[Peace-discuss] India and the Somali pirates

[Robert Naiman]

Off the lawless coast of Somalia, questions of who is pirating who
Off the lawless coast of Somalia, pirates say they are merely patriots
protecting their shores, the Tribune's Paul Salopek writes
Paul Salopek, Chicago Tribune, October 10, 2008
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-somalia-pirates_salopek1oct10,0,6155016.story
...
Mostly, they say their attacks are tough payback for the world
community's abuse of prostrate Somalia's territory and resources. And,
surprisingly, some experts admit that these arguments, while never
forgiving the terrors of piracy, may hold a grain of truth.

Somalia's lawless coastline has been ravaged by unscrupulous outsiders
with impunity since the Somali government collapsed in 1991, experts
say.

In the early 1990s, for example, Somalia's unpatrolled waters became a
cost-free dumping ground for industrial waste from Europe. Fishing
boats from Italy were reported to have ferried barrels of toxic
materials to Somalia's shores and then returned home laden with
illicit catches of fish. Rusting containers of hazardous waste washed
up on Somali beaches as recently as 2005, after a powerful tsunami
roared through.

But fish poaching has proved far more devastating to Somalis,
environmental officials say.

"It's been like a long gold rush for Thai, European, Yemeni and Korean
boats," said Abdulwali Abdulrahman Gayre, the vice minister of ports
and fisheries for Puntland, a dusty, semiautonomous state in northern
Somalia that is the bastion of the pirates.

"We have some of the richest fishing grounds in the world," said
Gayre. "Scientists say it is like a rain forest of fish. But our
fishermen can't compete with the foreigners in big ships who come to
steal from our waters."

Somalia, like all maritime countries, has legal rights over an
exclusive economic zone that extends 200 nautical miles to sea. And
though it has no navy to enforce its control, it theoretically owns
the fish and minerals in that area.

Many of Somalia's angry fishermen have picked up rifles and joined the
pirate mafias that have seized more than two dozen vessels off the
Somali coast so far this year, maritime security experts say.

"It's almost like a resource swap," said Peter Lehr, a Somalia piracy
expert at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland and the editor of
"Violence at Sea: Piracy in the Age of Global Terrorism." "Somalis
collect up to $100 million a year from pirate ransoms off their
coasts. And the Europeans and Asians poach around $300 million a year
in fish from Somali waters."

Lehr said at least 700 Somalis go to sea as pirates, usually in small
speedboats that operate from mother ships. He said the criminal
activity is bolstered by a massive shore-based infrastructure —boat
repairers, food suppliers, security guards—that directly involves
10,000 to 15,000 people.
...
On Wed, Nov 19, 2008 at 2:33 PM, Ricky Baldwin <baldwinricky at yahoo.com> wrote:
> So NPR is repeating today that the Indian Navy has claimed victory in a
> reported "sea battle" with Somali pirates and even sank one of the pirates'
> "mother ships."  A US Naval College professor interviewed this morning told
> Daniel Schorr that piracy had now become a major threat to the world's
> energy resources.  Presumably the professor was referring specifically to
> sea piracy – he didn't mention the big corporate land pirates – and in fact
> the interview never brought up any pirates other than Somali ones.
>
> They discussed some Saudi tankers recently seized or threatened by the
> former Somali fishermen.  Again, the context was decidedly not the potential
> right of the inhabitants to control or benefit from the resources of their
> lands – we're against that, aren't we? – but the threat to rich people's
> profits derived from said resources.
>
>
>
> Reminds me of a story that Noam Chomsky attributes to St. Augustine, I
> believe.  Alexander "the Great" it seems once captured a rather mouthy
> pirate.  Alexander: Who are you to molest the seas?  Pirate: Who are you to
> molest the whole world?  I have one ship, and you call me a pirate.  You
> have a whole navy, and they call you emperor.
>
>
>
> Not that India is the biggest emperor in the picture these days – that would
> be us.  India has been in the news a lot lately, as have Somali pirates.
> India even landed a probe on the moon earlier this month.  The pirates
> haven't managed any moon shots yet, as far as I know.
>
>
>
> But the Horn of Africa is one of those regions where Washington thinkers and
> oil company executives like to play Risk.  After all, the Persian Gulf is
> right there.  (We didn't think all that Black Hawk stuff in Mogadishu was
> really about 'humanitarian' concerns, did we?)  And ever since the implosion
> of the USSR, India has been a lot more amenable to US scheming.  A lot
> more.
>
> The rise of the Hindu Nationalists probably hasn't hurt, either.  The Indian
> government has had its own conflicts with Islamic populations at home and
> abroad for many years, complete with suicide bombings and military
> deployments, even a nuclear arms race with Pakistan.  According to
> international opinion polls after the World Trade Center attacks, India was
> the only country that ranked higher than the US in saying "war is the
> answer."  And so on.
>
> But I'm certainly no expert on the region (or anything else).  Anybody else
> have insights on this?
>
> Ricky
>
> "Every time you think, you weaken the nation." - Moe Howard
>
>
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>



-- 
Robert Naiman
Just Foreign Policy
www.justforeignpolicy.org
naiman at justforeignpolicy.org

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