Piracy Pays

On The Lawless East African Coast, Piracy Is The
Only Business That Pays -- The Guardian

The stand-off with US warships could make Somalia's well organised criminals even more dangerous.

A tiny port of blocky, single-storey, windowless houses built of stone and adobe, Eyl sits beneath the cliffs of a flat-topped and arid mesa. Its dirt roads - little more than paths - are scattered with rocks and goats wander through. Welcome to the pirate capital of the Horn of Africa.

Yesterday, just off this lawless coastline, six American warships were circling the hijacked Ukrainian freighter the MV Faina, laden with a cargo of 33 tanks, small arms and ammunition and bound for southern Sudan until it was seized and a $20m ransom demanded. One of the pirates, Sugule Ali, warned last week that they would fight any attempt to re-take the ship until the last of them was dead. Suddenly, the attention of the world is focused on this forsaken corner of the world, where piracy and extortion have become a way of life.

The drama in the Gulf of Aden is the latest and most dramatic of 50 serious attacks on ships in this region in the past year. And in the dusty little fishing ports and towns that dot the coastline, an entire economy has been privatised by the overlapping criminal enterprises whose business is the smuggling of weapons and people, obtaining 'taxes' and protection fees from the foreign fishing boats that ply Somalia's waters, and preying on the yachts and cargo vessels that sail off its coast.

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My Comment: Hmmmm ..... maybe I should become a pirate also .... the pay seems to be good.