2010 a Record Year for Pirate Hijackings

2010 a Record Year for Pirate Hijackings

www.cbsnews.com

(AP) Pirates took a record 1,181 hostages in 2010 as ship hijackings in waters off Somalia escalated, a global maritime watchdog said Tuesday.

Attackers seized 53 vessels worldwide last year - all but four off the coast of Somalia - according to the International Maritime Bureau's piracy reporting center in Kuala Lumpur.

The number of hostages and vessels taken "are the highest we have ever seen" since the center began monitoring attacks in 1991, its director, Pottengal Mukundan, said in a

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The majority of these attacks happened off the coast of Somalia. I have read that since Somalia doesn't have a government that other nations have been dumping toxic waste into it's waters and these pirates are retaliating as most of it's food comes from the sea.

This could be just propaganda as Somalia seems like it's a out of control place where warlords rule there territories and hijacking seem to be a profitable business for them to engage in.

It was also my understanding that there is a large multi national armada patrolling the water off Somalia and it really makes me wonder why the pirate business is booming?

www.cbsnews.com
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reply to post by LDragonFire


I watched a documentary about this subject not too long ago on PBS... might have been on Frontline, but I cannot recall for sure... Anyway it was about a man in London who is the "go-to" negotiator to deal with Somali pirates. He's a barrister who has connections with the pirates.

His words were quite chilling.

He said that, initially it was all an economic issue. These ships produce Xamount of revenue potential per hour, based upon variables like cargo value, delivery date commitments, etc. If the pirates demands were below X then they were paid quickly and the ships went on their way. He said, if I recall correctly, in the beginning, the pirates were happy with 300 - 500k.

But now the pirates have gotten arrogant and are demanding 20 -50 million per ship. I believe the barrister said he'd just negotiated a deal that paid a handful of pirates 13 million.

His next words were that the pirates are barbaric and uneducated people who have pushed beyond the value of X and that, soon, a time would come where the most economical way of dealing with the pirates would be to hire mercenaries.

So, the piracy issue? A literal case of watching a group of people make themselves expendable.

~Heff

I wanna be a pirate so bad.

anti pirate laser

blind them long before they get near you.

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buy

light goes farther than bullets, and is more accurate.

reply to post by LDragonFire


I understand that the records of the quoted body only go as far back as 1991. While the number of hijackings may be up since then, I can assure you that the figures are still far more favourable than they were in the 1600s. Along the East Coast of America, and the West Coast of Africa much of the Naval power at the time there belonged to the Spanish. Dutch pirate ships captured about 500 Spanish and Portugese ships between 1623 and 1638 in those areas alone, so I can only assume that the number of boats being boarded, cleared of navy personel, and made off with was much higher than that, when taking the entire globe into account.
Now, of course I am not saying that the new figures are any less worrysome for all that, but what I am saying is that its pretty small beer compared with the picture painted by history, and further that although every effort must be made to curb this increase , lest it become an epidemic , one should not allow this new batch of figures to impress themselves to heavily upon the mind either. We are not about to be carried off in the night from our beds by bearded cutlass waving nutcases , drunk on rum nor thier more chronologicaly accurate AK 47 weilding descendants.
What this does mean is that civilian shipping will now have to have far more support from military shipping than it currently gets, and constantly manned naval tracking stations will have to be erected all around the centre of this piracy upsurge , hopefully containing the threat.