When pickings no longer become easy, the highwaymen of the sea fine-tune their tactics. Humanity does not register strongly on the pirate radar unless it can be exploited to turn a profit.
Somali pirates threaten revenge
Somali pirates strike yet again
Somali pirates scouting for prey in the Gulf of Aden are now using African refugees fleeing in search of a better life as human shields in a bid to fool patrolling international warships, according to humanitarian agencies.
The phenomenon first surfaced at the beginning of the year, when the international community boosted its naval presence in the vital maritime shipping lane in response to increasing pirate attacks on commercial vessels.
"What is new is the use of refugee boats as human shields," said Francisco Otero Villar, who heads the Spanish section of Doctors without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontieres, MSF).
Some pirates now resort to tying up their skiffs alongside boats ferrying refugees from Somalia to Yemen and then hiding themselves among the helpless and hapless would-be migrants.
The people traffickers, who are also Somali and reportedly in cahoots with the pirates, then keep a keen lookout for isolated ships vulnerable to attack instead of heading with their human cargo directly towards refuge in Yemen.
Once they locate a likely victim, the pirates board their fast and manoeuvrable skiffs and press home their attack.
"It’s a deal between the smugglers and the pirates," Otero Villar said, adding that four such cases have been reported since the start of 2009.
In such situations, the boats carrying refugees act like a "mother ship" for the pirates.
As a result, the refugees’ voyage to Yemen from the port of Bosasso - the economic capital of the Somali breakaway region of Puntland - which on average takes two days, stretches for much longer, exposing them to even greater risk.
Refugees have reported these incidents to the Spanish section of MSF and other aid agencies, as well as to UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) workers who take care of them after they make landfall in southern Yemen.
"It is difficult to fathom the links between the pirates and the smugglers" who transport desperate refugees in old and ill-equipped boats, said Claire Bourgeois, the UNHCR representative in Yemen.
"One day they’re smugglers, the next they’re pirates," she told AFP.
Source: AFP
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