Plan would take pirate fight into Somalia

[unhappycamper]

Pirates leave the merchant vessel MV Faina for the Somali shore Wednesday, Oct. 8, 2008 while under observation by a U.S. Navy ship. The U.N. Security Council will decide on a proposal Dec. 16 that would allow the U.S. to hunt down pirates on land.


Plan would take pirate fight into Somalia
By Philip Ewing - Staff writer
Posted : Monday Dec 15, 2008 7:48:51 EST

Sailors and Marines could begin hunting Somali pirates where they live — on land, in the coastal towns they use as havens for hijacked ships — if the U.N. Security Council approves a resolution offered in mid-December by President George W. Bush.

The resolution would authorize the allied navies patrolling off Somalia to enter its airspace and go ashore in pursuit of the pirates who have ramped up their attacks this year off the Horn of Africa. Experts and analysts have agreed that patrolling offshore or escorting merchant ships only deals with the symptoms of piracy; its cause is the anarchy on land in Somalia, specifically the ability of hijackers to take refuge in sympathetic pirate havens.

But the commander of U.S. naval forces in the region said Dec. 12 it wouldn’t be a good idea to fight pirates ashore. Vice Adm. Bill Gortney told reporters that striking pirate camps presents problems because it is difficult to identify them and the potential for killing innocent civilians “cannot be overestimated.”

Still, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was scheduled to present the U.S. resolution Dec. 16 at a meeting of the U.N. Security Council. For one year, it would authorize allied anti-piracy forces to “take all necessary measures ashore in Somalia, including in its airspace, to interdict those who are using Somali territory to plan, facilitate or undertake acts of piracy and armed robbery at sea and to otherwise prevent those activities.”

It’s the second piracy resolution the Security Council will have considered in the same month, reflecting the widespread concern among merchant shippers about the danger to the thousands of vessels that pass off Somalia’s eastern coast or in the narrow Gulf of Aden. The Security Council voted unanimously Dec. 2 to authorize the international naval coalition off Somalia to pursue pirates and operate inside its territorial waters, if necessary.


Rest of article at: http://www.navytimes.com/news/2008/12/navy_piracy_121508w/%2e