The reason Somali fishermen became pirates

(photo: AP)

“Somebody is dumping nuclear material here. There is also lead, and heavy metals such as cadmium and mercury - you name it.” ~Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the UN envoy to Somalia

There are two sides to every story, but the cause of Somalia's piracy problem is barely discussed in the media. In January, Kenyan analyst Mohamed Abshir Waldo wrote a paper entitled “The Two Piracies in Somalia: Why the World Ignores the Other?” That is a very good question.

I decided to write this blog when I received an email yesterday from a yachtie friend who'd gone ashore in Djbouti, just north of Somalia.



She writes:

Personally, I have a certain amount of sympathy for the Somalian "Robin Hood's." After finishing a job on an expedition boat I got off in Djibouti to see the country and maybe go into Ethiopia. I hitched a lift with a group of French navy pilots going up to Lac Abby. It was an amazing adventure! They were the crew of the new French spy plane that is permanently patrolling those waters. They know everything that is going on! Information that could be used to avoid piracy situations? They found the 4 French "tourists" that were kidnapped in the Yemen. Orwell's "Newspeak" is found here. I think this is a power play whose main player is not yet clear.

There is a perversity in protecting the very commercial interests that have driven a country into abject poverty. Orwell's "doublethink" is found here. There are two refugee camps in Djibouti, that are the largest in the world, both cardboard cities are dependent on just two stand pipes and charity, supplemented by the prostitution of the women to the servicemen who are station there.

The connection is our humanity.....or our gradually increasing detachment from it!

In a nutshell, other countries have been illegally fishing Somali waters, taking crab, lobster, and fish that the Somali fishermen exclusively used to gather. Even worse, there is proof that European toxic waste is being dumped, much of which washed ashore after the 2005 tsunami, sickening livestock and people, and killing three hundred. Yet the U.N. does nothing.

Here are some excerpts from Mohamed Abshir Waldo's paper:

. . . massive illegal foreign fishing piracy [has] been poaching and destroying the Somali marine resources for the last 18 years following the collapse of the Somali regime in 1991. With its usual double standards when such matters concern Africa, the “international community” comes out in force . . . against the Somali fishermen pirates while discreetly protecting the numerous Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) fishing fleets there from Europe, Arabia and the Far East.

The countries engaged include practically all of southern Europe, France, Spain, Greece, UK. Nowadays I hear even Norway. There were not many Scandinavians before, but Norwegian fishing now is involved in this, you know, very profitable fishing business. So, there are others, of course. There are Russian. There are Taiwanese. There are Philippines. There are Koreans. There are Chinese. You know, it’s a free-for-all coast.

One report estimated that more than $300 million dollars-worth of tuna, shrimp, and lobster are being stolen every year by illegal trawlers. The local fishermen are now starving.

“IUU fishing is detrimental to the wider marine ecosystem because it flouts rules designed to protect the marine environment which includes restrictions to harvest juveniles, closed spawning grounds and gear modification designed to minimize by-catch on non-target species….In so doing they steal an invaluable protein source from some of the world’s poorest people and ruin the livelihoods of some legitimate fishermen; incursions by trawlers into the inshore areas reserved for artisanal [as opposed to commercial] fishing can result in collision with local fishing boats, destruction of fishing gear and deaths of fishermen” says the High Seas Task Force (HSTF). In its report, Closing the Net: Stopping Illegal Fishing on the High Seas, HSTF puts worldwide value of IUU catches at $4 to $9 billion, large part of it from Sub-Sahara Africa, particularly Somalia.

Not only are other countries pillaging Somalia's waters, they are dumping toxic waste. This excerpt comes from a columnist for the London Independent:

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 UN 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 clean-up, no compensation, and no prevention."

It seems that piracy will continue as long as the plundering of Somalia's waters is tolerated.

Mohamed Abshir Waldo concludes:

In their current operations, the Somali fishermen pirates genuinely believe that they are protecting their fishing grounds (both 12-mile territorial and EEZ waters). They also feel that they exacting justice and compensation for the marine resources stolen and the destroyed ecosystem by the IUUs. And their thinking is shared and fully supported by the coastal communities, whose protectors and providers they became.

Somali pirates wreaking havoc in the Gulf of Aden

When you look at the size of this Saudi oil tanker that Somali pirates raided last week in the Gulf of Aden, you think "How the hell?" These guys are seeking $25 milion -- $1 million for each crew member of the Sirius Star they are holding hostage. And they'll probably get it.

Check out The Weekly Piracy Report. Pirates are running rampant from Nigeria to Colombia to Cameroon. But most attacks are in the Gulf of Aden off the coast of Somalia.

It's not completely unusual for yacht owners to hire an ex-military guy who knows his guns to travel with them for pirate protection. Piracy incidents have declined over the past five years, except off the coast of Somalia, where they've increased 100 percent in the past year alone. The "pirate town" of Eyl is where they hold the crew for ransom.



I wondered why Somalia was the main place where piracy was going on. Turns out they haven't had a government for 20 years, their economy is beyond horrible, and fishing, once a big source of income for Somali coastal towns, is no longer a viable option.

In an interview with The Guardian this week, pirate Asad Abdulahi said "we consider ourselves heroes running away from poverty. We don't see the hijacking as a criminal act but as a road tax because we have no central government to control our sea."

The BBC interviewed a retired Somali army colonel who lives in Eyl and advises town elders. He explains that in addition to piracy,

. . . there has been something else going on and it has been going on for years. There are many dumpings made in our sea, so much rubbish.

It is dumped in our seas and it washes up on our coastline and spreads into our area. A few nights ago, some tanks came out from the high sea and they are leaking into the water and into the air.

The first people fell ill yesterday afternoon. People are reporting mysterious illnesses; they are talking about it as though it were chicken pox - but it is not exactly like that either. Their skin is bad. They are sneezing, coughing and vomiting.

This is the first time it has been like this; that people have such very, very bad sickness.

The people who have these symptoms are the ones who wake early, before it is light, and herd their livestock to the shore to graze. The animals are sick from drinking the water and the people who washed in the water are now suffering.

This town is close to the sea. It is a very old town which has a mixture of Somali clans. It is not big but it has a well-knit community.

Our community used to rely on fishing. But now no-one fishes. You see, a lot of foreign ships were coming and they were fishing heavily - their big nets would wipe out everything, even the fishermen's equipment. They could not compete.

So the people here began farming and keeping greater numbers of livestock. Like in any other Somali town, all one can do is rely on oneself.

But now we have these medical hazards.

What can we do about it?

That's a good question, but in the meantime, what can vulnerable vessels do to counter pirate attacks?

In addition to electric fences along the ship's guard rail, holographic radar for advanced warning, and even good old-fashioned barbed wire, there are some cool technological advances that ships can deploy, including sonic devices that can practically blow out the pirates' eardrums called LRAD, or Long Range Acoustical Device, made by the American Technology Corporation.

(photo by xeni)

Then there's the Magnetic Acoustic Device (MAD), pictured above, which also emits a warning noise like a focused laser beam of sound. The manufacturer's president Vahan Simidian says, "Should [pirates] keep on closing, the captain would commence evasive actions and switch on 'tone' - this is a piercing sound that will irritate and disorientate them," he said. "For now, the speakers on a merchant vessel aren't capable of hurting a person. Is our technology capable of hurting someone? Absolutely."