Unidentified Warship Captures Somali Pirates

by Finding Dulcinea    September 08, 2008

 Someone has taken a step toward ridding the Somalia coastline of pirates, though it was not immediately clear who. Reuters reports that an “unknown warship” captured 14 alleged pirates and destroyed their ship. Earlier this week, a French yacht and its passengers were hijacked in the area.

Abdulqadir Muse Yusuf, the fisheries minister for Puntland, a semi-autonomous part of Somalia, said Sunday that the warship might be American, but it’s still under investigation. News accounts don’t specify how the captured pirates were delivered to authorities.

According to Reuters, someone who described himself as “the pirates’ servant” said the two hostages taken from the French yacht are “safe and healthy.”

Last month, pirates hijacked Iranian and Japanese ships, part of a string of recent ship hijackings off the Somali coast.

A combination of location, opportunity and motivation has led to a surge in piracy off Somalia. The country has Africa’s longest coastline, approximately 2,000 miles, according to Bloomberg. That coastline is near the Gulf of Aden and Suez Canal, which lead into the Mediterranean Sea, connecting Europe to Africa, the Middle East and Asia. The government has struggled for years with warring clans and has no navy, according to USA Today.Extreme poverty has played a role. Christian Bedford called piracy the country’s biggest industry, and said it started in 1991, when the “last semblance of truly national governance” fell apart. Pirates are part of organized, extensive criminal organizations and earn $10,000 to $30,000 annually in a country where the average person earns $600 in the same period.

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