Lessons in gunboat diplomacy coming for Somalia’s pirates

When seafaring bands of brigands who patrol the coast off Somalia in speedboats and raid and plunder passing ships with impunity, because the United States and Europe have been too timid to go after them, boarded a Ukrainian freighter, they found what they must have thought was a bonanza: 33 Russian tanks, the mother lode of a USD 30 million haul that included grenade launchers and piles of ammunition they can now sell or use against more ships who are defenceless because almost nobody will stop them.
Until now, perhaps. Because while the pirates are looking at what they hope will be a multi-million ruble ransom or selling the goods on the black market, this time they are dealing with the Russian Navy and one Vladimir Putin, the Russian prime minister who doesn’t even like someone looking at him crosseyed, never mind stealing his tanks. Russia and Putin are not Bush and the EU, and the day after the ship was seized, a Russian warship was sent heading to Somalia.
None of this would have been necessary if European countries had simply gone after the pirates long ago, pointed a gun boat in their direction and asked, “How are you going to get off that boat?” Instead, European countries have paid ransoms because the pirates had innocent hostages on board, although French President Nicolas Sarkozy has taken his Russian lessons to heart because the last time pirates grabbed a French yacht, he sent commandos instead of Euro. He discovered after France paid a ransom in another hijacking this stuff doesn’t stop until you stop it.
The pirates have been emboldened by reluctance on the part of the world to follow them wherever they are. These are not suicide bombers or political fanatics, people who don’t care if they die. They are thieves who want to live to spend their bounty and, faced with the prospect of returning live hostages or killing everyone on board, they’ve probably figured out that would include them and that it’s cheaper to return the boats and hostages and live. Putin wouldn’t care if the crew died anyway because he wants the tanks.
It’s well-known that the pirates, who have some heavy weapons but not battleship guns, are holding hijacked hostages and ships in a base at Eyl, a coastal port city, where foreign navies are not allowed. But since Somalia isn’t a country, but a land mass occupied by gangs and has no government, there should be no qualms about just sending in a multi-national fleet of gunships and taking back the ships and crews and hostages. What the pirates going to do, attack a battleship with spears and rifles?
The pirates, usually former fishermen, like to go after easy prey like yachts and fishing vessels, although when a few boatloads of them tried to board a Greek freighter, they found out that Greeks fight back as the crew repulsed them with water cannons. But since the pirates have figured out no one will stop them, they have seized 56 vessels this year, and been paid handsomely for it, leading one Somalian diplomat to complain that “paying the ransoms is just making this worse.”
They work the heavily-traveled waters of the Gulf of Aden, where there is a multi-national fleet of warships patrolling. Of course, they can’t use their guns because of political reasons, but if they were allowed to open fire, this nonsense would stop. Pirates aren’t stupid and they can figure out that if one of their little raiding parties gets blown out of the water with 100-millitre guns and cannons that they can look for a safer and more profitable line of work that allows stealing without any risk of being caught, or shot. Like politics.