Middle East Media and Book Reviews Online Volume 1, Issue 2 | Page 18

2/2/2016

Middle East Media and Book Reviews Online

“The Somalis actually disdain fish and fishing” (p. 49). He quotes Pham, “the idea that Somali fishermen went out of business because of foreign
trawlers is laughable, because any Somali fisherman would’ve been out of business year ago for want of customers” (p. 49). He sees it as merely a
good storyline or narrative that fits the foreign press’ need to have a simple narrative of disenfranchised people forced into a life of crime.
McKnight also estimates that there are only several thousand Somalis actively engaged in piracy.
McKnight provides several chapters analyzing and describing the rescue of Captain Richard Phillips of the MV Mearsk Alabama. Mcknight notes
that “Yes, Capt. Richard Phillips wrote a book about his rescue, but he was in the hijacked lifeboat” (p. 119). He then proceeds to provide a blowby-blow account of the rescue of Phillips and the killing of several pirates who had captured him. This story is interesting, but for those wanting to
learn about the larger issues of Somali piracy it doesn’t provide that many lessons, since H