Sharks In the Water

 

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The U.S. Navy recently recommended that merchant ships arm themselves—an idea that's proved unpopular with sailors afraid it will only provoke pirates to greater violence. The Navy also points out that piracy affects less than 1 percent of the 16,000 vessels to pass through the Gulf of Aden each year. This overlooks the fact that the pirates managed to force the World Food Program to suspend grain deliveries last year, before Canada agreed to have its warships escort the transports at great expense. And in another sign of rising costs, a major Norwegian shipping company just announced that it will begin sailing around the Cape of Good Hope rather than going through the Suez Canal—which will double freight charges.

Linington of Nautilus UK complains that "if we were seeing aircraft attacked at the rate of 1 percent, it would have taken no time to respond." And he fears that it will take a major calamity—"an ecological disaster" or the death of "thousands of people in a passenger liner"—before the international community changes direction.

Such an event no longer seems unlikely: the pirates have given the Saudis 10 days to ransom the Sirius Star, warning reporters by satellite phone that "otherwise we will take action that could be disastrous." That could mean deliberately spilling the supertanker's cargo, which would cause an environmental crisis 10 times the size of the Exxon Valdez spill.

The one way to prevent all this would be to make sure pirates never set sail in the first place. That may sound like a daunting task. Yet Britain successfully blockaded France, with a coastline 400 nautical miles longer than Somalia's, for more than a decade—and that was 200 years ago, using sailing vessels and signal flags. The allied fleet off Somalia today has nuclear-powered warships, aircraft and unmanned drones, radar and sonar at its command. So how hard could it be?

© 2008

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  • Posted By: martialguy @ 12/07/2008 2:24:03 PM

    One way to fight these pirates is to pose as merchant ships to lure them in to capture them. Then force them to...eat so full that they beg for mercy

  • Posted By: Popsiq @ 12/07/2008 8:51:55 AM

    Is Puntland where the 'good' Somalis (viz NOT Islamic courts) come from?

    One should be able to speak the language of democracy and free enterprise to such 'allies', no?

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