A Chinese merchant sailor preparing a Molotov cocktail as their defense against the Somali Pirates.
Today I was scanning for video's for my advert post and got sidetracked by the Somali pirate videos. If you haven't seen them they are quite awesome and a little addictive.
This has been going on way too long now and I am hoping things are slowing down and eliminating the threat is the only way. There are a flotilla of navy vessels against the pirates speedboats. You will be shocked to know how many Navies are involved out there now. Phillipines, Chinese,British,American,Indian and Russians are all out patrolling the waters.Just think it is nearly the 10 year anniversary of Captain Phillips and his crew being hijacked whilst on route delivering food aid.
Most of the merchant ships that travel this route have some sort of preventative measures in place including mercenaries on board. This vessel in the video below has a ring of barbed wire in place and it just seems crazy. The rest of the world has just been way too soft as it just shows these guys don't care and are brazenly attacking vessels. The money a pirate can make is just such a huge temptation and they have bonuses for first one on board etc.
As you can see by this they still attack even when the boats have protection so they know what they are up against and even more reason to show no mercy. Some criminals are just that desperate they don't care so why must the Navies who are involved care.
You know the bad guys are going to get it and they deserve what they get and more. What was surprising is the difference between the various navies working the area. The British and Americans as per normal doing everything by the book not scaring anyone. The Russians and Chinese though put the fear of god into the pirates and maybe should leave some survivors to spread the rumors.
The problem I see is the Americans and British fire warning shots and allow them to get away even though they know that group just attacked a boat. The one instance which I found disappointing is they had the evidence that this boat attacked a ship,but couldn't arrest anyone as they had thrown the weapons into the sea. Why even arrest them and create issues with a possibility of them coming back.
The way the Russians and Chinese work is they gather the evidence of who attacked who through surveillance and reports, track the boat back to the mother ship and then remove all the boats associated in one swoop. Surely this makes more sense and you are not putting your personnel in harms way by boarding vessels looking for arrests.Arrests are very rare as most evidence is tossed over board.The Americans and English fire warning shots but that is it.
Being politically correct working with a group that will only take advantage of the softly softly approach doesn't work.I am glad to see ships in the area patrolling and most vessels that do that route now are heavily armed with bunkers and machine gun nests. Eliminating the scumbags is the only way and I think the soft approach by the Americans and English hasn't helped and has made the whole thing drag on far too long.
Image source youtube.com and thedailymail.co.uk