AN ESTIMATED 20,000 cargo vessels travel through the Gulf of Aden and along the east African coast every year. In 2007, 60 of them were kidnapped for ransom by Somali pirates and this year the number has already reached 90, with a ransom haul of $30 million.
Piracy has captured world headlines once again with the first capture of a very large carrier, the Saudi-owned Sirius Star, which has a $100 million cargo of oil.
Behind this phenomenon lies the story of how Somalia became a failed state without an effective government in the 1990s. As a result it was in no position to safeguard coastal communities who saw their fishing grounds raided and destroyed by international super trawlers and their people reduced to penury. In recent years they have gradually turned their seafaring skills to piracy. This has been relatively easy in a region that lacks naval protection and has such a large volume of commercial shipping. Most of these vessels, including the Sirius Star, have a minimal, unarmed crew. They are surprisingly vulnerable to attack from speedboats equipped with grappling hooks and machine guns. And their commercial owners are usually willing to pay ransoms rather than change staffing and security.
This loose acceptance of such risks may be about to change in response to escalating piracy. Already UN resolutions have authorised naval interventions, Nato and other warships have become involved, and there is talk of organised convoys and attacks on those responsible. But the sheer scale of the threat and its extension southward down the east African coast towards Kenya and even Mozambique waters shows a military solution is much more said than done. The pirates are more sophisticated, as was shown in the audacious capture of the Sirius Star, which involved a mother ship and occurred far to the south of Somalia and well out to sea.
Naval experts say it would take a far more extensive protection programme to stamp out piracy, while regional specialists argue that unless determined efforts are made to restore political order in Somalia military solutions cannot work. Historians recall the Barbary Coast piracy which was such a threat to marine commerce in the 17th and 18th century Mediterranean - or more recently in the South China Sea and the Moluccan Straits. Nevertheless, increased insurance costs, the potential threat to oil supplies and fears that this piracy could be joined to Islamic movements will ensure the issue remains prominent.