pirates, terrorists, whatever

As liberal America convulses in ecstacy over the willingness of their guy to pull the trigger on pirates, its worth thinking a little more about Somalia, since its not out of the question that well be seeing another wonderful humanitarian intervention there before too long.  Consider, then, Johann Haris analysis:

In 1991, the government of Somalia collapsed. Its nine million people have been teetering on starvation ever since and the ugliest forces in the Western world have seen this as a great opportunity to steal the countrys 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. When I asked Mr Ould-Abdallah what European governments were doing about it, he said with a sigh: Nothing. There has been no clean-up, no compensation, and no prevention.

At the same time, other European ships have been looting Somalias seas of their greatest resource: seafood. We have destroyed our own fish stocks by overexploitation and now we have moved on to theirs. More than $300m-worth of tuna, shrimp, and lobster are being stolen every year by illegal trawlers. The local fishermen are now starving. Mohammed Hussein, a fisherman in the town of Marka 100km south of Mogadishu, told Reuters: If nothing is done, there soon wont be much fish left in our coastal waters.

This is the context in which the pirates have emerged. Somalian fishermen took speedboats to try to dissuade the dumpers and trawlers, or at least levy a tax on them. They call themselves the Volunteer Coastguard of Somalia and ordinary Somalis agree. The independent Somalian news site WardheerNews found 70 per cent strongly supported the piracy as a form of national defence.

No, this doesnt make hostage-taking justifiable, and yes, some are clearly just gangsters especially those who have held up World Food Programme supplies. But in a telephone interview, one of the pirate leaders, Sugule Ali: We dont consider ourselves sea bandits. We consider sea bandits [to be] those who illegally fish and dump in our seas.

Its worth reading the whole thing the history of classical pirates is, it seems, just as multilayered as the situation in Somalia.

http://web.overland.org.au/?p=1128