This is popular front a podcast focused on the niche details of modern warfare and

underreported conflict with me Jake Hanrahan. Today we're speaking to journalist Colin Freeman and

he's going to be telling us everything we needed to know about armed piracy so militancy on the seas not always

political militancy but militancy for financial gain conflict nonetheless

Colin himself was actually kidnapped by pirates at one point and he's been covering this beat for years.

He knows about the paramilitaries that help out the sailors.

He knows about the pirate groups that give

kickbacks to militant, sometimes jihadist groups. He's going to explain it all

to us. If you like what we're doing here, please consider supporting Popular Front

at patreon.com

slash Popular Front.

Maybe just give us an idea of where global piracy is at at the moment.

Well as of about 10 years ago when I first started covering piracy it was mainly off

the coast of Somalia and extending out into the Indian Ocean.

And there was a lot of hijackings between the years of about 2008 to 12.

Then after that, the Somali privacy

pretty much got stamped out, and it was pretty simple

as to why most of the ships that were sailing in the Indian Ocean at the time

eventually just decided that they were going to start carrying armed guards and

that pretty much stamped the problem out there.

The reason they hadn't done prior to that was because insurers were generally a bit

wary of having armed guards on ship. They were worried about

...