Somalia’s Pirates Keep Attention on Lawless Seas, Off Lawless Land

Somalia has the dubious distinction of being the worlds longest running failed state. Despite this status, or more likely because of it, its coastline is among the great strategic prizes of the world and as such has attracted a great amount of attention from the international community at the expense of continued unrest inland.

Since Somalia has virtually no national institutions, its coastline is controlled largely by marauding pirates who in the past several months have brazenly captured various oil tankers, the largest and latest of which is a supertanker holding an estimated 130$M of oil. Somalia's pirates have already drastically affected global oil prices, with estimates ranging of their effects as high as 1$/barrell. The piracy has led indirectly to a number of other effects, too. Already some ships have decided to take alternative routes for fear of being held hostage; the effect of which has been to raise the demand for oil and shipping insurance costs. Lloyds of London, the largest shipping insurer in the world, has already seen a surge in coverage plans which include “K&R,” kidnapping and ransom.

But the piracy also feeds into the perception that Somalia is important only when it disrupts the international community’s vital organs, such as oil supplies and markets. Adding to this perception is a Security Council mandate in cooperation with the Somali government to allow naval ships to use any means necessary to fend off attacks by pirates. The mandate, which concluded last week, came immediately after last weeks most recent hostage situation, but was first requested by the International Maritime Organization in 2007.

Lost in the debate is the estimated 10,000 people who have been killed in skirmishes, with another estimate 1 to 2 million displaced. And only recently has the threat to urgent food supplies to the region been acknowledged by other multilateral groups. The piracy debate has also siphoned off discussion around rebuilding Somalia and its national institutions.

A UN peace mission, hastily tacked-on to a Sudan peace mission meeting, has tentatively scheduled talks with a number of officials in Djibouti. Conspicuously absent will be the leader of the al-Shabab militia, Somalia's Islamic warlord group, which holds de facto control over large swaths of southern Somalia and insists on Ethiopia’s departure from Mogadishu as a precondition to any peace talks.

• Somalia