"We prefer hijacking ships to being on land because that way we can feed ourselves," pirate Abdulahi Hasan Afdhub said by satellite telephone from a hijacked Taiwanese ship in Somali waters.
"There's no other work than piracy for us in this time of anarchy in Somalia. The money we get is the only way we can survive," he said.
The Somali pirate took control, along with a group of armed hijackers, of the Taiwanese fishing vessel in the middle of last month off the Somali coast and on June 2 they killed one crew member out of frustration with failed ransom negotiations.
They have threatened to kill more crew members if a ransom is not paid soon.
The ship is one of five held by Somali pirates who are back in action, attacking with speedboats mounted with machine guns, on a scale unseen for more than a year.
Attacks all but disappeared during six months of strict Islamist rule at the end of last year, but now -- after Ethiopian-Somali troops drove out the Islamist Courts Union at the start of the year -- the pirates are back with a vengeance.
This year has so far seen at least 10 attacks and many attempted attacks off Somalia's 3,700km of unpatroled coastline, the same amount as during the whole of last year.
But there is little incentive for the pirates to stop.
"It's very difficult to release a vessel without a ransom," said Andrew Mwangura, who heads the Kenyan office of the Seafarers Assistance Program.
Behind-the-scenes negotiations lead to ransoms ranging from a minimum of US$25,000 for an empty boat or US$400,000 for a fishing vessel with a catch on board to up to US$1 million or US$2 million.
"The highest amount ever paid was US$2.5 million for a ship held for four months earlier this year," Mwangura said, declining to give further details.
Pirates like Afdhub may earn enough to eat but do not see more than a tiny fraction of the spoils, which also include profits from stolen cargo sold on to Somalis.
Five leaders are said to control all the piracy operations along the Somali coastline and to pocket most of the ransom money, handing a tiny proportion to pirates, who can be as young as 14 years old.
Meanwhile, ordinary Somalis, suffering from 16 years of civil unrest since the ouster of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre, including some of the deadliest fighting in the capital's history in recent months, said the pirates are dealing them a further blow.
"The prices of commodities are affected by increasing insurance and protection expenses. In the end, the poor Somalis are the main victims of the pirates," said Abdinasir Roble Abdi, a food store owner in Mogadishu.
The UN food agency pressed last month for urgent action to end Somali piracy, after a World Food Program (WFP) chartered freighter was attacked and a guard on board killed after it had delivered aid to Somalia.
"This attack underscores the growing problem of piracy off Somalia which, if unresolved, will sever the main artery of food assistance to the country," WFP chief Josette Sheeran said in a statement.
In 2005, a similar upsurge of piracy in Somali waters, including the hijacking of two WFP-chartered vessels, forced the agency to suspend deliveries of food assistance by sea to Somalia for weeks.
Port officials in Mogadishu said they had armed their workers to deal with the rising attacks.
"We are no longer confined to giving normal port services," said Mogadishu port director Abdi Jinow Alasow. "We have tasked an armed force to fight piracy."
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
CONFIDENT ON DEAL: ‘Ukraine wants a seat at the table, but wouldn’t the people of Ukraine have a say? It’s been a long time since an election, the US president said US President Donald Trump on Tuesday criticized Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and added that he was more confident of a deal to end the war after US-Russia talks. Trump increased pressure on Zelenskiy to hold elections and chided him for complaining about being frozen out of talks in Saudi Arabia. The US president also suggested that he could meet Russian President Vladimir Putin before the end of the month as Washington overhauls its stance toward Russia. “I’m very disappointed, I hear that they’re upset about not having a seat,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida when asked about the Ukrainian
RSS