A four-ship NATO naval flotilla, pictured, has been ordered back to East Africa to battle pirates, four months after the European Union replaced NATO in the mission to escort U.N. food ships through pirate waters. But NATO still doesn’t have clear rules of engagement for fighting pirates, and there have been reports of NATO ships “catching and releasing” pirate suspects.
Piracy is a “complex legal issue linked to national law, international law and the law of the high seas,” said NATO General Karl-Heinz Lather. Rules of engagement are “being addressed at NATO headquarters. The rules of engagement the E.U. is applying and NATO is applying should be as similar as possible.”
That means shooting when shot at, and turning over pirate suspects to Kenyan courts.
How is NATO coordinating with the E.U. and other counter-pirate forces? Simple, Lather said:
We do that on the political level with a sort of coordinating board. There is an international Website accessible for those forces that are active in the area. And we are lucky: the NATO maritime command and the E.U. operational headquarters are almost co-located, in the same barracks. There is coordination at the operational level, and the commanders of the forces .. E.U., U.S., Saudi ships as well, coordinate as they pass in the area.
(Photo: NATO)
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