While India is augmenting the security of the Lakshadweep islands, implementation of the coastal security scheme on the ground has been slow.

In its efforts to check the piracy menace, Japan deployed two Maritime Self Defense Force (MSDF) destroyers - Sazanami and Samidare - on March 14, 2009 in the Gulf of Aden, off the coast of Somalia, on a four-month long anti-piracy mission. Japanese law mandates that that the destroyers can only escort Japanese merchant ships through this piracy-prone area without the authority to use weapons. 2,595 Japan-linked commercial ships have already registered their requests to be escorted.

Call it China’s new military diplomacy or emerging naval strategy. A Chinese naval fleet arrived in the Gulf of Aden off the Somalian coast on January 6, 2009 to carry out the first escort mission against pirates. On February 18, 2009, in an efficient display of its growing naval capabilities, the fleet completed its twenty first mission (the largest held so far in the series) of escorting merchant ships in this region.

Since 2005, the ‘centre of gravity’ of Asian piracy has clearly shifted westwards from Southeast Asia to the western Indian Ocean. The Somalia-based pirates are on the rampage, capturing vessels of all sizes ranging from yachts to super-tankers and their crew for ransom. This is hardly surprising, considering that the writ of Somalia’s Transitional Government (TFG) does not even run on the entire Somali land territory, and much less on its adjoining seas.