Five pirates from Somalia drowned after they left the ship that they had been holding for ransom for approximately two months. The pirates small boat capsized and sank along with the money. The ship that the pirates had captured was the Sirius Star and the ransom was for approximately $3 million dollars. Three other alleged pirates spent hours swimming to land.
The pirates had to have been congratulating themselves about receiving that amount of money. In Somalia, the people are very poor…most of them are living on humanitarian aid. Many of these ships that have been targeted, by pirates, have been in this area in the Gulf of Aden. Somalia is a country that has not had proper governmental leadership since the early 1990’s. It must be awfully tempting to see all of these ships travel through the area loaded with multi-million dollars of crude oil and not see it as a way to grab their share of the money for themselves. Piracy has become a huge problem.
Just this past week the United States Navy has announced that they will be utilizing an anti-piracy taskforce to combat the issues such as the hostage situations that face the ships that must travel through those international waters.
Piracy in today’s world is not the piracy of the movies. It is not some swashbuckling, romantic way to see the world. It is quickly becoming a form of terrorism that attempts to hold the world of commerce hostage to pay up or be caught in the web of the pirates that feed off of the traffic that must pass through on their way to pick up and deliver merchandise from one nation to another.
One has to wonder, do the people who contemplate becoming pirates consider the possibility that they could end up on the bottom of the ocean right along with their stolen treasure? Maybe some of the area nations could come up with a way to build up the infrastructure of Somalia so that the temptation to take from those who have so much would no longer look like a good way to earn a living to those who have so little! Stealing is not a good option. But those nations who are rich in natural resources could invest some of their money into those countries who seem bent on surviving any way that they can.
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