The United Nations has called for an international response to a growing threat from seaborne pirates attacking oil facilities, ships and towns on or around the coast of West Africa.
Western and other nations have already sent warships to fight the pirates threatening shipping off the Horn of Africa.
But on the other side of the continent, heavily-armed gunmen in fast launches have in the last year preyed on oil plants, oil and fishing boats and even coastal towns in a region grouping the main African suppliers of crude oil to the West and China.
Seaborne raiders initially focused on Nigeria's Niger Delta, where militants are battling the government over oil revenues. But more recently raiders have robbed banks and confronted security forces in Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea and Benin.
"There is indeed a common threat in the Gulf of Guinea and there is a need for a collective response to that threat," Ambassador Said Djinnit, the U.N. Secretary-General's Special Representative for West Africa, told Reuters.
In an interview late on Tuesday, Djinnit said the problem straddled both West and Central Africa, which share the Gulf of Guinea. He urged navies from the United States and Europe to help local security forces with training, patrol vessels and equipment.
"I believe there must also be a role for the U.N. at some point, in trying to mobilise the countries of the region and major stakeholders in facilitating a concerted, integrated approach," he added, speaking in Cape Verde on the sidelines of a West African conference on drug-trafficking.
He said criminal activity in the Gulf of Guinea had become intertwined with local insurgencies.
"Armed groups ... are perceived to be bandits initially, and then they start making some political claims ... so it's a new area where pirates, bandits essentially, have seen an opportunity in the prevailing insecurity, in the so-called marginalisation of some regions, and in conflict," he said.
BANDITS, REBELS OR BOTH?
He said the lawlessness was comparable with Somalia; the Sahel region encompassing northern Niger and Mali; and the region where the borders of Chad, Central African Republic and Cameroon meet.
Here too, local rebellions were enmeshed with widespread smuggling and the activities of highway bandits, known locally in French as "coupeurs de route".
Recent attacks by armed men in speedboats on soldiers in Cameroon's border peninsula of Bakassi, which was formally ceded by neighbouring Nigeria in August, have been claimed by little-known groups calling themselves the Niger Delta Defence and Security Council or the Bakassi Freedom Fighters.
Their commanders have said in public statements they are fighting for compensation for Nigerian fishermen and their families who say they are being forced to leave the peninsula, which is reported to have significant oil reserves.
But some security experts believe they could be marauding Nigerian oil militants carrying their guerrilla war from the creeks of the Niger Delta over the eastern border into Cameroon.
"The security problem in Bakassi is related to the security problem in the Niger Delta and the larger Gulf of Guinea," Djinnit added. He said a distinction should be made between real grievances over local governance issues and sheer banditry.
In late September, armed raiders, believed by Cameroon to have come from Nigeria, stormed ashore from speedboats under cover of darkness to blast their way into banks in the Cameroonian coastal town of Limbe. They killed one person, fought off soldiers and carried away cash.
Since then, Nigeria and Cameroon have pledged to cooperate to improve border security. The United States said last week it was providing Angola with ships, radar and intelligence to prevent it becoming a target of seaborne crime.
Nigeria has in the past contributed 18 percent of U.S. oil imports but that share has been reduced by Niger Delta violence. Experts say the Gulf of Guinea as a whole is expected to supply 25 percent of U.S. oil needs in coming years.
(Reuters)
