The Economist admits that it's going to take a long time to win the fight against Somali pirates.
Two years ago Somalia’s weak transitional government agreed to let foreign navies chase pirates into its territorial waters. Since then, the sea off Somalia’s coast has seen an increasing number of warships mainly from rich countries trying—with partial success—to fend off pirates from the poorest. Ships steaming along maritime corridors in convoys are safer than they were. So the pirates are being forced to venture ever farther out into the Indian Ocean to seize their booty. This means that the remoter reaches are still very dangerous.
Many of the world’s most powerful navies are involved. The French and American ones have killed Somali pirates while freeing their own citizens. For the past year the European Union has deployed its first-ever joint naval force, named Operation Atalanta, to protect ships passing in and out of the Red Sea on their way from or to the Suez canal. Russia has an active anti-piracy mission, helping, among other things, to revive its rusting navy. China has asked if it could set up a naval base in Kenya or elsewhere in the region to support its anti-piracy patrols. The Japanese and South Koreans have sent warships to protect ships carrying their cars. India, Malaysia, Indonesia and South Africa have also joined the anti-piracy fray.
Yet the pirates are still hijacking ships and receiving ransoms with apparent impunity. In the past fortnight they have captured four more big ships. Two of them, the Singaporean-flagged Pramoni and the British-flagged St James Park, both tankers carrying chemicals, were nabbed under the nose of the foreign navies patrolling the Gulf of Aden.
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This as news comes that pirate attacks in 2009 rose considerably.
Pirate attacks around the world surged 38.5 percent in 2009 with suspected Somali pirates accounting for more than half of the 406 reported incidents, an international maritime body said Thursday.
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It's not all bad news, though.
US prosecutors are charging a pirate that's in US custody.
A Somalian suspect accused of staging a brazen high-seas attack on a U.S.-flagged ship off Africa last year pleaded not guilty yesterday to new piracy charges involving two other vessels, including one that authorities said was still being held hostage.
A new indictment alleges that Abdiwali Abdiqadir Muse and others tried to seize the two ships in the Indian Ocean in the weeks leading up to their widely publicized capture of the Maersk Alabama.
The court papers, which did not name the other ships, say Muse threatened to kill the crew of the first vessel with "what appeared to be an improvised explosive device" after its capture in March. They say that the pirates used the first ship to seize the second one in April.
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And yes, there's even been a reported upside to Somali piracy.
Kenyan fisherman are perhaps the only people in the world who have reason to be grateful to Somali pirates – they keep away illegal fishing boats.
In past years, illegal commercial trawlers parked off Somalia's coast and scooped up the ocean's contents. Now, fishermen on the northern coast of neighboring Kenya say, the trawlers are not coming because of pirates.
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So what do you think about the current state of piracy around the Horn of Africa?
By: Brant
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