Naval history
Somali Piracy in 2008: Why Warships Could Not Simply Stop It
Through 2008 hijackings off the Somali coast rose sharply, culminating in the seizure of vessels large enough to make the problem impossible to ignore: a Ukrainian ship carrying tanks, and a Saudi supertanker. Several of the world’s most capable navies were operating in the area. The obvious question was why they could not stop it, and the answer had almost nothing to do with naval capability.
The geography defeats patrolling
The area at risk covers the Gulf of Aden and, as the pirates extended their range using mother ships, a large part of the western Indian Ocean. That is an expanse of open water measured in millions of square kilometres.
A warship can see and reach a very small fraction of that at any moment. A helicopter extends the radius considerably and still leaves most of it unwatched. The arithmetic is unforgiving: to guarantee a warship within reach of every merchant vessel would require a fleet nobody possesses, and the pirates only need the gaps.
What did work was concentrating traffic. A designated transit corridor through the Gulf of Aden, with merchant ships grouped and warships covering the corridor, reduced the problem in that specific water substantially. The pirates responded by operating further out, which is the pattern any concentration of defence produces.
The target is indistinguishable until it acts
A pirate skiff is a small open boat with an outboard motor, a few men, fuel and weapons. So is a fishing boat. Until ladders and weapons are visible and a merchant ship is being approached, there is frequently no lawful basis and no reliable means to tell them apart.
This is the operational core of the problem. The window in which a vessel is identifiably pirate and still interceptable is short, and it usually opens only once an attack is under way.
The legal problem was the binding one
This is where the phrase in the title comes from, and it is worth taking seriously as a question rather than as a slogan.
Naval forces operate under rules of engagement grounded in law. Piracy is a crime, and a suspected pirate detained at sea is a criminal suspect, not a combatant. That triggers a chain of requirements: evidence has to be collected to a standard a court will accept, the suspect has to be held somewhere, and some jurisdiction has to be willing to prosecute.
For much of this period no jurisdiction reliably was. Somalia had no functioning court system. Flag states of the attacked vessels were often unwilling to take cases involving foreign nationals seized in international waters. The warship’s own state frequently had no legal hook and no appetite for importing the prosecution.
The result was catch-and-release: suspects detained, weapons and ladders confiscated, boats sometimes destroyed, and the men put ashore. That looked like failure and was, in fact, the lawful outcome of the available options. Agreements with regional states (Kenya and the Seychelles among them) to accept suspects for prosecution were among the more consequential developments in the whole campaign, and they were diplomatic and not naval achievements.
The economics sustained it
Hijacking for ransom was profitable and the ransoms were paid, because the cost of a ransom was lower than the cost of a lost ship, cargo and crew, and because crews were being held hostage. Every payment funded the next operation and confirmed the business model.
At the same time the shipping industry adopted measures that proved more effective than patrolling: best-management practices including increased speed through the risk area, evasive manoeuvring, razor wire, water cannon and secure citadels where crews could lock themselves in and wait for help. Vessels that followed them were markedly less likely to be taken, and (the decisive step) armed private security teams aboard, once accepted, made successful boardings very rare.
Why it matters as a case
The campaign is a clean illustration of a category error. The problem presented as a naval problem and was addressed by navies, which produced coordination structures worth having. But the variables that actually reduced hijackings were legal (somewhere to prosecute), commercial (hardening the ships and putting armed guards aboard) and onshore (the conditions in Somalia that made the trade viable).
Naval presence bought time and protected the corridor. It could not solve a problem whose binding constraints sat outside naval capability — which is the general lesson, and the reason the flippant version of the question in the title has a serious answer: because the law does not permit it, and because it would not have addressed the reason the boats kept launching.
Questions and answers
Why was naval force not simply applied?
Because of the arithmetic of the area. The waters involved are vast and the vessels are small, wooden and indistinguishable from legitimate fishing craft until they act. Patrolling that area to a density that would deter requires more hulls than any coalition was prepared to commit, and hulls elsewhere are hulls not doing something else.
What actually reduced the attacks?
A combination, and the merchant-side measures came first: hardened vessels, razor wire, citadels, evasive manoeuvring, speed, and armed security aboard. Naval escort along a transit corridor and coordinated reporting followed. Onshore conditions changed as well. Attributing the decline to any single measure does not survive the sequence.
Why is prosecution such a persistent difficulty?
Because jurisdiction is genuinely unclear when a vessel of one flag is attacked in international waters by nationals of a state without a functioning court system, and detained by a warship of a third state. Warships repeatedly disarmed and released suspects for want of anywhere to try them, which is a legal problem instead of a naval one.