A long-term solution to piracy in the waters of East Africa demands establishing stability inside Somalia itself, depriving the pirates of a sanctuary, and preventing the anarchy there from spilling over Somalia’s borders, said The Economist in an editorial yesterday. Excerpts:
It is tempting to be jaunty about piracy. So what if a few Robin Hoods in skiffs nick the odd tanker off the Horn of Africa? Often enough, the owners pay ransom and nobody gets hurt. Everyone needs a living in these hard times. And if the worst comes to the worst, gunboats can always be dispatched to clean the problem up, just as the British and Americans did off North Africa’s Barbary coast at the turn of the 19th century. It is tempting, but it is wrong. The Barbary pirates caused immense human and economic damage, and the current spate of piracy in the waters of East Africa is now getting out of hand too. On Nov. 15 pirates operating hundreds of miles from the coast seized the Sirius Star, a supertanker carrying 2 million barrels of Saudi oil. A dozen or so other vessels are already held by pirates.
The last thing the world needs right now is disruption of one of its busiest shipping lanes and a spike in insurance premiums. But the cause of the present surge of piracy is no less worrying than its consequences. What has made the pirates’ audacity possible is the collapse of Somalia. The existence of a vast ungoverned space in Africa’s Horn does not just provide a useful haven from which pirates can hunt their prey at sea. It also threatens to transmit shock waves through a seam of fragile and strife-torn African states from Sudan to the Congo.
So how to resolve the issue? It is not enough just to send more gunboats. Although an Indian warship sunk an alleged pirate vessel this week, and a bigger naval effort could help to keep the sea-lanes a little safer, a long-term solution demands much more. This includes establishing stability inside Somalia itself.
