134 Pinoys Now Hostaged by Dread Somali Pirates

The national reaction so far to 134 of our countrymen being held hostage by pirates in Somalia has been ho-hum. No street rallies or prayer vigils led by the bishops. The Senate and the House are busy with their own intramurals, and the executive branch has not visibly exerted any muscular leadership on this issue. 134 Americans hostages in a foreign land would have been cause for war (at least in a Republican administration). Then again, the Philippine military is not exactly in a position to stage a Raid on Entebbe to free our own hostages. And Somali internal politics are so fucked up it would be virtually impossible to engage in a diplomat-to-diplomat solutions session.

I do wonder. If the 134 Filipino hostages were exchanged for one man, Manny Pacquiao, would it lead to the sort of heightened national outrage that unifies as a nation? Rioting in the streets, chain rosaries along EDSA, 24-7 news coverage by those reliable standbyes in times of crisis -- AM radio? It is for the good that this pirate crisis has not paralyzed us as a nation, yet the relative equanimity with which we are reacting to it is still somewhat chilling.

In the last few days Somali piracy has attained international attention, especially after the Somali pirates captured the Aramco-owned Saudi oil supertanker The Sirius Star. There has been focus on the economic implications of the present increase in piracy "on shipping lanes crucial to the oil supply". Interestingly, Abu Dhabi's The National, quoting analysts, warns that the escalation of Somali piracy "will significantly raise the cost of most crude shipments to Europe and North America", even as the threats to the UAE's own oil exports would be "negligible". Across the globe, the respected American investigative journalist Gerald Posner, writing in Tina Brown's The Daily Beast, announces that:

a classified internal report at the US Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) has concluded that the pirates are funded by expatriate Somalis and Emiratis based in Dubai. This determination is based, in part, on an independent Interpol probe that managed to identify several moneymen behind the high sea piracy. All live in Dubai.

Understandably, there has been no official confirmation of Mr. Posner's report.