Tuesday, May 22, 2007

U.S. Navy Warns Ships to Stay Clear of Somali Coast   [J. Peter Pham]

The U.S. CENTCOM's Bahrain-based Maritime Liaison Office (MARLO) has renewed its advisory warning all ships to stay at least 200 nautical miles off of the coast of Somalia due to increased piracy in those waters. The advisory notes that "although there are Coalition Forces operating in the area, they cannot be everywhere monitoring every ship that passes the coast of Somalia."

I note the advisory, although its contents are hardly something to cheer about, is itself indicative of progress. It comes exactly thirteen months after I lamented in a World Defense Review column about an earlier attack:

This incident was just the latest in a string of attacks in what the International Maritime Bureau calls "the most dangerous waters" in the world...Altogether, there were some thirty-seven recorded attacks on commercial shipping along the Somali coast in the last twelve months. Yet somehow, neither the Bush administration nor any of our inside-the-Beltway terrorism experts have connected the dots linking this "piracy" and America's "global war on terrorism."

At least we're now monitoring the situation and have begun to pay heed to the connections to the larger fight against Islamist terrorists. It remains to be seen what we do about it.

05/22 03:18 PMShare