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Africa Horn
Party over for Somali pirates
2012-09-27
Today's feel-good story.
The empty beverage bottles and overturned, sand-filled skiffs littering this once-bustling shoreline are signs the heyday of Somali piracy may be over. Most of the prostitutes are gone and the luxury cars repossessed. Pirates while away their hours playing cards or catching lobsters.

"There's nothing to do here these days," said Hassan Abdi, a high school graduate who taught English in a private school before turning to piracy in 2009. "The hopes for a revitalised market are not high."

Armed guards aboard cargo ships and an international naval armada that carries out onshore raids have put a huge dent in piracy and might even be ending the scourge.
Posted by:Steve White

#7  Pirates beware of loan sharks!
Posted by: European Conservative   2012-09-27 20:30  

#6  I'd have put Ebola in pirate villages, and sent in poisoned anti-biotics.

But I'm nice like that.
Posted by: Bright Pebbles   2012-09-27 19:44  

#5  Clearly they weren't going after the feared pirate Roberts.
Posted by: Nimble Spemble   2012-09-27 14:49  

#4  ironic, isn't it? all these years we were figuring out ways to send in the SAS and the SEALS. But all we really needed to do was to pay the repo guys to take away the pirates' BMW's and their high-priced hookers.
Posted by: Raider   2012-09-27 14:44  

#3  and the luxury cars repossessed

Seriously?! There are guys in Africa who repo from pirates? Talk about a strong work ethic.
Posted by: Shinter Javirong9154   2012-09-27 14:06  

#2  ahhh ... these boom-bust cycles in economics. they never last as long as you hope :-) i wonder if anyone in central Somalia knows the words to Auld Lang Syne??? :-)

The interesting thing is that criminal financiers in Africa figured out this decline in piracy profits really fast - and they stopped backing the Somali pirates. There is a high-level network of funding for banditry, kidnappings and extortion in Africa that operates well above the waterline where the pirates work. This "venture capital" will just flow into new enterprises somewhere else.
Posted by: Raider   2012-09-27 11:15  

#1  high school graduate who taught English in a private school before turning to piracy in 2009

Immigrate to Chicago and you can do both!
Posted by: Besoeker   2012-09-27 09:11  

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