Somali pirate

Piracy off the coast of Somalia has been a threat to international shipping since the second phase of the Somali Civil War, around 2000, when foreign ships exploited the absence of an effective national coast guard by invading the fishing grounds, and also dumping illegal waste that would further diminish the local catch.

Fishing communities responded by forming armed groups to deter the invaders by hijacking commercial vessels. But this grew into a lucrative trade, with large ransom payments, and financial gain (piracy) was clearly the main motive.

International organizations began to express concern over the new piracy on account of its high cost to global trade and the incentive to profiteer by insurance companies and others. The Somali government has been active in policing the area, though some believe that it wants to collaborate with the pirates as a bulwark against Islamist insurgents. An anti-piracy coalition known as Combined Task Force 150 established a Maritime Security Patrol Area in the Gulf of Aden, aided by India and Russia. By 2010, these patrols were paying off, with a steady drop in the number of incidents. As of April 2017, there were no major vessels or hostages remaining in pirate captivity.

In the early 1980s, prior to the outbreak of the civil war in Somalia, the Somali Ministry of Fisheries and the Coastal Development Agency (CDA) launched a development programme focusing on the establishment of agricultural and fishery cooperatives for artisanal fishermen. It also received significant foreign investment funds for various fishery development projects, as the Somali fishing industry was considered to have a lot of potential owing to its unexploited marine stocks. The government at this time permitted foreign fishing through official licensing or joint venture agreements, forming two such partnerships in the Iraqi-Somali Siadco and Italian-Somali Somital ventures.

After the collapse of the central government in the ensuing civil war, the Somali Navy disbanded. With Somali territorial waters undefended, foreign fishing trawlers began illegally fishing on the Somali seaboard and ships from big companies started dumping waste off the coast of Somalia. This led to the erosion of the . Local fishermen subsequently started to band together to protect their resources. After seeing the profitability of ransom payments, some financiers and former militiamen later began to fund pirate activities, splitting the profits evenly with the pirates. In most of the hijackings, the pirates have not harmed their prisoners.

Combined Task Force 150, a multinational coalition task force, subsequently took on the role of fighting piracy off the coast of Somalia by establishing a Maritime Security Patrol Area (MSPA) within the Gulf of Aden. However, many foreign naval vessels chasing pirates were forced to break off when the pirates entered Somali territorial waters. To address this, in June 2008, following a letter from the Somalian Transitional Federal Government (TFG) to the President of the UN Security Council requesting assistance for the TFG's efforts to tackle acts of piracy off the coast of Somalia, the UN Security Council unanimously passed a declaration authorizing nations that have the consent of the Transitional Federal Government to enter Somali territorial waters to deal with pirates. On the advice of lawyers, the Royal Navy and other international naval forces have often released suspected pirates that they have captured because, although the men are frequently armed, they have not been caught engaging in acts of piracy and have thus not technically committed a crime.

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Wikipedia