According to the latest reports, pirates who have taken control of the supertanker carrying US$100 million in oil have demanded a US$25 million ransom. While the Saudi government has demanded that action be taken against piracy in the region, the Saudi owners of the vessel have quietly begun negotiations in the hopes of gaining the release of the ship, as well as its 25 crew members. So far this year, there have been more than 100 attacks on shipping in the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean regions adjacent to Somalia.

Naval vessels from several countries, including Britain, France, the United States and India, have joined in the effort to patrol waters near the Somali coast. Over the past several months, international warships have guarded a safe shipping lane for ships carrying food and international aid into Somalia. Vessels from the British Royal Navy recently killed two pirates and captured several more warding off attacks on shipping in the region.

Earlier this month, an Indian naval vessel fired on and sunk a pirate ship that had refused to stop and be boarded, although two smaller craft carrying pirates managed to slip away in the same incident. Earlier this year, French forces also managed to regain control of a yacht that had been taken over by Somali pirates.

While these efforts have produced some results, the pirates have become more sophisticated and taken to launching their attacks further and further out to sea in an area that is impossible to patrol all the time. While many attacks have been warded off, the pirates have succeeded in reaping huge gains from the vessels they have managed to seize and take back to port in Somalia.

According to reports published in nearby Kenya, the Somali pirates have collected more than US$150 million in ransom money over the past 12 months. There are entire towns in Somalia that now depend on revenues from pirates in order to get by.

Some shippers have decided that it is already too dangerous to move cargoes through the region and go to great expense to sail their vessels around the southern tip of Africa rather than risk moving through the Indian Ocean and Gulf of Aden on their way to the Suez Canal. It is high time that the international community got tough on piracy in the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean.If Somalia is unable to control what goes on inside of its own territory, the international community will have to step in and take temporary control of the country's ports until order can be restored. That is no simple prospect in Somalia, which has lacked a functioning central government ever since the regime of former dictator Mohamed Siad Barre was violently overthrown in 1991. At present, Somalia is broken up into numerous divisions, some of which have proclaimed independence from the Somali state despite not being recognized in the international community.

In the past, international forces have attempted to restore order to the country in the hopes of reviving law and order there. In late 1992, the United States led a multinational coalition of peacekeeping troops to patrol parts of southern Somalia, but the effort soon fell apart as Somalia's warring factions continued their brutal attacks against each other and even attacked peacekeeping troops. Since the peacekeeping operation was terminated in 1995, various efforts aimed at restoring a working government in Somalia have failed.

The latest attempt to establish a central authority in Somalia, known as the Transitional Federal Government, has only managed to exert control over part of the town of Baidoa and swaths in the southern part of the country.

With no central government and no forces on land to oppose them, the pirates reign free in Somali ports and have built up a multi-million U.S. dollar industry by launching attacks against international shipping in the region.

Facing increased patrols of waters adjacent to Somali territory, the pirates have even taken to projecting their presence by using "mother ships" that sail hundreds of miles offshore and launch smaller craft to attack international shipping in an area far too large to effectively patrol. Clearly, the most effective way to deal with the Somali pirates is to take control of the ports in Somalia they operate from.

Occupying Somali ports is no easy task, given the fact that many Somalis strongly object to the presence of foreign troops on their soil and such an action would be deemed an "occupation" by extremists, just as peacekeepers were before. But until the Somalis are able to effectively control their own ports, action will simply have to be taken to ensure that pirates cannot wreak havoc on international shipping.