HARGEISA, 9 December 2009 (Somalilandpress) – Piracy along the Somali coast has seen an unprecedented increase in the last year. According to the BBC So far, there have been 147 incidents in the waters off the Somali coast and in the Gulf of Aden, compared with 63 for the same period last year. A total of 533 crew members have been taken hostage. Furthermore, according to the BBC again, the IMB (The International Maritime Bureau) also says the pirates appear to have “extended their reach, threatening not only the Gulf of Aden and east coast of Somalia, but also the southern region of the Red Sea, the Bab el Mandab Straits and the East Coast of Oman”.
The pirate’s are becoming bolder with every ransom paid to them and their attacks have now escalated into kidnapping and demanding ransoms from individuals as well as multinational vessels. At present an international search is under way for a British couple Paul and Rachel Chandler who were captured by Somali Pirates whilst in their yacht heading to Tanzania from the Seychelles. The combination of the Chandlers ordeal, their desperate appeal for help and the greed of the Somali pirates has firmly placed Somali piracy in the international media spotlight.
Whilst the Pirates and their financial backers may be enjoying the limelight and comfortably living off their ill gotten gains, the majority of the worlds businesses are counting the painful cost of it all. As a result of the pirate attacks, many ships have changed routes and those that have been brave enough to continue using the pirate infested routes through the Gulf of Aden have been forced to pay higher insurance premiums in order to receive basic insurance cover. This has inevitably caused an international rift between insurers and shipping companies who feel that the insurers are using the piracy scare as a method of generating more revenue from what is already a costly and heavily recession hit industry. Since the majority of the worlds consumer goods are transported by sea, the hike in insurance premiums for the shipping companies will be passed on to their clients who will in turn pass it on to their customers. This is already happening in most of the worlds developed economies as the consequences of Somali piracy is been bitterly felt through a rise in food and fuel prices. In addition to this, neighbouring East African Countries such as Kenya where just over a million Refugee Somali nationals live, the proceeds of piracy has lead to a sharp rise in property prices and land costs for ordinary citizens as pirates use their ill gotten gains quickly to buy land and commodities before they are captured.
The pirates have argued unconvincingly that their main motivation comes from a need to protect Somalia’s waters against illegal fishing and dumping of waste from foreign vessels. Whilst this may have been true at first and could have attracted support from international environmental groups such as Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace, it has proven to be a very feeble justification as a result of the extortionate ransom demands made by the pirates. The fact is that most of these pirates are nothing more than common criminals and gangsters who use their knowledge of the sea to make trade difficult for the rest of the world.
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