Fighting Piracy in Somalia

We applaud the U.S. Navy for the rescue of Richard Phillips from Somali pirates, and Captain Phillips for giving himself as a hostage to safeguard his crew. We also regret the death of the French yachtsman, Florent Lemaçon, who was killed along with two pirates when French navy commandos stormed the sailboat they were on (Mr. Lemaçon’s wife and child and two family friends were rescued).

The cruel fact is that even as Americans celebrated the rescue, the Somali pirates — in what is business as usual off of Somalia’s long ungoverned coast— were grabbing more ships. There are now 17 captured ships and about 260 hostages waiting to be ransomed. The short-term answer is more patrols and better cooperation with regional states; a long-term solution, alas, remains elusive.

The U.S. and French governments were fully within their rights to authorize deadly force against the heavily armed pirates. Though the bandits may only be looking for ransom, their trophies have included giant oil tankers and ships full of sophisticated weapons. They have seriously disrupted shipping in one of the busiest maritime passages in the world, and their tactics could easily be adopted by terrorist groups — including Islamist groups inside Somalia linked to Al Qaeda — looking to cripple global commerce. President Obama has rightly pledged to work with nations around the world to fight this plague. The United States and its allies and other affected states will have to increase their patrols in the Indian Ocean, as well as their coordination and cooperation. They must also consider the pros and cons of placing armed teams on cargo ships to repel pirate attacks. The pirates simply cannot be allowed to roam the seas unchallenged. But Somalia has the longest coastline in Africa, with countless small ports, fishing villages and inlets, so military means alone are not likely to end the piracy. That can happen only with the revival of a semblance of government in Somalia.

This is tough. Somalia has known only varying degrees of anarchy for 18 years now. A whole generation of Somalis has been raised in a violent free-for-all of warlords, pirates and extremists. Misguided American attempts to impose order produced the “Black Hawk Down” fiasco in 1993 and an ultimately useless Ehtiopian invasion in 2006.

Yet left to its own devices, Somalia can only become more noxious, spreading violence to its East African neighbors, breeding more extremism and making shipping through the Gulf of Aden ever more dangerous and costly. Various approaches are being discussed, such as working through Somalia’s powerful clans to reconstitute first local and then regional and national institutions. These must be urgently explored. One thing is clear: the United States cannot go it alone. This is a problem that can only be solved in partnership with Western allies and East African governments.