Political and social instability in countries and regions affects the operations of enterprises near and far. Corporations everywhere must carefully consider their business risks in an era of uncoordinated international counter-combat against coordinated piracy.

Keeping workers and workplaces safe in politically sensitive areas can be difficult and expensive. Colombia and the Philippines have storied histories of kidnappings of foreign employees.

No economic nor social threat has picked up more international headlines in recent months than that of the coordinated pirate attacks most famously occurring off the coast of Somalia. However, what caused this surge of Somalia’s only boom industry is what I find fascinating.

Somalia’s 3,330 km coastline — the longest in continental Africa — has been pillaged by foreign vessels for decades. A United Nations report in 2006 stated that Somali waters have become the site of an international “free for all,” with fishing fleets from around the world illegally plundering Somali stocks and freezing out the country’s own rudimentarily-equipped fishermen. According to another U.N. report, an estimated $300 million worth of seafood is stolen from the country’s coastline each year. 

In lieu of this, impoverished Somalis living by the sea have been forced over the years to defend their own fishing expeditions out of ports such as Eyl, Kismayo and Harardhere — all now considered to be pirate dens. Somali fishermen, whose industry was always small-scale, lacked the advanced boats and technologies of their interloping competitors, and also complained of being shot at by foreign fishermen with water cannons and firearms. “The first pirate gangs emerged in the ’90s to protect against foreign trawlers,” says Peter Lehr, lecturer in terrorism studies at Scotland’s University of St. Andrews and editor of Violence at Sea: Piracy in the Age of Global Terrorism. The names of existing pirate fleets, such as the National Volunteer Coastguard of Somalia or Somali Marines, are testament to the pirates’ initial motivations.

The waters these “pirates” sought to protect, according to Lehr, were “an El Dorado for fishing fleets of many nations.” A 2006 study published in the journal Science predicted that the current rate of commercial fishing would virtually empty the world’s oceanic stocks by 2050. 

High-seas trawlers from countries such as South Korea, Spain and Japan have operated down the Somali coast, often illegally and without licenses. They often fly flags of convenience from sea-faring friendly nations like Belize and Bahrain, which further helps the ships avoid international regulations and evade censure from their home countries. Tsuma Charo of the Nairobi-based East African Seafarers Assistance Programme, which monitors Somali pirate attacks and liaises with the hostage takers and the captured crews, stated that “illegal trawling has fed the piracy problem.” In the early days of Somali piracy, those who seized trawlers without licenses could count on a quick ransom payment, since the boat owners and companies backing those vessels didn’t want to draw attention to their violation of international maritime law. This, according to Charo, inspired the pirates to build up their tactical networks and seek out bigger spoils.

Foreign ships have also long been accused of dumping toxic and nuclear waste off Somalia’s shores. According to a U.N. report, at the time of submission, it cost $2.50 per ton for a European company to dump uranium off the Horn of Africa, as opposed to $250 per ton to dispose of them cleanly in Europe.

Monitoring and combating any of these misdeeds was and is next to impossible — Somalia’s current government can barely find its feet in the wake of the 2006 U.S.-backed Ethiopian invasion. U.N. monitors in 2005 and 2006 suggested an embargo on fish taken from Somali waters, but their proposals were promptly shot down by members of the Security Council. 

It should therefore come as no surprise that Somali piracy has grown into the country’s only boom industry. Most of the pirates, local observers say, are not former fishermen, but just “rambo and robin hood” figures, seeking fortune, and held in high regard by their fellow Somalis. These self-proclaimed ‘saviours of the sea‘ are getting better coordinated not just regionally but internationally with each passing day and will remain a consistent threat to safe freighter passage, dramatically shifting international stock markets with each pass. In an era of economic instability caused by a lack of responsibility, is this just another example of turnabout being fair play?