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Americans breathed a sigh of relief earlier this week when Captain Richard Phillips was rescued in the waters of the Gulf of Aden after being held hostage for five days by pirates who attacked his ship, the Maersk Alabama. KSMU's Jennifer Moore spoke with an economist who lived in the region about the driving forces behind these bandits: money and power.

US snipers killed three of Phillips' captors on Sunday.

But the move angered the pirates off the coast of Somalia, who have vowed revenge against the US and France. In the past two days, pirates have attacked another US ship, as well as several others from France, Greece, Lebanon and Egypt. Today, the French Navy captured 11 suspected pirates off the coast of Kenya.

Experts say the political instability in Somalia allows these crimes to continue, but that money is driving them.

Dr. John Hoftyzer is a professor of Economics at MSU. He lived in Saudi Arabia for six years, working at the University of Petroleum and Minerals.

He spoke to me about these bandits from an economic perspective, beginning with who’s sending them out, and who’s collecting the money when they come back to shore.

Hoftyzer said the situation is not unlike a mafia situation, where chieftains send soldiers out to do the 'collecting.'

He said quelling the pirates will take a lot of resources, since it is such a big area: a lot of ships to monitor the area. He says to date, governments have been reluctant to send enough forces to stop the attacks.

He said the problem of piracy off the coast of Somalia will only die down when the rewards no longer outweigh the risks. The options are to send in a tremendous amount of naval resources, arm the ships themselves, or help get a centralized government in Somalia which will, itself, police these pirates.

The problem of piracy got worse after the fall of the Somali government in the early 1990s. An estimated 16,000 ships pass through the Gulf of Aden each year.

For KSMU News, I’m Jennifer Moore.