The International Chamber of Commerce has a live map of piracy reports (http://www.icc-ccs.org/index.php?option=com_fabrik&view=visualization&controller=visualization.googlemap&Itemid=219). Looking over the data there, it appears that a majority of the attacks in the Gulf of Aden are far, far closer to the coast of Yemen than Somalia. Similarly, most of the ones along Somalia’s eastern coast are far beyond anyone’s reasonable definition of territorial waters. Accordingly, I’m not buying the theory that they are being done “as a form of national defence of the country’s territorial waters.”

I suspect the reason piracy is popular in Somalia – if it is – is not because of a sense of national outrage at what’s being done to their coastal waters; it’s because it pays and little else does in that part of the world. The economy of Somalia is no better off than its government and even assuming the vast majority of each ransom payment goes into the pockets of a few small number of warlords and criminals, a little still trickles down to the general population. Not much else does even that.

One can debate whose fault it is that Somalia collapsed or whether other nations should have – or could have – intervened to help the people there. I don’t accept, though, that either failing justifies piracy or that the primary motivation of these individuals is defense of their homelands. These are not the 21st century equivalents of John Paul Jones attacking British ships off the coast of Ireland.

Austin