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This paper investigates the potential existence of a nexus between piracy incidents in East Africa and the attacked vessel’s flag. The investigation takes place on two distinct levels. Firstly, it is widely believed that Somali pirates select their targets at random. On the first level of enquiry, the investigation attempts to assess whether this common belief is supported by historical data and to what extent. Secondly, it is also widely believed that the decision on attacking a vessel registered under a particular flag is unrelated to the participation of its Flag State in any of the Naval Forces operating around the Horn of Africa. Again, the investigation attempts to assess whether this belief holds true and under what circumstances. The paper is constructed in the following way: \n \nSection 1 is the Introduction to the Phenomenon of Piracy around the Horn of Africa and its definitions. It includes a brief literature review and statistics on attacks staged against commercial vessel (targets) through-out the ten year period from 2000 to 2009. The section includes also historical data on vessel registries. \n \nSection 2 challenges the First main belief: an analysis of reported data is performed in order to establish the possibility of existence of a (counter-)driver which may potentially be influencing pirate targets. The assumed (counter-)driver is the vessel’s flag and it is endeavoured to establish the impact of the latter on the pirates’ decision to attack a specific vessel. \n \nSection 3 challenges the Second main belief: At Flag State level the investigation questions whether there is a link between the flag of the vessel attacked and the protection (if any) offered by the Flag State to vessels’ in its Registry. As previously mentioned, for the purpose of this paper, protection is defined as the participation of the Flag State’ s Navy in a Naval Force operating around the Horn of Africa and in the Gulf of Aden.
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