Word: aden
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...amount of education required. Even amid the present economic gloom, officers' salaries have not plunged due to a shortage of qualified people. Indians and Filipinos are most in demand on international vessels because they speak English. But many Indian seafarers are now refusing to do the Gulf of Aden run. "Sailors are very apprehensive, very jerky," says Sunil Nair, spokesman for the Mumbai-based National Union of Seafarers of India (NUSI), which has some 80,000 members. He says that since the spate of hijackings last year - when there were 72 attacks and 52 hijackings - more sailors who switch companies...
...negotiations between the pirates and the ship's owners, and the crew was released for an undisclosed ransom, believed to be much lower than the $6 million the pirates had initially demanded. At the same time, the Indian navy sent a warship, the INS Tabar, to the Gulf of Aden - for the first time deploying a warship in an offensive role in international waters. For close to 20 days, the INS Tabar escorted some 35 ships to safety, including non-Indian-flagged vessels, but it accidentally shot down a hijacked Thai trawler that it mistook for a pirate mother ship...
...with the Obama Administration's newfound determination to tackle piracy in the Gulf of Aden, many people expect things to improve. "This is definitely good news," says Goyal. "Hopefully someone will come to the rescue of poor countries' sailors." On Wednesday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced steps including tracking and freezing assets of pirate gangs, and pressing Somali authorities to shut down pirate land bases, while also calling for a greater global response to secure the release of ships still held in the region. So far, there is little coordination between the various navies patrolling the area, which...
While international attention was riveted on the Gulf of Aden, a Singapore-registered tugboat in the South China Sea was attacked by pirates on April 7, a reminder that piracy is happening elsewhere in the world as well, underlining the need for a global response. "An American captain freed is a good example," says Nair of NUSI. "But if it remains an isolated, incidental event, it will mean nothing. Now the Somali pirates have threatened revenge; they may become more active...
That kind of terrorism may be turning many would-be sailors away from a lucrative career. After 13 years and three trips back and forth across the notorious Gulf of Aden during his last stint onboard, Vikas Kapoor quit the merchant navy last year. "It's anyway a hazardous profession, what with rough seas and accidents and homicide. Now this piracy and criminalization of sea lanes ..." he says, adding, "It's crazy out there. There'll be hundreds of big and small boats, and it's impossible to tell who's a pirate...