SOMALIA:There are thought to be 10 gangs of pirates operating off Somalia with as many as 1,000 members, writes Rob Crillyonboard 'Ville de Québec', off Mogadishu
MOGADISHU WAS once a destination for package tourists who stayed in the grand whitewashed hotels that line its Indian Ocean shores.
Whales and dolphins still play in the shimmering blue waters.
But today the bombed-out city stands beside the most dangerous shipping lanes in the world.
Pirates armed with rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) and AK-47s control the waters far out to sea; close to shore, the threat of Islamist suicide boats keeps captains watchful.
"It used to be a good place," says Mohamed Shoaib Siddiqui, the Pakistani master of the MV Golina, a rust bucket of a cargo ship loaded down with food desperately needed by Somalia's starving population.
"It was like Kenya with disco bars, nice hotels, a good life. Then the security situation changed. None of that is possible now."
His 829km (510-mile) voyage from the Kenyan port of Mombasa was possible only by staying close to the guns and missiles of a naval escort.
As the master turns the vast hull of the Golina towards Mogadishu's harbour, a Canadian frigate armed with a 57mm cannon stands guard.
Cdr Chris Dickinson scans the shoreline with high-powered binoculars from the bridge of Ville de Québec, watching for high-speed skiffs leaving the harbour. Anything that gets within 500 yards of the cargo ship or escort will be turned to driftwood within seconds.
"The threat here for us is small boats - a suicide boat or a boat armed with RPGs or small arms," he says.
The ship's helicopter has been dispatched to make passes close to Mogadishu's pockmarked villas and bombed-out hotels looking for potential threats.
This is the only way humanitarian aid can be delivered to the world's most dangerous city.
An estimated 8,000 people have died in the past year-and-a- half of conflict. Tens of thousands more have fled the capital.
Last week, Islamist insurgents ordered the city's airport to close amid intelligence reports they had recently received a shipment of surface-to-air missiles.
And it could be about to get much worse for Somalia's embattled population, which hovers close to famine. The Ville de Québec is due to return to Nato duties at the end of the week and aid officials are desperate to find another country to continue the escorts.
Denise Brown, deputy Somalia director of the World Food Programme, says using land routes could only deliver about 10 per cent of the aid needed.
"We currently do not have a firm offer for any naval escort and we have 45,000 tonnes of food which needs to be distributed in October," she says. "We are expecting merchant captains to come back to us and say that they won't go in without an escort. It is crunch time."
While almost half of Somalia's population needs emergency food aid, the country's armed entrepreneurs are busy exploiting the anarchy to earn hard currency. On land, they run protection rackets and roadblocks; at sea, they call themselves pirates, although they have little in common with the cutlass-wielding brigands of old.
The power vacuum has allowed pirates to launch 55 attacks on vessels as they skirt the Horn of Africa this year. Shipowners are warning they may soon be forced to reroute their vessels around the Cape of Good Hope, increasing costs to consumers.
Pottengal Mukundan, director of the International Maritime Bureau based in London, says the frequency of attacks is unprecedented and could only be stemmed with international action.
"Somalia has no government able to deal with piracy. Neighbouring countries lack the resources to tackle this problem," he says. "The only forces that can do anything are coalition naval forces."
A US-led naval taskforce, set up as part of "Operation Enduring Freedom" to tackle terrorism, has been given responsibility for trying to keep the sea lanes open.
They have established a series of waypoints marking a safe corridor through the Gulf of Aden, which is patrolled by warships and coalition aircraft overhead.
And last week European Union foreign ministers announced plans to set up a co-ordination centre to help tackle the threat.
But so far the billions of dollars of warships, with their radar, missiles and helicopters, seem powerless to halt the ragtag bands of pirates in simple, fast-moving skiffs.
The result is boom time for the buccaneers, who can earn €1.5 million a time for their trouble.
Today there are thought to be 10 gangs operating around Somalia with as many as 1,000 members. Two years ago there were only 100 or so pirates.
In all, 13 ships are under the control of pirates. Two more vessels - a Greek cargo ship and a Hong Kong-flagged vessel - were snatched last week and attacks are being reported almost daily.
So for now, the only way to feed Somalia's hungry is to send in warships with each delivery.