Piracy is about all that’s keeping Somalia, which The Economist calls “the world’s most utterly failed state,” together. It’s become the war-ravaged country’s fastest growing and only industry, and its economic mainstay.
For many months, the Jolly Roger has ruled off Somalia’s 2,000 kilometers of coastline on the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean, defying the navies of a dozen countries, including the United States, in the greatest surge of maritime piracy in modern times.
Now, just as Great Britain sent its Royal Navy into the Caribbean in the 1700s to stamp out piracy, and as the Americans did along North Africa’s Barbary Coast a century later – other nations are sending their navies into the Gulf of Aden to combat a new breed of pirates.
The Gulf is one of the world’s major shipping routes, linking the Mediterranean and the Indian Oceans. Every year, 22,000 vessels pass through this strategic maritime artery between Europe, the Middle East and Asia. That includes vessels carrying nearly one-third of the world’s container cargo, almost half its bulk cargo and 5 percent of its oil supplies.
In the first 10 months of 2008, the pirates attacked at least 61 vessels in these waters, according to the International Maritime Bureau, a branch of the International Chamber of Commerce that monitors piracy worldwide. That marked an alarming surge. In all of 2004 there were only two such attacks off Somalia.
Chatham House, a think-tank in London, estimated in an Oct. 6 report on Somali piracy that the raiders had reaped up to $30 million in ransom payments from those attacks. According to Lloyd’s List, the shipping industry’s newspaper, total ransom will hit at least $50 million by the end of the year.
New heights. The most high-profile attack since the piracy surge began two years ago was the seizure of the Ukrainian-flagged freighter MV Faina on Sept. 25. It was carrying 33 Russian-built T-72 main battle tanks and a large amount of ammunition and other military supplies to Kenya.
The ultimate destination of the tanks remains unclear, but there are deep suspicions that Kenya was to pass them on to the government in neighboring Sudan, which is under a UN arms embargo. This has complicated negotiations with the pirates, who initially demanded a $35 million ransom (later reduced to $20 million) for the ship, its 20-man crew and the cargo.
There are an estimated 50 pirates aboard the freighter. Three were reported killed in a shootout between one faction that wanted to release the crew and the cargo, and hardliners holding out for a big payoff. A multinational fleet of warships has independently assembled to surround the freighter, but so far has made no move to assault the pirates, largely for fear that the ship’s crew would be massacred.
The Americans want to ensure that the T-72s and the other weapons on the Faina do not fall into the hands of Isla-mist militants linked to al-Qaeda fighting Somalia’s beleaguered and impoverished government in Mogadishu.

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