There was some hope, over the past few months, that the presence of an international armada off Somalia was having a serious positive impact on pirate attacks. It turns out, however, that this may have been optimistic. Pirates have seized several ships in the past few days, and yesterday captured the US-flagged Maersk Alabama, taking 20 American hostages. This is the first American-crewed ship to be seized by Somali pirates. In response to the presence of the international flotilla, pirates are moving away from the Gulf of Aden and farther out to sea. It's unclear what additional steps can be taken at this point to fight piracy, given that the fleet of warships is unlikely to get much larger. Attacks on pirate bases on land have been proposed, but I'm deeply skeptical that any major nation is actually interested in carrying them out. I'm just as skeptical that such attacks would have any enduring positive effect on the problem. Private security companies have been floating some interesting ideas. For example, decoys (Q ships) might lure pirates into range, then overwhelm them with firepower. This is what happened when a group of pirates accidentally attacked a German naval resupply vessel last week. Other proposals have centered on the deployment of small, fast, privately owned patrol vessels. For now, however, it's likely that ship owners will continue to pay heavy ransoms, and that warships will stop some percentage of attacks and capture some (much smaller) percentage of pirates. --Robert Farley
