With the naval might of the United States, Europe, China and others now lined up against Somalia’s pirate fraternity, shippers are hoping the nightmare year of 2008 will not be repeated.
 
Somali pirates — mainly gangs of poor young men seeking a quick fortune under the direction of older “financiers” and boat leaders –  reaped tens of millions of dollars in ransoms last year in a record haul of 42 hijacks, 111 attacks, and 815 crew taken hostage. 
 
That pushed insurance prices up, persuaded some ship-owners to go round South Africa instead of through the Suez Canal, and prompted the unprecedented rush of navies from 14 different nations to the region. Even China is in on the act, deploying its navy for the first time beyond its own waters. And Japan is considering following suit despite its post-World War II pacifist constitution.
 
There have been some early successes from all the deployments - half a dozen pirates arrested and a series of attacks blocked, by helicopter and boat. Bad weather, too, has given the pirates some real problems, drowning five of them when their pockets were stuffed with dollars after taking their share of the ransom from the release of a Saudi super-tanker.
 
Yet the pirates have still managed two new hijacks and 11 attacks in the first half of January. They are hanging on to 11 ships with 207 hostages - most notably a Ukrainian ship with tanks on board. 
 
And with such a vast area of operations — plus fancy new speedboats that have taken them as far as Kenya and Madagascar, and GPS equipment to keep away from the warships — the pirates are confident of keeping their business going. So who will win this modern-day battle of the seas? Will the shipping industry lose as much to the pirates this year as they did last? Should they keep paying huge ransoms like the $3 million paid for the Saudi boat?

Maybe, some argue, it will never really be possible to eradicate such a lucrative business which, in one of the world’s most failed states, offers an opportunity for poor and hungry men to become millionaires after a few successful raids. As one pirate told us, they will carry on until there is government again in Somalia.

The Somali pirates who released a Saudi supertanker got a $3 million reward, according to their associates. Good money in one of the world’s poorest and most war-blighted corners.

But the waters off Somalia are getting ever more crowded with foreign ships trying to stop the pirates. As well as potentially making life more difficult for the hijackers, it has become a real illustration of the much talked about global power shift from West to East in terms of military might as well as economic strength.

This raises a question as to whether this will lead to close cooperation, rivalry or something altogether more unpredictable.

This week the United States said it planned to launch a specific anti-piracy force, an offshoot of a coalition naval force already in the region since the start of the U.S. “War on Terror” in Afghanistan in 2001.

It wasn’t clear just what this would mean in practical terms since U.S. ships were already part of the forces trying to stop the modern day buccaneers, equipped with speedboats and rocket-propelled grenades. It was also unclear which countries would be joining the U.S.-led force rather than operating under their own mandates.

The U.S. announcement came two days after Chinese ships started an anti-piracy mission in the Gulf of Aden. This is the first time Chinese warships have sailed to Africa, barring goodwill visits, since Ming Dynasty eunuch Admiral Zheng commanded an armada 600 years ago.

As my colleague Sanjeev Miglani wrote last month, the Chinese deployment was being scrutinised by the strategic community from New Delhi to Washington.

The Chinese had actually been catching up to other Asian countries. India already had ships in the region. So did Malaysia, whose navy foiled at least one pirate attack this month. Reasserting its might, Russia had sent a warship after the big surge in piracy in the Gulf of Aden between Somalia and Yemen. The European Union has a mission there.

For Asian countries there is good reason to send warships. This is the main trade route to markets in Europe and their ships have been seized. Attacks on shipping push up insurance rates and force some vessels to use more fuel on the longer, safer route around Africa instead of taking the Suez Canal.

But there certainly appears to be evidence too to back up the U.S. National Intelligence Council’s “Global Trends 2025” report late last year that highlighted the relative decline in Washington’s long term influence in the face of the rise of China and India.

As well as being a chance for the world’s old and new powers to show their strength in terms of numbers, the anti-piracy operations off Somalia could prove something of a test of effectiveness.

While the hardware the navies have will always outclass that of the pirates, the new powers may have an advantage in more robust rules of engagement. That might lead to mistakes, however. In November, India trumpted its success in sinking a pirate “mother ship”. It later turned out that a Thai ship carrying fishing equipment had been sunk while it was being hijacked. Most of the crew were reported lost.

There is a lot of sea to cover, one of the reasons why naval forces have had so much difficulty in stopping the hijackings, but the presence of so many navies in the same area at the same time must raise questions over how well they are going to work together.

Will this become a model for cooperation in a new world order? Or are there dangers? Might this also end up being a display of how little either East or West can do in the face of attacks by armed groups from a failed state with which nobody from outside seems prepared to come to grips? What do you think?

(Picture: Commanding officer of a U.S. Navy guided-missile cruiser monitors the pirated ship off Somalia REUTERS/U.S. Navy/Handout)
(Picture: Forces from French naval vessel "Jean de Vienne", seen in this January 4, 2009 photo, capture 19 Somali pirates in the Gulf of Aden. REUTERS/French Navy/handout)

Chinese naval ships may soon be steaming into the Gulf of  Aden to join a growing fleet of international warships fighting  Somali pirates.

A first probably for a navy that has long confined itself to its own waters, the move is certain to stir interest in the strategic community stretching from New Delhi to Washington.

Chinese state media on Wednesday quoted Vice Foreign Minister He Yafei as telling a UN Security Council meeting that Beijing  was considering sending naval ships on escort duty in the troubled waters.

On the face of it, as Beijing would argue, too much should not be read into its naval deployment off the Somali waters. Theirs will be one of a number of navies patrolling the region such as
the United States, India, Greece, Saudi Arabia, France, Russia, Britain and Pakistan.

Besides, Chinese vessels have been attacked by the pirates in recent months giving them as much justification for escort duty as anyone else operating there. The latest was on Tuesday when a Chinese fishing vessel was seized in the Gulf of Aden, along with three other ships including a yacht.

But China's military has been the subject of relentless scrutiny and any move it makes will be closely watched especially in regional capitals such as Tokyo and New Delhi. India, one of the biggest navies in the Indian Ocean boasting of an aircraft carrier group, has long looked over its shoulder watching for signs of a creeping Chinese naval presence in the Indian Ocean.

If nothing else, its role in helping Pakistan build its Gwadar port on the Baluchistan coast  is a matter of concern for Indian navy planners who worry that the deep water port is a key element of China's "String of Pearls" strategy of  extending its influence from the South China Sea through the Indian Ocean and on to the Arabian Gulf through  a chain of outposts.

The strategic message of the deployment in the Gulf of Aden is not lost on Chinese experts either. The state-run China Daily quoted a Chinese military strategist as saying it would be a good opportunity for the navy to get into the thick of action in waters far away from home.

"Apart from fighting pirates, another key goal is to register the presence of the Chinese navy," Prof Li Jie, a naval researcher, told the paper.

Is that partly what this is burst of activity in the region is about? Are navies flexing their muscles, stepping out of their comfort zones, running up alongside unlikely partners? Imagine Iranian and U.S. naval vessels operating in the same waters against the same enemy?

Should we really care that Britain’s House of Lords upheld a British government appeal on Wednesday, blocking the return of hundreds of Chagossians to their Indian Ocean homes?The decision by the House of Lords ends a years-long battle to secure the Chagos Islanders the right to return to their archipelago, from where they were forcibly removed in the 1960s and ’70s to make way for an American airbase on Diego Garcia.

By a ruling of 3-2, the lords backed a British government appeal that argued that allowing the islanders to return could have a detrimental effect on defence and international security. It’s a tough decision and an agonizing result for the Chagos islanders. They continue to suffer appalling injustice because of the British government, who booted them out of the Chagos islands - also known as the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) - to make way for a US military base.

But now the estimated 5,000 Chagossians are mostly scattered between Mauritius, Seychelles, and Britain. And the younger generations (many of whom are half Chagossian) don’t seem so keen to return. One expert has said that about 1,000 Chagossians could return to two of Chago’s six atolls, making a living from coconuts, fishing and ecotourism. But others say this outline plan has grossly underestimated the costs and practical difficulties. Should we, in fact, breathe a sigh of relief at the House of Lords’ decision?

Small islands like those in the Chagos Archipelago tend to have an incredibly rich variety of plants and animals, often found nowhere else. Scientists and sailors visiting the islands describe a near paradise of coral reefs teeming with fish. And examples from elsewhere in the Indian Ocean - Mauritius, Madagascar, Reunion, Comoros, and the Seychelles - show just how badly human populations can damage the environment.

The Chagos Archipelago, for example, has the largest coral atoll in the world, 10 so-called Important Bird Areas, ideal nesting conditions for two turtle species, and - according to tests in 1996 and 2006 - some of the world’s cleanest waters too. And while a 1998 rise in water temperatures killed as much as 95 percent of coral in some areas, Chagos’ reefs grew back probably because there is so little human activity, scientists say. The nearby Maldives were not so lucky.

A sense of justice tells us that Chagossians should be allowed to return. But if these islands truly are on the frontline in the battle against extinctions and if such clean and isolated regions are truly a rarity, then should we really be upset by the block on Chagossians’ return to their homeland?

The new U.S. command for Africa began independent operations on Wednesday, after being carved out of three other Pentagon units previously responsible for the continent. President George W. Bush originally wanted Africom to be based in Africa, and Liberia has offered to host it. But the plan met with considerable hostility on the continent, especially from big powers South Africa and Nigeria and oil giants Algeria and Libya. Many ordinary Africans were also cynical, believing Africom would be a cover for Washington to counter growing Chinese influence and control vital oil supplies from West Africa — expected to provide 25 percent of U.S. needs by 2015.

The hostility forced Washington to rethink its plans and Africom, expected to reach its full complement of 1,300 by the end of next year, began work from Stuttgart, home of the existing European command, although officials clearly expect to open a base in Africa sometime in the future. It also pushed U.S. officials to emphasise that there was no hidden agenda, that Africom would not threaten the sovereignty of any nations and that a base would not be built in Africa without the full agreement of potential host nations. They also said half of Africom’s leadership would be composed of civilian agencies including the State Department. Africom’s stated aim is to help African countries face everything from natural disasters to terrorism and its targets will including drug trafficking, arms smuggling and the kind of piracy now plaguing the waters off Somalia. Experts say U.S. forces have been cooperating quietly for years with African armies, particularly in the Horn of Africa and the Sahel where rebel and al Qaeda-affiliated groups operate. They say Africom got a bad press initially because it was associated with heavy-handed U.S. policy in Somalia and as part of the U.S.-led ”War on Terror”, but now Pentagon officials are treading more carefully, realising how sensitive Africans are about suggestions Washington is trying to dominate.

Do you believe U.S. assurances about Africom or is it the thin end of the wedge, a precursor to a boosted American military presence on the continent that could attract rather than deter terrorist attacks and infringe on the sovereignty and independence of African nations?

It’s the stuff for a Hollywood blockbuster to rival Ridley Scott’s 2001 thriller “Black Hawk Down”: A bunch of 50 Somali pirates in speedboats and heavily armed with grenade launchers clamber aboard a Ukranian ship in the Gulf of Aden. They overwhelm the 20-man crew and take control of the ship and its dubious cargo of 33 battle tanks, supposedly destined for the Kenyan military. Six days later and with US navy ships stalking, a shootout breaks out on board among the pirates, killing three.

The hijacking of the MV Faina is only the most high-profile of what is turning into the biggest scourge of sea piracy in modern times. According to the International Maritime Bureau, presumed Somali pirates have attacked more than 60 ships in the area this year. It’s piracy alert website reported on Sept. 26 that four ships had been attacked in the Gulf of Aden within a 48-hour period.

“Intelligence sources revealed that there are now three suspicious vessels in the Gulf of Aden believed to be pirate mother vessels looking to attack ships with the intent to hijack,” it said.

Somali pirates taking advantage of chaos onshore, where an Islamist insurgency has raged for nearly two years, have intensified attacks this year on vessels plying the main water route linking Asia and the Middle East to Europe. Somalia has been a dysfunctional state since 1991. The upsurge in piracy has sent shipping insurance costs soaring tenfold, according to Lloyds List, and prompting shipowners to call for tougher international action. The alternative would be rerouting sea trade through the Cape of Good Hope, adding thousands of miles to the journey.

An international coalition of 19 states has been scrambling to keep the waterways in the region safe, but its own warships run the risk of deadly attack. France has been championing international action against Somali pirates. It sent its commandos twice this year to rescue its yachts seized in the region and is now spearheading United Nations action to deal with piracy.

What should be the correct international response to the problem? Should the world’s big powers increase their military presence in the Gulf of Aden to protect vital sea lanes? How should the international community address the fundamental issue of chaos in Somalia itself? Can piracy in the region be contained without a solution to the Somali crisis?