Somali piracy is back in the news big time. The reason: this time Somali pirates have taken control of an American cargo ship, the Maersk Alabama. Though the takeover was brief and the ship has sailed to its destination in Kenya, the Captain of the ship, Richard Phillips is being held hostage by the pirates on a lifeboat about 300 miles off the Somali coast. Since the hostage taking, the American media has written a lot on Somali piracy, much of it expressing an underlying current of exasperation and bewilderment at how dare anyone, let alone a rag tag group of Somalis, take over an American ship. To explain what is going on, American media and experts on Somalis stress three points:
1- Somalia has no government
2- The Somali coast is very long
3- International laws are hampering US efforts to combat piracy
Point number one is indisputable. Point number three is debatable. But the biggest defect in the reasoning of American policy makers and opinion makers has to do with point number two. No, we are not disputing that the Somali coast is long. What we are saying is that to stress that the Somali coast is long and leave it at that shows either ignorance or deliberate deception. Why are we saying this? Because although the Somali coast is long, it belongs to 3 different entities: Somaliland (a peaceful and democratic republic that covers most of the north), Puntland (an autonomous region in North East Somalia), and South-Central Somalia (an area under the control of religious extremists and warlords). Out of these three Somali territories, only one, namely, Puntland, is the source and base of pirates. The policy implication of this fact is clear: in order to put an end to the scourge of piracy, action will have to be taken against the source of the problem in Puntland. The other choice for US policymakers is of course, to dance around the problem, which is what saying the Somali coast is too long really amounts to.
The long-term danger of the current approach of not rooting out the source of the problem, which is in Puntland , is that there is every possibility that other Somalis who are watching what is happening might be emboldened by Western impotence and join the fray, then we will really have the self-fulfilling prophecy of piracy along the entire Somali coast.
Piracy and hostage-taking are inherently immoral and criminal actions, but what makes the taking of the Maersk Alabama even more abominable is that it carried food for the starving people of Kenya, many of whom are Somalis. Moreover, continued piracy by Puntlanders has raised the cost of insurance for shipping and thus made the cost of living higher in the Horn of Africa, one of the poorest, if not the poorest region, in the world.
We condemn the barbaric actions of the pirates and their networks and facilitators in the Puntland administration. We also call on the US government to take strong steps to free Captain Richard Phillips. But it is important to remember that Captain Phillips is not the only hostage who needs to be liberated. The international community, particularly the US, need to liberate their policies from the faulty perception of Somalia as a sovereign and unified country. Instead of sticking to the fiction of a non-existent unified Somalia, the US should acknowledge the reality on the ground and start treating each Somali territory according to whether it respects international rules and civilized morality. A policy based on reality would mean rewarding the good guys and punishing the bad guys, the opposite of current policies of the US and the international community toward Somalis. It would mean granting diplomatic recognition to democratic Somaliland, and punishing pirates and terrorists.

 

Home | Contact us | Links | Archives | Search