Somali Pirates No More: No Hijackings In Almost A Year, Pirates Seek New Jobs

The chair of the global group that combats Somali pirates said Thursday that the fight against the pirates has been so successful that they haven't been able to mount a hijacking in almost a year.

"Pirate attacks are down by at least 75 percent," U.S. diplomat Donna Leigh Hopkins said to the Associated Press.

 "There are still pirate attacks being attempted but there has not been a successful hijacking since May 2012," she said. "May 12 will be the one year anniversary of no successful hijacking off the coast of Somalia."

Factors include increased security and armed guards on ships, the collective efforts of naval forces, and the jailing of 1,140 pirates in 21 countries "deglamorizing piracy".

"The number of active pirates is perhaps 3,000," Danish Ambassador Thomas Winkler said. "So if you put a thousand behind bars, and 300-400 die every year at sea from hunger (or) drowning ... you will quickly come down" in the number of pirates that exist.

Indeed, Mohamed Abdi Hassan, one of Somalia's most notorious pirate chiefs, now says he has renounced piracy and wants employment, not hijacking of ships.

Hassan, better known as "Afweyne" or "Big Mouth" says he has persuaded almost a thousand young pirates to quit.  "The young men need to be trained, to get skills and get integrated into society," he says.

Afweyne's men once virtually ruled much of the Indian Ocean, generating millions of dollars in ransom money. He was involved in the 2008 capture of a Saudi owned oil ship Sirius that was released for several million dollars in ransom money, and reportedly responsible for attacks on ships carrying food to his famine-stricken country. But he shuns the pirate label.  "I'm not saying I was not involved, for I was the one who initiated the fight," he says.  He says that he became involved in piracy after his fishing company went belly-up after the country erupted in civil war in 1991.

"It was legitimate because there was no government, we were like orphans without a father," he added.

While he agrees that the patrols that have slashed numbers in hijackings have done "a lot of good",  they "need efforts on land too".

"We need financial support to allow (ex-pirates) to have alternate careers... to be fishermen or farmers or traders, whatever they choose."

Many who have given up piracy have turned to land-based crime because Somalia's government and economy are so damaged.

Ex-pirate captain Abdullahi Abdi told reporters he worries that the men who are once under him and now unemployed onshore have not given up pirating forever.

"I can't say that," he said. "There are hundreds of young men wanting a future... and a young hungry man can do anything."

Somali pirates hijacked 46 ships in 2009, 47 in 2010, and only 25 in 2011. Then, in 2012, only 14 ships were hijacked. There were only 75 total attacks reported, down from 237 attacks in 2011, according to the International Maritime Bureau. There has not been a successful hijacking in almost a year.