A week ago the Indian Navy, struck a body blow for shipping, world wide, by sinking a pirate vessel in the Gulf of Aden and capturing the fleeing pirates.With this amazing operation the Indian Navy has clearly established its reach & prowess.
For me it was a redemption of sorts seeing the INS Khukhri being part of the operation, because in 1971, the INS Khukhri was a ship the Indian Navy lost to the Pakistan Navy, in a sea battle.
In a move to take on piracy, our Defense minister is toying with the idea of having 'Sea Marshals' or armed security men on board, merchant ships to protect them.The issue is, ships unlike organizations cannot have 'matrix organizations', where the reporting structure is loose and not clearly established. The point is, will the 'sea marshal' work under the command of the ships captain or will he/she operate as an independent entity answering only to his/her call? On board an Indian ship the authority of the captain is supreme and is established by the Constitution of India ( Merchant Shipping Act 1958 ). This debate has been raging in western Europe and the USA for a while now and no answer has been found.No ships captain would like to see a loose cannon running around his ship.
Another idea is to have a 'fortified' area on board, where crew can secure themselves under attack from pirates and wait to be rescued by a rescue force. Assume this scenario played out on a crude oil carrier with 100000 Tons of crude oil? What would prevent the pirates from blowing up this floating bomb, before the rescue force arrived?
While the Defense Minister's zest is commendable, his lack of domain knowledge is painfully evident and eventually like all conflicts the solution to this vexed problem as well, will have to be found by diplomats on land rather than by guns at sea!
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