Zeenews Bureau
New Delhi, Nov 20: Pepped up by its resounding success in tackling piracy in the crucial Gulf of Eden, the Indian Navy is keen on strengthening operations in the region, reports suggested on Thursday. India hopes to take the lead role in guarding the Indian Ocean and thereby assert its tactical supremacy.
As a precursor, Indian Navy is stressing on increased co-ordination with other nations to guard the Somali coast and then build on it to expand its sphere of influence in the whole of Arabian Sea.
The Indian Navy is considering positioning more ships in the Gulf of Aden. It indicates that India has now decided to take a leading role in the fight against mounting pirate threat.
"Yes, we are considering a proposal to increase the number of warships in Gulf of Aden to fight the pirates and to protect merchant ships flying the Indian flag," a top Indian Navy officer said yesterday.
At present, India has a stealth guided missile frigate in the Gulf of Aden and the warship, INS Tabar, has successfully defended two merchant vessels that came under pirate attack last week and went on the offensive for the first time on Wednesday to sink a mother ship of the sea brigands.
Navy officials also met Defence Minister A K Antony yesterday to discuss the developments in the wake of INS Tabar destroying the pirates' mother ship.
The proposal to increase the number of warships and augment its naval assets came from the Shipping Ministry, which suggested four warships to be deployed there.
However, a decision was still pending on the proposal, as the Navy felt that it would be near impossible for a single nation to indefinitely deploy its warships and other assets, and also keep the supplies going to the on-board personnel, officers said.
Following this realisation, India has sought an international arrangement, preferably under the United Nations, to have a collaborative effort to ward off the menace in the sea brigand-infested international waters of the Arabian Sea.
"A Shipping Ministry representative has told an International Maritime Organisation meeting last Friday that India seeks an UN-mandated international operation against the piracy, which is turning out to be major concern for all nations with shipping interests in the Arabian Sea," the Navy officers said.
"No amount of naval assets of a single nation is adequate to fight the pirates. But there are already three groups of navies carrying out anti-piracy operations in the region, such as (the US-led) Task Force 150, NATO and the European Union. But their efforts are not coordinated well, hence the complexities. That's precisely why we are asking for a UN arrangement," they said.
Another challenge was the paradigm shift in the way pirates operated in Gulf of Aden, compared to the Malacca Straits.
"In the Malacca Straits, the hub of piracy a few years earlier, the issue was pilferage of cargo and theft of property on-board merchant vessels. The situation now is mostly under control there.
"The Somali pirates in Gulf of Aden have gone a step ahead and are hijacking cargo ships along with the crew to a port and demanding a ransom," the officers said.
In fact, the Somali pirates are so ingenious that they have started operating 500 nautical miles off the coast in the high seas and regularly improvising their attack tactics.
"Most of these Somali pirates are originally trained militiamen from the hinterland and they have developed tactics of decoy to distract and deceive merchant vessels," they said.
The Indian Navy stunned the world on Tuesday when its warship INS Tabar, after exchange of fire, sank a suspected pirate "mother ship" in the Gulf of Aden and chased two attack boats.
This was the second successful strike by the Indian Navy within a week. Last week, the Indian warship had foiled an attempt by the pirates to hijack an Indian and a Saudi ship off the coast of Somalia.
Somali pirates have become a source of tension for the international community as at least 91 ships have been hijacked in the Gulf of Aden since January. In the last 12 days itself, they have hijacked seven ships in the Gulf of Aden, the latest being an Iranian cargo vessel with seven Indians aboard.
Meanwhile, an anti-piracy watchdog group has welcomed an Indian warship's destruction of a suspected pirate vessel in waters off Somalia.
Noel Choong, who heads the International Maritime Bureau's piracy reporting centre in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, said he was heartened by the Tabar's success.
"It's about time that such a forceful action is taken. It's an action that everybody is waiting for," Choong said.
"If all warships do this, it will be a strong deterrent. But if it's just a rare case, then it won't work" to control the unprecedented level of piracy in the Gulf of Aden, he said.
In the meantime, UN chief Ban Ki-moon extended strong support to the Indian Navy’s efforts to sink pirate ‘mother ship’.
Condemning the acts of piracy and armed robbery at sea wherever they occur, Ban said that he is working closely with Somalia's Transitional Federal Government (TFG), the International Maritime Organisation (IMO), North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), the European Union and others to ensure that international efforts to combat piracy are better co-ordinated.
"He welcomes the EU's decision to authorise the deployment of a maritime force off the coast of Somalia, and the efforts of individual Member States to send vessels, which will strengthen security in the area," his spokesperson said.