Salamon: What is most important is that they could not take any hostages. Furthermore, the captain set up the engine so it could not be started in the usual way. When the pirates noticed that, we got an angry phone call from them at the shipping company.Worth reading it all.
The pirates calling the shipping company? That's piracy with impunity and yet another proof that the presence of naval forces has failed to deter the pirates.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the post. I also discuss piracy every now and then in my Marine Cafe Blog. You may want to check the blog out and include it in your blogroll. I shall gladly put yours on my own roster in return.
The ONLY solution is ACTIVELY and AGGRESSIVELY pursuing pirates and destroying them immediately.
ReplyDeleteTrack, shadow and sink ALL the "mother" ships. Run-down and destroy all the skiffs, either from the surface or from the air. Run tight convoys. (BOTH World Wars have shown that the CONVOY SYSTEM DOES WORK) Institute ACTIVE and AGGRESSIVE patrolling. Attack coastal pirate enclaves.
No apologizes. Once the word gets out that pirates are shot down on sight and the successful ransoming and the obscene parties that follow are very short lived as the participants are turned in to pink clouds, piracy WILL end, and they that remain will go back to subsistence fishing.
some measure of deterent force is neccesary, the problem is that most of these pirates could not go back to subsistence fishing if they wanted to...notice how a large majority of the vessels that are seized are fishingboats. The foreign fishing fleets are essentially fishing the resources dry...as there is no somali navy to discurage this activity. So yes a little force might discurage piracy but there has to be an alernative source of income for the "former" pirates to go back to...perhaps the best solution would be to train the pirates as some type of maritime security force with strong oversight and then they would be able to legitimately seize and vessel not operating with proper permits. Would cost some money, but figure the cost of having a DDG or bigger platform doing covoy ops on a yearly basis
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