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business newsUS to Pirates: Do You Feel Lucky?
By
Scott Reeves Apr 20, 2009 11:25 am
Brief scrutiny of today's headlines.
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Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says its part of a 4-point plan to combat piracy off Africa’s coast. The meeting hopes to raise money for the Africa Union’s peacekeepers in Somalia.
Uncle Sam hopes the meeting will be the first step in improving the security services of Somalia’s transitional government. That may be overly optimistic, because Somalia has been without a functioning government since 1991, and according to press reports, the authority of the transitional government doesn’t extend much beyond Mogadishu.
Anarchy has allowed piracy to thrive, including clashes between Somalia’s Islamist insurgents who oppose the transitional government and the pirates.
The Somali Transitional Federal Parliament elected Sheikh Sharif president on January 30. According to press reports, he’s a “moderate Islamist” who some believe can broker peace among Somalia’s warring clans.
That assumes the pirates can be bought off, and that’s unlikely, given how lucrative raiding has become. The pirates extort $1 million or more for each ship and crew seized. Definitive figures are hard to come by, but Kenya estimates the pirates received about $150 million last year.
Civil society as we know it doesn’t exist in Somalia, making it unlikely former pirates will start small businesses anytime soon. Here’s betting nothing much will change until the US acts independently. Other nations have warships in the region to protect freighters and tankers, but it doesn’t appear likely that an international force will be formed to strike the pirates’ land bases.
Gunman have roamed waters off Somalia at will. Earlier this month, Navy Seals shot and killed 3 pirates and rescued an American captain held hostage in a small boat.
Nothing will change until the pirates’ bases and boats are destroyed, making it impossible for them to mount raids at sea. The meeting at Brussels assumes there’s someone to talk to, and that that person can control the pirates. Seems unlikely. If so, does that make Uncle Sam’s latest 4-point plan to combat piracy feckless or just naive?
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