The world as seen by Somali pirates

J. Roughan

7 May 2009

Honiara

 

Young men from Somalia are currently grabbing the world's attention. A handful of them in tiny, fast moving dinghies, speed boats and skiffs have been capturing massive-sized trade ships, super oil tankers and luxury liners. Once these ships are captured the pirates trade them off for big bucks, millions and millions of ransom dollars. How could a small, poor bunch of kids bring the world's mighty nations to their knees?

 

Little known and realized is the fact that the failed state of Somalia--some 20 years of non-governance, lawlessness and chaos--is causing major grief among the nations of the world. This small, poor and insignificant country off Africa's eastern coast has become the centre of piracy in the 21st century. The world had already written off the whole piracy idea as something found in history books of the 18th and 19th centuries. Somali teenagers, however, have revisited this old 'business' enterprise and raised it to an art form.

 

Twenty years ago, piracy was hardly known in that part of the world. However, in the early 1990s when Somalia was in the process of falling apart right in the front of the world's eyes, it's early death raised few eye brows among the rich and mighty. A failed-state Somalia meant nothing to the world's elite and so this small. poor and insignificant nation was allowed to fail and fail spectacularly.

 

It's said that nature abhors a vacuum and so too do international thieves! Somalia's thriving fishing stocks were just sitting there for the raping by richer and more powerful nations. And their fishing ships came into the seas around this dying nation and plundered its rich fish resources. With no functioning state around to protect people's resource base, stealing fish stocks was easy to do. And that's exactly what happened!

 

Local fishermen whose whole livelihood and family life depended upon catching fish along the sea coast lying off Somalia saw their lives  destroyed before their eyes. At the time, there was hardly a peep from leading nations of the world. Somali fishermen, however, decided to take things into their own hands and to do something about this injustice.

 

They began preying upon the 20,000 large ships that sail the shipping lanes yearly off Somalia. If pirates could steal only a few ships a year,  hold the boats crew, cargo and the ship itself for ransom, then at least the millions of dollars demanded from ship owners would keep the pirates' families and way of life together.

 

It is interesting to observe how the developed world handled this crisis. Most African experts are convinced that piracy would come to a screeching halt if the Somalia nation could begin to stand on its own two feet and start functioning once again. But no, the world's major nations decided that fleets of very expensive warships, thousands of personnel and dozens of helicopters and planes would be the better answer. Presently almost a dozen nations--US, UK, Norway, Japan, China, Canada, etc.--have ordered their warships to patrol the sea lanes off Somalia and if necessary, blow away these nasty pirates. 

 

The developed world's warships, sailors and planes response currently costs millions of dollars to patrol, monitor and chase after pirates. A much smaller investment to re-root a new Somalia, the African failed state, could be much more effective means to put a stop to piracy.

 

Obviously, the warship response--huge naval ships chasing after a bunch of teenagers in speed boats--will win in the long run. But the Somalia failed nation problem will continue unresolved. The mighty nations of the world will win at sea but lose on land until Somalia's basic failed nation problem is answered.  

 

Does the Somalia failed nation story have anything to say to us in Solomon Islands?