Pirate watch

• Last Updated: April 14. 2009 8:30AM UAE / April 14. 2009 4:30AM GMT

What to do about the ragtag pirates menacing the seas off the Horn of Africa? Sunday’s US naval response – while commended for rescuing Capt Richard Phillips from his Somali captors – met with dismay by some, who questioned whether snipers needed to cut down the three bandits holding the American skipper hostage at gunpoint.

Decisive action against piracy has historically succeeded when the disruption of commerce became intolerable. Fed up with having to surrender 20 per cent of federal revenue to pirate ransoms, the American president, Thomas Jefferson, hunted down and wiped out the Barbary Pirates of Tripoli in the early 19th century. But there is also Pompey the Great’s famously liberal model. The ancient Roman general suppressed high-seas marauders in mere months by dispatching a powerful fleet as well as generously offering amnesty and resettlement inland to those who surrendered. Indeed, today’s Somali pirates are a far cry from the romanticised buccaneers of seafaring lore. But they are, as ever, driven by desperation as well as life in a lawless state. Pompey’s approach to quashing piracy was a novel one in 67BC and still appears so now. Until Somalia can be stabilised, however, there are no tidy solutions on the horizon.