AMERICAN forces would receive a mandate to attack Somali pirates by land and air, under a new proposal that will go before the UN Security Council next week.
The United States has drawn up a draft resolution on the issue, which proposes that all nations and regional groups co-operating with Somalia's government in the fight against piracy and armed robbery "may take all necessary measures ashore in Soma
lia".
The proposal marks one of the Bush administration's last major foreign policy initiatives.
If the US military gets involved, it would mark a dramatic turnabout from its experience in Somalia in 1992-93, which culminated in a deadly military clash in Mogadishu, followed by a humiliating withdrawal of American forces.
Piracy off Somalia has intensified in recent months, with more attacks against a wider range of targets. There was an unsuccessful assault on a cruise ship in the Gulf of Aden, which links the Mediterranean Sea, the Suez Canal and the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean. In September, pirates seized a Ukrainian freighter loaded with 33 battle tanks, and on 15 November they seized a Saudi oil tanker carrying $100 million worth of crude.
About 100 attacks on ships have been reported off the Somali coast this year.
Forty vessels have been hijacked, and 14 are still in the hands of pirates, along with more than 250 crew members, according to maritime officials.
In a related development, Britain, which has a frigate off the Somali coast, reached agreement with Kenya yesterday that any pirates the Royal Navy captures can be handed to Nairobi, as Somalia has no effective government or legal system.
The new US resolution is to be presented at a session on Somalia on Tuesday with Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state.
The resolution proposes that, for a year, nations "may 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".
The draft also says Somalia's government – whose president has written to the UN twice this month seeking help – suffers from a "lack of capacity, domestic legislation, and clarity about how to dispose of pirates after their capture".
The Somali government yesterday welcomed the move.
The resolution is aimed at taking measures to stabilise a long-violent and lawless Somalia, a senior US official said on Wednesday.
Although a number of countries, such as Russia, have sent naval forces and taken other steps to stop the piracy, the efforts were considered "very unco-ordinated" so far, a second US official also said privately.
Earlier this month, the Security Council extended authorisation for another year for countries to enter Somalia's territorial waters with advance notice and to use "all necessary means" to stop acts of piracy and armed robbery at sea.
Nations entering Somali waters to fight piracy and armed robbery along the country's 1,880-mile coastline, the continent's longest, must first obtain approval from the Somali government and give advance notice to Ban Ki-moon, the UN's secretary-general .
But now the US believes the fight must go ashore.
Without committing more US navy ships, the Bush administration wants to tap into what officials see as a growing enthusiasm in Europe and elsewhere for more effective co-ordinated action against the Somali pirates.
Administration officials view the current effort as lacking coherence, as pirates score more and bigger shipping prizes.
Spearheading the administration's case, Ms Rice intends to make a pitch at the UN's anti-piracy meeting in New York on Tuesday with her counterparts from a number of nations with a stake in solving the problem.
Bandits going global as investors in the ransom 'business' trade support for cashAHMED Dahir Suleyman is cagey as he talks about the global network that funds and supports piracy off the coast of Somalia.
"We have negotiators, translators and agents in many areas," said Suleyman, a pirate in the harbour town of Eyl, where scores of hijacked ships are docked.
"These people help us during exchanges of ransom and finding out the exact person to negotiate with."
Before cutting off the mobile phone call, Suleyman snapped: "It is not possible to ask any more about our secrets."
The dramatic increase in piracy in African waters this year is backed by an international network, mostly of Somali expatriates, from the Horn of Africa to as far as North America and Europe: people who offer funds, equipment and information in exchange for a cut of the ransoms, according to researchers, officials and members of the racket. With help from the network, Somali pirates have brought in at least £18 million in ransom so far this year.
"The Somali diaspora around the world have taken to this business enterprise," said Michael Weinstein, a Somalia expert at Purdue University in Indiana, US. He likened the racket to "syndicates where you buy shares and get a cut of the ransom". Mr Weinstein said the phenomenon had reached Canada, home to 200,000 Somalis.
Sheik Qasim Ibrahim Nur, director of security at Somalia's interior and national security ministry, said evidence pointed to Somali expatriates in Kenya and the United Arab Emirates. He said there was "no doubt" the pirates had links outside Somalia.
Kenya's government spokesman, Alfred Mutua, said the issue was under investigation. In Dubai, a police officer at the interior ministry denied claims that anyone was funding piracy.
The deals with "investors" appear to be fairly informal, with family or clan networks stretching overseas.
Somalia is a failed state with no banks, only a cash-based, informal transfer network called hawala. A hawala operator takes in money on one end, then instructs a relative, friend or another agent in another country to hand a like amount to someone else.
The pirates acknowledge using foreign help.
"We have people in Nairobi, Djibouti, Dubai and many other countries," said Gamase Hassan Said, a pirate in Eyl.
Aden Yusuf, another pirate in Eyl, said foreigners helped pirates acquire sophisticated equipment, such as money-counting machines, in exchange for a cut of the ransom.
Roger Middleton, an expert on east Africa at the Chatham House think-tank in London, said ransoms in the past had been "channelled to expatriate Somalis around the world". But pirates appeared to be opting for direct cash pay-outs more often – bypassing even the hawala system – because of concerns about scrutiny by governments, he said. In one instance early this year, he said, the pirates wanted money delivered through the Gulf but nobody was prepared to take it.
"That may be an indication that the (UAE] government was stepping up pressure," said Mr Middleton.
The Somali pirates also rely on a local network of corrupt officials and villagers. The pirates generally dock hijacked vessels near the coast in the northern Somali region of Puntland as they negotiate ransoms. Rogue security and government officials there allow the pirates to use ports and move freely around towns while they restock ships, said Abdullahi Said Aw-Yusuf, a district commissioner in Eyl.
"This is the main reason why pirates are stationed in Puntland," he said.
