It has been awhile since we checked in with our old friends
the Somali pirates. A big part of the reason was simply that 2012 was not a
good year for piracy, with successful pirate raids dropping off sharply. This turn in fortune seems to be the
motivation for one of Somalia's most infamous pirates to call it quits. The New York Times is reporting that Mohamed Abdi Hassan, better known by his nom de guerre
“Big Mouth”, announced his retirement last week in a press conference broadcast
on YouTube.
Big Mouth's retirement is a big
deal in that he was thought to be the head of a notorious pirate network and
was identified in a United Nations report last year as one of Somalia's most
influential and most dangerous pirates. But a host of factors are now working against
the Somali pirates, including more effective naval patrols in the Indian Ocean,
on-shore raids aimed at disrupting pirating operations ashore and the emergence
of effective governments in the capital, Mogadishu, and in the semi-autonomous
northern region of Puntland. These
factors have combined to reduce the pirate's haul down to a mere 13 captured
vessels in 2012, making pirating a far more dangerous and far less lucrative
business today than it was a couple of years ago.
Big Mouth seems to have been
further enticed by the issuance of a passport by the new Somali government that
allowed him to travel abroad to visit his family, according to the Times. In his farewell press conference, Big Mouth
claimed to have also influenced a number of his pirate brethren to give up
their pirating ways as well. But while
piracy seems to be on the decline off the coast of Somalia, there is concern
that the pirates could come back if international navies scale back their patrols,
thinking that the pirate problem has passed; at the same time, the pirate
problem may be shifting to the coast of West Africa, where pirate attacks are
on the rise.
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