Bring the sailors home

Over three weeks have passed since the oil tanker MT Honour 25 was hijacked by Somali pirates and taken to the coast of Eyl in Puntland, a semi-autonomous region of Somalia. From there, the pirates have been demanding ransom payments from the countries from which the ship's crew hail, and from the owners of the ship itself. After being boarded by about 50 pirates, supplies onboard meant for the 17-member crew have been exhausted, forcing the multinational, mostly-Pakistani crew to eat plain boiled rice and drink dirty water.

The Pakistani government's response has been to just bide its time, leaving the sailors' relatives to threaten hunger strikes as a last-ditch effort to draw attention to the problem. The non-profit Ansar Burney Trust has provided some assistance to the families, but it has also warned that resolving the issue is beyond its capabilities. Ironically, that is also the position of the Somali government, which has done little to rein in pirates, who mostly operate from breakaway states and areas that are not under the control of the central government.

The only effective restraint on piracy has been brute force. The US, China and India are the most prominent countries that have sent their warships and special forces soldiers to directly attack pirate ships, which led to a years-long lull in the number of incidents of piracy. Incidents only increased after the Iran war started, and naval ships in the region were redeployed around the Strait of Hormuz. As a result, apart from Honour 25, at least two other ships in the area are currently under the control of hijackers - the oil tanker Eureka and the cargo ship Sward. If the US is unwilling to secure the Horn of Africa, Pakistan and other affected countries need to step up and secure trade routes, because the area's importance to international trade in general and Pakistani trade in particular makes it well worth the investment of taking decisive action.