Christmas Island- or death

With more than 300 boat people having died route to Australia this year alone, the refugee crisis there does not seem to show any sign of ending.  Thousands of refugees– mainly Afghans, Iranians and Sri Lankans- continue to pay up to US $ 5500 each for the perilous journey from the Indonesian island of Java to the nearby Christmas Island, the Australian outpost close to Indonesia where asylum seekers are detained and processed. Almost two thousand arrived in Australia in August, the highest monthly total on record. Almost ten thousand have arrived this year already, more than double the figures for the whole of last year. Hundreds die during the transit. Official figures say more than 600 have perished since 1999, but who knows for sure?

Outside Australia, the plight of these refugees has been largely ignored thus far. That is nothing unusual- the same attitude has forever been on display towards the thousands of seaborne refugees that cross waters across the world every year, whether in the Red or Mediterranean seas or Central America- and the same attitude was on display towards the original boat people- from Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos-a few decades ago.  (Even as I write this, a stuffed illegal immigrant boat has sunk of  Turkey’s western Aegean, drowning at least 58; scores of others are missing).

There are the usual tales today of capsized or disabled boats, distress calls, people smugglers abandoning their cargoes at the first sign of trouble, rickety overcrowded boats and tens of men, women and children drowning when their boats literally fall apart. The shadowy kingpins behind this human smuggling racket include a Pakistani based in Indonesia; a regular ploy is to bring the boats close to Christmas island and send out a distress signal, sometimes even by mobile phone, and wait to be rescued. 

The Australian Maritime Safety Authority and their Indonesian counterparts-BASARNAS- have obliquely and not so obliquely blamed each other for either abandoning the refugees or promoting calculated delay in rescue with the intent to discourage the boat people. Meanwhile, boats are being intercepted by the Australian navy almost every day.

In Australia, there is political acrimony and a hardening of positions with respect to the boat people on one hand and consternation over the humanitarian crisis on the other. A decade old plan- the ‘Pacific Solution’ that calls for refugees to be sent to Nauru and Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island for processing at detention centres- has been revived. Australian newspapers are meanwhile reporting the body count religiously, while the authorities are hoping that the recent spurt in the numbers of boats will reduce substantially because the refugees have been so far trying their best to make it to Australia before the ‘Pacific Solution’ was reimposed. Now, it has.

The story of the Wallenius Wilhelmsen owned car carrier Parsifal last month should have brought, especially to the shipping industry, the crisis in sharp focus. The Singapore registered ship, with a crew of just ten, picked up 67 asylum seekers off Java after a distress call. En route to Singapore, the Captain diverted the Parsifal to Christmas Island fearing for the safety of his outnumbered crew after what was reported as aggressive behaviour by the refugees who wanted to go to Christmas Island. As it turned out, a couple of the asylum seekers had threatened to harm themselves, not the crew, though obviously the situation could have escalated rapidly.

The Parsifal story mirrors tale of her sister ship Tampa, owned by the same Wallenius Wilhelmsen, that had precipitated  a political storm in Australia when she tried to take 438 Afghan boat people to Christmas Island way back in 2001. The then Australian Prime Minister Howard sent Australian Special Forces aboard to stop Captain Rinan from landing the refugees, who were sent to Nauru after the ‘Pacific Solution’ was hastily put together in four days. Howard said at the time, "We will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come."

This is not the place to go into the pros and cons of Australian policy; I will only say that despite all the flutter, the numbers of these seaborne refugees heading for that nation of immigrants is small. They get disproportionate attention, though, thanks to their somewhat spectacular mode of attempted entry. They also expose themselves to criminal elements and crazy risk.

Masters of ships that sight boat people today are in a tighter spot than ever, for there is an additional security threat that these refugees potentially represent- one that was absent during the Vietnamese boat people days. Those of us who were sailing then remember the horror stories of Masters ignoring- illegally and inhumanely- overcrowded boats begging for rescue, or just food and water. We remember shore side managers asking us to avoid the area altogether if possible and ignore the boat people if not. We remember spineless Masters complying with this illegal directive. This time too, shipping has already begun to behave against the laws and traditions of the sea: a bunch of rescued refugees told Australian media last month that five ships passed them and their friends who were in the water for two days but refused to stop.

I will not defend such behaviour- there is no defence- although I am well aware of what promotes it. The fact that governments around the world routinely propagate policies that are dangerous both to the refugees and to the crews that choose to rescue them is no excuse for a Master to abandon drowning men, women and children at sea. The fact that shortmanned crews on cramped ships cannot easily accommodate- leave alone control- tens or hundreds of aggressive and desperate refugees is no excuse for manslaughter. The fact that the world does not re-examine is treatment of seaborne refugees and the cruel systems that govern this treatment is no grounds for cold-bloodedness.

Final idle thoughts: does shipping need armed guards to protect its crews from rescued refugees in ‘boat-people waters’? I am not advocating shooting boat people in the water, I hastily clarify, just wondering if armed guards will protect crews against aggression from survivors.

And, does the ISPS code- that has failed spectacularly to protect ships and crews from boat people, terrorists, pirates and robbers alike- need to be thrown in the bin at once?

 .

.

Warlords, Drug lords and the new anatomy of ship security

In January this year, this column carried a piece (ISPSo Facto) which highlighted the farcical unworkability of the ISPS code as applied hurriedly and without thought to seagoing ships today. My opinion remains that the ISPS code is overwhelmingly impractical and unworkable in its present form.

For those of us who thought that we could cheer up because things could not possibly get worse, we now have some news. They probably will; I can see the writing on the wall. New threats are emerging or old ones dramatically escalating in different areas of the world. Let us look at just two such areas today: the Horn of Africa and the US East Coast.

Piracy, or more accurately, hijackings of ships, has been an unpleasant fact on the Somali coast for almost a decade and a half. The difference between the time I was plying on the coast (Red Sea/Yemen to Kenya/Tanzania) and now is that the killing zone has moved north and threatens the entrance to the Red Sea, and indirectly traffic through the Suez Canal.

In the last four months, seven ships have been hijacked off the Horn of Africa. A third of recent piracy attacks worldwide have been in this area which is a critical shipping route, situated as it is at the entrance to the Red Sea. Four ships were hit on the same day recently; close to a hundred crewmembers were kidnapped on that one day alone. The number of reported attacks on ships has tripled this year; industry experts believe that many incidents remain unreported.

In the past, ransoms up to millions of dollars have been paid for safe release of ships and crews. Past (and present?) Somali links with Al Qaeda make this anarchic country, with no government since 1991 and in the grip of warlords, a particular cause for concern.

And before I forget, one more thing has changed: owing largely to the fact that the shipping industry has done nothing except ransom ships (and crews, though they are always collateral damage to the industry) with millions of dollars each (ransoms for European ships are higher, which should tell us something about the value of skin colour), the IMB in Malaysia recommends ships now stay 200 miles off the Somali coast, compared to the 100 recommended when I was on a liner service there last a few years ago. We think that this is acceptable progress and good risk management after a more than a decade in that hostile environment.


Threats in the United States emanate from an old enemy that has learnt new tricks: The US Coast Guard says that in this year alone, they have detected twenty seven semi submersibles headed for the United States, each carrying up to ten tonnes of cocaine. This is greater than the number of such known submarines in the last six years combined, and represents a dramatic escalation in the drugs trade and consequent security concerns. The number of submarines undetected is, of course, anybody’s guess.

Eighty feet long and with a military design (fingers are pointed at ex Soviet Union technology and technicians working in manufacturing facilities in the river estuaries of Colombia), these sleekly designed drug subs, each with a crew of two, twin silent propellers and with a profile above water only eighteen inches high (just enough to take in oxygen and release exhaust), can carry drugs thousands of miles and at a decent speed directly from Colombia to the US coastline. These semi submersibles, almost identical to military submarines, mark a significant advancement in the ability of drug smugglers to pose a serious threat to the United States. This method of smuggling cocaine is a generational leap in drug smuggling and does not need corrupt officials ashore to be successful. To make this nightmare complete, these subs are undetectable by radar and not visible except at very close range.

And by the way: these submarines are abandoned after drug drops on the US mainland even though each costs several million dollars to manufacture; the street price of the drugs each one carries is worth tens of millions of dollars on the streets of the US and so a few million can be written off without discomfort.

Officials in the Department of Homeland Security are very worried at the increased sophistication of these drug subs. Officials fear that the submarines can easily deliver terrorists or weapons, including unthinkable and unspeakable ones, into the USA.

I guess what these stories are telling us is that the threat perception of a few years ago is already redundant, and that the ISPS code cannot cater to the rapidly escalating security scenario; hell, it can barely cater to normal operations at the best of times.

We have been often told of the links between terrorism and organised crime. Hawala linked to Dawood Ibrahim, the ISI and the WTC bombers. LTTE cadres are carriers into Europe for Columbian drug lords. Indonesian terrorist and separatist groups in Aceh linked to the Bali bombings and Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda linked to everybody’s aunt including terrorists in the Philippines. The Taliban being opium financed and created by the Pakistani ISI. Past links between the IRA and the Columbian drug lords.

What are the chances that these links will get stronger? Should we not assume that they already have? And if so, what do we think will happen?

I expect the immediate threat to shipping around the Horn of Africa to be resolved by military force of some kind, though partially; Somalia has a 3200 mile coastline. I also expect that boarding of hijacked merchant ships on the high seas by military commandos will become more of a possibility, as will some in house measures, including the use of armed security personnel by some owners; at least one is already doing so. Insurance may well get more expensive, too.

Around the US Coast, and given the fact that those mini subs are alleged to get logistical support from private vessels at sea, I expect an increase in overt and covert surveillance, combined with perhaps raised vessel reporting and other requirements. I expect that the US will take action on this quickly; they have a hole through which a few hundred tonnes of anything can be brought in annually, breathing or otherwise, and seemingly at will.

I expect new legislation in many countries and pressure on the IMO to strengthen existing security resolutions, the end result of which will be to increase operating costs somewhat, reduce again the Master’s authority in the open sea while increasing his responsibility and contribute to fatigue of already stressed out crews. Daily ISPS checks of the ship at sea, anybody?

In short, I expect more of the same post WTC attack (if you are not with us, you are against us) kind of responses. In addition, I expect they will be as unworkable and as unsuccessful as those, because, to repeat while getting blue in the face, ships crews are ill manned, ill equipped, ill trained and too overworked to deal with security, terrorism and organised crime in any meaningful way. Asking them to do this is like asking pilots and cabin crew to be responsible for security at JFK.

There is one thing we can do this time around, however. The shipping industry can engage countries like the US and organisations like the IMO and help them in bringing about changes that are practical and workable. Whether in Somalia, the US today, or another region tomorrow, we should not be caught flat footed as we were last time, when ill conceived and hasty regulations were stuffed down our throats. Industry bodies must engage the IMO and Marine Departments of countries meaningfully; regulations once written tend to be etched in stone, so it is much better to have a hand in shaping them. India, too, must strengthen the quality of its IMO contingent.

If all this hoo haa results in elements of ship security being outsourced to professional outfits, then we are also looking at an upward pressure on freight rates, besides insurance costs. That is another piece of math the industry could do well to flesh out, starting now.

Incidentally, this is also a good time for the maritime world to try to tweak the present ISPS code to make it workable.

Finally, Masters of vessels bound for the Gulf of Aden or down the Somali coast would do well to start exercising their minds with some, “What if” scenarios, two hundred miles off the coast or not. Scenarios like, “what do I do if six men with grenade launchers and AK47s knock on my door right now?”

Lie back and enjoy it?




.
.

Bipolar disorder

(Also known as manic depression. Extreme changes in mood, energy levels and behavior.)



Right up into the early eighties, we sailors used to look forward to the next port. Often, after weeks of sailing, it meant a break from monotony and sometimes from hardship; many ships were old and usually without air conditioning or heating. We looked forward the long port stays, working like dogs during our watches or during the day and then going ashore like kings. Communicating home was another attraction of making port; letters came only there, phone calls were possible, sometimes with great difficulty, only in port. Shopping, drinking, and otherwise letting our hair down was expected, even encouraged. A German Master I sailed with as an officer used to get angry if he saw me on board outside my watch keeping hours. An Indian Chief Officer used to tell us cadets, with the usual profanity thrown in, “Roger off from the ship. If I see you on board you will be chipping the whole night”.

In short, we behaved like sailors on shore leave, and it didn't make us poorer seamen because of it.

There was not much thought given to port officials, the US Coast guard, superintendents and surveys. Those happened anyway, nothing too alarming to worry about. And Superintendents, in Indian companies at least, came aboard only in Indian ports. Foreign company bosses were not so problematic or egotistical, and not under the pressure they are today.

Sometime, in the eighties and later, things changed. The recession hit. Ships and cargo became more unitised. Turnaround times decreased rapidly. The industry learned how to run ships cheaply, with minimum maintenance and short manning. One started hearing the adage “A ship does not make money in port” more often. Regulations fell on us like a ton of bricks. Chief Stewards and then Radio Officers disappeared. Workloads increased dramatically and paperwork increased to ridiculous levels. The ISM code, and later, the ISPS code, hit us. Checklists checkmated the most intrepid. Short manning now became the norm. Criminalisation of the profession became more common and dreaded. Short of going to the loo, we had checklists for everything. (Aside- a hilarious Chief Officer I sailed with had this checklist, too, stuck in his cabin. Right from opening the door in the beginning to using air freshener at the end, everything was covered and had to be ticked!)

As port calls started being measured in hours rather than days, as regulations and paperwork choked the fun out of sailing, as clerks and minor officials were given powers disproportionate to their knowledge and responsibility and as everybody from ashore became a pain in the neck in one way or another, as all this happened, the fear and distaste for the shore establishment, from boarding officials to Superintendents to the Coast Guard to everybody in between, became more widespread.

Most seafarers today prefer long sailings over long port stays any day. Simply put, there is minimum interference from the shore establishment at sea. Sure, there are the usual emails, some horrendously long winded and autocratic. (Companies should really put in place an email policy which stresses that the shore establishment is a support function, not a control one). Sure, at sea there are maintenance schedules and watches to keep, ubiquitous paperwork to catch up on, periodical and ever increasing reports to be made… but there is no chance of a clerk landing up and threatening to fine the ship because a garbage can has its lid displaced, or an environment guy saying that the tyres of vehicles being imported carry 'foreign' dirt and therefore he will stop cargo operations unless 'the Captain can be cooperative'. There is no chance of a ship chandler's delivery guy calling up the Master on his mobile and even satellite phone (the Master having just gone to sleep after two days without any) and asking the crew to be sent down to receive stores. There is no chance of a Ministry of Agriculture functionary demanding ten cartons of cigarettes because she found a spider in the provision room rice. There is no chance of a Superintendent arriving for two days with an agenda that should cover ten. No chance, also, of a Port State Control inspection which was done ten days ago and is being repeated now to 'train some of our youngsters, hope the Captain doesn't mind'. There is no chance of being bombarded with a dozen different people all of whom seem to think the crew exists just to service their often minor needs. There is no chance of being mentally and physically stressed by people one wouldn't give the time of day to in other, different circumstances.

No exaggeration. All that has happened to me, and surely to almost everybody at sea.


The distaste and dismissiveness for the 'other side' is not limited to seafarers. An ex Master now in port operations gleefully and dismissively says, "We visit the ship, but we don't even go up to see the Captain". A senior functionary of a huge manning company says, with less tact and even lesser sense, "If seafarers behave like prostitutes they will be treated as such". A charterer's representative takes great pleasure in seeing the Master ten times a day for minor matters which could have been sorted out at the gangway; he also needs a more comfortable cabin to spend time in, given that today's ships are not built with well appointed spare ones. A US Coast guard inspector wants everything including six drills yesterday, when the ship berthed ten minutes ago. A ship chandler's delivery guy arrives with parts of his body apparently on fire, and knocks on all crew and officer cabin doors at three in the morning, the crew having just gone to sleep after arrival. He is kept waiting six hours, which increases communication with his boss remarkably well.

And, in these days of mobile phones, well, they just don't seem to stop ringing. Not unless you switch them off, which once created some friction between yours truly and the Managers of the ship, who seemed to believe that a telephone operators job was part of my job description. Things were sorted out only after I threatened to throw the phone overboard instead of switching it off. Batteries and charger included.

Antagonism within an industry is hardly uncommon. Operations and management are often at loggerheads everywhere, fighting turf wars and ego battles and the usual useless things. But in the end, in almost all other industries except shipping, saner brains realise that they need to work together and not against each other. Hang together, or we will surely hang separately.

This does not work in Shipping for one reason and one reason alone. The crew and management have no long term association plans worth speaking of. Even after ten back to back contracts, nobody at sea really belongs to an organisation. Everybody is temporary, and the maximum that can usually happen is that a seafarer will not return or will not be recalled. Besides the alarm this may cause in these days of shortages, nobody, deep down, really cares about that.

Besides, we in Shipping have a unique disorder, akin to a manic depressive or bipolar disorder. Depending on shortages or excesses of manpower and the imperatives of demand and supply in this cyclical industry, we treat each other either as prospective bridegrooms for our daughters, or something the cat brought in.

Small wonder, then, that this is an additional negative for a youngster contemplating the sea as a career. And, while one can always blame the economic boom in India for the increasing unattractiveness of the sea as a career option, we ignore the perception of Shipping as a backward profession at our own peril. And this perception, that it treats its professionals like bonded labour being sent to the Middle East, is not without justification.


Fix this, my friends, or we will never be home free.




.

The colour of blood.

Right through the nineties, I seemed to be assigned ships which were predominantly plying in the Malacca Straits and South East Asian waters, and some of these never stirred out of the Straits and Indonesian waters adjacent to them. And, right through the nineties, the Straits and surrounding areas had almost daily multiple incidents of piracy, or attempted piracy.

We were boarded once, probably by amateurs, because a foolhardy chief officer could chase them away with a raised voice and a searchlight. Other company ships were not so lucky.
Ships used to call on the VHF to report attacks all the time, and daily. I remember one of these incidents was almost within the Sultan Shoal anchorage area; regulars there will know that the North West bound traffic lane there passes less than a mile from anchored vessels. This is practically Singapore harbour. Surely something could be done here to assist the ship?

The response? The dedicated anti piracy VHF channel effectively saying "There is nothing we can do right now", and calling, later, to collect data for some babu in some crusty office to collate, analyse and use with authority at the next anti piracy meeting.
Seamen died during that time in piracy attacks, and later. Fortunately not too many at first unless they resisted. Of course, later there was Aceh and the separatist movement there, when things escalated and more sailors died. Later and suddenly, pirates became terrorists in the world's myopic yes, though dead seamen stayed dead. Later, everybody suddenly discovered that these pirates were the bad guys. Later, we were expected to hear, all wide eyed and impressed, how various authorities established that links existed between these pirates, sorry, terrorists, across the world. Later, we were meant to assume this was a new war.

Somalia has not had a government since the early 90's. Fishing boats started getting hijacked a few years later while on the Somali coast, and merchant vessels a few years after that. No real action, besides paying ransoms for the ship, cargo and crew, was taken by the world or shipping community.

Contrast this to sometime around 2002, when I was on a regular run from Kenya to the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea. The International Maritime Bureau used to send daily warnings asking ships to stay at least a 100 miles from the Somali coast. Ships closer to the mainland were sometimes hijacked, sure, but the French Navy patrolled the 3300 mile long coast. The German navy, too, as part of the 'Allied' fleet (love this term, please always remember that the Allies are the good guys), seemed to be in attendance at the entrance to the Red Sea and around Aden. Military aircraft used to fly low over this area and check out ships in transit. We were regularly called on the VHF, in international waters and by the US navy, and particulars taken.
Remember this was after the New York World Trade Centre attacks, when the 'war on terror' was taking off, or freaking out, depending on your point of view.

As a seaman, and in my experience, many ports and waters have been dreaded for decades. Authorities like to hide behind semantics, but Robbery, Armed Robbery, Piracy, Hijacking and Terrorism are just words to a seaman when he is at the wrong end of a knife or a gun. The southern Philippines, the Sri Lankan coast, certain African and South American countries, the Indonesian archipelago, the Malacca straits and parts of the South China sea have been known, sometimes for decades, to be piracy prone, even infested, and supported by powerful people ashore.
Authorities within some countries have been strongly suspected to be involved. Or elements within governments. Various international fora have raised these issues, and, as our industry often does, raised them impotently. At the end of the day, insurance covers everything, don't you know?

Go back a decade or two. I remember reading that, during the worst of the Iran Iraq war, more than a seaman a day was being killed, usually in rocket or such attacks in the area. Unfortunately, some of those years of sailor casualties coincided with the recession in Shipping. Seamen's lives became even cheaper then; nobody was really interested in a boring body count.
Seventy one merchant ships were attacked in 1984 alone. Unarmed civilians were killed, while the industry, the IMO and the world community stood by wringing its hands and mouthing platitudes. A couple of tankers were supposed to have been sabotaged by the Iranians, or the Iraqis, depending on your affiliation, and were bleeding oil into the sea. Alarm bells were rung at the possibility of the potential for disastrous ecological damage.

Of course, we were shown the usual pictures of seagulls drenched in oil and the environmental fallout of that war. I don't remember seeing the body of a single dead seaman. Oil stained seagull photographs are a favourite tear jerker with the media. Dead seamen don't evoke the same response, of course. But, as much as I like animals and seagulls, if I see one more oily bird I may puke.

So much for history. Let's fast forward to the present. Today, we ask all our seamen to implement the ISPS vigorously and with great gusto. We ask them to participate in the war against terror. We ask them to forget semantics.
Certain countries ask us to forget our dead comrades and grieve for their nationals instead. Not only do they not ask us nicely, they stop our shore leaves while doing so. We can bring massive ships capable of doing huge damage into their ports safely, but we can't be trusted once we are there.

Once again, the industry watches, impotent and uncaring. Once again, a ship is hijacked with ten Indians on board off Somalia. Once again, the crew survives because they are lucky. Once again, we are told about the fractured nature of our business, and how difficult it is for authorities to coordinate things to any degree of satisfaction. Once again, the spiel is dished out. Once again, the assumption is that the world is doing the best that it can.

So let me ask you this. What would have happened if a passenger ship had got boarded and robbed during the nineties in the Malacca Straits? Would any action have been taken? I can see the headlines and the sanctimonious talk show hosts going to town with this. The pirates were too smart to hit a passenger ship, of course, because they knew there would be fallout. But, what if? What if a couple of passengers were killed? Remember Achille Lauro and the military response later?

Or, what if a tanker ran aground 5 miles from Singapore or Malaysia after a pirate attack, with crew incapacitated or dead? What if we had more oil soaked seagulls? Do you think the world would have taken action then? Do you think our industry would have remained impotent?

My beef is not with the Western world, or the double standards prevailing there which we Indians have seen enough of. Those are outsiders. My beef is with my own brethren and contemporaries who have failed to fulfill their responsibilities, including many in my own country.
Actually, they haven't failed. Failure is when you try and don't succeed. Actually it is worse, because my colleagues haven't even tried.

Let's face it; this is an industry which regulates as much as it can. It regulates the number of checklists and frequency of equipment checks and drills. It regulates maintenance schedules, alcohol intake and training and procedures for everything under the sun. Hell, it even regulates the colour of the lids on segregated garbage cans. Safe ships, cleaner oceans and all that jazz, remember?

It does not, however, even begin to get a handle on the man made risks a seaman faces (natural risks are passé'). It does not even begin to regulate on any single issue which effects a seaman's well being, leave alone his life.

The ISPS code is brought out within weeks and months of an attack on mainland USA. The industry is dragged into it kicking and screaming, prepared or not. Practicality of implementation is thrown to the winds. Officials in international organisations are as usual petrified that if powerful countries act unilaterally, they might well become redundant. (Usefulness can be debated, redundancy seems final).
Tell me then, how come no quick and concrete action is similarly taken on seafarer fatigue issues which were first raised by respected organisations almost twenty years ago? The industry dithered for years, and even now pays lip service to the STCW rest period rules.

One of the largest manpower suppliers to the world of shipping, India, does not even have an apex body which coordinates seaman's welfare and interests. Associations which exist are toothless, clueless and useless. Most are social or networking fora, nothing more. One or two State run ones are proven corrupt; officials have been found fraudulent.

So and anyway, folks, what we are saying are this: Seamen's lives, like those of citizens of some third world (oops, developing) countries, don't really have much value. And if you are a seaman from a third world country, you count least of all. Even worse, you count least in your own colleague's eyes. Your life is insured, sure, but your life counts for less than a life in the western world, it counts for less than your colleague's life in Mumbai, and it may even count less than a seagull's life.

Because, you see, in the case of the seagull and the others, the colour of their blood is white.




.
first published in www.marexbulletin.com


.