"For if you suffer your people to be
ill-educated, and their manners to be corrupted from their infancy, and then
punish them for those crimes to which their first education disposed them, what
else is to be concluded from this, but that you first make thieves and then
punish them."
Remembering this quote the
other day, it vividly brought to mind what I had been reading about Somali
piracy - an intractable problem which costs the global economy $18
billion annually according the World Bank. In 2011, a piracy attack
occurred every 31 hours and currently 120 sailors are being held hostage. A
reduction in piracy attacks has occurred recently, falling by
two-thirds, due in part to the increased weaponisation and defence
surrounding ships. However, this is merely the stemming of an interminable
symptom as opposed to addressing the root cause. In the words of
John Clancey, chairman of Maersk shipping; "Arming merchant
sailors may result in the acquiring of even more lethal weapons and tactics by
the pirates, a race the merchant sailors cannot win". And they are not only the only losers in
this battle. It’s hurting Somalia and its neighbours too. Pirates often attack ships bringing goods to the
region and the cost of these strikes is being passed on to African consumers in
the form of increased prices for staple items like rice and flour. What to
do? Perhaps the recipe for Somali pirates also holds the solution.
Ingredients
- Somali government breakdown
- Illegal international activity on the Somali coast
- Illegal dumping of toxic waste
- Illegal trawling
- Willingness of shipping lines to pay ransom
Our first and most fundamental ingredient in this recipe
will be the breakdown of the Somali government. This
ingredient has been maturing for a while, at least since the fall
of General Muhammad Siad Barre in 1991. Since his
departure Somali has had but a semblance of a central authority and various
states in the North have taken this opportunity to attempt to breakaway, most
notably Puntland in the North East where the majority of
pirates have made their base.
However even before the fall of Barre, Somalia was a difficult
nation to govern owing to its strong clan system. When Barre left, Somali
became effectively controlled by the twelve strongest clans in the region,
all battling for supremacy or independence. Twenty-two years later, the clan
system still dominates Somali political culture, making top down government and
authority very difficult to impose. Yet, the greatest opposition to
the formation of the government has not come from one particular clan
but from the extreme Islamist group Al Shabaab. This group was
so powerful that by 2012, they controlled much of the South of Somalia.
However, since then they have been driven back by a concerted military
push from Somali and African Union forces.
The government in Mogadishu now controls 80% of Somalia but the
central government is still very weak and has little mandate in much of the
country. With historical fragility and without an effective central authority to
impose the rule of law, Somalia's stability has crumbled. This weakness has
allowed piracy to flourish along Somalia's coast. The lack of any effective
police force or coast guard has meant that they have an almost free reign over
Somalia's 2,000 miles of coastline. With no coast guard to check
their behaviour they have become de facto rulers of the waves. Indeed there is
evidence that authorities, far from checking piracy are actually profiting. The
breakdown of Somalia's institutions has meant that corruption is rampant
(Somalia comes at the very bottom of Transparency International's Corruption
Perception Index, in174th place) and there is plenty of evidence of
pirates paying off public officials. We can see an almost direct correlation
between the strength of the state and piracy; levels of piracy fell significantly
in the South after Al Shabbab lost power there.
Yet weak government does not only provide the opportunity for
piracy to occur. It also provides incentives. Without a central authority
and functioning institutions, the private sector has not been able to flourish
in Somalia. As a result many Somali’s work in agriculture, often
operating on a subsistence basis. With the absence of business or a
strong public sector there are few other employment opportunities in Somalia.
This has kept the majority in Somalia underemployed and living on less than $2
a day. With few jobs available and no state safety net, it is unsurprising
that many young men have turned to piracy. The annual income in Somalia is
$650 a year whereas a single act of piracy can yield $10,000 for an
individual. This gives pirate captains a ready crew of desperate young
men. Poverty and unemployment, the result of Somalia’s fragility, is one of the
driving forces behind piracy. In fact,
piracy really began to flourish, in 2005, when attempts to
more firmly establish the government in Somalia collapsed, leading to a rise in
extreme poverty.
Yet
the lack of employment does not stem solely from government breakdown, it
requires two further ingredients. Many on Somalia’s coasts, where the majority
of pirate crews hail from, could earn a basic living as fishermen. Yet this is
no longer the case. What needs to be added to explain this phenomenon
is an equal pinch of both the illegal dumping of toxic material and
illegal trawling for fish. One of the knock on effects of the collapse in the
rule of law in Somalia has been the country's inability to protect its
coastline from international predators. Since the 1991 down fall, Somalia’s
waters have fallen prey to the illegal dumping of toxic waste and illegal
fishing, in a situation the UN described in 2006 as a "free for all".
The result has been the destruction of livelihoods and a ready incentive to
turn to piracy.
It
can cost up to $1000 a tonne to dump toxic waste in Europe, where it is
suspected much of the material comes from, but costs only $2.50 a tonne to
dispose of toxic materials in Somali waters. There is therefore an incentive
for less reputable firms to look for cheaper ways to get rid of toxic materials
and the defenceless Somali coastline has suffered as a result. These materials
have devastating environmental consequences particularly on fish stocks which
has in turn harmed the local fishing industry. To add physical injury to
this assault on livelihoods, the UN reported in 2005 that the illegal dumping
of radioactive uranium and other hazardous material was causing respiratory diseases,
haemorrhages and skin ailments in Somali villages on the coast, diseases
consistent with radiation sickness.
However,
it isn't only illegal dumping which is harming Somali fishermen. Illegal
fishing trawlers, primarily from Spain, South Korea and Japan, have preyed on
Somalia's fragile coast line, often under the flags of friendly governments
such as Belize or Bahrain, snapping up tuna, red snapper and barracuda. The
low-tech Somali fishing boats are no match for the high tech trawlers.
The trawlers use banned fishing equipment such as nets with very small
mesh sizes and sophisticated underwater lighting systems. As a result Somali fishermen
have lost $300 million a year in sea food. In a country where most live on less
than $650 a year, this is a loss to many families. On top of this, Somali
fisherman report shots being fired at them from illegal trawlers or being
sprayed with boiling water from on-board water cannons.
All
of this has rendered fish stocks too low for Somali fisherman to remain
commercially viable. Deprived of financial security but with their boats
remaining, it is easy to imagine why many would turn to piracy, especially when
their original prey was those depriving them of their living. Yet the shift
into piracy may have been an even more direct response to illegal trawling. In
the words of Peter Lehr, lecturer in terrorism studies at the University of St.
Andrews "the first pirate gangs emerged in the '90s to protect
against foreign trawlers". International disregard for Somalia's maritime
sovereignty caused the creation of vigilante groups formed to drive off
trawlers and many of these gangs became the pirates which plague international
waters today. The names of existing pirate fleets, the National Coast
Guard of Somalia or Somali Marines, indicate these groups initial motivations.
In fact, illegal
trawling and dumping gave pirate fleets a nationalist rhetoric which they
claimed with some success, justified their activities. The trawlers, who
were anxious to avoid attracting attention to their activities, almost always,
paid the pirates ransom.
This
neatly brings me to the final ingredient needed to fully explain Somali piracy;
to the current recipe one must add in a hefty dose of willingness by ship
owners to pay the ransoms demanded. On the ship owners part this is
an entirely logical calculation. Quite apart from illegal trawlers, merchant ships
and their cargo are often worth upward of $20 million. Paying even a tenth of
that sum to a pirate crew makes good business sense. And yet, what is rational
for one individual is not rational for the group, an example of what economists
call the tragedy of the commons. By continually agreeing to pay ransoms at the
individual level, shipping firms are incentivising pirates to continue to take
their ships hostage and are also giving them the capital to do so, inadvertently
financing better pirate vessels and weaponry.
So
there you have a very simple recipe. Just combine a broken state, illegal
fishing and dumping and a willingness to pay huge ransoms and you've got your
very own Somali pirate. I hope you will, as I did, get a very different image of
the Somali pirates from this recipe. An image quite different to their
portrayal on the news and in the media. They become less the perpetrators of
heinous crimes and more the victim of desperate circumstances. When the
international community allows Somali's to live in a broken state, damages coastal
livelihoods by illegally fishing and throwing toxic waste into their water and
then incentivising crime through almost guaranteed ransom payment "what
else is to be concluded from this, but that you first make thieves and then
punish them." ?
I'm not saying
that Somali’s are entirely blameless. Many ordinary Somali’s eke out a
living on coastal towns, not committing crime, and are horrified by the
activities of their compatriots. Yet
with the different perspective this recipe grants us, we can perhaps see a more
human and indeed rational side to their actions. Indeed Somali pirates are not
famed for their cruelty. They tend to treat hostages well and behave in
a business-like manner, at least according to a Colin Freeman, a
journalist at the Telegraph who was taken hostage by pirates in 2008.
The fact is that until the international
community steps up to the plate, piracy will continue. In the word of Roger
Middleton, from Chatham House ; "There
are ways that navies from around the world can patch over the problems of
Somalia but as long as a state with grinding poverty, hunger, no law
enforcement and no effective government sits beside a rich trading route,
piracy will continue". The international community is therefore
compelled to act, not just for moral or humanitarian reasons, but also in
simple self-interest. Guilt and hand wringing over the situation we’ve helped
create will get us nowhere.
The international community are already
taking some steps. It was widely reported in May that David Cameron
attended a major conference on the rebuilding of Somalia, speaking of the
importance of supporting Somalia’s new but fragile government. At the same
conference, £50m ($77m) was committed in aid to the new government from
countries including China, the US and South Africa. But more must be done.
The international community must focus on state-building in Somalia. Without a
strong central state, any other solutions will be merely “patches”. And patches
belong on the clothes of children dressing up as pirates at Halloween this
year, not international policy.