By Zhao Zhuoyun
After months of relative calm, the waters off the Somali shore is shivering again under the shadow of the pirates with at least six ships being hijacked and one US captain abducted since the beginning of this month.
The new wave of terror came as dozens of warships from the US, Russia, France, Germany, Spain, India, China and other countries are gathering in the Gulf of Aden to the north of Somalia to secure the crucial international maritime route.
The international efforts have so far foiled hundreds of attempts to hijack merchant ships in the 800 km-long waterway. While Somali pirates seized nearly 38 percent of the vessels they targeted in 2008, their success rate in the first two months of this year plummeted to about 13 percent due to the strong presence of naval ships.
However, there are still 14 vessels and about 200 crew members currently under the control of pirates, according to the International Maritime Bureau based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
In 48 hours between April 4 and 6, five ships were hijacked, some of them in the Gulf of Aden heavily guarded by naval forces.
The attack shows the patrols by warships have not been an effective deterrent measure in the war on piracy since the bandits are determined to make money at whatever cost.
According to Jane Campbell, a spokeswoman for the US- Navy's 5th Fleet based in Bahrain, it would take 60 naval ships to adequately guard vessels traversing the Gulf of Aden, far beyond the number of the warships now deployed in the area.
Furthermore, the sea gangs have devised new strategy to circumvent the patrols by operating far off the coast in the Indian Ocean. Three ships, owned by Germany, French and Taiwanese companies, were hijacked 700 to 1,300 km off the east shore of Somalia early this month.
"It's an incredibly vast area, and basically we're seeing pirates in more than a million-square-mile operating area," said Campbell. "So while the presence of naval vessels has had an effect, we continue to say that naval presence alone will never be a total solution. It starts ashore."
Even the slump in attacks since January, some experts said, is not attributable to the patrols -- it was due to turbulence of the sea brought by the winter monsoon.
