The alacrity with which the patrolling proposal was cleared by the government and the frigate Gomati dispatched is understandable. The distance between Bab-el-Mandeb, on the mouth of the Suez, to the Gulf of Aden near the horn of Africa is about 800-900 nautical miles; 500 miles of that, primarily off the east coast of the virtual failed state of Somalia, brims with pirates. The Suez Canal records 20,000 ships moving through it annually and accounts for 7 per cent of the global oil trade. The Malacca Straits account for one-fourth of world oil and trade transportation. A major incident on either of the two portals to the Indian Ocean and world trade is severely hit, with a direct effect on commodity prices.

New Delhi took the right decision, choosing not to rely on Western navies to resolve a situation aboard an Indian flag carrier. Its navy is aptly trained for the job. Nine years ago, a task force led by the destroyer Delhi dealt with the hijacking by Indonesian pirates of the Japanese merchant ship Alondra Rainbow off the Konkan coast. The navy showed its capabilities again in December 2004 when relief supplies on board the destroyer Mysore were dispatched to Male within four hours of the tsunami striking the Indian subcontinent. Another destroyer, Mumbai, along with frigates Betwa and Brahmaputra and logistics ship Shakti evacuated Indian peacekeepers from Lebanon in July 2006 at the peak of the Israeli military operations in that country.

While the navy has shown that it is more than adept at giving New Delhi sufficient leverage in operational situations in the Indian Ocean, it has most often chosen to play lone ranger and, to be fair, has succeeded. Although searching for a pirate dhow in the expanse of international waters near the horn of Africa is akin to finding a needle in a haystack, New Delhi chose not to join the Djibouti-based 14-nation combined task force 150 due to political sensitivities. This is because it was essentially a US-led initiative connected to the Afghan and Iraq wars. Also, Pakistan was part of the multilateral force. This stand was taken by the NDA regime and has been followed by the UPA government.

... contd.