Ahoy ye high seas hypocrisy!

Piracy off the coast of Somalia has become another ‘global crisis’. It took the hijacking of a US ship last month and the media hyped antics of the US Navy in ‘neutralizing’ the rogue elements — three shots, three dead pirates — to make it onto the crisis list. Yet piracy has been a problem off Somalia for as long as this East African country has been in a state of crisis, since 1991. And it is not a clear-cut case of the good guys — merchant seamen — versus the baddies — Somali pirates. The dire situation in Somalia is what triggered a surge in piracy that has, like the conflict itself, many regional and international players involved. As an essentially failed state, there are no means for patrolling Somalia’s coastline. This has been a scourge for the Somalis as well as the 33,000 ships a year that sail