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Africa Horn
Somalia official calls for assistance to tackle piracy
2009-04-08
International navies will fail in their bid to eradicate Somali piracy if they do not commit more towards assisting the local authorities on the ground, the northern region of Puntland said Tuesday.

Puntland security minister Abdullahi Said Samatar, whose breakaway region is the main hub for piracy in the Gulf of Aden, made his appeal for help after pirates seized five foreign ships in 48 hours. "We can see that international allied forces operating off Somalia are not succeeding in their crackdown on the pirates, who despite their increased presence are still hijacking as many ships as they used to," he told AFP.
He's got a point, but why do I think he's just shaking us down for 'international aid' ...
Between Saturday and Monday, Somali pirates hijacked a British-owned cargo, a German container carrier, a Taiwanese tuna fishing vessel, a Yemeni tugboat and a small French yacht with a three-year-old boy on board. Close to 150 attacks by Somali pirates on foreign ships were reported in 2008, most of them in the Gulf of Aden, where 16,000 ships bottle-neck into the Red Sea each year on one of the world's busiest maritime trade routes. The European Union's months-old Atalanta anti-piracy naval mission is estimated to cost more than 300 million dollars annually.
Posted by:Fred

#3  Well, hell, if we're gonna give money to Pakistan and Gaza we might as well give some to these guys too. I'm sure the results will be about the same.
Posted by: Ebbang Uluque6305   2009-04-08 15:13  

#2  There's the money paid to the pirates to get the ships back and the money paid for help to eradicate piracy and then there is the money paid to rebuild Puntland for damages after eradication of the pirates. Triple-play shakedown. I'm in the wrong business.
Posted by: JohnQC   2009-04-08 13:23  

#1  Sounds more like throat-clearing prior to a request for tribute.

Or, less sarcastically, a prelude to the request for international recognition of Puntland - if the naval powers recognize it as a sovereign nation, then they'll close the piratical bazaar.
Posted by: Mitch H.   2009-04-08 10:10  

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