Proud to be a pirate

I'll admit it: I love pirates.

I have all the Pirates of Caribbean films on DVD. I do a pretty mean Cpt. Jack Sparrow at Halloween - made the costume myself. My house is decorated with cutlasses (real) and figurines of Anne Bonney and Edward Teach (Blackbeard). And it's not just the fantasy pirates of Hollywood. I can reel off a plethora of obscure facts about real-life piracy from ancient days when Julius Caesar was held hostage by pirates through the Golden Age of Pirates in the 1600-1700s when Blackbeard, Bonney, Calico Jack and the rest roamed the Spanish Main. Few people know that the pirate ships and Caribbean pirate colonies were essentially the world's first true egalitarian democracies.

Which brings us to the topic du jour: the pirates of Somalia. I probably don't need to go into the details. You've all seen the headlines. Speedboats packed with Somali men, AK-47s and RPGs, nabbing international shipping off the Horn of Africa with unfettered abandon and making off with massive ransoms while the navies of the world run circles trying to keep up.

Media coverage has been pretty uniform. Pirates Bad. Something Must Be Done. Oh Woe This Shameful Lawlessness. If anybody bothers to talk about background at all, or to question why these pirates are there, it's pretty glossed over and superficial. Somalia is a failed state. There's no law and order. These pirates are just crooks and thugs exploiting the situation. Typically, the mainstream media has not dug deeper to find out who most of these pirates were before they were pirates, and why they really turned to piracy.

Ya see, for the most part, today's Somali pirate was yesterday's Somali coastal fisherman. The coastal areas of the Horn of Africa are rich fishing grounds. Very rich. Rich enough to attract the attention of certain fish-hungry Asian and European markets (Who Shall Remain Nameless) and their massive fleets of mega fish-trawlers. And as Canadians we all know how fast those kinds of fishing fleets can decimate a fish stock. Fast forward a bit to the mid-90s. The Government of Somalia implodes spectacularly. No new government of any real power takes its place. Suddenly there's no authority to monitor the waters off Somalia. So having stripped the waters of fish,  those unnamed European and Asian fleets find a new use for the Somali coast: un-policed toxic waste dumping ground. Pan over to our communities of Somali fishermen. Now not only are the fish stocks upon which they relied all but gone, the few fish that are remaining have become a delightful cornucopia of poisons.

No fish = no food+no income

But what they did have were fast little boats (ironically, some of those boats were given to them by western aid agencies who were trying to help rebuild their fisheries) and, thanks to the political unrest, easy access to a large supply of weapons. And what did they see within spitting distance of their shores but scores of undefended rich tourist yachts, cruise ships and billions of dollars worth of international shipping. So - shock and surprise - they "went on their own account" as they used to say in the 1700s. I don't know about you but I'd hoist the skull-and-bones for lesser cause.

By some reports, some of these Somali pirates actually consider themselves to be an unofficial Somali Coast Guard. In their minds all they're doing is taking what they feel their communities are owed by the rest of the world for the - let's be frank - right royal screwing they've received over the years. Now I've no doubt that not all these pirates are pure Robin Hood types. There very likely are more than a few true thugs and villains in the crew. The thing to bear in mind is that, relative to piracy occuring in other parts of the world right now - eg in other coastal areas of Africa, in Asian waters - the Somali acts of piracy have been relatively civil. Ships are taken and crews held hostage, but in most cases both released unharmed when the ransom is delivered. In other parts of the world the pirates routinely just slaughter everyone on board and take what they want before vanishing. Sometimes both ship and crew just disappear never to be heard from again.

The long and the short of it (and yes, this is turning into a long entry, but this issue really has my long john silvers in a knot) is this: we can fill the waters of Somalia with so many navy ships that you can walk the entire length of the coastline going from ship deck to ship deck without ever touching water. We can let loose the US Marine snipers. We can even start hanging pirates from the yard-arms in traditional Royal Navy fashion. We can do all that. But if we don't give the coastal peoples of Somalia a real alternative for obtaining a livelihood the pirates will just keep coming back. Generation after generation.