Piracy at sea with all its lore and literature is not new and is believed to have existed in turbulent periods as early as 14th century BC when the Sea People, as they were then called, threatened Aegean and Mediterranean voyages. It is said that the great Roman emperor Julius Caesar was also captured by Cilician pirates and released only after payment of huge ransom amounting to fifty 'talents of gold' -one talent roughly equated with the weight of one person. Pakistan got embroiled in this menace as a huge chunk of its Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), which has recently been extended from 200 nautical miles to 360 nautical miles, was affected by piracy off the coast of Somalia. Pakistan began to contribute its naval forces towards a multinational coalition task force which took up the role to fight piracy and was named as Combined Task Force 151 (CTF-151). It comprised of about 25 naval vessels from NATO, USA, Pakistan, Singapore and Japan that patrolled approximately 8.3 million square kilometers of ocean which is roughly the size of Western Europe.
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