A couple of months back, I spoke at length with David Axe who is a freelance reporter who has a blog at both WIRED and his own at warisboring.com.  David has huge balls and seeks out the world's most dangerous locations and reports back from there.  I believe he might be travelling through Afghanistan right now.

During the latter half of last year he decided to join a Kenyan ship and explore the world of Somali pirates.  I had a lengthy conversation with him which you can check out here. 

David described how the Somali pirates have evolved to become a cedible threat to high seas commercse off the Horn of Africa.  The economy collapsed in Somalia along with social order.  Agricultural and subsistence economies also collapsed as social order disappeared in many parts of the country.  Young men went from agrarian and fishing pursuits to piracy.  Many pirates early on were fighting for territorial fishing rights with each other as compeitition increased and reliance on the sea for food grew.  These skills evolved slowly over the past decade to  include complex operational capabilities involving mother ships and skiffs.  

These pirates have become particularly harmful to the emerging economies of the East African coast such as Kenya which has now been hurt by both the pirates and the overal global financial collapse.  Trade with Kenya has been significantly impacted as has trade with many other countries in the region at precisely the wrong time.   The Kenyans don't have a blue water Navy and don't have the reach to keep the sea lanes open and operating safely.  East Africa relies on a variety of navies that have a vested interest in the region which include the Indian, Chinese, European, and US navies.

In contrast to their more ruthless Indonesian straits pirate cousins, the Somali pirates do not typically kill the crews of the ships they hijack.  Instead, they find that it's more profitable to ransom these folks off, and many countries in the Gulf are willing to pay to avoid trouble.  In addition, there aren't many strong governments that prosecute the pirates which is in stark contrast to Chinese enforcement and dispensation of death penalties for pirates who are caught.  For that reason, the Asian pirates take the operating philosophy of "dead men don't talk."  As enforcement off the Horn of Africa increases, the hostage taking practice may morph into something more violent.

In striking similarity to the Taliban in Afghanistan; most of the pirates involved are young men who get a sort of rock star reputation by being involed in the pirate trade.  They also get access to all the fun things in life such as women and booze which in turn attracts even more underemployed Somali youth to piracy.  An amusing anecdote involves Somali pirates who had just received a multi-million dollar cash rasom returning to shore.  In their rush to celebrate, they began drinking and cruising too fast and capasized...lossing most all of the money and some their lives.  Ah, the folly of youth.

Ironically, the further rise of piracy off the Horn of Africa could have been avoided.  In the cauldron of Somali instability, an Islamic Judicial Council was emerging that was particularly hard on pirates during the early to mid part of this decade.  This early stage government was rising amid the chaos in a very similar fashion to the way the Taliban did in the chaotic context of post-Soviet Afghanistan.  The Bush administration did not want to see this happen.  Looking through fairly myopic lenses, they assumed this group would take the same path as the Taliban though there were many notable differences.  The Islanic Judicial Council was clamping down on pirates effectively as it had declared piracy un-Islamic.  But because they looked too similar to the Taliban, the Bush administration encouraged Ethiopia to invade Somalia and take out the Council.  Ethiopia had a misadventure in Somalia similar to the US experience in Iraq.  Ethiopia was seeking a warm water port after Djibouti had broken away from the country taking away access to the sea.  As Ethiopia started to lose control, lawlessness returned and so did piracy...and it began to rapidly evolved to take the form we see today.

We get a lot of sporadic stories of high seas chases and scense of high seas naval face offs from the traditional press, but we don't get a lot of context.  That's why I'm glad that folks like David are around.

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