http://www.sfbayview.com/2009/you-are-b ... t-pirates/
February 4, 2009
You are being lied to about pirates
by Johann Hari
Somali pirate ?ships? are small, but the ships they seize are huge. They held one gigantic tanker for months until ransom was paid. Who imagined that in 2009, the world?s governments would be declaring a new War on Pirates? As you read this, the British Royal Navy - backed by the ships of more than two dozen nations, from the U.S. to China - is sailing into Somalian waters to take on men we still picture as parrot-on-the-shoulder pantomime villains. They will soon be fighting Somalian ships and even chasing the pirates onto land, into one of the most broken countries on earth.
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In 1991, the government of Somalia - in the Horn of Africa - collapsed. Its 9 million people have been teetering on starvation ever since - and many of the ugliest forces in the Western world have seen this as a great opportunity to steal the country?s 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 U.N. 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 Ould-Abdallah what European governments were doing about it, he said with a sigh: ?Nothing. There has been no cleanup, no compensation and no prevention.?
At the same time, other European ships have been looting Somalia?s seas of their greatest resource: seafood. We have destroyed our own fish stocks by over-exploitation - and now we have moved on to theirs. More than $300 million worth of tuna, shrimp, lobster and other sea life is being stolen every year by vast trawlers illegally sailing into Somalia?s unprotected seas.
The local fishermen have suddenly lost their livelihoods, and they are starving. Mohammed Hussein, a fisherman in the town of Marka 100km south of Mogadishu, told Reuters: ?If nothing is done, there soon won?t be much fish left in our coastal waters.?
This is the context in which the men we are calling ?pirates? have emerged. Everyone agrees they were ordinary Somalian fishermen who at first took speedboats to try to dissuade the dumpers and trawlers, or at least wage a ?tax? on them. They call themselves the Volunteer Coast Guard of Somalia - and it?s not hard to see why.
In a surreal telephone interview, one of the pirate leaders, Sugule Ali, said their motive was ?to stop illegal fishing and dumping in our waters ? We don?t consider ourselves sea bandits. We consider sea bandits [to be] those who illegally fish and dump in our seas and dump waste in our seas and carry weapons in our seas.? William Scott would understand those words.
No, this doesn?t make hostage-taking justifiable, and yes, some are clearly just gangsters - especially those who have held up World Food Program supplies. But the ?pirates? have the overwhelming support of the local population for a reason. The independent Somalian news site WardherNews conducted the best research we have into what ordinary Somalis are thinking - and it found 70 percent ?strongly supported the piracy as a form of national defense of the country?s territorial waters.?
One of the pirate leaders, Sugule Ali, said their motive was ?to stop illegal fishing and dumping in our waters ? We don?t consider ourselves sea bandits. We consider sea bandits [to be] those who illegally fish and dump in our seas and dump waste in our seas and carry weapons in our seas.?
During the revolutionary war in America, George Washington and America?s founding fathers paid pirates to protect America?s territorial waters, because they had no navy or coast guard of their own. Most Americans supported them. Is this so different?
Did we expect starving Somalians to stand passively on their beaches, paddling in our nuclear waste, and watch us snatch their fish to eat in restaurants in London and Paris and Rome? We didn?t act on those crimes - but when some of the fishermen responded by disrupting the transit corridor for 20 percent of the world?s oil supply, we begin to shriek about ?evil.? If we really want to deal with piracy, we need to stop its root cause - our crimes - before we send in the gunboats to root out Somalia?s criminals.
The story of the 2009 war on piracy was best summarized by another pirate, who lived and died in the fourth century BC. He was captured and brought to Alexander the Great, who demanded to know ?what he meant by keeping possession of the sea.? The pirate smiled and responded: ?What you mean by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, while you, who do it with a great fleet, are called emperor.?
Once again, our great imperial fleets sail in today - but who is the robber?
Johann Hari is a writer for the Independent newspaper. He has reported from Iraq, Israel/ Palestine, the Congo, the Central African Republic, Venezuela, Peru and the U.S., and his journalism has appeared in publications all over the world. To contact him, email johann@johannhari.com or visit his website at JohannHari.com. This column previously appeared in the Independent and Huffington Post, where the following postscript was added:
Postscript: Some commentators seem bemused by the fact that both toxic dumping and the theft of fish are happening in the same place - wouldn?t this make the fish contaminated? In fact, Somalia?s coastline is vast, stretching 3,300km (over 2,000 miles). Imagine how easy it would be - without any coast guard or army - to steal fish from Florida and dump nuclear waste on California, and you get the idea. These events are happening in different places but with the same horrible effect: death for the locals and stirred-up piracy. There?s no contradiction.
