any kind of international agreement - each country on it's own under the pretence of anti-piracy efforts - that definitely causes chaos and upsets Arab governments," Dr Ghanim A-Najjar, a Somalia expert and professor of political scientist at Kuwait University, told The Media Line.

"Who gives the authorization for any military force to go into the Red Sea? There is no such body so essentially any foreign navy can just go in and say they are doing so against piracy," Dr A-Najjar said. "The number of these warships are increasing and nothing has been done to control these ships or guarantee that nothing will happen."

Dr A-Najjar argued that both Western and Arab governments have ignored the issue for almost a decade. "The anti-piracy efforts have never been serious," he said. "We've been talking about it for eight years now but they were mostly interested in terrorism and piracy they just let happen without interference."

A growing wave of Somali-led piracy, targeting the coast of the East African nation, the Arabian Sea, and the Gulf of Aden, has plagued the international shipping industry since the late 1990s.

More than 70 vessels have been hijacked over the last two years. While there have been a few hijacking attempts along the southern tip of the Red Sea this year, none were successful.

Somali authorities, local fishermen and civil society organizations first complained of foreign vessels illegally fishing or dumping industrial, toxic and nuclear waste off Somali shores in 1991, when President Mohamed Siad Barre was ousted by Ethiopian backed forces.

Over the 18 years since Barre's fall, Somalia has not had an effective central government able to protect the country's 2000 mile coastline.

Due to the lack of government protection, Somali coastal communities dependant on artisanal fishing have claimed their fishermen have been violently harassed by foreign trawlers in past years. They refer to the phenomenon as "economic terrorism."

Saudi Arabia has significantly boosted its anti-piracy efforts since a Saudi oil supertanker was hijacked earlier this year.

Iran, noticeably absent from the anti-piracy initiative, sent six warships into international waters last month at the orders of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamanai, billed by the Islamic republic as an anti-piracy measure. The move marked the first time in modern history that the Islamic republic has projected its military might beyond its regional sphere of interest.

"This has two dimensions," Dr. Mustafa Alani, the director of terrorism studies at the Gulf Research Center in Dubai, told The Media Line. "First Iran wants to join the international action. Secondly, they have their own ships to protect."

Iran has sent its navel ships into the Gulf of Aden on numerous occasions to protect its oil tankers from pirates.

(c) 2009. The Media Line Ltd. All Rights Reserved.