Can mercenaries defeat the Somali pirates?

Jim Cowling has chosen the right moment to launch his new business. An experienced security consultant, he has just set up a company called Shipguard, with a small office in Clerkenwell. The product: providing the men, the know-how, and if necessary the weapons, to defeat the pirates that are the scourge of Somali waters.

‘We’re one of the groups throwing our hats into the ring,’ says Cowling. ‘This is going to be the next Iraq in terms of where mercenaries are going. Iraq is being wound down, and guys are looking around and latching onto piracy.’

He is far from alone. In the past year, as pirates have menaced the Gulf and the Indian Ocean demanding bigger and bigger ransoms, so dozens of companies have sprung up to fight them. But there is also a fierce debate going on within the shipping industry. Can the pirates be defeated by a few resourceful mercenaries, ready to take the fight back to them in the kind of robust language they understand? Or, as many shipping experts argue, is that just going to inflame an already difficult situation, when the solution can only really come from better policing by the world’s major navies?

There’s little doubting the eagerness of the mercenaries — or the scale of the problem. ‘Every man and his dog is out there,’ said one security consultant who preferred to remain anonymous. ‘Or rather, every man and his dolphin.’ The Somali pirates burst on to the world stage by seizing the oil tanker Sirius Star with a cargo worth $100 million last November. But they have been a menace for a long time. Last year, more than 100 ships were attacked off the Somali coast.