Pirate Attacks Delay Food Sent to Africans

01 June 2009

Documents & Texts from America.gov

By Kathryn McConnell
Staff Writer

Washington — If pirate assaults on ships carrying emergency food donations escalate, more than 10 million people in Somalia and other countries in East and Central Africa will go hungry.

That is according to the World Food Programme (WFP), which says that already-high malnutrition rates are likely to climb in 2009.

Every time pirates attack these ships, as happened to the U.S.-owned and -flagged container ship Maersk Alabama on April 8 off the coast of Somalia, it raises the prospect of additional delays. The Alabama’s cargo included 4,100 metric tons of corn-soya blend, which is useful in combating malnutrition in children and mothers, and almost 1,000 metric tons of vegetable oil. The food, valued at $5.3 million, will sustain 300,000 hungry people for one month.

The incident meant that the food aboard the Alabama did not reach the port of Mombasa, Kenya, on schedule. It arrived two days late and was then transported to humanitarian groups for distribution to hungry Somalis, Kenyans and Ugandans, said Peter Smerdon, WFP spokesman in Nairobi, Kenya.

The region drastically needs food because it has been suffering from a combination of droughts and floods, while also experiencing growing numbers of refugees due to ongoing conflict, Smerdon told America.gov.

Smerdon said that if the agency receives sufficient money or food, it plans to feed the more than 10 million people in Somalia, Kenya, Uganda, southern Sudan and the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo who rely on food assistance brought through Mombasa. The United States is the World Food Programme’s largest donor.

Mombasa is essential to WFP’s operations. More than 500,000 metric tons of food aid arrived there in 2008 aboard more than 200 ships. Nearly 40 percent of that was bound for Somalia. About the same amount went to Kenya. Ten percent was distributed in Sudan. And the final 10 percent went to Uganda and the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, according to Smerdon.

Allan Jury, WFP’s director of U.S. relations, told America.gov he finds it troubling that the pirates are interfering with ships over a greater geographic distance. Where once they attacked ships going to Somalia, he said, "now ships headed to Mombasa also are being threatened."

The attack on the Alabama, 500 kilometers off Somalia, occurred during a regular rotation through the Indian Ocean from southwestern Oman to Djibouti — where WFP maintains warehouses — en route to Mombasa. (The United States does not make concessions or pay ransom to pirates.)

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wants international partners to develop a more effective response to an unprecedented level of piracy off the Somali coast because it is robbing Africans of much needed support. (See "United States Expands Fight Against Pirates.")

Other Attacks on Food-Aid Ships

A week after pirates attacked the Alabama, the Lebanese-owned and Togo-flagged MV Sea Horse was hijacked April 14 by pirates 700 kilometers from Somalia’s shores. The Sea Horse had been headed to Mumbai, India, where it was to load 7,300 metric tons of food to take back to Mogadishu under WFP charter, Smerdon said, but had to abort that mission. (Pirates released the ship April 17.)

The Sea Horse was to have been the first WFP-chartered ship to use a new Mumbai-to-Mogadishu transportation corridor; the food program ended up having to charter a different ship to make the journey.

Another attack occurred April 14 when marauders launched rocket-propelled grenades against the U.S.-owned and WFP-chartered Liberty Sun, damaging its hull.

This happened just after the ship had unloaded some of its food donations at the Port of Sudan and had begun steaming toward Mombasa carrying another 27,000 metric tons of maize meal, maize-soya blend, wheat flour, yellow peas and lentils for WFP. The ship managed to escape the attacking pirates and requested U.S. Navy assistance. The USS Bainbridge sailed to its aid, but the pirates fled before the Navy ship arrived.

On any given day, 30 merchant ships are ferrying food for the hungry under contract with the WFP.

While ships heading to Somali ports are escorted by European Union vessels, those headed to Mombasa with food to be delivered by truck to other countries often do not have escorts, Smerdon said. Somali ports are not large enough to accommodate the large merchant ships that deliver on regular schedules; Mombasa ports are.

It is not unusual for WFP to share cargo space on regularly scheduled merchant ships going to Mombasa. This decision is driven, in part, by a dwindling number of shipping firms willing to risk going to Somalia, as well as the lower cost that comes with shared transportation.

Beyond possible ship damage, loss of crew, and pirate ransom demands, these attacks pose a potential threat to the quality of the food itself. The nutritional value of grain begins to degrade if it is not delivered within a reasonable time, according to Rick Boyle of the Maersk Line Limited, a U.S. subsidiary of Dutch-owned Maersk Lines.

With this in mind, Boyle said, his company has been adapting its operations to reflect the threat from pirates, working on specific self-defense tactics.

See related stories: "Young Mariners Get Up-Close Lesson in Thwarting Pirates," "Global Coordination Can Stop Pirates" and "Commercial Fleet Owners Ask U.S. Congress for Solutions on Piracy."

For more information about transportation issues, see the Economic Impact of Piracy in the Gulf of Aden on Global Trade. (PDF, 36kb)