I recently returned from the two-day marquee counter-piracy conference held at the Madinat Jumeirah resort (really, a city within a city) in Dubai:
As with many of these high-level events, the public discussion was largely contentless and bland, seemingly serving as a requisite smokescreen to justify the back channel schmoozings, cash appeals, and shoulder-rubbing that comprise the real rationale behind such meetings.
In Dubai, the two back channel events of notice turned out to be a) a highly touted yet remarkably meaningless statement jointly issued by the Somali Transitional Federal Government (TFG) and the administration of breakaway Somaliland, an agreement that predictably met with opposition by the Puntland government. The agreement, which pledged the two sides to the "continuation of dialogue," amounted to nothing more than a confirmation that the concord reached between the TFG and Somaliland at the February London conference had not been abandoned:
...and b) much more interestingly, the potential handover of Berbera port operations to DP World, the majority state-owned ports logistics company that co-hosted the Dubai conference (the other host being the UAE Foreign Ministry), according to a story in the Somaliland Sun. In order to imbue the deal with international legitimacy, TFG President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed is said to have affixed his name to the agreement, allegedly in exchange for financial support for his re-election campaign in August. The Sun piece caught me a tad off guard, having sat on a panel with the Vice Chairman of DP World, H.E. Jamal Majid Bin Thaniah, during which His Excellency assured the audience that Somali ports would remain unacceptably risky investments for years to come.
The move will certainly more than push the UAE government into the black after hosting the opulent conference, as will the $17m it managed to save itself by pledging a paltry $1m to a UN trust fund towards a "national coast guard" (soon after withdrawing $18m of funding to the Puntland Marine Police Force, or PMPF, and reportedly turfing the responsibility of training the envisaged 1,000-strong force to the European Union). This heralds the end of the controversial tenure of South African private security contractor Saracen International, a fact confirmed to me by a senior member of the Puntland government.
It wasn't all cloak-and-cocktail intrigue. The much-publicized theme of the conference was the human cost of piracy suffered by those on the front lines, namely kidnapped seafarers. Though ultimately this theme merely supplied the conference with a feel-good narrative, I immensely enjoyed the panel featuring Nareman Jawaid, daughter of MV Albedo captain Jawaid Saleem, an incredibly poised and articulate young woman who eloquently described the ordeal suffered by her family during the ongoing ransom negotiation for her father's vessel. The Albedo is one of the most tragic tales in the Somali piracy saga, an uninsured vessel that has been held captive, as of this date, for a total of 585 days.
It was a refreshing respite from the surrounding concert of stale and passionless speechifying.
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| Madinat Jumeirah, a Dubai Disneyland |
As with many of these high-level events, the public discussion was largely contentless and bland, seemingly serving as a requisite smokescreen to justify the back channel schmoozings, cash appeals, and shoulder-rubbing that comprise the real rationale behind such meetings.
In Dubai, the two back channel events of notice turned out to be a) a highly touted yet remarkably meaningless statement jointly issued by the Somali Transitional Federal Government (TFG) and the administration of breakaway Somaliland, an agreement that predictably met with opposition by the Puntland government. The agreement, which pledged the two sides to the "continuation of dialogue," amounted to nothing more than a confirmation that the concord reached between the TFG and Somaliland at the February London conference had not been abandoned:
 |
| The not-so-revolutionary TFG-Somaliland MOU |
...and b) much more interestingly, the potential handover of Berbera port operations to DP World, the majority state-owned ports logistics company that co-hosted the Dubai conference (the other host being the UAE Foreign Ministry), according to a story in the Somaliland Sun. In order to imbue the deal with international legitimacy, TFG President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed is said to have affixed his name to the agreement, allegedly in exchange for financial support for his re-election campaign in August. The Sun piece caught me a tad off guard, having sat on a panel with the Vice Chairman of DP World, H.E. Jamal Majid Bin Thaniah, during which His Excellency assured the audience that Somali ports would remain unacceptably risky investments for years to come.
The move will certainly more than push the UAE government into the black after hosting the opulent conference, as will the $17m it managed to save itself by pledging a paltry $1m to a UN trust fund towards a "national coast guard" (soon after withdrawing $18m of funding to the Puntland Marine Police Force, or PMPF, and reportedly turfing the responsibility of training the envisaged 1,000-strong force to the European Union). This heralds the end of the controversial tenure of South African private security contractor Saracen International, a fact confirmed to me by a senior member of the Puntland government.
It wasn't all cloak-and-cocktail intrigue. The much-publicized theme of the conference was the human cost of piracy suffered by those on the front lines, namely kidnapped seafarers. Though ultimately this theme merely supplied the conference with a feel-good narrative, I immensely enjoyed the panel featuring Nareman Jawaid, daughter of MV Albedo captain Jawaid Saleem, an incredibly poised and articulate young woman who eloquently described the ordeal suffered by her family during the ongoing ransom negotiation for her father's vessel. The Albedo is one of the most tragic tales in the Somali piracy saga, an uninsured vessel that has been held captive, as of this date, for a total of 585 days.
It was a refreshing respite from the surrounding concert of stale and passionless speechifying.
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