The ongoing pirate saga off Somalia is lurid, almost too fantastic for me to consider that this is still happening in 2009. But after reading the bombastically title "You Are Being Lied to About Pirates" by Johann Hari, I realized that this story is incredibly revealing of a nation left to linger in misery, with help from us and other world players, for a very long time.
Smoke and mirrors today, with Rush Limbaugh designating Somali pirates as muslim terrorists, which was immediately refuted by the Department of Defense.
Now back to Hari...he asserts that some of those called pirates are actually protecting the unregulated coast of Somalia against illegal dumping of nuclear waste and over fishing by European and Japanese vessels.
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Nuclear waste dumped off the coast of Somalia...
In 1991, the government of Somalia - in the Horn of Africa - collapsed. Its nine million people have been teetering on starvation ever since - and many of the ugliest forces in the Western world have seen this as a great opportunity to steal the country's food supply and dump our nuclear waste in their seas.
Yes: nuclear waste. As soon as the government was gone, mysterious European ships started appearing off the coast of Somalia, dumping vast barrels into the ocean. The coastal population began to sicken. At first they suffered strange rashes, nausea and malformed babies. Then, after the 2005 tsunami, hundreds of the dumped and leaking barrels washed up on shore. People began to suffer from radiation sickness, and more than 300 died. Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the UN envoy to Somalia, tells me: "Somebody is dumping nuclear material here. There is also lead, and heavy metals such as cadmium and mercury - you name it." Much of it can be traced back to European hospitals and factories, who seem to be passing it on to the Italian mafia to "dispose" of cheaply.
On over fishing...
At the same time, other European ships have been looting Somalia's seas of their greatest resource: seafood. We have destroyed our own fish-stocks by over-exploitation - and now we have moved on to theirs. More than $300m worth of tuna, shrimp, lobster and other sea-life is being stolen every year by vast trawlers illegally sailing into Somalia's unprotected seas. The local fishermen have suddenly lost their livelihoods, and they are starving. Mohammed Hussein, a fisherman in the town of Marka 100km south of Mogadishu, told Reuters: "If nothing is done, there soon won't be much fish left in our coastal waters."
This is the context in which the men we are calling "pirates" have emerged.
Please, do not mistake me for a pirate apologist. Criminals are criminals and should be treated as such. I think the allegations laid out by Hari are entirely plausible. If true, the Somali's must be desperate. Why else would they resort to such tactics? I think they should be investigated and documented, and if found to be true, a solution must be formulated. If what Hari writes is accurate, its in our better interests to help find that solution and not in a way that kills more civilians (I know we are smarter than that).
These are incredibly serious charges, and I'd like to thank the criminal pirates for helping bring them to light. Could you imagine this kind of dumping or exploitation taking place off your coasts? What would you do if there were no one there to stop it?