Does anyone know why there are pirates in (off the coast of ) Somalia?

[ColbertWatcher]

I remember a little bit about how these guys are doing it because their country is flat broke. But I don't remember where the link is.

Why are there pirates off the coats of Somalia? Anyone know what they want? Is this the same group that captured those other ships? This cannot be the most profitable way for these people to make a living.

Anyone know why this is happening?

[tekisui]

1. Here is a starting point:

An actually informative article from the AP:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=5435755&mesg_id=5435755

[stray cat]

2. Actually I think it is an extremely profitable way to make a living - millions at a shot

generally no military intervention - seems to almost always result in no pirate fatalities and a huge ransom paid by insurance companies

[joshcryer]

4. Indeed, some of these warlords are basically millionares with large arsenls.

They're the epitome of warlord, really. And all it takes is a small fishing boat with a moter on it and a few guns.

[Rabrrrrrr]

3. Shitty, a whole continent full of corrupt, evil, shitheaded "leaders", mixed with tribal racism

and hunger and disease and a hundred other things.

Somalia has been a pirating place for a few years, and in the last year it's become truly atrocious - but until this current one, they never bothered to fuck with an American ship, so the piracy hasn't made the news much.

The Wall Street Journal had a series of articles a month or two ago about it, warning that it's going to get a hell of a lot worse, and it's so difficult to stop because the laws of international waters are so ambiguous.

One reason that Somalia has so much piracy is that it's coastline is along a major shipping route(s), so it's perfectly placed for piracy.

[malaise]

14. Well now

imagine if it was your continent that had millions of young citizens captured and stolen for a few centuries.

Then wonder for a few minutes if leaders in Africa would be corrupt if European and American corporations and politicians didn't offer money for favors re the continent's resources.

Your post is offensive.

[Rabrrrrrr]

15. Of course European and American corporations and governments are part of the problem.

So is the Catholic Church.

It's still corrupt.

[Arctic Dave]

5. Piracy happens all over the world. Just like any crime

What we should be asking is why all of a sudden the MSM gives a rats butt. Distraction or reason to keep a large naval presence there?

[HeresyLives]

6. Starvation.

Due to the clan-based organization of Somalia and the lack of a central government, combined with Somalia's location at the Horn of Africa, conditions were ripe for the growth of piracy in the early 1990s. Since the collapse of the state, boats illegally fishing in Somali waters were a common sight. Pirates at first were interested in securing the waters before businessmen and militias became involved. Acts of piracy temporarily subsided following the rise of the Islamic Courts Union in 2006. However, pirate activity began to increase after Ethiopia invaded Somalia in December 2006.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somali_pirate


and

The Nightmare in Somalia
By LEN WENGRAF

U.S.-BACKED Ethiopian troops withdrew from their remaining positions in Somalia at the end of January, bringing an end to a two-year occupation carried out in the guise of the "war on terror."

The Ethiopian Army invaded Somalia in December 2006, overthrowing the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) government and installing the Transitional Federal Government (TFG). Two years later, approximately 10,000 people have lost their lives, and 1.1 million Somalis were turned into refugees, the victims of Ethiopian occupiers and an ongoing civil war.

From the beginning, the TFG, though backed by the U.S., was weak, maintaining control in only a small area of the capital of Mogadishu, and some regions of western Somalia. Several thousand African Union troops--including U.S.-trained Ugandan forces--ostensibly bolster the TFG, to little effect. The U.S. also intervened directly in Somalia with sporadic air strikes.

After the Ethiopian invasion, sections of the UIC and other opposition forces regrouped in the Alliance for the Re-Liberation of Somalia (ARS), with others coalescing around the fundamentalist al-Shabab group and other armed factions.
Ethiopian troops withdrew after a unity agreement between the TFG and the ARS, now the major opposition faction. Sheik Sharif Ahmed, the ARS leader and head of the UIC government in 2006, was elected president of the TFG on January 31


http://www.counterpunch.org/wengraf02132009.html

[Bobbieo]

9. I understand the pirates were former fishermen until their livelihood

was taken away from them.

[joshcryer]

12. All because they failed to form a government.

A government could have a coast guard to keep the seas from being overfished. Instead they have clans of warlords who are all only looking out for themselves.

In this case it is pure greed driving them.

[HeresyLives]

20. They had a govt until they were

invaded by Ethiopia, which was backed by US.

[joshcryer]

24. There has been many attempts to form a government, but the warlords won't have it.

They have executed people who wanted to form a democratic government, this is fact.

[HeresyLives]

21. Other countries were fishing in their waters.

It squeezed the Somalis out, and they are starving.

[FarLeftRage]

7. CopoRATions dumping toxic wastes into fishing grounds

off the coast of Somalia...

More here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x5435385

[Historic NY]

10. What corporations or countries none were named?

[FarLeftRage]

16. Very good question!

Further research is needed, because the Der Spiegel article is not specific.

But even before this article was posted, I had read somewhere and I don't remember because I read alot of different articles each day, that mainly Indian and European companies engaged in the practice of dumping toxic waste off Africa's east coast for a while now. They did not name any particular company...

[ColbertWatcher]

11. This is the one I remember! Of course the other explanations are sound as well.

Thank you for posting.

[FarLeftRage]

17. You're welcome...

Here's another link: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x3796185#3796315

[Historic NY]

18. Strange no other country is reporting effects. I'd like to know how

they got there from Europe with radioactive waste w/o being detected in the Suez Canal. Since 911 you can bet many nations are shadowing or screening for the obvious. I haven't seen many other articles either.

[ColbertWatcher]

22. How are blood diamonds still mined? How do contaminated products keep leaving China?

And show up years later in America?

I can totally see how radioactive waste can get shipped around as long as the right people are paid the right amount.

[stellanoir]

8. Piracy has always paid off since time immemorial.

It's thoroughly acceptable on Wall Street and within the walls of alleged power but is not at all in uncharted and impoverished waters.

Go figure.

signed,

a diabolical though quite determined female robin hood

[Alamuti Lotus]

13. initially formed by rogue (actually, just 'out of work') Coast Guard detachments

Short version..

The dictator Mohammed Said Biarre was a Cold War pawn. At this time Somalia & Ethiopia were alternately (both sides at some point) US & Soviet client states. Once the Cold War was over, their need was expired. Organized tribal resistance to Biarre saw his government fall about 20 years ago; however, the factions could not agree on any kind of government to follow and turned on each other. None were really strong enough to overcome the others and a violent stalemate followed.

In the north, two quasi-independent states formed. There was a particularly nasty and growing trend of foreign corporations exploiting the lack of a central government in Somalia and began mass harvesting of fish and other coastal resources (the original pirates, ironically). In response to this, in the northern independent state of Puntland and based out of the port of Eyl, former Coast Guard squads and other local citizens began fighting off the robbers to discourage their criminal behaviors

Some of the coast guard armed squads took this a step further and began seizing the ships themselves. As the profits grew exponentially, so did the seizures. The various groups are only loosely organized, sometimes outside of clan loyalties. The Union of Islamic Courts engaged and defeated the pirates on the land in Kismayo and Eyl when they took over Somalia two years ago, but the pirate factions regained power in Eyl only after the Ethiopian invasion and occupation. More recently, the al-Shebaab movement sent a small squad of their mujihadeen to Eyl to force the pirates to release the Saudi oil tanker. The Puntland government takes a public stance against them, but many government ministers get a cut of the action in exchange for their non-action. Some Somali businessmen and various arms dealers around the world support the groups in exchange for a cut of the action.

[Buck Laser]

19. Because that's where the ships are.

[Hamlette]

23. We wrote the Constitution (to replace the Articles of Confederation) to fight the pirates.

We couldn't form a Navy under the confederacy so we wrote the constitution with a federal government with the power to form a navy and send it to accompany merchant ships to protect against the Barbary pirates.