In 2011, pirates carried out 212 attacks in a vast area spanning Somali waters, the Indian Ocean, the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, actions that the World Bank said cost the world economy US$18 billion a year.
Armed pirates hijacked ships as far away as 1,000 nautical miles from the Somali coast. They held the ships and crews for ransom. The World Bank estimates that Somali pirates received more than US$400 million in ransom payments between 2005 and 2012.
The piracy problem appeared unsolvable. Anti-piracy naval missions undertaken by the world’s most formidable navies, and self-protection measures adopted by the shipping industry, didn’t seem to work. It was, therefore, generally held that the solution lay ashore: major state-building in Somalia to remove the root causes of piracy.
