One man’s pirate is another’s coast guard

[The Zack]

 

Can anyone ever really support pirates? That was the question posed by one of Somalia’s most famous poets a few years ago. The answer depends on what part of the world you are in, and is more complicated than a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no.’

Pirates, kidnappers, rag-tag militia, sea-bandits, sea-robbers, disenfranchised fishermen, off-shore entrepreneurs, whatever you call them, it is universally accepted that their way of making a living is unlawful.

Somali pirates currently hold 30 ships and more than 660 seafarers from at least 20 different countries.

But why are these mostly young former fishermen catching ships instead of fish? The answer lies onshore as well as offshore.

By looking at pictures from the pirate havens of Eyl and Hobyo, it is clear that these young men have nothing in common with Johnny Depp in the movie Pirates of the Caribbean.

Somalia hasn’t had a functioning central government in the last 20 years. The country is in ruins, thanks to feuding warlords and Islamists.

The coastal towns these young men call home haven’t been spared death and destruction.

In fact, in some coastal towns, the fighting has been worse, thanks to illicit trading partnerships between warlords and foreign mafia. It is true that for these young Somali men, making money has always been their primary goal.

During the “good-old days,” they used to go to the sea and come back with plenty of fish to sell. The sea was not only a provider, but also an escape from the war that was raging on land.

Warlords learnt that dealing in the dumping of toxic waste in Somali waters was more lucrative than running check-points and robbing the already penniless populations. Once the dumping of toxic waste had begun, it grew and grew.

At height of the dumping operations, foreign mafia were paying local warlords a mere $2.50 (Sh210) per tonne of toxic waste dumped on the Somalia coastline.

This made Somalia one of the world’s cheapest dump sites and gave locals unknown illnesses and killed what remained of any fish that had been left by illegal fishing trawlers. This dumping continues today and no one knows if, or when, it will end.

Suspicious containers leaking what is thought to be radioactive toxic wastes, surface every now and then in populous coastal towns all along the Somali coast. The rate of birth defects and children born with cancers has increased.

Terrible civil wars had already made surviving on land hard enough and these young men now found themselves with no way of making a living from the polluted soil and not being able to support their families. Thus, modern day piracy was born.

In places like Hobyo and Eyl, a young man may only have three options to make a living: join local warlords, join the al-Qaeda-linked Islamist group al-Shabaab or become a pirate.

Doubled each year

One Earth Foundation figures show that for the average ransom paid to free a ship in the last five years, the amount paid to pirates has doubled each year.

From around $150,000 (Sh12.6 million) in 2005 to $5.4 million (Sh453 million) in 2010, a 3,600 per cent increase. This makes piracy off the coast of Somalia extremely profitable.

Is it any wonder that piracy is the undisputed number one “profession” in Eyl and Hobyo? The world’s reaction to this has been to increase the international naval presence off the coast of Somalia.

This hasn’t deterred the pirates and has led to world leaders making exasperated statements about how Somali pirates are taking the world economy hostage.

Pirates know that even when caught red-handed they stand an 80 per cent chance of being released to try their luck again. When they are detained and sent to prisons in the West, the prison conditions are much more favourable than those in many Somali coastal towns.

The Somali people feel abandoned by the world, their plight seen but not acted upon. They feel they have been left to fight warlords, Islamist and foreign mafia on their own and now the pirates who spend their rich pickings in unknown places, away from the local economy.

The world needs to know that sea-borne only operations will not solve the issue of piracy in Somalia. Any solution that is proposed must involve solving the problems on land. The longer these problems are ignored, the bolder and richer the pirates get and harder it will be to dislodge them.

As an author of a report on piracy from Chatham House says: “Pirates can be chased on sea, but piracy can only be eradicated on land.”

 

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