Another turn in the piracy story

The East African out of Nairobi has an article by Charles Onyango-Obbo:

The recent hijacking of a Kenya-bound arms-carrying ship by Somali pirates should not have come as a surprise. The fruits of piracy are immense.
A recent report in the British newspaper The Independent had it that in 2004 there were just five attacks and attempts on ships in the seas off Somalia. Now there is a surge: so far this year, there have been more than 60, nearly 30 per cent of the 198 pirate attacks in the world reported so far.
The takings make it worthwhile. This year Somali pirates are expected to rake in a cool $50 million. That prize is simply too tempting in a country that has been at war and without an effective national government for nearly 20 years.
The Ethiopian-backed government installed after Addis Ababa helped rout the Islamic Courts Union has failed to take control because it has been discredited as a puppet regime. The African Union peacekeeping force is overwhelmed.
With more Somalis being killed in continued fighting, falling into hunger, and wasting away in squalid camps, the people are being driven to ever-greater desperation. Without a functioning economy, and with most people unable to find work, it looks like piracy is becoming the main source of livelihood for some Somalis.
While the pirates are largely criminals, before long an honest Somali husband looking to put food on his family's table will go out in a boat looking for a ship to hijack, in much the same way a law-abiding farmer sets out in the morning to till his land. Piracy could soon no longer be piracy, but just another day at the office.
The Ukrainian ship looks likely to be attacked by a multinational force, and so the pirates will this time miss out on the hefty ransom they are demanding. But that will be the end of just one episode. The pirates have other options. They can put up 'roadblocks' in the sea lanes by planting mines, and render the Gulf of Aden, and therefore the Suez Canal and upper swathes of the Indian Ocean, impassable to a great many more ships than they could possibly have hijacked.
If not that, given that Somalia is a failed state, militants can get hold long-range weapons that will enable them to take out ships from the safety of hideouts on land. Given the fertile imagination of the Somalis, they might come up with something more deadly than these possibilities. In the end, the pirates will still have to be bribed - with more than the hijackers ask for today -- to stop wreaking havoc on shipping.
The solution to piracy on the seas off Somalia, therefore, is not on the high waters. It's on shore, inside Somalia. The Somalia conflict needs to be settled, and that must involve Ethiopian forces leaving. As long as they are in Somalia, they feed nationalist resentment on which extremists thrive, and thus ensure the fighting will continue. If the Ethiopians leave, the transitional government will, obviously, collapse and the Islamists will take power again. The Islamists were the only force that managed to restore some order in Somalia, their alleged support for international terrorists and extreme methods (lopping off the limbs of chicken thieves, stoning adulterers) notwithstanding. Somalia, therefore, needs the Islamists. If the Islamists put themselves to it, they can stamp out piracy, and direct the energies of the people to making a living off the waters because the country will be stable enough.
The ICU are not fools. If they realise that the price of their keeping power is that they must not allow Somalia to turn into a nursery for deadly jihadists, they will clamp down on them. The enlightened self-interest of the East Africans countries hit by Somali piracy demands the only possible solution: Give Mogadishu back to the mullahs.