In October 2011, Robert Young Pelton, publisher of Somalia Report, set off on a tour into pirate country -- in the semiautonomous region of Puntland, Somalia -- in order to better understand the fight against piracy being waged along these shores. As he writes for FP, "My week and a half at sea plotting the vast distances and
measuring the response time of the designated naval escorts made it clear to me
that piracy would never be defeated at sea. But I had plenty of time with my
new South African friend who worked for a security company named Sterling
Corporate Services to understand a new program -- how exactly how pirates could
be defeated very quickly, on land."
Above, cocktail time in the Gulf of Aden. The Burmese master of the ship on which Pelton was traveling -- the MV MAP K -- brought these glasses along to add a little dark humor to the perilous voyage. The liquor was Pelton's.
Robert Young Pelton
