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Depending on your personal beliefs and where you live, how to deal with the Somali pirates may range from kill them all, to take away there tools, to give them money so they don’t need/want to be pirates.

Critical Items to any Solution

1. Deterrence. Any solution that isn’t a deterrent to other Somalis to start or continue being pirates is unacceptable.
2. The risks must outweigh the rewards. Break a leg or an arm at every encounter with every pirate. Some have suggested that cutting off fingers or tongues would be a better deterrent. That would be permanent. A broken leg would cause 6 weeks of healing.
3. Remove the tools of the trade every time there’s an encounter. They leave every encounter without communications, guns, GPS devices, with just enough food and fuel to get back to the mainland. Sadly, we can’t take their small boats, since they will need them to fish and return home. Unless we sink those boats and parachute drop them back home. Hummmm.
4. No rewards. No payments. Period. We shouldn’t pay them for not being pirates or jail them outside Somalia or pay any ransoms. Let them keep the cargo. It appears that most of the ships taken recently carried food aid. What can they do with grain when at sea? Send in the SEALS, SAS, Dutch, French, German commandos for target practice.
5. I read here that Somalia was 100% Islamic. I’d be curious to know what Islamic law says should happen to the pirates after they are inhospitable towards travelers of the sea.

Follow the pirates back home or to the mother ship and take all the guns, GPS, radios, and as many of the boats as possible away. Place all the pirates on board the smallest craft possible 20 miles from shore.

Certainly a private security firm or 10 could work out a business model to provide arms and/or soldiers for legs of the trip where pirates exist in world. These security firms would need to be registered with the countries of origin and destination. That registration would help with any laws preventing fire arms on ships in ports. Obviously, this is possible since military ships dock in ports around the world today and they include trained marines with guns AND rifles.

Combat pirates with multiple countries working together. There can’t be more than a few thousand actual pirates. After a while, most of them will have broken legs, no guns, no GPS, no radios and no boats with which they can continue. Every year, a few new, young pirates will take up the effort. After a few of them get broken legs or “don’t come back”, the risk will clearly outweigh the rewards and it will cease to be a problem like it is today.

Obviously, there are some issues to be resolved with this plan.