Somalia News: Pirate hijacking continues
Calm waters may signal it’s time for Somali pirates to come out again. Here, Somali children play in the water near the port of Mogadishu on the Indian Ocean coast along Hamarweyne district, in Mogadishu, Somalia November, 8, 2011.
NAIROBI, Kenya — Piracy emanating from the coast of Somalia is not going away.
News of hijackings ebbs and flows with the monsoon seasons.
The monsoons make the seas too rough for pirate skiffs to navigate for months at a time, but when the storms stop and the waters calm the pirates come out again. Every year. Without fail.
Nobody yet has a solution to the problem. Some countries now permit armed private security guards on vessels flying their flag and many nations have contributed to the three international naval fleets that patrol the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean, but this deals with symptoms not causes.
Worth looking out for is this new research from which sets out to track the spending of pirates' ill-gotten gains using satellite imagery. The study will be released on January 12 by the Royal Institute for International Affairs in London.