BEIRUT: Somali pirates preying on shipping in the Gulf of Aden have struck most often off the coast of Yemen, an unstable, impoverished Arab state that has few resources to tackle the maritime scourge.

Ships often take sea lanes near Yemen to avoid proximity to pirate lairs in lawless Somalia or its breakaway Somaliland and Puntland regions, but there is no sign of Yemeni involvement in the attacks, diplomats in Sanaa and some analysts say.

They do not exclude links between Somali pirates and some of the several hundred thousand Somali refugees and migrants in Yemen, but cannot confirm theories that pirates have forged ties with criminal networks there during years of people-smuggling.

Many analysts, however, regard Yemen's own chronic problems as a major potential threat to order in the Horn of Africa.

“Future instability in Yemen could expand a lawless zone stretching from northern Kenya, through Somalia and the Gulf of Aden, to Saudi Arabia,” concluded researcher Ginny Hill in a paper issued by London's Chatham House think-tank on Wednesday.A European diplomat in Sanaa said the Yemeni government had grave concerns about maritime insecurity, in part because of the risk that it could damage efforts to attract foreign investment.

These include offshore oil exploration and a liquefied natural gas terminal due to operate next year, both seen as vital to counter declining oil output. Oil now accounts for 90 per cent of export earnings and 75 per cent of state revenue.

Despite Western training and assistance, Yemen's tiny coastguard and navy is ill-equipped to patrol its 1,906 km coastline, even against the crammed boatloads of Somali refugees smuggled to its shores every year.

“At the last count, the Yemeni navy had 15 ships, nine of which were operational. Only two have deepwater capacity,” said another Sanaa-based diplomat. “Yemen lacks the ability to really police the deep water in the Gulf of Aden area.”

Pirates operating across ocean expanses have defied the foreign navies trying to stop them – they showed their reach last week by seizing a Saudi supertanker with a $100 million oil cargo 450 nautical miles southeast of Mombasa, Kenya.

A naval force with NATO and European Union components guards a shipping corridor in the Gulf of Aden. US, French and Russian warships are also deployed off Somalia.

Somali Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein told Reuters on Wednesday naval patrols alone could not stamp out pirates whom he linked to unidentified “criminal networks” beyond Somalia.

Such networks operate out of the United Arab Emirates, not Yemen, said Michael Weinstein, a Somalia expert and professor of political science at Purdue University in the United States.

“The major business interests abetting and controlling the piracy to a great extent are based in the UAE,” Weinstein said, describing them as diaspora Somali entrepreneurs without known links to political or militant Islamist groups.

He said the pirate gangs were based mostly in Puntland and attributed the spike in attacks to a collapse of authority in the region, which claimed autonomy from Somalia in 1998.

“The Puntland regime, which had been seen as relatively stable, has basically crumbled,” he said. “The administration there is honeycombed with officials with links to the pirates.”

The piracy gangs, he added, were mostly from the Darod clan and were cooperating across sub-clan conflict lines, rather than following “the normal Somali model of internecine strife”.

For Yemen, the main impact of Somalia's troubles so far has been the flood of refugees escaping chaos, war and insecurity.

About 32,000 survived the perilous sea crossing in the first 10 months of this year, according to the UN refugee agency (UNHCR). At least 230 people had died and 365 were missing.

It is a measure of their desperation that they take such risks to reach Yemen, grappling with 27 per cent inflation, 40 per cent unemployment and 46 per cent child malnutrition.

“Yemen's collapse has been predicted for years but the country has muddled through,” Hill wrote for Chatham House.

“However, Yemen's window of opportunity to shape its own future and create a working post-oil economy is narrowing as oil production falls closer to consumption levels.”

“State failure” in Yemen would dim peace prospects in Somalia and endanger security across the region.

“Piracy, smuggling and violent jihad would flourish, with implications for the security of shipping routes and the transit of oil through the Suez Canal,” Hill wrote.—Reuters