Somalia: Puntland Minister says anti-piracy strategy is doomed

MOGADISHU - International navies will fail in their bid to eradicate Somali piracy if they do not commit more towards assisting the local authorities on the ground, the northern region of Puntland said Tuesday. Puntland security minister Abdullahi Said Samatar, whose Puntland region is the main hub for piracy in the Gulf of Aden, made his appeal for help after pirates seized five foreign ships in 48 hours. "We can see that international allied forces operating off Somalia are not succeeding in their crackdown on the pirates, who despite their increased presence are still hijacking as many ships as they used to," he told AFP. Between Saturday and Monday, Somali pirates hijacked a British-owned cargo, a German container carrier, a Taiwanese tuna fishing vessel, a Yemeni tugboat and a small French yacht with a three-year-old boy on board. Close to 150 attacks by Somali pirates on foreign ships were reported in 2008, most of them in the Gulf of Aden, where 16,000 ships bottle-neck into the Red Sea each year on one of the world's busiest maritime trade routes. Most of the ships in the pirates' latest haul were caught in the Indian Ocean, far from the heavily-patrolled shipping lanes of the Gulf of Aden. The flurry of hijackings shattered a relative lull in Somali piracy since the start of the year but it now appears the reprieve owed more to unfavourable winter seas than naval deterrence. The European Union's months-old Atalanta anti-piracy naval mission is estimated to cost more than 300 million dollars (230 million euros) annually and Samatar warned the money could be wasted if his administration wasn't propped up. China, Japan, Norway, Russia, the United States and other countries also have naval forces also operating in the area. "They should assist us and try to solve the crisis on the ground so that we can tackle the pirates together," he said in a phone interview. "The campaign against the pirates can achieve quick success if the international community heeds our calls for help because this war needs local community forces to help the international forces," he added. The Atalanta mission's mandate expires in December 2009 but the EU said last month it was mulling an extension.