Other than Halloween and perhaps the Disney movie franchise with Johnny Depp, Pirates of the Caribbean, most of us rarely hear much about modern day pirates. It wasn't until last April when Somali pirates off the coast of Somalia took a vessel and kidnapped sea Captain Richard Phillips. The captain was held on a small lifeboat by four hostage takers. A five day stand off ended with President Obama giving the navy seals the green light to "take 'em out" if I may paraphrase. The seal snipers waited until the cover of night, took aim at the kidnappers heads and shoulders and dropped three of the four bad guys. One of the pirates surrendered. He was 16 years old.
A familiar theme popped into my pea brain when I heard tell of the media's tale and that was; there has got to be more 'story', to this news story. What followed from the media was the usual: Separate the good guy from the evil guy, make the delineation lighthouse clear and write numerous stories that support the 'good and evil' findings. The latest attack came outside of Mogadishu. Pirates attacked a Panamanian flagged ship that left Dubai on October 24th. The kidnappers want $3 million.
My question is: Who are the pirates and why piracy in the year 2009? Somalia had a large fishing industry. Word spread of the abundant food source and rival/illegal trawlers and fishermen came to the area and took what they wanted. Somalia, having a powerless government was, you guessed it, powerless to do anything about it. To add insult to thievery, the trawlers and vessels dumped tons of waste into the waters which helped kill the remaining marine life that the sea poachers hadn't plundered. Then there are the big guns. The oil tankers who pass through the region. They not only dump their garbage but leaky tankers do what leaky tankers do. Then there is Somalia itself. In two words; poverty stricken. Lastly, it has even been reported that thanks to corporatism, nuclear waste has also been dumped into Somalia's waters. So who are the pirates? Well, the western media might go as far as saying that the brigands are disgruntled fisherman. However,it would be more accurate if they declared that these men began as fishermen and became HUNGRY AND DESPERATE!
The Somali fisherman cannot go to any police and report that his waters have been poisoned and pillaged. Nor can he go to his government and ask for a welfare check or food stamps. He is poor and on the brink of starvation. Before you jump up and call me a bleeding heart liberal, and label me as some kind of pirate/ terrorist sympathizer, I'm just searching for an answer...and now I feel that I have a better understanding of the Somali pirate. I don't condone the violence. But, what I do condone is a government that works for the people, which sadly, Somalia's government does not. I also condone a West that backs up the U.N. as well as aid organizations so that people in Somalia or any country are not pushed to starvation and lawlessness. But the U.N. is weakly backed and has their hands tied fighting an Islamic insurgency. And the latest contribution from the outside world is an international armada of war ships patrolling the area.
Please welcome the international armada players: The U.S., the E.U., Nato, Japan, South Korea and China topped off with U.S. drones launched from Seychelles. I'm not knocking a joint police force but once again in an effort to help, we are trying to treat the effect, not the cause. The shit, so to speak, is already out of the horse by the time you take out pirates in the open seas. If you deal with the poverty problem, (cause) and the pillaging problem (more cause) the shit stays in the horse and the fisherman never becomes a pirate (effect). Then we can all go back to dressing as pirates on Halloween and hoping and praying that Hollywood doesn't release Pirates of the Caribbean IV!
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