But there is precious little stability in Somalia or Yemen, whose ports have not yet recovered from the aftermath of the 2002 terrorist attack on the USS Cole which killed 17 crew members. As a UN spokesman remarked: "If you gave countries points for anarchy and confusion from one to ten, Somalia gets 20." Shipowners have little alternative to using the Gulf to ship manufactured goods, oil and liquefied gas between Europe and the Far East. According to Datuk Cheah Kong Wai, former head of the piracy bureau in Kuala Lumpur, a ship sailing from Port Klang to Rotterdam takes 25 days via this route, assuming an average speed of 13 knots. This 8,089-nautical-mile voyage becomes 11,590 miles, and takes an extra 12 days, if the same ship has to round the Cape of Good Hope. It is worth paying massively-inflated insurance premiums to take the riskier shorter route.

Four major gangs of pirates operate from such Somali coastal towns as Eyl, including the Somali Marines, the National Volunteer Coast Guard and the Marka Group, plus the Puntland Group, based in the northern breakaway tip of the Horn of Africa. In inshore waters, Somali pirates have been known to fire distress rockets to lure ships closer to their vessels, like Cornish wreckers using lamps to draw ships on to rocks. Use of large mother ships enables them to operate up to 200 nautical miles offshore, where smaller high-powered boats speed pirates armed with rocket-propelled grenades and machine-guns towards their unarmed targets which they board using grappling hooks. Payment of ransoms does not guarantee the release of either crews or ships, as the Iranians have discovered after paying $200,000 for the MV Iran Deyanat, which still lies off Puntland.