Pirates drown with their ransom
It’s a bit hard to not think that the Somalian pirates who held a Saudi Arabian oil tanker got their just desserts when they capsized after getting their $3 million ransom, probably drowning five out of the eight pirates. In their defense, the modus operandi of Somalian pirates are to hold the ship and crew for ransom and releasing them unharmed after being paid, unlike pirates old and new who kill everyone on board for the booty or sell them off as slaves.
Unfortunately, most Somalian pirates got into the business not because they like to steal and pillage, but because piracy is one of the few things available to them as a means of living after the breakdown of central government in the 1990s. Besides devastating the Somalian shoreline or occupying the country with an authoritarian presence to rebuild the economy, neither of which are palatable alternatives, there doesn’t seem to be much that can be done about it, so Somalian piracy is probably going to be with us for quite awhile.
Not that most pirates start off in piracy just for the fun of it, but there’s something really wrong when piracy is one of the biggest industries in a country.
