Pirates of the Sea

Did anyone really expect to have real pirates attacking ships after the Pirates of the Caribbean movies? Somali pirates attacked the Maersk Alabama on Wednesday for the second time in seven months and were thwarted by private guards on board the U.S.-flagged ship who fired off guns and a high-decibel noise device.


Pirates hijacked the Maersk Alabama last April and took ship captain Richard Phillips hostage, holding him at gunpoint in a lifeboat for five days. Navy SEAL sharpshooters freed Phillips while killing three pirates in a daring nighttime attack.

Four suspected pirates in a skiff attacked the ship again on Wednesday around 6:30 a.m. local time, firing on the ship with automatic weapons from about 300 yards away, a statement from the U.S. Fifth Fleet in Bahrain said.

An on-board security team repelled the attack by using evasive maneuvers, small-arms fire and a Long Range Acoustic Device, which can beam earsplitting alarm tones, the fleet said.

Pirates have greatly increased their attacks in recent weeks after seasonal rains subsided. On Tuesday, a self-proclaimed pirate said that Somali hijackers had been paid $3.3 million for the release of 36 crew members from a Spanish vessel held for more than six weeks — a clear demonstration of how lucrative the trade can be for impoverished Somalis.

Phillips told the AP last month from his farmhouse in Vermont that he was contemplating retiring from sea life after his ordeal. He's been given a book deal and a movie could be in the works.

Phillips was hailed as a hero for helping his crew thwart April's hijacking before he was taken hostage, but he says he never volunteered, as crew members and his family reported at the time. He says he was already a hostage when he struck a deal with the pirates — trading him for their leader, who was taken by the Maersk Alabama's crew.

Today's pirates are mainly fighters for Somalia's many warlord factions, who have fought each other for control of the country since the collapse of the Siad Barre government in 1991.

Their motives? A mixture of entrepreneurialism and survival, says Iqbal Jhazbhay, a Somali expert at the University of South Africa in Tshwane, as Pretoria is now called.

"From the evidence so far, these primarily appear to be fighters looking for predatory opportunities," says Mr. Jhazbhay. They operated "roadblocks in the past, which were fleecing people as a form of taxation. Now they've seen the opportunities on the high seas."

Initially, one of the main motives for taking to the seas – working first with local fishermen, and later buying boats and weapons with the proceeds of every ship they captured – was "pure survival," says Jhazbhay, explaining that armed extortion is one of the few opportunities to make a living in lawless Somalia.

"It's spiked more recently because of a spike in food prices," he says.

Now it has become a highly profitable, sophisticated criminal enterprise hauling in millions of dollars in ransom payments.





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