As the country awaits the outcome of Captain Richard Phillips hostage negotiation, I begin asking myself the same questions everyone seems to be asking, but not answering. Why is this piracy happening? For that answer, I had to go back to the late 1980s. Somalia was in civil war and shortly after its outbreak, allegations began to surface that hazardous waste had been dumped along its’ shorline. The allegations fell on deaf ears until the massive tsunami of 2004 stirred up tonnes of nuclear and toxic waste and higher than normal respiratory problems began to be reported.
The European Green Party began to follow up on these allegations and found copies of contracts signed by two European companies — the Italian Swiss firm, Achair Partners, and an Italian waste broker, Progresso — and representatives of the warlords then in power, to accept 10 million tonnes of toxic waste in exchange for $80 million. According to reports by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the waste has resulted in far higher than normal cases of respiratory infections, mouth ulcers and bleeding, abdominal hemorrhages and unusual skin infections.
At the same time, illegal trawlers began fishing Somalia’s seas with an estimated $300 million of tuna, shrimp, and lobster being taken each year depleting stocks previously available to local fishermen. The government of Somalia tried taxing these illegal trawlers, but to no avail. And thus began the rise of piracy. In an interview, Sugule Ali, one of the pirate leaders explained “We don’t consider ourselves sea bandits. We consider sea bandits (to be) those who illegally fish and dump in our seas.” Mostly, pirates say their attacks are payback for the world’s abuse of Somalia’s territory and resources and surprisingly some piracy experts agree. Peter Lehr, a Somalia piracy expert at the University of St. Andrews says “It’s almost like a resource swap, 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.“
[...] guard, Somalia finds it impossible to patrol it’s lengthy coastline. As I reported before, illegal dumping of toxic and hazardous waste has also led to resentment and piracy views of [...]
[...] But what we do know is that these pirates are still in action. I did a series a few blog posts ago explaining the beginning of the piracy. People are desperate in Somalia. They haven’t had a functioning government since 1991. The [...]