Somali pirates just had a banner year. Not only have three international naval groups failed to seriously reduce the number of ship hijackings in the Indian Ocean since 2008, the ransoms demanded by Somali negotiators have skyrocketed, and “more people were taken hostage at sea in 2010 than in any year since records began" in 1991, according to an annual report by the International Maritime Bureau. The reason hijackings haven’t slowed is not that naval groups are lazy — in fact they’ve been busy intercepting pirates in dhows and skiffs. But the pirate gangs have responded with a ... Read More
The Pirate Stock Market
December 9, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment
Piracy off Somalia is not just organized crime, as an excellent Reuters report emphasized last week: It's venture capitalism. Pirate entrepreneurs have organized a stock market in Haradheere, Somalia's busiest pirate nest, where local financiers can find promising pirate gangs to underwrite. "Four months ago, during the monsoon rains, we decided to set up this stock exchange," said Mohammed, a "wealthy former pirate" who served as a guide for Reuters correspondent Mohamed Ahmed. "We started with 15 'maritime companies' and now we are hosting 72. Ten of them have so far been successful at ... Read More
A Fishing War Off Somalia?
December 2, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment
When pirates attacked the Maersk Alabama for a second time this year on Nov. 18, a private security team fought them off. The reaction in the American press was instant. "Lesson from foiled pirate attack on the Maersk Alabama?" wrote the Christian Science Monitor. "Fire back." Some observers fell over themselves advising Spain to arm its fishing boats, because a Spanish tuna trawler, the Alakrana, had just been released a day earlier for a reported (and record-breaking) ransom of $3.3 million. The Spanish government had already changed its law in October to allow fishing vessels to carry ... Read More
What Are Those Warships Doing Off Somalia?
November 18, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment
Navies are expensive, and sending warships to Somalia is a hugely inefficient way to fight pirates, considering that the number of successful attacks off the Somali coast this year — 35 by mid-November — is only seven below the total for all of 2008, before NATO and the EU had anti-pirate missions in the region. So why are they there? The short answer is that Western governments don't know what else to do. But the U.S. and Europe also have different self-interested reasons to cruise the Indian Ocean. For most of the European governments involved, the obvious idea is to protect their ... Read More
Sending in the Marines
November 12, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment
NATO, officially, is pleased to have pirates to fight. A mission against sea bandits in the Indian Ocean is not mission creep for the trans-Atlantic alliance, if you talk to its leaders, but a return to origins. "It is a good task for the navies of NATO," Commodore Steve Chick said aboard a frigate last September in the Gulf of Aden. "You only need to look back in history three or four hundred years — this is what some of our navies were formed on, counterpiracy, so it is taking us back to our roots there." Referring to U.S. and European history in the fight against pirates, though, is ... Read More
Autumn Trends in the Pirate War
November 4, 2009 • By • 1 Comment
A new season in Somali piracy has started, after a summer monsoon lull, and like a new season in Paris or Milan, there are new styles to report, new tendencies and trends. The first trend that catches your correspondent's eye is the sheer distance from the Somali mainland where the latest assaults have occurred. The four pirate hijackings since the end of monsoon season have all occurred north of the Seychelles, more than 600 miles from the Somali coast. A shipping industry group called Idarat Maritime Ltd. writes on its blog that the De Xin Hai, a Chinese cargo ship caught Oct. 19, is the ... Read More
The Real Cost of Ransom
October 29, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment
The swarm of pirates buzzing around the so-called Somali Basin has grown since last year even though American and European navies now patrol those waters in force. "This year we've seen more attacks than we did all of last year," said Lt. Nathan Christensen, a U.S. Navy spokesman in Bahrain, comparing all of 2008 with the first eight months of 2009. "So are they more active? Yeah, but they're less successful. ... There may be more events, but their rate of success is less." Europe and the United States rushed military ships to the Indian Ocean late last year after 2008's alarming surge in ... Read More
