Over the past few years, piracy has exploded off the coast of Somalia. The Somali pirates congregate on a mother ship and then divide into smaller groups that sail out on tiny skiffs. Using potent weapons like AK-47's and hand-propelled grenades, the Somali pirates then attack civilian ships carrying cargo through the Gulf of Aden, toward South Africa or Asia. Once they have overtaken the victim vessel, pirates typically hijack the vessel's cargo and crewmembers. The former is often resold to willing buyers (some of which include terrorist organizations like Al Qaeda). The latter are taken to the Somali shore and kept hostage, until multi-million dollar ransoms are paid by either the hostages' home country or the ship owners themselves. In most instances, crew members have been released unharmed, but those held hostage by the Somali pirates describe a horrific ordeal, and specify that they were held at gun point during most of their captivity. The pirates themselves routinely go unpunished: once they release the hostages, they simply return to their ships to plan yet another lucrative capture. The reasons for such a high success rate for the Somali pirates are relatively simple. First, the Somali pirates operate for the most part in the Gulf of Aden, a narrow strait of water where thousands of ships sail every year; thus, the number of potential victim vessels is higher in these waters than elsewhere. Second, because these pirates operate in such a narrow body of water, they are able to haul captured cargo and victims quickly and easily onto the Somali mainland. Thus, pirates do not have to risk capture by sailing for long stretches of time on open seas with the hijacked cargo and crewmembers on their own ships, which would be the case if they operated elsewhere. Third, Somalia is a failed state with no central government and no effective police force; thus, pirates are able to operate with impunity from Somali coastal towns. In fact, news accounts confirm that entire towns on the coast of Somalia happily live off the proceeds of piracy. Fourth, piracy is a lucrative business: reports indicate that a single seizure of a ship can earn each individual pirate up to $150,000! In a country like Somalia, where average yearly earnings amount to about $600, this amount seems more than staggering. Finally, piracy in Somalia has been thriving because of a lack of global cooperation in suppressing pirate attacks. Pirates work at a supra-national level: they attack a vessel owned by a company headquartered in country A, which flies the flag of country B and employs crewmembers coming from countries C, D, E, and F. Thus, no particular country's interests are harmed through the pirate attack. Moreover, crewmembers typically come from the developing world, and the major maritime powers like the United States and the United Kingdom have shown relatively little interest in working toward the release of pirate-held non-native hostages. The lack of global cooperation in terms of law enforcement as well as prosecution of the detaine...
