Even the commander of the European Union anti-piracy force admits that he has an impossible job. “In a piece of ocean that large we will never close down pirates who are determined to operate up to a thousand miles off the coast of Somalia,” Rear-Admiral Peter Hudson said during a recent visit to Nairobi. “We need to be alive to that reality.”

Patrols can work in constrained areas — for example, the Gulf of Aden, where the EU says there have been no hijackings since July — but this has simply pushed the pirates farther out to sea where pickings are just as rich.

Although Admiral Hudson admits this is not enough he does not want more: “How many ships do you need? It’s well beyond the means of the European Union and the major countries involved.” Experts reckon that a warship costs on average about £60,000 a day to keep at sea so the sums being spent on this futile task are mind-boggling.

The battlefield where the fight against piracy will be won or lost is war-ravaged Somalia itself but solving that chaos will be a more difficult task then setting navies to send out task forces.

In Mogadishu the 15th internationally backed Government in 18 years is on the verge of failing, just as its unpopular and ineffective predecessors did. It provides no services to Somalia’s benighted people, not even security. It is kept in place only by 5,000 or so African Union soldiers (they are called peacekeepers but there is no peace to keep between the Government and its Islamist rivals). It is their tanks and artillery — enough to outgun the insurgents — that do more than anything to prevent the Government from being chased from the few blocks of the capital over which it holds tenuous sway. Last week’s suicide bombing that killed three ministers in a supposedly government-controlled part of the capital showed again how weak the state is. It is no surprise, then, that pirates are free to take to the seas, grab ships and return with their hostages to Somalia’s 1,700-mile-long coast with impunity.

The problem of piracy is not going to be solved with warships. The long-term solution is ashore in Somalia. And there’s the real problem — because no one knows what that solution is.

Source: timesonline

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