Word: somali
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...months ago, when Somali pirates captured a Ukrainian vessel carrying 33 battle tanks, the temptation may have been to laugh them off as a bunch of ragtag local gunmen who had improbably gotten lucky. But the pirates of Somalia proved they have more than dumb luck going for them last Saturday, when they seized the Saudi supertanker MV Sirius Star and its cargo of more than $100 million worth of crude oil. This occurred despite the attention of navies from the U.S., NATO and others that were patrolling the area to protect shipping. (The Ukrainian vessel, MV Faina, remains...
...shipping in the area in response to the recent uptick in attacks. According to the International Maritime Board, there have been some 80 pirate attacks off Somalia's coast this year. More than half of those were repelled, but the remainder have made for a highly lucrative year for Somali piracy...
...piracy has grown, so have the ambitions of the pirates, who have begun to home in on tankers and bigger cargo vessels in the hopes of fetching larger ransom payments. Usually, a Somali pirate attack involves two or three speedboats, each carrying up to five armed men, but NATO officials say the number of boats involved is going up, suggesting that the pirates are getting more men and equipment...
...presence in the region is helping deter and disrupt criminal attacks off the Somali coast, but the situation with the Sirius Star clearly indicates the pirates' ability to adapt their tactics and methods of attack," Vice Admiral Bill Gortney, commander of the U.S. Navy's Combined Maritime Forces, said in a statement earlier this week. Gortney urged shipping companies to take greater care to protect themselves, noting that 10 of the last 15 ships to be attacked in the Gulf of Aden were traveling outside a corridor recommended by the International Maritime Organization and carried no onboard security. (See TIME...
...eight men arrested are likely to be quickly replaced by hundreds of other pirates - not to mention the thousands desperate to join their ranks and get a piece of the lucrative action. The pirates have thrived in a situation of negligible government authority on land, where the Somali state barely exists. And they are further emboldened by the jurisdictional difficulty of figuring out where to put arrested pirate suspects on trial. Strict rules of engagement also prevent foreign navies from attacking suspected pirate vessels unless they are caught carrying out a raid. That means that patrol boats can rarely interdict...