There is a great rush to the port of Eyl, where most of the hijacked vessels are kept by the well-armed pirate gangs.

People put on ties and smart clothes. They arrive in land cruisers with their laptops, one saying he is the pirates' accountant, another that he is their chief negotiator.

With yet more foreign vessels seized off the coast of Somalia this week, it could be said that hijackings in the region have become epidemic.

Insurance premiums for ships sailing through the busy Gulf of Aden have increased tenfold over the past year because of the pirates, most of whom come from the semi-autonomous region of Puntland.

In Eyl, there is a lot of money to be made, and everybody is anxious for a cut.

Entire industry

The going rate for ransom payments is between $300,000 and $1.5m (£168,000-£838,000).

A recent visitor to the town explained how, even though the number of pirates who actually take part in a hijacking is relatively small, the whole modern industry of piracy involves many more people.

"The number of people who make the first attack is small, normally from seven to 10," he said.

"They go out in powerful speedboats armed with heavy weapons. But once they seize the ship, about 50 pirates stay on board the vessel. And about 50 more wait on shore in case anything goes wrong."

Given all the other people involved in the piracy industry, including those who feed the hostages, it has become a mainstay of the Puntland economy.

Eyl has become a town tailor-made for pirates - and their hostages.

Special restaurants have even been set up to prepare food for the crews of the hijacked ships.

As the pirates want ransom payments, they try to look after their hostages.

When commandos from France freed two French sailors seized by pirates off the Somali coast in September, President Nicolas Sarkozy said he had given the go-ahead for the operation when it was clear the pirates were headed for Eyl - it would have been too dangerous to try to free them from there.

The town is a safe-haven where very little is done to stop the pirates - leading to the suggestion that some, at least, in the Puntland administration and beyond have links with them.

Many of them come from the same clan - the Majarteen clan of the president of Somalia's transitional federal government, Abdullahi Yusuf.

Money to spend

The coastal region of Puntland is booming.

Fancy houses are being built, expensive cars are being bought - all of this in a country that has not had a functioning central government for nearly 20 years.

Observers say pirates made about $30m from ransom payments last year - far more than the annual budget of Puntland, which is about $20m.

When the president of Puntland, Adde Musa, was asked about the reported wealth of pirates and their associates, he said: "It's more than true".

Now that they are making so much money, these 21st Century pirates can afford increasingly sophisticated weapons and speedboats.

This means that unless more is done to stop them, they will continue to plunder the busy shipping lanes through the Gulf of Aden.

They even target ships carrying aid to feed their compatriots - up to a third of the population.

Warships from France, Canada and Malaysia, among others, now patrol the Somali coast to try and fend off pirate attacks.

An official at the International Maritime Organisation explained how the well-armed pirates are becoming increasingly bold.

More than 30% of the world's oil is transported through the Gulf of Aden.

"It is only a matter of time before something horrible happens," said the official.

"If the pirates strike a hole in the tanker, and there's an oil spill, there could be a huge environmental disaster".

It is likely that piracy will continue to be a problem off the coast of Somalia as long as the violence and chaos continues on land.

Conflict can be very good for certain types of business, and piracy is certainly one of them.

Weapons are easy to obtain and there is no functioning authority to stop them, either on land or at sea.

Somalia pirates hold U.S. captain

American seamen on the Maersk Alabama cargo ship manage to fend off the attackers, but they escape in a lifeboat with the captain as a hostage.

By Edmund Sanders and Julian E. Barnes
April 9, 2009

Reporting from Washington and Nairobi, Kenya -- With a U.S. warship on site keeping watch early today, Somali pirates and American seamen engaged in a standoff on the high seas after the crew of a freighter loaded with food for Africa fought off the hijackers -- who fled in a lifeboat with the captain as a hostage.

The assault on the U.S.- registered Maersk Alabama cargo ship far off Somalia's coast marked the first attack against a U.S.-flagged vessel off Africa since the days of the Barbary pirates more than 200 years ago, a maritime official said.
The 20-member crew, unarmed, according to the ship's owner, managed to overpower at least four pirates and regain control, U.S. officials said. But the captain, 55-year-old Vermont resident Richard Phillips, was being held by the pirates, a U.S. Defense official said.

The attempted seizure of the Danish-owned vessel marks the latest chapter in the piracy saga off Somalia. Poverty, civil war and the lack of a functioning government since 1991 have turned the waters around the Horn of Africa nation into the most crime- infested on Earth.

The attack on the cargo ship was the second in two days, U.S. officials said. After rebuffing the first attempt, the ship's crew radioed Wednesday that two skiffs were closing in. Thirty minutes later, the ship told maritime officials that pirates had attached a grappling hook and were climbing aboard.

It remained unclear how the American crew retook the ship, and with Phillips in pirate hands, second-in-command Shane Murphy was in control. A crew member told CNN that one of the pirates had been detained, but then was released in an unsuccessful bid to exchange him for the captain.

U.S. Defense Department officials said the U.S. destroyer Bainbridge arrived on the scene early today and was monitoring the situation. Navy P-3 surveillance planes also were keeping watch.

Officials said the destroyer would establish communication, watch the situation and seek to negotiate the hostage's release, which could take some time.

"I wouldn't expect it to resolve itself like an episode of "CSI" in 45 minutes," a Defense official said.

Both Murphy and Phillips are graduates of the Massachusetts Maritime Academy, where Murphy's father teaches a course in anti-piracy tactics. Academy President Rick Gurnon said it was his understanding that the crew had disabled the cargo ship in a bid to thwart the hijackers.

Phillips' sister-in-law, Lea Coggio, described him as "easygoing, laid-back," and added that she wouldn't be surprised if he was having a relaxed conversation with the pirates.

Numerous merchant vessels have successfully fended off or outrun pirates, but the actions of the U.S. crew appeared to mark a rare instance of seafarers overpowering pirates after a ship was seized, maritime officials said.

It remained unclear who attacked the 17,000-ton vessel, but past attacks have been launched by Somali warlords, disgruntled fishermen and foreign-based criminal networks. After chasing ships in speed boats and scaling the ships' hulls, Somali pirates typically anchor vessels off the coast and negotiate ransoms of $1 million to $3 million.

Last year, pirates attacked 122 vessels in the region and seized 42 of them. Total ransom payments collected by Somali pirates were believed to have topped $50 million. Maritime officials say at least 16 ships and 200 crew members are being held.

Among high-profile attacks last year was one against a Ukrainian vessel carrying 33 military tanks and another targeting a Saudi-owned tanker carrying $100 million worth of crude oil.

Pirates attacked the Maersk Alabama about 7:30 a.m., U.S. Navy officials said. The ship was in the Indian Ocean about 240 nautical miles southeast of the Somalia port city of Eyl, they said.

The ship's owner, Norfolk, Va.-based Maersk Line, is a U.S. subsidiary of Denmark's A.P. Moller-Maersk. The shipping giant is a longtime Pentagon contractor, according to security analyst firm Global Security.org, operating vessels with "top security clearance." But the hijacked vessel was not sailing under a Defense Department contract at the time of the attack, company and U.S. military officials said.

Maersk Line Chief Executive John Reinhart said at a news conference that the company's seafarers were trained in prevention methods to combat piracy, such as increasing the ship's speed or changing direction, preventing pirates from boarding, using extra lookouts and maintaining regular communication with the U.S. Navy.

"We have ways to push back, but we don't carry arms," he said.

A spokesman for the World Food Program confirmed that part of the ship's cargo was being ferried on its behalf, including 4,000 metric tons of corn headed for Somalia and Uganda, and 1,000 metric tons of vegetable oil for refugees in Kenya. It was expected to dock in the Kenyan port of Mombasa on April 16.

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