Sitting in a small mud house in Pishukan, a fishing town near Gwadar, Khuda Bukhsh is assailed by worries about the safety of his fishing boat’s crew who sailed from Gwadar harbour on January 3, 2011 for international seas. Exactly one month later, Somali pirates seized the boat 400 nautical miles off Somalia’s coast to use it for attacking bigger cargo ships. It was in May that Bukhsh last heard from the crew of other boats that the engine of his boat had broken down and the pirates had forced it to anchor near the Somali shore.

People living in the rest of Pakistan are unaware of the problem he is facing in spite of the well-publicised recent story of Pakistani sailors on-board an Egyptian cargo vessel having spent ten months as hostages with Somali pirates. Few, if any at all, know how the pirates routinely seize Pakistani boats fishing in international waters and use them as convenient launching pads for attacks on cargo ships. The pirates have taken over two of every five boats that departed for fishing in the international seas from Balochistan’s harbours between December 2010 and March 2011, says Imam Bukhsh who works with the Rural Community Development Council, a non-government organisation in Gwadar. The captured boats and their crew have remained hostage for anywhere between seven days and three months, he says.

The latest report of the International Maritime Bureau’s piracy reporting centre reflects the high number of such seizures in the increased frequency of pirate attacks. The report shows more than 50 per cent increase in attacks by Somali pirates in the first six months of 2011 as compared to last year.

The latest wave of pirate attacks started in 2005 off the eastern coast of the African continent. The first known incident in which the pirates took over a fishing boat to launch an attack on bigger vessels occurred in December 2009. Shahbaig, the boat used in this attack, was a Pakistani one.

Karim, the captain of the al-Karim fishing boat in Gwadar, narrates how the pirates took over his boat and how he and his crew spent three months in captivity between February and May this year. “We had just located several large pins of mackerel, cobia and barracuda off the coast of Maldives in the international seas and were planning to cast our nets when we saw another fishing boat approaching us. On seeing a speedboat placed on its deck, I realised that the approaching boat was under the pirates’ control. We tried to flee but the pirates chased us and forced us to stop after shooting at us,” he tells the Herald. The pirates then shifted all their belongings, including their weapons and speedboat, to his boat because the fishing boat earlier under their control had run out of fuel.

After the pirates take over a fishing boat, they usually make it clear to its captain and crew that they are not taking them hostage for ransom and that they will release them once they grab a cargo ship. “It does not take extensive vocabulary for communication to take place between the pirates and the crew. Often a few words in English and some necessary gestures are enough to understand each other,” explains Bukhsh.

The main reason why the pirates seize and use the fishing boats is their size and the abundance of food and fuel on them. These boats are “55-70 feet long and 25-30 feet wide complete with a large deck and two to three stories,” says Mohammad Ishaq, the captain of the fishing boat al-Idrees. Their size allows them to carry large quantities of fuel and food. A boat usually has 20-25 crew members and takes anywhere between 30 and 45 days to complete a round trip back to the harbour. But every boat carries food that can last for no less than three months as a contingency measure, keeping emergency factors in mind. It also carries 9,000 gallons of fuel, both for keeping the boat going and running the generators which operate its cooling system and mechanised net casters, says Ishaq whose boat and crew were released by the pirates only a month ago.

“Once the pirates take over a boat, they immediately reduce rations for each crew member,” says Karim. “As soon as they see a large cargo ship, some of them lower their speedboat into the water and start chasing the ship while the rest remain on the seized boat. If the operation succeeds, all the pirates shift to the taken over ship, releasing the boat. Otherwise they return to the boat and the hunt for another cargo ship starts all over again,” he explains.

Buksh says at times the pirates fail to find any cargo ship for months. In this situation, they take the seized boat close to Somalia’s shores to replenish dwindling fuel and food supplies. “While the boat is anchored near the shore, a few pirates leave their speedboat and return with fuel and food in small wooden boats,” says Karim. “Sometimes the boats remain anchored for weeks, even months,” he adds.

Unfortunately for the seized boats, there is little to no help available. In fact, they become victims of their own identity. When a patrolling ship of the international task force (formed to tackle the piracy problem) comes near a seized boat, often it cannot see anything suspicious as the pirates hide their speedboat away from the ship’s view. If and when the patrolling party smells the rat and challenges the pirates, they threaten to kill the crew of the seized boat and force the patrol ship to retreat, the captain adds.

While there has been a lot of international hue and cry over pirate attacks having threatened sea trade along the east coast of Africa to the west coast of Indiain the Indian Ocean, the predicament of the fishermen goes almost unnoticed. Besides causing emotional trauma to their families back home, the seizure of the boats badly hits their livelihood.

First, the boat owners are becoming increasingly wary of deep sea voyages, fearing that the pirates may take over their vessels for good. According to fishermen, a large fishing boat costs 30-35 million rupees and is usually owned by five to seven people. A boat lost to the pirates means a negative financial impact on not just an individual but five to seven families. Secondly, the fishermen get paid in kind rather than cash. They get a portion of the catch as their wages which roughly translates into 40,000 rupees for each crew member for spending two months on the sea. When the pirates seize their boats, there is hardly any chance for them to do fishing which deprives them of their wages. “Piracy has posed a serious threat to the livelihood of around 2,000 fishing families [along the Makran coast in Balochistan],” says Bukhsh. But he laments that “nobody seems to be bothered about the threat to the fishermen even while the international community is making collective efforts to ensure safety of the cargo ships.”