Pirate, as a word, has been not received much attention from this society for long time, but now that the big vessels and ships are hijacked and the crews aboard are killed for getting ransom constantly occurred, which greatly shaked our world. So, a pirate’s problem has to have also been reviewed, Somali and The Gulf of Aden breeding the pirates are becoming more prevailed in a world.

“Guilty born of poverty” quoted a Chinese idiom, since chaos and poverty are kept in Somali, which have caused a vast difficulty in getting profits or incomes through normal industries however the pirates can bring great deal of ransom from owner of ship or some targeted country. On other hand, actually, a more complicated and bigger network of guilty always backs these sea robbers, these commanders behind the curtain use a ransom by robbing ships to commit other guilties such as smuggling drugs, weapons and organizing illegal immigrants.

Troubled situation in Somali has become a soil of nourishing sea robbers. Since Mohamed Siad Barre’s regime had been toppled in January 1991, this country in corner of Africa thoroughly plunged into a disorder of non-government. All parts of this country were separated by various armed parties, races or tribes, whom fired across each other. Many civilians flocked abroad, Mogadishu, a capital of Somali, its two in three population had fled out. Such a troubled situation created a surviving space for the pirates. However, these “upstarts” who depended on robbing and blackmail never needed to worry any prison dangers, because of no law there.

 

Let’s eye on pirates rampancy in The Gulf of Aden, locating between Indian Ocean and Red Sea, also a very important seaway linking Indian Ocean to Mediterranean Sea and Atlantic Ocean. It is always one of the busiest seawaters linking Asia and Europe. Annually, 4% of all oil tanks in a world pass by the Gulf of Aden, and there are approximately 18000 vessels to go through Suez Cannel each year, most of which do need to go by The Gulf of Aden.

No sea transportation, no prosperity of economy and bloom of trade, but outrageous activities of pirates have severely impacted maritime trade and security.

According to International Maritime Bureau’s statistics, during January to October 2008, it had received 63 Somali pirates’ attacking cases. But there were 31 similar cases in 2007, only 4 cases in 2004. Further, the pirates easily requested more than one million dollars’ ransom, payment of all ransom has reached more than 300 millions dollars in 2008, depending on advanced arms, amount of cases and ransom have been increasingly growing; amount of the hostages held by the pirates has also been increasingly up. It may be reasonable that many traveling vessels consumed willingly more fuels and time than before to make the round of Cape of Good Hope in southern Africa in order to ensure safe of lifes and goods and avoid expensive ransom, which heavily burdened trade costs. Financial tsunami and pirates issues surely further deteriorate the present’s fragile trade business.

Written by Zhu Qi
Jan-15-2009
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