Sinking Somalia's pirates

A U.S. Navy destroyer is now shadowing a Ukrainian ship carrying tanks and other weapons that was seized by Somali pirates last week, said David Axe in Wired online. “If the Pentagon decides to take out the Faina pirates, how's it going to go down? Four words: Djibouti (where U.S. Special Operations Command has a base north of Somalia), helicopters, Navy SEALs.”

“For a moment,” said Jeffrey Gettleman in The New York Times, “the pirates must have thought they had really struck gold—Somalia-style.” A $30 million cargo of arms is a big haul, even by the standards of “seafaring thieves” accustomed to pillaging with impunity. But this time the pirates may have “gotten more than they bargained for.”

It’s about time, said the Kenyan daily The Nation in an editorial. The hijacking of a ship laden with tanks being sent to Kenya’s military demonstrates “the extent to which lack of effective government in Somalia is a threat to the entire region.” It’s time for international navies to “take the war to the pirates" operating in the country’s lawless waters.

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