MedeshiOff the lawless coast of Somalia, pirates say they are merely patriots protecting their shores, the Tribune's Paul Salopek writes
By Paul Salopek
Tribune correspondent
October 10, 2008
JOHANNESBURG — Somalia's pirates want the world to know they are regrettably misunderstood.
They are merely "gentlemen who work in the ocean." Indeed, many are salty patriots risking their lives at sea while "protecting Somalia's shores." And the sea — ah, she is the pirates' beloved "mother."
Or so said a rueful pirate who telephoned a Somali radio station earlier this year, complaining about all the negative publicity surrounding the epidemic of boat hijackings, hostage-takings and thuggish attacks on UN aid ships that have made Somalia's coastline the most dangerous in the world.
The aggrieved buccaneer, calling himself a spokesman for the "Ocean Salvation Corps," said he and his men were merely exacting a tax for years of foreign poaching in Somalia's fish-rich waters. He even offered to embed reporters with his corsairs.
As the seizure of a weapons-stuffed Ukrainian freighter edges into its third week of a tense standoff between pirates and U.S. naval vessels off the coast of Somalia, the motivations of Somalia's notorious pirates would seem grimly clear: In this case, $20 million in hard cash in exchange for cutting loose the ship and its crew.
Yet for years, Somali pirates have wielded other, more self-serving justifications for their criminal activity on the high seas. 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.
Experts worry that piracy's quick and dirty spurts of cash into Somalia's coastal communities will destroy the local fishing industry once and for all.
In the raw frontier port of Bosaso, which also doubles as a hub for smuggling migrants to the Middle East, shiny new mansions have sprouted amid smoldering garbage dumps. The millions of dollars raked in by pirates have trickled far and wide, through local clans, Somalia's Islamist rebels and even the leadership of the weak transitional government, experts say.
The Puntland authorities insist they are doing what they can. Seven pirates are serving time in the dilapidated Bosaso jail, a government spokesman said.
