International naval efforts to stop piracy off Somalia's coast are unlikely to succeed without better resources and closer coordination, perhaps under the auspices of the United Nations, security experts say. Although naval forces from more than a dozen countries are deployed in the area, Somali pirates in the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean have captured dozens of ships, taken hundreds of people prisoner and secured millions of dollars in ransoms. This year alone there have been 25 attacks off Somalia's east coast, and the situation is not expected to improve soon. “The best we can do is to hope to keep piracy at a moderate level,” said Jason Alderwick of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. “At the moment there are about 15-16 naval ships in the area and that's clearly not enough. But what would be enough?” Alderwick said he had heard suggestions that up to 300 ships might be needed to control the area fully. “But doubling and even tripling the number of assets is not going to eradicate the problem. It would effectively only dampen it down and keep the impact on trade at a manageable level,” he said. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Wednesday announced US steps to help combat piracy, including efforts to coordinate an expanded multinational response better. Naval efforts so far involve task forces from the European Union and NATO, as well as one led by the United States, and warships from countries such as China and Russia. But a senior NATO officer said: “There's no centre of naval operations coordinating all these operations ... Coordination doesn't exist at a tactical level with different nations, the Japanese, the Indian, the Russian ships, etcetera.” Risk of mishaps He said the lack of coordination meant there could be a repeat of incidents similar to one last November in which an Indian warship sank a Thai vessel which was being hijacked, killing most people on board. Alderwick said a unified command was needed, ideally under UN auspices, but it was unclear whether there would be an appetite for a full United Nations mission. “You are looking at funding issues and who is going to contribute,” he said. “The Russians and Japanese and others might argue that they are contributing anyway and may well not be willing to come under a fully fledged UN mission. But arguably if we want to have the best effect, that is what we have to be looking at now.” The NATO officer said there was an acute need for more aircraft to cover a wider area because about 800 pirate groups were now operating along 3,000 km of coastline. Sirus Nody, manager of the International Maritime Bureau in London, said the international naval effort had helped reduce the number of successful hijackings, even though the overall number of attacks had not fallen. He said the number of attacks was small in proportion to the total volume of shipping using the sea lanes – less than one percent – but the effect in driving up insurance and other costs had been significant. “And with the amount of weapons that are being fired about, including rocket-propelled grenades, there's always the risk that one day we could see the hull of an oil tanker broken and a major environmental disaster,” Nody said. Single Command He would welcome a UN-led effort to combat piracy. “If you were to try to put one navy in charge of the entire effort, you would bring a political angle into it,” he said. Alderwick said it might make sense to direct operations from the US naval command centre in Bahrain, but trying to create a single command outside UN auspices was fraught with problems. “There are massive political sensitivities as to what would be seen in the region as the Americans once again trying to dominate an international problem,” he said. A long-term solution would require major international efforts to improve law enforcement in Somalia. “The issue is ashore in what is effectively a failed state. Unless we get some sort of governance or control there, we are not going to have any impact on the problem. It's a bit bleak, I'm afraid,” he said.
