BRIEFLY, ON PIRACY. Tom Zeller arrives late at the piracy party. Piracy off the coast of Somalia and in the Straits of Malacca has received a lot of attention in the past three or four years. The pirates, typically, travel in small gangs in small boats armed with AKs and occasionally RPGs. Most modern cargo vessels have very small crews, making it easy to seize a ship even with a small contingent of pirates. There have a been a few big profile incidents, including an attack on a cruise ship and an encounter between a small pirate boat and a USN cruiser and destroyer. After a few years of serious increase, however, the piracy problem in the Straits of Malacca (critical to world trade) seems to be taking care of itself, as attacks have dropped dramatically. The USN and regional navies have increased the attention that they give to piracy, with good effect. The new big area is Somalia, where the ICU promised to try to reduce piracy prior to its ouster, but failed. With the ICU gone, it's quite unlikely that the provisional government will be able to rein in the attacks. The remaining open question is whether the problem is serious enough to justify the devotion of additional resources. --Robert Farley
