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Do you want some good news from overseas? Cause I have some for you.
Did you know that Somali piracy has been all but eviscerated?
You know, these small gangs of Somali pirates, funded by fat cats in places like Kenya and the United Arab Emirates, boarding vessels off the Somali coast and taking hostages, holding them for ransoms in the millions.
If you saw the movie, "Captain Phillips," then you know what I'm talking about.
In 2011, at the height of piracy, there were 237 attacks off the Horn of Africa, the Red Sea and the northwest Indian Ocean. Thus far in 2014 there have been a grand total of seven attacks...and each one of them failed. This, according to the International Maritime Bureau.
Further, the number of hostages being held by pirates dropped from 1206 in 2011 to 38 today.
"With a few very small exceptions, we've had two years now without any successful piracy attacks," Alan Cole, regional coordinator of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, told Mike Pflanz of the Christian Science Monitor.
These fierce, gruesome and sordidly wealthy pirates are walking away from the business, and it's not because their conscience has gotten the better of them.
"What's happened is the odds of success for the pirates have dropped," says Cole in Pflanz's July 13th article. "It's become an increasingly hazardous business to be in. The chance of getting killed or captured is pretty high now, and watching so many men disappear...does suppress interest in this area as a career path."
I guess.
The reason for the drop? I've got one word for you: c-o-o-p-e-r-a-t-i-o-n.
First, dozens of warships from over 40 nations have worked in a coordinated effort to patrol the seas. Even nations stoked with animus toward each other are cooperating. Both South and North Korea are onboard. As are Russia and Ukraine. How about that for some strange bedfellows?
There is nothing as unifying as a common problem.
This international cooperation at sea has been coupled with cooperation on land. Indian Ocean countries like Kenya, Seychelles and Somalia have boosted their justice systems to process suspected pirates, and have refurbished prisons to hold them.
The third leg of this cooperation stool is the companies that operate the target ships. They've agreed to carry more security agents through the "high risk zones." These 3-4 man security teams are made up of mostly former British, American, South African and Russian military.
It's stunning what cooperation can do.
Piracy was the best job going for young Somalis a few short years ago, writes Pflanz. Firhan Ali, a newly unemployed pirate wistfully looks at his days on the high seas as "the good days."
One of the most successful, a Mr. Yuluh, announced in May that he had "renounced piracy" and would tell his "fellow comrades to leave this dirty business too."
Another, Mr. Ali, is quoted by Pflanz as saying, "Life is pretty bad now. What used to be my daily income is now my monthly income. It's all a struggle to make ends meet. During the heydays, none of us expected such an inferior life to come back."
That's a real shame.
I don't blame these gruesome creatures for thinking that their piracy and party times would never end. Who would have thought, after all, that the world would find the level of cooperation necessary to snuff them out?
But, alas, it did.
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