Editorial: Piracy the legacy of failure

The incredulity grows by the day. How can rag-tag boatloads of pirates operating from a failed state make a mockery of warships from more than a dozen countries and extract millions of dollars in ransom from the world's biggest shipping companies? The few thousand Somali buccaneers are becoming even more brazen and sophisticated. Undeterred by United States and French hostage rescues that killed seven of their number, they have stepped up strikes at shipping on one of the world's most strategic trade routes. President Barack Obama has promised to halt "the rise of piracy". He did not say how. Nor is there an easy answer.

In simple terms, it would seem the cream of the world's navies should be able to blow the pirates out of the water. But that proposition founders somewhat on the extent of the seas around the Gulf of Aden, Somalia's near 4000km coastline, the longest in Africa, and the buccaneers' tactics. Often, it is difficult to distinguish pirates masquerading as fishermen from the real thing. Recognition may come too late for shipping. For warships, it can lead to incidents such as when the Indian Navy sunk a Thai-owned trawler, killing 15 of the 16 men on board.

The 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea is also said to constrain attempts to thwart the piracy. But this is true only in so far as the convention applies merely to the high seas, not to piracy committed inside territorial waters, as is usually the case with the Somali bandits. Such acts are meant to be dealt with by the laws of that nation, a situation rendered redundant by the virtual anarchy in Somalia.

The uniqueness of the situation has been acknowledged by the UN, which passed several resolutions last year related specifically to the pirates. These overrode Somalia's inherent right of state sovereignty. One granted maritime powers the right to enter Somali waters to conduct anti-piracy operations using "all necessary means" and to prosecute suspected pirates, and another permitted the international community to attack the pirates' bases.

Yet to be addressed is the responsibility for conducting prosecutions, which falls on the countries patrolling its coastline. Denmark freed 10 pirates because it did not believe it had the jurisdiction to prosecute them. Britain fears arrested pirates might claim asylum. It has co-opted Kenya to act as prosecutor. The best solution would be to establish a specialist international tribunal.

The United States and France have developed fewer qualms about ruthlessly tackling the pirates. A stronger US presence and greater international co-operation hold the key to controlling the situation. An exclusion zone could be established off the Somali coast and enforced by pickets of warships. Shipping could also be organised into convoys protected by naval vessels. But assaults on the buccaneers' havens seem unlikely. There would be too great a risk of heavy civilian casualties. Still vivid in American memory is the last attempt to claim Somalia from the warlords. It ended with the Blackhawk Down debacle in 1993 and the retreat of a US-UN peacekeeping force.

Today's piracy is in many ways a legacy of failed international intervention at that time. Somalia has been 18 years without effective government and its people are impoverished. Increasingly lucrative piracy has filled the vacuum. That situation must be tackled, starting with support for Sheikh Sharif Ahmed, the moderate Islamist President. It should not be beyond the world's navies to deliver a degree of control, but the Horn of Africa will become pirate-free only when order and political stability is restored in Somalia.