Somalian Pirates Are The Least Of Your Worries

It is unfortunate ,but, 99% of all pirate attacks go unreported. On a daily basis, 6 attacks will occur somewhere in the world. You of course will never know about it because it does not affect you personally (unless you're an unfortunate sailor). From today on understand this: Somalia is not the only country that throws pirate raids at unprotected commerce!

Nonononononononono! NO! Somalia is responsible for maybe one raid a month. The statistics show that internationally ever four hours, a pirate attack occurs (we say 6 a day to be lenient). And no, these attacks don't involve large war vessels with rear mounted cannons. No, that is simply a glorified Hollywood image. Much rather, the pirate of today is usually reminiscent of an al-Qaeda member. They dress in rags because they simply can't afford decent clothing(uniforms etc). And quite unlike the pirates of before, they do not go out and take a vessel with the intention to "take loot" and leave the crew alive. Much rather, they are VERY desperate to feed their starving families and an unprotected vessel can result in a large loot (comparable to a one year salary in the United States) per person. Acquiring this amount of wealth in Somalia would take a lifetime to obtain. It is quite apparent that when you are dying of starvation on a daily basis, you do crazy things.

90% of these modern pirate attacks take place in the Indian Ocean. Countries like India, Indonesia and Nepal are responsible for not only failure to regulate renegating (and illegal/unregistered) ships from doing as they please (usually trafficking drugs and firearms), but also selling off information to alleged pirates about merchant ships so they have an exact time frame to strike.  Indeed , corruption and the sheer impossibility to control the world's second most populated country in the world (and perhaps the most densely populated area in the world) simply adds to the problem.

This geographic arena is the sight where many sailors are butchered and millions of dollars of cargo are hijacked every day 

Now lets ask ourselves the huge question: Why is this happening?

The answer is very complex. But the primary reason is quite frankly because there is no longer a master sea power. With the bringing of universal self-determination following world war 1, the British, French, German and Dutch empires seized to exist. This created a power gap in the world's seas. At that point and time (and up to now) only areas like the Mediterranean , North Atlantic and Pacific Ocean surrounding Japan,Australia, Russia, China and Northern America were paroled by large navies. Later on, in 1945, the soviet and American navies expanded worldwide and acted as "policemen" for international waters. Following the fall of the soviet union, both navies were cut by up to 80%. Travel in international waters was, supposedly, prohibited to navies of all nations and merchant vessels (regardless of size) where now trading billions of dollars of goods unprotected (you probably can see a pattern that coexists here with the fall of the roman navy in the Mediterranean and rise of Ivory Coast barbarians). These vessels are practically gold mines, with a bit of force, they are EASILY taken.Every day, unarmed crewmen are terrorized, tortured or killed in many of these raids. The unfortunate part is, as long as no real superpower decides to end this madness, the amount of pirate attacks will rise exponentially. We deeply regret to see this and need the world's help to combat it.

The events that we can plainly see unfolding are spurring us to continue to run and operate "piracy today".