The United States may soon respond more aggressively to Somali piracy following a warning to the United Nations Security Council that the pirates are becoming “the masters” of the Indian Ocean.
The intensifying US and international focus on lawlessness off East Africa’s coast coincides with the 20th anniversary of the overthrow of Somalia’s last functioning government. Violent anarchy has prevailed in the country ever since the ouster of Siad Barre in January 1991.
Vice Admiral Mark Fox, commander of US Navy forces in the Indian Ocean, suggested last week that the world’s nations should act as vigorously toward pirates as they do toward terrorists.
“I’m not advocating we suddenly come out with guns blazing and just change everything,” Fox told reporters in Washington. “But I would advocate that we use the same techniques that have been successful in our counter terror that we have not heretofore used in our counter-piracy.”
Fox said the US and its allies should pressure pirates on-shore by disrupting their supply lines and financing. Such a strategy may have already become operative.
According to a report in the January 20 Daily Nation of Kenya, five soldiers landed by helicopter in a remote part of central Somalia, took away three local youths and questioned them for three hours on a large ship offshore as to whether they were pirates.
A spokesman for the US Africa Command responded to the report by saying no American forces were involved in that “alleged event.”
Vice Admiral Fox’s comments followed by one day a UN special advisor’s pessimistic assessment of current efforts to deter piracy.
“The situation is serious,” declared Jack Lang, the UN Secretary-General’s Special Advisor on Piracy. “I would even say it’s worsening.
“There is this race between the pirates and the international community, and progressively that race is being won by the pirates,” Mr Lang added in an oral report to the Secury Council. He estimated that piracy in the Indian Ocean is costing shippers and governments up to $7 billion a year.
Mr Lang said the Somali marauders have upgraded their technology and arsenal, making use of GPS devices and heavy weaponry.
He also expressed concern that the pirates could develop ties with the Shabaab militants fighting to overthrow the US- and UN-backed transitional government in Mogadishu.
Similar worries about a pirate-terrorist nexus in Somalia were cited by US ambassador Susan Rice in her remarks to the same session of the Security Council. And Vice Admiral Fox warned that pirates could threaten cruise ships.
Nine of every 10 captured pirates are being released because of inadequate capacity to prosecute and incarcerate them, Mr Lang added.
He recommended that piracy-focused courts and prisons be established in the breakaway regions of Puntland and Somaliland.
A Somali-administered court should also be set up in Arusha during a transitional period prior to being transferred to Mogadishu, Mr Lang added.
Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete is “open” to this proposal, he said. It would cost about $25 million to establish these courts and prisons, Mr Lang estimated, suggesting that is a small price in comparison to the billions of dollars lost to piracy.
Ms Rice said the United States agreed that “targeted co-operation with Somaliland and Puntland [should] be increased.” That comment is causing some analysts to speculate that the Obama administration may be moving toward tacit recognition of the two territories as sovereign entities.
Source: The East African
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