The problem with stamping out piracy - it's too lucrative!

I'm fuming at an article in Der Spiegel about the problem of Somali piracy.

Like almost all the other suspected pirates incarcerated in Hargeisa, Adam claims to be just a hard-working fisherman with no connections to piracy. The motor of his boat broke down and Adam says they then drifted westward from the coast of Somaliland. Then, he says, a foreign frigate spotted his boat and relayed its coordinates to the coast guard. Adam was given a 15-year sentence.

Despite his denials, Adam went on to provide some astonishing insights into the piracy trade. "Anyone who goes out is assuming a risk," he says, "and most of them suffer a defeat." He adds that, before becoming a lucrative business, piracy was a way to fight back against foreign ships. In fact, the business has gotten so lucrative that the high risks involved no longer frighten people off. He also says that it won't stop, either, because people like him view the ransoms "as a type of tax."

These days, lots of people are dying off the coasts of Somalia, and only a fraction of the victims are ever identified. In mid-May, helicopter-borne American soldiers shot dead four Somali pirates as they were trying to board the Artemis Glory, a German supertanker. The ship's crew had already repelled a number of attacks before the helicopter took off from the USS Bulkeley, an American destroyer, and came to their rescue.

In recent months, there have been a number of similar episodes. But they still haven't done anything to reduce the number of pirate attacks. On the contrary, as the pirate Adam puts it: "Whenever 20 die, there are always 20 more to replace them."

Adam also says that the pirates have devoted some of their profits to obtaining better equipment. "They now have speedboats that can escape from any warship," he says. He adds that the prestige that pirates gain from a successful seizure is enormous. "Whoever brings back a ransom is untouchable."

As such, it is no wonder that pirates who have successfully seized a ship enjoy so much support on land. "The major clans and families are also involved," Adam says, "all of them." He adds that the state no longer has any influence in Hobyo, a large pirate nest on Somalia's eastern coastline. "A minister recently wanted to talk with the clans," Adam recounts. "But he encountered serious difficulties already on his way to Hobyo."

Adam is also convinced that the state is powerless to stop piracy. "In the 1990s," he explains, "you could have still pulled it off. But that's no longer the case. It's too late now; the ransoms are too high."

. . .

In the harbor's small military area, base commander Col. Ahmed Ali deploys the members of his coast guard. They are a very strange-looking bunch, wearing well-worn boots and a mishmash of uniforms manufactured in the West and the former Soviet Union, boarding boats that the pirates can easily outrun. With the 400 men and 10 boats at his disposal, Ali is supposed to safeguard activities on almost 1,000 kilometers of coastline. He opts to say nothing of the replacement parts that never turn up, the lack of fuel and the salaries that always arrive late.

Ali knows what journalists want to hear. "Piracy is a scourge," he says. "But if we really want to get good at this, we need better radars for our boats, better training and real speedboats." And then he adds: "Instead of spending billions of dollars to deploy warships, the international community should invest in us. It would be a whole lot cheaper."

There's more at the link.

The solution seems simple enough to me.

1. Form a company of well-trained mercenaries (something like the old Executive Outcomes or Sandline should be suitable);
2. Put armed guards aboard every ship sailing through the danger zone, equipped with weaponry powerful enough to take out pirate boats (e.g. anti-tank missiles, etc.), and pay for them by imposing a levy on all shipping companies and vessels making the passage under their protection;
3. Reward the guards handsomely every time they thwart a pirate attack;
4. Put the Somali coastguard on the payroll, with some of the mercenaries to improve their training and operate heavy weapons for them;
5. Pay the coastguard a similar bonus every time they intercept a pirate vessel (you'd have to make sure it really was a pirate vessel, of course, and not some innocent fishermen they decided to shoot up in order to claim the bonus - hence the presence of mercenary guards);
6. After a year or two, you'll have saved tens of millions in ransoms in return for a relatively small outlay in security costs. Everyone'll be happy (except the late pirates and their surviving families).

What's so difficult about that?

Peter