At the moment pirates now control 18 ships and around 250 hostages . The shock reverberates amongst the nations that organized an international naval task force patrolling the strategic waterway between Yemen and Somalia, which has failed to thwart the recent attacks. The pirates off the coast of Somalia continue to hijack merchant vessels and adapt to the newest strategies of the international community, going farther to sea. To date, the pirates have amassed more than $100 million of ransom payments. Last year, more than 130 pirate attacks were registered, including close to 50 successful hijackings. This threatens one of the world's busiest shipping lanes.
Atlantic Community ran a poll in December asking you to vote for what you considered to be the best course of action regarding the piracy problem. The poll generated a great deal of interest and prompted lively debate. The results showed a strong leaning towards military-interventionist action. The top four choices were as follows:
- Action from NATO, with 18.5% of all votes cast
- Arming merchant ships and pursuing pirates on land-each with 15.2% -and
- Increasing naval patrols, with 14.1% of all votes cast.
The international community appears to have listened to your second and third choices, but the approach's success is debatable. Efforts have been cohesive with currently more than twelve warships from Europe, Asia and Iran patrolling the Gulf of Aden. The EU's Operation Atalanta, launched in December 2008 to replace NATO patrols, includes vessels from Germany, France, Spain and Britain. An American led task-force was set up to combat the piracy and the US even sent in their 80,000 ton nuclear supercarrier "Eisenhower." The French Defense Ministry has emphasized the encouraging fall in hijacking figures since the NATO and EU operations began. The recent attacks, however, seem to suggest that patrolling such a vast area of more than one million square miles cannot be an exclusive tactic.
The poll results favored action from NATO; perhaps greater success could be had if the EU handed the mission back to the military alliance. While the proposition for UN intervention in Somalia was not that popular amongst voters - it received only 10.9% of votes- the need to rebuild Somalia and increase regional stability was an important theme in the debates. Comments also focused on the legitimacy of the pirates' actions, and how the piracy phenomenon relates to questions about international trade and neo-colonialism. There was a recurrent emphasis on the need to combine strategies.
Questions on further approaches remain: should the international community persist with military patrols or look for a different strategy? Do current conditions reopen a debate about humanitarian intervention in Somalia? What approaches could be combined to ensure stability of the coasts? How can the international community stabilize Somalia and address the root cause of the problem - the lawlessness in Somalia? Possible solutions are an UN Mission, accepting the breakaway states and remedying the grievances with regards to overfishing. How are the strategies proposed in our last poll, as well the ones you might suggest, best implemented?
We are interested in your interpretation of recent events and what change in strategy, if any, you advocate. Based on these comments and the poll results, we will collate the results into an Atlantic Memo, which we will share with relevant policymakers.
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April 10, 2009
Ken Berg