Piracy strategies

Sustaining the political will to engage long term remains a concern, but the focus has shifted to the more complex question of how to tackle piracy offshore while dealing with the underlying causes onshore.
No longer is it enough for governments to roundly condemn the pirates and point to their assets on the water offering protection.
For too long, the issue of piracy has suffered from simplistic headlines and an aversion to address the wider issues.
The pledge by the international community to increase financial support for Somalia in the hope that law and order onshore will end piracy offshore is a step in the right direction.
The recent offer of US$213m by the international community certainly sounds impressive, but compared with the amounts being ploughed into naval operations that at best offer little more than an elaborate program of containment, it is a drop in the ocean.
Given the economic climate it is understandable that neither defence nor development ministers are prepared to make more than the most essential of requests to their governments, but ultimately this short-term approach is not going produce sustainable results.
The United Nations contact group on piracy and the recent Djibouti agreement are both positive examples of how this problem needs to be addressed with sophisticated, long-term strategies, but neither is likely to produce easy answers or sensational headlines.
Anything else, however, is just dealing with the symptoms.