Who are the real pirates in Africas waters?
By Tony Iltis April 18, 2009 — The report in the Times of London began: “Pirates caught redhanded by one of Her Majesty’s warships after trying to hijack a cargo ship off Somalia made the grave mistake of opening fire on two Royal Navy assault craft packed with commandos armed with machineguns and SA80 rifles.’’ The references to modern weapons and the use of the modern term “hijacking’’, indicate that this is a recent article (from the November 12, 2008, online edition). In other respects it could have been written 300 years ago. Pompous triumphalism from the press of the “great powers’’ (which has reached a fever pitch since the US Navy’s April 12 rescue of Richard Philllps, captain of the US-flagged and crewed Maersk Alabama, in which three teenage pirates were killed and one captured) is not the only parallel between the current confrontation between powerful navies and pirates off the coast of Somalia and that in the early 18th century Atlantic — the “golden age of piracy’’.
