I always liked pirates better than ninjas.
Partial confirmation from an article by Jeffrey Gettleman published in the New York Times on Sept. 30th last year:
The piracy industry started about 10 to 15 years ago, Somali officials said, as a response to illegal fishing. Somalia’s central government imploded in 1991, casting the country into chaos. With no patrols along the shoreline, Somalia’s tuna-rich waters were soon plundered by commercial fishing fleets from around the world. Somali fishermen armed themselves and turned into vigilantes by confronting illegal fishing boats and demanding that they pay a tax.
“From there, they got greedy,” said Mohamed Osman Aden, a Somali diplomat in Kenya. “They starting attacking everyone.”
By the early 2000s, many of the fishermen had traded in their nets for machine guns and were hijacking any vessel they could catch: sailboat, oil tanker, United Nations-chartered food ship.
“It’s true that the pirates started to defend the fishing business,” Mr. Mohamed said. “And illegal fishing is a real problem for us. But this does not justify these boys to now act like guardians. They are criminals. The world must help us crack down on them.” [ Why? When there are clearly deeper problems, in part caused by the rest of the world, that have generated the "piracy"? ]
The United States and several European countries, in particular France, have been talking about ways to patrol the waters together. The United Nations is even considering something like a maritime peacekeeping force. Because of all the hijackings, the waters off Somalia’s coast are considered the most dangerous shipping lanes in the world. Googling Somalia's history is making me even more suspicious of the Western governments motives.
Apparently the country collapsed after a "Cold War dictator" was overthrown, and Somalia became a civil-war-zone ruled by Warlords.
This happened in Afghanistan, with the following features:
*Human rights groups that were campaigning against the dictatorship had no support from the West,
*Conservative and violent terrorist groups (the mujahideen) did get support from the West,
*The reason that so many warlords suddenly appeared to tear the country apart, is that they were actually the descendants of the terrorist groups armed and funded by the U.S.A.
If "Cold War" is a euphemism for "Russian ally" [...] One would wonder if these people were the same sorts of Western-backed murderers that took control (and still hold a lot of power) in Afghanistan.
Actually it's the opposite (but still kinda the same). The "Cold War dictator" in Somalia was the US-backed one, not a Soviet-backed puppet democracy as in Afghanistan. But conservative and violent terrorist groups did get support from the US (and went on to become the modern 'warlords'); they were just the ones in power.
From an article by Jim Lobe at "Inter Press Service News Agency", about the U.S.'s recent support of Somalian warlords as part of their "War on Terror" (*cough*):
http://ipsnews.net/africa/nota.asp?idnews=33514Ironically, some of the warlords who have benefited from U.S. backing fought its troops in 1993 when Washington was trying to crush resistance to U.N. efforts to pacify the country following the ouster in 1991 of President Siad Barre, a U.S. client during the Cold War, according to Dagne.
[...]
To Prendergast, Washington's most recent misadventure in Somalia recalls earlier debacles. "During the Cold War, U.S. officials armed strongmen to carry out our perceived national interests, and the consequences for Africa were disastrous," he said.
"It appears they've learned nothing since, as they're repeating the same strategy of arming strongmen and ignoring institutions. The consequences, predictably, are equally disastrous."Also interesting is that in most of the articles i've found, Siad Barre is a generic "Cold War dictator". But as soon as he is described as a US-ally, he becomes "President Siad Barre, a U.S. client".
(Note that almost all U.S. "clients" over the last century have been mass-murdering fascist dictators. Currently the U.S. supports dictators in Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, not to mention a mass-murdering apartheid regime in Isreal, a puppet democracy in Afghanistan where much of the Parliament is made up of warlords (the US-backed Cold War terrorists), and hideously unpopular puppet-governments in most of the Middle East, most famously Saudi Arabia.)
Most of the articles i've found on Somali Pirates amount to some fairly shameless banner-waving. Lots of mindless British pap about the Royal Navy, comments about how important it is that the Australian Navy get experience working with other navies, generally full of the blustery nationalistic self-celebration you expect from propaganda, with all the required comments about what a terrible effect all this is having on international trade. Very few even mention the history that the New York Times article (above) and the Huffington Post (previous post) cover, but nobody disputes this history. It's suspicious. And it amounts to journalists choosing not to mention crimes committed by their own nations.
(Noam Chomsky tells a story about a meeting with some Russian officials during the Cold War, when one of the officials joked about how efficiently the Western media said what the government wanted them to say, "How do you do it? In our country, we have to break fingernails to get that sort of control!")
What i've read so far has all of the hallmarks of a problem that was created - not through cluelessness or bumbling, but through direct action - by Western powers. Rather than addressing core Somalian problems like poverty, violence, and lack of human rights, our governments' response is to "declare war on pirates" and "secure shipping lanes for international trade," and cry foul now that some small part of the suffering they knowingly create around the world is finally touching them. (Hello, "9/11".)
It's an obscenity. I want to know more.