Re: Somali pirates and Chinese navy
If the report is true, how embarrassed it would be for the IN.
Let's make a guess like this: The fishing trawler was attacked by two attack boats of the pirates, the pirates wished to take the vessel as its mother ship while the Tabar came in. The Tabar thought the vessel was a pirate mother ship because they saw pirates roaming on the desk of the vessel with weapons. The pirate refused to stop for inspection, so the battle began.
The vessel used to be a fishing trawler, but it had become a pirate ship when the Tabar battled it. Does this sound logical?
The Thai ship had been hijacked by pirates and they were holding the crew hostage. The crew of the INS Tabar saw armed pirates on deck and apparently the pirates shot at them when they approached so they Tabar opened fire back. Now at least one of the hostage crew is dead, one was rescued and 14 others are missing. They are probably dead, your chances of surviving an open ocean shipwreck under those circumstances are miniscule.
So that shows the dangers of the "guns blazing" approach to this problem.
It certainly would be possible for the USN to land a Marine battalion or some other such force at Haradhere and Eyl and clear out these pirate dens, try to rescue hostages etc. But would that be a permanant solution, and would it be the correct solution (is it right to kill a bunch of poor ex-fisherman and probably a bunch of civillians and hostages as well). Ultimately the solution to this is to do something about the problem of Somalia as a whole.
Perhaps partition is the answer; the northern parts of the country, Somaliand and Puntland, have their own de-facto governments that desire international recognition. Doing so could allow international aid to flow to them and start development in these relatively peaceful areas, as well create a border to contain the violence and Islamic insurgency in the rest of the country.
Central and Southern Somalia are a problem that no one cares enough about to try to fix. The problems there are so great and terrible and interlocking that I think that almost any effort to fix things would fail. The "provisional government" has been a total failure and will fall apart as soon as the last Ethiopian troops leave. Then it's only a matter of time before the Shahab milita makes a repeat of what the Taliban did in 1996 and defeats the remaining warlords and takes over the country. Without a massive international presence this or some other such disaster like it cannot be prevented. However, since that massive effort is not going to be forthcoming, I believe that partition with international recognition and support of Somaliland and Puntland is the best "containment" option. Any solution to piracy is going to have to be temporary and tactical, like the aforementioned teams of PAP troops embarking on merchant ships or a US airstrike to destroy oceangoing vessels at the pirate's strongholds (the US doesn't seem to worry much about bombing Somalia occasionaly to get terrorists, so they shouldn't have much problem with that either).