I’m Naomi O’Leary, Europe Correspondent with The Irish Times based in Paris, filling in for Denis Staunton while he is away.
For 67 days of war, roughly 20,000 seafarers have been stuck on ships in the Strait of Hormuz in a situation described by the United Nations as without precedent since the second World War. Concern about their welfare is rising.
An invisible workforce
Imagine: you sign up for a months-long assignment as a cook, officer or engineer on an oil tanker or cargo ship to support your family back home.
Your ship loads up on oil, gas or fertiliser at the port of a Gulf state and departs. You message your family over the on-board satellite internet to tell them you are on the home stretch.
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Then, without warning, Israel and the United States attack Iran to your north, and Iran retaliates by attacking the countries to your immediate south.
All night, missiles and interceptors explode overhead, lighting up the sky and filling you and your shipmates with terror that falling debris might set your cargo ablaze.
In the morning a radio broadcast announces that ships may no longer pass the narrow passage that is your only exit point out into the wider Arabian Sea.
You have been trapped in a marine cul de sac.
Your ship is among hundreds now lolling in clusters at anchor around the Gulf.
The captain orders a count of provisions, and food begins to be rationed.
Ships are being allowed out of the strait at a trickle, but the policy is shifting, unclear and sometimes deadly.
In March, a tanker attempting to leave is attacked and the crew quarters catches fire, trapping and killing Capt Ashish Kumar and crewman Dilip Singh.
Two weeks later, a frantic radio message to the Iranian navy from an Indian-flagged tanker – “You gave me clearance to go, you are firing now. Let me turn back!” – goes viral on social media. India summons the Iranian ambassador.
A series of vessels are boarded and seized by both US and Iranian forces.
Each new announcement from either side lights up social media and ripples through the crew, causing surges of hope, fear and despair.
Most on board have now long outstayed their contracts. Provisions, wages or a route home: these are all uncertainties, relying on the competence and benevolence of your employer.
The pressure to provide for your family back home – school fees, groceries, medication – adds to the stress.
Chirag Bahri of the International Seafarers Welfare and Assistance Network understands the psychological toll of living for a prolonged period of time on a ship not knowing when you can leave.
He was held captive for eight months in brutal conditions when a ship he was working on as an engineer was seized by Somali pirates.
Calls to a help hotline for seafarers run by his organisation have risen 12 per cent since the outbreak of the war. About a third of calls are from individuals who are desperate to go home, but cannot.
“They can’t share everything with their families, because their families are already quite anxious and worried for their survival,” Bahri says.
The people he is most concerned about in the Gulf are those on ships that were already abandoned before the conflict broke out.
Abandonment typically happens when the company that owns a ship goes bust, leaving crew stranded, with dwindling supplies, no way home and often no wages paid.
Opaque ownership structures and unclear jurisdiction can make abandonment difficult to address. Those left on board are at the hard edge.
“When there is no fuel on board to run the generators, you cannot make your own food, you cannot pump in fresh water,” Bahri says. “It’s awful conditions, an unhygienic environment.”
More abandonments could occur due to the conflict itself.
“Because there has been no business going on, a lot of the ships which have been there in the Gulf could face bankruptcy,” Bahri says.
Major supplier nations for the shipping crew workforce include India, Indonesia, the Philippines, China, Russia and Ukraine.
Bahri calls them an “invisible” workforce, though they move more than 80 per cent of world trade, measured by bulk.
“Everything we eat, everything we use in our day-to-day life, most of the items are transported by ship.”
On Monday US president Donald Trump announced plans to “guide” the trapped ships out through the strait. But it’s deeply unclear whether this is really a humanitarian gesture as presented or an escalation, implying a willingness to use force to make shipping resume. On Tuesday Trump said he would “pause” this effort for “a short period of time” to see whether an agreement to end the war could be reached with Iran.
It leaves the trapped seafarers more than ever pawns in a geopolitical contest far beyond their control.
Please let me know what you think and send me your comments, thoughts or suggestions for topics you would like to see covered to denis.globalbriefing@irishtimes.com
