They really screwed up when they dissolved the (organically created) islamic councils.

I see they still don't get it.

Quite true.

Actually, this is one of Ron Paul's better ideas. Admitedly, that's not saying much.

"As if private contractors in Iraq worked well....."

Actually, they worked very well indeed, from the perspective of the USG and the US military. They performed their roles largely under the radar and provided plausible deniability when there was the occasional press eruction. The Iraqis didn't like 'em. Apparently picturing them as mall security guards, the press thought they were a great source of self-righteous scandal. But you can't please everyone, I suppose.

The problem in Somalia is that everyone knows how to solve the problem and nobody has the balls to do it. There is no secret to dealing with pirates. Julius Ceasar knew how to do it. Thomas Jefferson knew how to do it. Fighting them at sea is, at best, a holding action. If you want to actually stop pirates, you must destroy their bases on land.

In the "ports" out of which these pirates operate, everyone knows exactly who they are. They aren't shadowy figures operating in back alleys, they're the leaders of the community and they splash their wealth around. In effect, everyone is living off -- or at least benefiting from -- the ransoms they bring in. I understand that there is even a decent-sized industry that's been built around providing care for foreign hostages which includes special supply lines to import food, provide medical care, etc.

So if you want to stop piracy, you have to destroy the pirates' land-based infrastructure and make piracy unprofitable for the local support network. If pirates were being chased off by angry locals instead of actively courted by them, piracy in Somalia wouldn't last another two weeks.

But, for various reasons, no government wants to take the responsibility for wiping out the pirate bases. Everyone knows exactly where they are. This is one of the few cases where an unsupported air assault would probable get the job done -- no ground troops needed. Piracy isn't about idealogy, it's about money. So if the locals suffer $2 in damage for every $1 in ransom, piracy quickly stops.

If you want to be all modern and sensitive, you can even give people a couple of hours warning so they can get out of town before you flatten it.

But the USG is too squeemish to do this. This does seem odd to me, BTW. They are willing to launch air assaults on Pakistani territory when they have only moderately decent inteligence as to the location of suspected terrorists. Why they are unwilling to lauch similar attacks in a failed state against port facilities that have giant "Welcome Pirates!" billboards plastered all over them, I cannot fathom.

In any event, a few hundred mercenaries could solve the problem quite nicely. No government has to take responsibility, all they have to do is not investigate reports of their nationals' involvement too closely. Somalia certainly isn't going to prosecute them. I suspect no government would even have to pay money. All they need do is drop a word in the right quarter and I'd be very surprised if Lloyd's didn't discretely organize something.

I agree with the Anon analysis above. However, it would only provide a relief on a temporary basis. You need a stable state to ensure it lasts.

I disagree entirely, from start to finish.

The Iraq analysis is bankrupt, and laying waste to the Somali coast is not going to achieve anything; the Barbary Coast was restrained when the Beys decided it was no longer useful (profitable). There is not such an equivalent in Somalia, and like the idiocy of overturning the Islamic Courts gov't, the policy of razed earth is likely to achieve perverse results.