The pirates are definitely winning the battle of the seas. Pirate attacks continue. The piracy trade continues to flourish. Piracy is a crime. Criminality has its root cause in other socioeconomic conditions. Pirates are the same thieves, kidnappers, hijackers, and marauders. Only, their crime scene happens to be the sea. This is the reason why piracy should be addressed as a crime with deep roots in social degradation.
The Gulf of Aden and farther off the coast of Africa are perfect hunting grounds for pirates mainly because they take their base in Somalia, a failed state with hardly a rule of law. The country is also being overrun by radical Islamists who want to topple Western business. For Somalis, coddling pirates that handicap Western companies may perhaps be deemed patriotic.
But the biggest reason that drives pirates to do what they do is poverty. The lure of piracy is stronger than ever, in spite of the international attention given the crime nowadays. Poor people lured into criminality will face all odds to alleviate their hunger and the general social malaise they are in, oblivious to the fact that they, themselves, add to the malaise.
There, too, is the seeming ease to conduct a piracy. These pirates know the seas too well. It only takes a few pirates to take a huge ship. And, first and foremost, owners of hijacked vessels continue to pay ransoms. After all, what’s $3 million or $10 million that the pirates ask as ransom when the cargo is worth more than tenfold.
All the above reasons, mixed together at the right time, give a perfect recipe for the triumph of piracy.
Via TIME
