If I were a Somali I would thank Allah for the pirates. For more than 20 years the world has stood by while successive civil wars destroyed the country, killing hundreds of thousands of people by bullets, disease and starvation and reducing what was once a prosperous land to a war zone. But the seizure of more than 200 ships by kids with guns in small craft has changed all that. Britain, for whom shipping and trade around the Red Sea and the Gulf are vital national interests, has decided to take action.

Pirates, the government has realised, cannot be stopped as long as their land bases are not ruled by a government. But on land the government is under attack from Islamic fundamentalists who are recruiting and training terrorists. So a political solution must now be found for Somalia. So declared William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, clad in flack jacket and helmet, in Mogadishu last Thursday. The search will begin at a conference in London on February 23rd. At last.

And what a conference it will be. Some 40 heads of government have been invited to Lancaster House. This was where traditionally former British territories negotiated their independence, but in a curious irony of history, this conference will instead discuss the take-over of Somalia. At least that is what the Italians, the former rulers of southern Somalia, want.

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