Piratas da Somalia: ferias e decimo-terceiro salario

THERE is no shortage of actors seeking to take the credit for a sharp reduction in piracy off the coast of Somalia. The queue got longer still after the International Maritime Bureau (IMB), a Malaysia-based monitoring group, reported that the number of attacks was down by nearly two thirds since last year. At the peak of the crisis in 2009 there were near-daily attacks on shipping in the Gulf of Aden, the Indian Ocean or the Red Sea; the third quarter of this year saw only one attempted hijacking. In the first nine months of 2012 there were 70 attacks compared with 1999 in the equivalent period the year before.

Common explanations for the drop-off include ship-owners’ deployment of armed guards and improvement of vessels’ defences. In addition, a veritable international armada has been assembled off the Horn of Africa to counter the threat. Europe’s anti-piracy force, EU Navfor, has taken a tougher approach, hitting pirate targets onshore in Somalia for the first time in May, following similar American operations.  More frequent arrests also mean that cases against suspected buccaneers are making their way through the courts from the Netherlands to New York. Somalia’s southern neighbour, Kenya, has even claimed that its forces’ move into the port city of Kismayo—in an African Union operation against Islamic militants, the Shabab—had “tackled the piracy problem at source”. Never mind the fact that the pirates were not operating from Kismayo.

But an alternative, more worrying, explanation may be that Somalia’s pirate gangs have temporarily closed up shop to do some stock-taking, during a period of particularly bad weather. In the week leading up to the release of the IMB report, three vessels were ransomed, including a UAE-flagged ship that had been held for two years. According to this theory, the pirates are clearing their stock of hostages and hijacked ships while they wait for the weather to change and the international community to tire of an expensive policing operation. In the meantime it still pays well. The Greek-flagged "Free Goddess" cost its owners somewhere between $2.3 and $5 million to have released.

There are still 11 vessels and at least 188 crew members being held in Somalia, according to the IMB. Security sources say that the pirates’ men, money and vessels remain largely in place. Just as predictions that the Shabab is close to total defeat after a year on the retreat seem overly optimistic, it is too soon to declare the end of the modern day surge in piracy.