The MV Sirius Star, an oil tanker hijacked by Somali pirates (AP Photo/Fred Vloo)
How to fight pirates
“Somalia is a great place to be a 21st century pirate,” said USA Today in an editorial. The East African “failed state” offers 2,000 miles of impoverished, lawless shoreline with 16,000 Suez Canal–bound ships passing by each year. The pirates get $1 million or more in ransom for each capture, but “paying off pirates signals weakness and begets more piracy.” Now pirates have seized a massive Saudi tanker with 2 million barrels of oil—and the world’s attention.
Since Somalia can’t control its pirates, said The Wall Street Journal in an editorial, it’s “left to the U.S. and the rest of the civilized world to police them.” The U.S. and its allies already have a combined naval force in the area, but the growing costs of piracy—both financial and in terms of encouraging lawlessness—require us to “push back” with more power.
A “western armada” is not the answer, said Peter Lehr in Britain’s The Guardian. A better solution is to help Kenya, Tanzania, and other regional states combine resources to patrol for pirates. But patrols “can only ever be half of the solution”—many Somalis turn to piracy because nations as far away as Taiwan poach $300 million worth of fish from their waters each year.
“Attacking some of the root causes of piracy” is important, said Dennis Sampson and Nikolas Gvosdev in the International Herald Tribune, but for the short term, we need more Western naval presence, a new international legal framework, and ship-tracking technology for regional coast guards. Somali piracy is now “a major threat” to global security and economic well-being, and it won’t go away on its own.
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Recent comments | 9 total
"We need more Western Naval presence" ?? Is the Western military the solution to everything now ? It is being made out as it the West is all that exsists in the world and the rest of the world is crippled by some imaginary paralysis. The solution is to get Africans and the Arabs to patrol their own seas, not the West. The fascination for international policing has to stop.
Western Naval Presence? I agree yet, why do we not send a UN Naval Taskforce? It is international so all sides need to get in. Also, the west has socio-economic power in the region so why not patrol and uphold that power. That is if it has not been reveresed on the west. So, lets send the West we have the warships capable other nations are stepping up so lets send more Western naval warships.
A real war against the Somali pirates is a war worth fighting. Forget about the civil war in Iraq and let's focus on something worthwhile. We should work with other nations and hit these pirates with immediate and extreme force. But hit them hard and go home -- no American presence in the area. We should learn to use necessary force in critical situations -- and then get out. If that "necessary force" doesn't solve the problem, then maybe we didn't use ENOUGH force. And hostages shouldn't stop us from taking immediate action. We can't let the taking of hostages tie our hands against international criminals.
Why can't these ships arm and protect themselves?
I think we should give into them and let them hold the boat and hostages for 444 days, then we would never have to worry about them again. oh, I guess we already did that and now we are dealing with the same psychos. How about a smart bomb and a huge explosion. We could show it on all the stolen tv sets in Somalia.
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