Pirate ambitions undeterred by navy

LONDON (Reuters) - Somali pirates' first seizure of U.S. citizens signals an entirely justified confidence in their ability to keep outwitting the allied naval forces deployed against them.

Whatever the outcome of their brief capture of the U.S. freighter Maersk Alabama, an event that puts Somalia higher up Washington's security agenda, factors including poverty and the sea's vastness mean the gangs' bold ambition is understandable.

"Can you make the high seas secure? No, you can't," said Jim Wilson of Lloyds Register-Fairplay, a provider of information to the maritime industry.

"Warships cannot be everywhere."

U.S. Horn of Africa scholar David Shinn, in a paper written days before the incident, said:

"All the world's naval forces do not have enough available ships to protect the 20,000 vessels that pass through the Gulf of Aden annually and the wider 2.5 million square miles of ocean where Somali pirate attacks occurred in recent years."

Gunmen briefly hijacked the 17,000-tonne freighter on Wednesday, but the 20 American crew retook control after a confrontation far out in the Indian Ocean where the pirates have captured another five vessels in a week.

The four gang members were holding the captain on the ship's lifeboat, and the crew were trying to negotiate his release.

Shippers can draw comfort from the fact that the crew regained control of the ship, an outcome experts cite as evidence that the crew probably followed standard industry advice in the event of a hijack.

But that development merely points to the reality that while the threat of piracy can be mitigated the prospects for ending the phenomenon altogether anytime soon are poor, experts say.

In a war-blighted country with no functioning government and profound poverty, the economic calculus underpinning the business of piracy is simple, if ugly.

"For Somalis it's a job. It's either piracy, or starve to death, or take part in a war. You have to look at it from the Somali viewpoint," said Wilson.

Nothing succeeds like success.

SIRIUS STAR INCIDENT EMBOLDENED GANGS

Pirates stunned the shipping industry last year when they seized a Saudi supertanker loaded with $100 million worth of crude oil. The Sirius Star and its 25 crew was freed in January after $3 million was parachuted onto its deck.

That emboldened the pirate community, experts say.

"Given the high revenues that can be gained from piracy operations, there are significant incentives to encourage further growth in pirate activity in 2009," wrote Jane's Intelligence Review in its February edition.

The attack was the latest in a sharp escalation in piracy off lawless Somalia, a surge experts say has been driven by a shift by the gangs to more southerly waters west of the Seychelles and off the coasts of Kenya and Tanzania.

Improving weather ahead of the southwest monsoon in the Indian Ocean means the pirate ships can range further south from the Gulf of Aden, forcing international naval forces to spread out in a bid to track their activities.

The southerly push is driven by the laws of probability.

"If you're going deer hunting, you go to the place where deer hang out," said Graeme Gibbon-Brooks, managing director of Dryad Maritime Intelligence.

"In January and February the coalition had the initiative. Now the pirates have the initiative ... Unfortunately the new area of operations is much bigger and it is difficult to control the battle space."

He said that over the last month the pirates had sailed south to where the flow of vessels coming north emerges at the head of the Mozambique Channel before splitting into two main streams, north to the Gulf and northeast to South Asia.

"They go to this sweet spot at the top of the Mozambique Channel. That's where they sit and wait," he said.

(Editing by Giles Elgood)