Piracy began threatening international vessels in one of the main international shipping routes lying off the Somali coast after the collapse of the government there in 1991. Who are the pirates?
They are often unemployed young men, primarily from Puntland in Somalia, who have seen their fishing decline because of overfishing of their waters by international fishing. They've found that if they occasionally intercept people, the insurance companies reward them for it.
Has piracy been affecting the distribution of aid relief to the local civilian population?
No, the pirates have on occasion boarded food shipments, but overall an enormous amount of aid has been delivered. There's a completely different phenomenon going on in Somalia which I don't want to refer to as 'piracy'. In the central part of Somalia where the main aid needs are, aid workers and doctors have been taken hostage. It's obviously similar to the piracy, but it's not the same as boarding a ship. Now there are no longer ex-pat aid staff working in Somalia. The level of ex-pat aid staff working in the area is the lowest area per aid dollar spent in any country.
Aid agencies have been saying for some time now that Somalia is a highly dangerous place to work in given the continued political instability, violence, and kidnappings. After the recent assaults on UN offices in Somalia, a UN official said yesterday that the UN would not 'back out' of the country, but is it feasible to continue humanitarian efforts in this environment?
A gang takes people hostage and hopes it will make them millionaires because the government of those hostages will step in and pay the ransom. Governments have created a market by being willing to pay millions of dollars. Most aid professionals are working for NGOs and the ransoms that have been paid have not been negotiated at the initiative of those organizations, which could use their position to work through mediators. Governments have leapfrogged the NGOs.
Are aid agency ex-pat staff likely to return in the coming months?
I don't know when they'll go back in. Crime is a funny thing. In the long term history, some things don't seem to change.
What is the situation regarding aid distribution now?
Aid is not just about taking stuff and distributing it. The largest share of U.S. government aid is in food aid, and it's being distributed through local Somali NGOs. But the more professional people from other countries are the people who would do the project supervising and monitoring, and they are not able to get through. One of the things humanitarian people do is make sure that key things are done; it's not just about spending dollars. That's been dramatically reduced, and that phenomenon is really being seen this year. Effectively in 2009, there are no ex-pats working in Somalia.
Somali President Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, who took office in January, made a personal plea for funds at the conference, also attended by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso.
Somalia has had no effective central authority since former president Mohamed Siad Barre was ousted in 1991, setting off a bloody cycle of clashes between rival factions.
Islamist fighters including the hardline Shebab militia have waged battles against the transitional government, its predecessor cabinet and their allies, vowing to fight until all foreign forces withdraw and sharia law is imposed.
More than one million people have fled their homes. Fewer than one in three Somalis, whose life expectancy is 46 years, have access to clean water.
While the conference was not focused on piracy, the high media profile of the growing number of cases of daring raids on freighters on the seas of the Gulf of Aden has become synonymous with Somalia's woes.
"Piracy is not a water-borne disease. It is a symptom of anarchy and insecurity on the ground," Ban said. "Dealing with it requires an integrated strategy that addresses the fundamental issue of lawlessness in Somalia."
Despite international naval missions -- including from NATO and the European Union -- piracy has spiralled over the last year, as ransom-hunting Somalis tackle ever-bigger and more distant prizes.
More than 130 merchant ships were attacked in the region last year, an increase of more than 200 percent on 2007, the International Maritime Bureau said. A tenfold increase was noted in the first three months of 2009.
"If we only treat the symptoms, piracy at sea, but not its root causes -- the decay of the state and poverty -- we will fail," Barroso said.
Non-governmental organisation Oxfam said the conference was being held at a critical moment for 3.2 million Somalis desperately in need of aid, more than a million of whom have fled their homes to avoid fighting in the last two years.
With a U.S. warship steaming to the scene, Somali pirates and American seamen engaged in a standoff on the high seas early today 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 first such attack against a U.S.-flagged vessel off Africa since the days of the Barbary pirates more than 200 years ago began with an attack against the U.S.-registered Maersk Alabama cargo ship far off Somalia's coast.
The 20-member crew, unarmed according to the ship's owner, managed to overpower at least four pirates and regain control, according to U.S. officials. But the captain -- Richard Phillips of Underhill, Vt. -- was being held by the pirates, according to a U.S. defense official.
His wife, Andrea Phillips, told The Associated Press that her husband has sailed in those waters ''for quite some time'' and that a hijacking was perhaps ''inevitable.'' 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 U.S. crew retook 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.
The pirates enjoy a lavish lifestyle unknown to many in a country racked by poverty.
A New York Times article in October described the high-rolling swagger of pirates in Garoowe, a town south of Boosaaso on the Somalian coast.
Flush with cash, the pirates drive the biggest cars, run many of the town's businesses — like hotels — and throw the best parties, residents say.
Fatuma Abdul Kadir said she went to a pirate wedding in July that lasted two days, with nonstop dancing and goat meat, and a band flown in from neighbouring Djibouti.
The pirates — who were often fishermen before they became criminals — have become more ambitious in their attacks in recent years, travelling longer distances to attack ships.
High-profile attacks include the hijacking of the Saudi supertanker MV Sirius Star and its cargo of oil worth more than $100 million in November, and a Ukrainian freighter carrying more than 30 Soviet-era battle tanks and heavy weaponry that was seized in September.
