From Fishermen to Pirates

In the early 1990s, Somalia's government collapsed. The state, which had been fragile for years, disintegrated entirely, leaving behind no functioning police force, no coast guard, and no legal framework. Into the vacuum came opportunity, and not only for Somalis.

Foreign fishing fleets, no longer deterred by patrol boats or regulations, descended on Somali waters. Industrial trawlers from Europe and Asia emptied the seas of fish that local communities had depended on for generations. The fishermen of Somalia, armed with small boats and hand lines, couldn't compete. Their livelihood vanished. Nobody came to help. Nobody was in charge.

So the fishermen made a calculation that, under the circumstances, was entirely rational. If no one would protect their waters, they would protect them themselves. And if protecting them meant boarding foreign vessels and demanding compensation, so be it.

Piracy off the coast of Somalia began as an act of desperation and self-defense. But it didn't stay that way. The ransoms were enormous, often in the millions of dollars. In a country where the average annual income was around six hundred dollars, even a low-ranking pirate could earn twenty thousand from a single hijacking. Piracy became the most profitable industry in a country without industries.

By 2011, the waters off Somalia were the most dangerous in the world. Over two hundred hijackings were reported that year alone. The economic cost to global shipping ran into billions. Thousands of seafarers were taken hostage. Some were held for years. A few never came home.

International navies deployed warships. Shipping companies hired private security. Trade routes were rerouted at enormous expense. The world mobilized to fight a problem that it had, in significant part, created. The foreign trawlers that had emptied Somali waters hadn't set out to build a pirate fleet. But by taking everything and leaving nothing, they had made piracy the only rational choice for the people who remained.