As a Somali let me say this: good on you with the fancy guns, please stop depleting our sovereign waters of fish and stop dumping industrial waste in our beaches.
One man's pirate is another man's coast guard.
Soomaliya ha noolaato!
One man's pirate is another man's coast guard.
Soomaliya ha noolaato!
As I understand it, as the Somali state failed, foreign fishing vessels took advantage of the missing government and misdirected leftover Somali coastguard to slip in and illegally fish out the local waters. This decimated the local economy. A bunch of out of work, starving fishermen sat around and looked at their boats, empty nets and left over coast guard gear and asked themselves "now what?" Justified anger led them to simply attack the offending fishing boats wantonly, but they soon realized that there was cash in them-thar ships.
From there, it quickly spiraled out of control. That much money available, combined with the local anger and desperation, quickly made all ships targets. Calls for "the end of piracy" sound to the locals like "please sit there and starve quietly by the coast we fished out like good world citizens."
This is why even magic comic book rifles that can bend bullets won't end piracy. Sitting and starving is not an option.
Personally, I've been impressed so far by the restraint the international community has shown in dealing with the pirates. The temptation to just load cargo ships with old WWII guns and blaze away must be no small thing.
I just really really hope we don't get a "war on piracy" out of this whole deal. I'm pretty much "war on X'ed" out.
And yes, that won't be a good thing. The interesting thing is, no matter how noble and Robin Hood like the start was, now there is hundreds of millions of dollars worth of loot at stake so I am sure just diplomacy and development aid is not going to stop piracy in the short term.
We have an infant government in the making. It's not much, but it's ours. We had a U.S. puppet of a prez fighting al-Qaeda supported Jihadis for the last two years. But as soon as W left office something nice happened: the puppet government stepped down after the end of its term, and the "terrorists" put down their weapons and actually participated in elections. Now we have something unique: an Islamist president who wants to reach out to the opposition; almost everyone is happy for it, it's really cute. Both were hardliners til Obama came to office; the warlords lost the guarantee of a U.S. funding, and the Islamists lost the existential adversary in George W Bush. So now they're talking. They are making something that will benefit the Somali people everywhere and make the world proud.
I, myself, have no interest in following their experiment. I'm an American now. I have a home, a country, friends, and a little thing going on for me that I want to keep. My sympathetic understanding of the pirates' issues, thanks to my linguistic affinity with them, is not enough to keep me interested. I might be Somali, but Somalia's problems are not exactly mine. I can go there today, but I'm ruined for it, I'm the "American guy" now. I hope those still there can turn it around into something pleasant.
- Mahmud of Arlington, Virginia.
The last B-52 was built in 1962.
Except one thing; Yusuf is a war criminal and made no effort what so ever to separate his for-profit conquests from the American mandated attacks on Jihadis. He dragged the name of the U.S. through the mud and cashed up while he was in power. He was eventually defeated in a fair election by the same Islamists he was fighting on behalf of the U.S.
[Just had to inform the dough-eyed voting American with a little bad news about foreign policy that might just ruin his TiVoed episode of tonight's PBS Frontline ;-]
Also, while the allegation that a majority of Americans are ignorant about the shortcomings of American foreign policy may be true, I think you will find that 1) It is less true on HN 2) When people on HN don't know something, they listen with an open mind, even to criticism of their country 3) (In my experience) Americans are the most open to discussing criticism of their country
So your repeated use of cliches to bash Americans is counterproductive here. FWIW I am not a US citizen.
I understand what you're saying yar, but deeko, things are not as cut and dry as they seem. The story I'm replying to had a phoney "pirates be ware, we have sophisticated guns" vibe to it. The so called pirates couldn't give a shit what you type of guns you have. To them death is secondary, because they have little to live for.
We have to understand their motives to combat their piracy (not to kill them): The pirates have two sources of income, cattle and fish. They used to export cattle, but their produce is no longer sold in any international market, because Somalia lacks the federal institutions to certify meat quality and oversee health issues. But they can't fish anymore, because foreign fishing boats have pretty much whipped out their coasts.
None of these pirates are committing crime in someone else's backyard. Nearly every ship they took was in Somali waters. I have no sympathy for the pirates, but I understand their cause as much as I understand an Inuit who bombs an oil refiners because, say, the Alaskan oil extraction industry is killing whales and sea lions, which the Inuit needs to hunt for food and fur.
I do see your point. Military force is never a solution against extremism bred out of injustice and desperation. Maybe the current US administration will act based on this understanding.
And nice use of Hindi/Urdu over there. Where did you pick it up? :)
I grew up with Amitabh and Dharmendra movies, from Sholay to Silsila to all the classics. The soundtrack of my childhood has been Mohamed Rafi, Asha and Lata. Then came the Khans, Sharuh, Amir and Salman. We loved them in Somalia more than anything else. Then in my teens I moved to Pakistan to study for my O-levels and A-levels and now I sing with the best of them "Sindhi hum, balochi hum, punjabi hum puttani hum .." :-)
And my fiancee is Sri Lankan :-P
Maaf karnaa yar, didn't mean to be a jerk.
No offense taken man and you've definitely been all over the subcontinent to the point of being an honorary desi ;)
However, I'm not prepared - without evidence - to accept the assertion that the acts of piracy are explicitly aimed at ships that dump waste.
In fact, all the evidence I've read says the opposite - the pirates attack ships with high value cargos (food, machinery, etc.)
Also, if the pirates are political freedom fighters, why are they asking for bags of unmarked cash, instead of asking for a resolution condemning dumping?
Care to provide any evidence ?