A White Paper by Rear Admiral Chris Parry CBE. With antecedents that reach back to classical times, piracy has sprung up and thrived in various troubled parts of the world for most of the 20th century and survived into the early years ofour present century. Because the perpetrators live on the land and rely on its support, piracy is paradoxically a land problem, but with an obvious maritime dimension. Common piracy is usually opportunistic and sporadic, organised piracy is endemic and defined by the range and sophistication of the links that sustain it, the context within which these networks are able to operate and the effects that criminalised activity has on the local political, economic and sociallandscape. The wider the connections and networks a pirate enterprise has, the more requirements and opportunities there are for corrupt institutions and individuals.