Continuing from my previous post, let’s see why piracy is justifiable in the minds of the people committing it.  First, I’ll say up front that I don’t agree with any justification of piracy, and I have the sense that the argument that others are polluting sounds more like an excuse, but I think this is a good illustration of the impact that an impoverished country can have on other countries and the world’s economy and security.

Bob Crow, [the Rail Maritime and Transport union] general secretary, said: “There are clearly deep economic and social problems in poverty-stricken countries like Somalia that are feeding the piracy problem, and they, too, require international co-operation because they are also a result of the global economy.”

Clearly, as long as there are riches afloat on the high seas, there will be pirates out there to plunder them.

Robbing thugs or Robin Hoods?

THE pirates of Puntland, the northern breakaway area of Somalia, are unapologetic about their trade.

Their spokesman, Januna Ali Jama, based in the port of Eyl, where scores of hijacked vessels are anchored, argues vehemently that the increasingly professional pirates are the Robin Hoods of the sea, righting numerous wrongs against Somalia.

“Our country is destroyed by foreigners who dump toxic waste at our shores,” Ali Jama argued in an interview with the BBC Somali Service.

Huge waves that battered Puntland after the Asian tsunami at Christmas 2004 killed 300 people, destroying thousands of homes and stirring up tonnes of nuclear and toxic waste illegally dumped offshore in the 1990s. The United Nations Environment Programme reported many unusual illnesses in the region following the tsunami. It said European companies were involved in the dumping, but there was never any accurate assessment of the extent of the problem.

Abdullah Elmi Mohamed, a Somali academic studying in Sweden, said that the European companies charged “approximately $8 per tonne (for dumping off Somalia], while in Europe the cost for the disposal and treatment of toxic waste material could go up to $1,000 per tonne.”

With Puntland unrecognised internationally, little diplomatic pressure can be put on the region’s authorities, which say piracy also grew after international “sea robber” fishing fleets plundered and wrecked its fishing grounds. The UN estimates fish worth at least £50 million a year has been taken illegally from Somali waters by Spanish, South Korean and other foreign boats, which also raided Somali fishermen’s nets and used destructive techniques that have wiped out tuna shoals, destroyed fish eggs and caused havoc with the marine environment.

Most of Puntland’s pirates are former poor fishermen with no particular political ideology who have turned to more lucrative work, plying the seas in search of ransom targets, travelling in light speedboats from at least two mother ships far out at sea.

The pirates are heroes in a shattered land. Millions of dollars in ransoms are being paid by desperate ship-owners – more than $30 million so far this year, one and a half times the annual budget of the Puntland authorities – and once-impoverished ports like Eyl have become boomtowns.

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