Analysis: To Beat Somalia's Pirates, Fix Their Country

Fikirka Xorta ah - One of the world's worst humanitarian disasters, Islamic terrorism and rampant human trafficking have all failed to draw the world's interest to Somalia. The return of piracy to the high seas, however, has.

The Somali pirates have attacked more than 100 vessels in the waters leading to and from the Suez Canal this year, and earned tens of millions of dollars in ransom. Today they are holding 17 ships with around 300 crew members off the Somali coast.

And at a weekend security conference organized by the International Institute for Strategic Studies in Bahrain, headquarters to the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet, opinion appeared unanimous: to fix the pirates, fix Somalia. "We haven't been as involved in Somalia as we should have been," Britain's Defence Secretary John Hutton told the BBC. "This is the consequence."

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