Thirty or so years ago the pirates, (or their fathers) were subsistence fishermen. Then the big boys turned up with fleets of big trawlers and emptied the fishing grounds, destroying the nets of the locals and occasionally running them down. Their government, lacking both resources and any real authority, could do nothing. So, wanting to eat, and having been taught by good teachers that crime does pay, they took to crime. A bit like the robber barons who infested the Rhine valley in the middle ages, they extracted tribute from passing trade. It seems that they spend freely when they collect, and a whole local economy has grown up. The people running the area are the local warlords, and they benefit as much as anybody else around there, so there is no incentive to stop.
The punitive measures proposed will no doubt satisfy briefly, but they will not cure the problem. Chances are that unless huge resources can be piled in, they won't even keep the lid on it. Most likely they will store up another generation of grudges to be worked out in the future.
