Yemen's coast guard hasn't done a good job of protecting local fishermen from pirates. The coast guard is too busy hiring themselves out to merchant ships who want an escort through this piracy belt:
Somali pirates have devastated the Yemeni fishing community, by stealing boats that go too far from the coast, and force the fishing boat crews to work for the pirate gangs, or simply killing the fishermen and keeping the boats, which are more suitable for trips far out to sea. In the last seven years, the catch has declined over 70 percent and many of the 20,000 fishermen are destitute, or just scraping by. The Yemeni Coast Guard has not been much help, as Coast Guard patrol boats make lots of money hiring themselves out to escort merchant ships through pirate infested waters.
This isn't exactly a new practice. Countries have helped support the cost of maintaining their militaries by hiring them out. Whether you are talking about Saudi Arabia hiring entire brigades to defend Saudi Arabia, nations offering troops for UN peacekeeping missions, host-nation support for foreign defenders (as we receive in South Korea, Japan, and Germany, for example), or even the 1991 Gulf War which we probably turned a profit on by winning so quickly and getting financial support from many of our allies, this is not unusual.
And it is not unusual for former military people to hire themselves out to countries. This has been a common practice in history that has not been repeated thus far today despite the hand wringing over modern versions of mercenary companies that offer military support services on the private market.
But it is an interesting development that organized military units of a state could hire themselves out as freelancers. Maybe this is far more common than I realize. But even if common, how much longer before the Internet makes the availability of such moonlighters a commodity to be purchased by private individuals interested in waging their own military actions in support of their own private foreign policies?
