Quick Study: Pirates!

Even before sacking the U.S.-flagged Maersk, high-seas thieves had been plenty busy hijacking loaded ships in sparsely patrolled waters. Here, the Reader's Digest Version of why this centuries-old scourge is back—and its human and financial toll.

By Mark Lasswell

From Reader's Digest

• Crisis state
  Piracy is down in many previously risky seas. Why are the waters off Somalia teeming with it? "It's hard to find a better pirate base than Somalia," says Alex Duperouzel of Background Asia Risk Solutions, which provides armed escorts for merchant ships. In a state that combines desperate poverty and a nearby oceanic superhighway of international commerce, hijackers are local heroes, spreading their loot around hungry villages and enriching their clans. According to one report, a typical million-dollar ransom is divvied up like this: The pirates keep $300,000, with the first-to-board-the-boat getting a double share. The rest of the money goes to repay financial backers, reward land-based accomplices, sow goodwill locally—and sometimes fund the acquisition of a second or third wife. While some say piracy will disappear when order comes to Somalia itself, the United States is hesitant to land troops in this essentially lawless nation, which hasn't had a central government for the past 18 years.



• Ransoms
  Before the April hijacking of the Maersk Alabama ended with Navy SEAL snipers picking off three pirates after a five-day standoff, hostages typically took a trip to shore. There the outlaws awaited an almost guaranteed ransom payment. Private shipping companies find about $1 million a ship a smaller price to pay than the loss of crew and cargo and quietly shelled out as much as $150 million in ransoms last year—something many argue just keeps pirates coming back for more.



• Who pays
  Estimates of piracy's impact on world trade range from $1 billion to $16 billion annually. Some ships have begun taking the long route, around Africa's Cape of Good Hope (cost: up to $500,000 a sail), to avoid the Gulf of Aden, off Somalia. Since everything from refrigerators to oil is shipped through this channel on the way to the Suez Canal, the rising costs of transport and insurance will be passed on to us.



• The pirate POV
  "We don't consider ourselves sea bandits. We consider sea bandits those who illegally fish and dump in our seas," said a "pirate spokesman" when the Ukrainian cargo ship Faina was hijacked in September. In the aftermath of the Maersk rescue, a harsher tone quickly emerged: "We will hunt down American citizens traveling our waters."

Pirate attacks are way up this year—nearly double what they were at this point in 2008. The jump is due almost entirely to activity off Somalia (although waters off Peru also showed an increase). Assaults are down near Bangladesh and Indonesia, which had previously been danger zones.

April 8, around 5:30 a.m., Maersk Alabama is seized by pirates about 300 miles off coast of Somalia.

• 102 attacks in 2009 so far


• 9 vessels now held by pirates


• 17 crew members from 36 countries now in captivity

• You catch a pirate—now what?
  Hanging pirates from the yardarm is so 18th-century. The modern freebooter often benefits from the absence of any controlling legal authority on the high seas. In September, the Danish navy nabbed ten pirates in the Gulf of Aden and held them for six days; it turned out that Danish law doesn't allow their prosecution in Denmark, so the men were put back ashore in Somalia. The government of Kenya agreed recently to accept Somali pirates for prosecution, but human rights groups have complained that the country's dubious judicial system can't be relied on for fair trials. Experts say that while a trial in New York for the surviving piratefrom the Maersk hijacking—whom Defense Secretary Robert Gates called an "untrained teenager"—is constitutional, it's uncharted legal territory. It's also the first such case in more than a century.



• Antipiracy 101
  Shippers have resisted arming their crews, which would deny them port in some nations. They also say the likelihood of casualties increases when guns come out—especially when the pirates arrive armed with rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) and ships carry explosive chemicals. Until recently, ships' defenses had been limited largely to things like water or fire hoses, electrified fences, greased railings, and evasive maneuvers. Post-Maersk, the U.S. military is urging arms for crews. "It's tough to be on the end of a water hose if the other guy is on the end of an RPG," quipped Gen. David Petraeus in April.



• Cast a wide net
  After a spike in pirate attacks in the Gulf of Aden in the fall, 18 countries contributed warships to an armada to police the region. Incidents tapered off, but the Gulf of Aden is 920 by 300 miles, and the pirates are adaptive: "We can't be everywhere at once," says Lt. Nathan Christensen, a U.S. Navy spokesman. "This is basically a case of pirates going where the cops aren't." The 20-plus warships now deployed in the Gulf of Aden are a fraction of what would be needed to guard thousands of commercial ships, sources say.



• Gang up on them
  Secretary of State Clinton has urged international cooperation in stopping pirates. Writing in the New York Times, Wayne Long, former UN chief security officer in Somalia, offered a plan: Cut off UN aid to the Somali clan or region in which hostages are being held. Long used this approach as early as 2000 to negotiate the return of pirate captives. In every instance, there was a release without hostages harmed or ransom paid.

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