In the first days of 2009, while most Americans are recovering from holiday festivities, gearing up for the new year or planning how to weather the recession, a game is being played in the Indian Ocean over what exactly to do about those pesky pirates whose activities this year escalated from real nuisance to damn serious front-page situation. 

The players are the various nations whose navies are patrolling the Gulf of Aden the US, British and Indian navies as well as members of a new EU force.  Over the past several months, these forces have been successfully fending off attacks, capturing pirates, and get this - letting them go.  Letting them go? It seems that since no country wants to haul pirates back and introduce them into their home legal system, pirates are being SET FREE. 

Normally, the country in which the crimes occurred in this case, Somalia would be responsible for trying such criminals, but Somalia hasnt much of a government to speak of these days, let alone a capable justice system or resources with which to hunt pirates.  And its this lack of government and subsequent lawlessness that has allowed Somalian piracy to flourish, so its really the problem, not the solution.

And it is a lack of an effective alternative solution that has allowed pirates to continue seizing ships without any serious repercussions from the international community.  Shame on us! But that may be changing.  It seems that Germany might be stepping up to the plate, deploying the warship Karlesruhe  last week,  empowered to retrieve captured vessels and even take pirates to Germany to  stand trial.  However, when it actually captured some pirates Christmas day, they were ordered to release them seems they were only to seize pirates that were harassing German interests, and the pirates they seized had been attacking an Egyptian vessel.   Oops.  Well, France has put on trial several captured earlier this year - maybe we can ship all the pirates to France? If nothing else, it makes for a nice visual.

In addition, as of last week the Chinese decided they also wanted a piece of the pirate action, and for the first time since the 15^th century (!), deployed Chinese naval warships outside of the Pacific to protect Chinese shipping interests and to show the world (finally!) that Chinas not a mere security free-loader, but a mighty sea power in its own right.  Go commies!

Japan isnt happy about this PM Aso and his military cronies are moaning theyre the only G8 country not part of the anti-piracy effort, and want to reinterpret the constitution to let Japanese forces deploy.  If the usual pace of Japanese legislative action is any indication, this will take a while.  A long while.

Nonetheless, mucking up the Gulf of Aden with a bunch of navies empowered only to protect their countries own interests isnt much of a solution German warships only protecting German boats and Chinese warships only protecting Chinese boats.  Whats needed is effective coordination and a mandate that all forces can act under and perhaps even standardized rules of engagement!  Think Im getting ahead of things? The EU mission ATALANTA is a start.   But there also needs to be a legal framework and judicial system ready to absorb arrested pirates, and there has been a little bit of talk about that, too. . .

The United States has said that the 5^th Navy Fleet will pursue pirates aggressively  - but only once a legal system is in place.   Plans were mentioned to cooperate with the Kenyans to set up a special judicial system to deal specifically with pirates there, to be supported by the US and the EU, if we can agree on how it should be run and who should fund it. 

I wouldnt bet on that happening with any great speed, except that the Chinese are due to arrive on the scene any minute now, and as its their big naval debut, who knows what they might do to show us how ready they are. Or what the US might so to show the Chinese we can handle this pirate thing just fine.  Could be interesting . . .tune in next week

Jessica Baker is an intelligence analyst for a risk management group. She holds a masters degree from Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies