wet and wild,a case of somali pirates

As a teenager, my skewed look
at the world taught me that
Somali women were beautiful,
too tall (for me), lean and hard
to get. Later as I grew up, my
vocabulary changed (for the worse), and instead of
attributing simple “beauty” to them, I called them “sexy”. Why so? Only my blood (flow) knows.
That was the about the only
thing I knew about Somalia,
apart from the other bizarre
scenes that were shot into my
head by the bloody movie “Black Hawk Down”. That was my idea of Somalia and her
women until recently when the
scourge of piracy hit the
airwaves, turning stories of a
hitherto dry land into a wet and
wild chase for the truth about piracy and the men who indulge
the world’ s richest and mightiest in a battle for
supremacy and easy money. In William Langewiesche’ s book The Outlaw Sea one explores
the murky waters of the
modern sea and the dangers
that the brave workers face in
the wavy ride from shore to
shore. Langewieshe exposes an exciting and turbulent world of
blackmail, truths and half-truths
controlled by unsuspecting
number of people whose
fortunes and bird’ s nests are saved in banks, insurance
companies and such like
institutions of fraud and finance.
He gives an expose into the
“licit and illicit” waters of the maritime business and how ships,
blood and water are all mixed in
an unlikely thirst for money.
Also, he explains the
sophistication of piracy, labeling
it “stateless terrorism” and how nautical activity contributes
to both the economies of the
countries involved and to their
levels of pollution and insecurity.
Langewieshe explains the almost
impossible task of ridding the world’ s waters of piracy into which pirates and shrewd
“businessmen” have dissolved. For a dry country that knows
no law and no constitution, half
a billion dollars should be a lot
of money, but that amount is
just how much Somali pirates
make from their “endeavors” every twenty months or so. For
a country whose per capita
income is less than six hundred
dollars per year, piracy is a
welcome idea for the poor.
Wanting to live lives “mirroring” those of the rich and famous,
most of the 20 to 35 year old
males who engage in piracy
usually end up chasing a mirage,
and for second timers, they
usually kill the golden goose. The allure for instant wealth is so
strong that more and more able
bodied, young Somalis are
leaving their families and friends
to swim into the pool of
promise, hoping to strike it rich. A few do; most swim their way
into jails and some, to their
disabilities or even death. Initially, prior to 2008, the
International Maritime Bureau
based in London, UK watched
helplessly as small time pirates
practiced their exploitive trade
on small ships on the Gulf of Aden. The IMB barked, did not
bite and eventually put its short
tail in between its legs and ran
off into oblivion, only to appear
when investors started losing
goods worth staggering sums of money. This time, it bit, only it
had no teeth. Eventually, with
the help of a nondescript Somali
Navy, the world decided to fight
piracy, long after the pirates
made billions of dollars and killed a few innocents. The lawlessness
on land had mutated into
anarchy in the waters and the
involved countries found
themselves found themselves
fighting a losing battle, at least for the first few years. While
the IMB had been watching, the
pirates had honed their skills
and donned their Jolly Roger
bandanas in readiness for more
terror and more money. The business of piracy is as
complex as they come. A BBC
web source says: “Brains, muscle and geeks is what it takes to
run a successful “piratedom”. The brains are usually retired or
former fishermen who navigate
the waters of the Gulf, looking
for unescorted ships, not any
ships, loaded tankers whose
worth are usually into the hundreds of millions. The muscle
are usually the young and idle
men form all over Somalia and
the geeks are the experts who
are good with the gizmos and
tech. Even here, survival is for the fittest. Only the armed and
escorted ships make it safely
ashore, the others usually spend
an impromptu vacation in the
mire of the Somali waters, in
the company of modern day pirates. Patience pays pirates,
and until responsible
governments and insurance
companies pay up their dues,
their citizens enjoy the
monotonic sights and sounds of the sea for a couple of months.
This “sightseeing” goes on for a few months, until a “well- fed” money bag drops from a chopper or otherwise, until a
few brave soldiers knock down
some unlucky pirates. It is a
vicious cycle of money, blood,
ships and water, where the
winners are just as miserable as the losers, whoever they are. A
perfect case of a Pyrrhic victory
perhaps? For a country whose navy was
well developed and funded by
the former USSR to deteriorate
into the annals of failures and
losers is appalling;and for her to
escape the rise of piracy is inevitable. If law cannot govern,
lawlessness will, and it continues
to do so. As one of Africa’ s top ten navies in the sixties,
Somalia’ s waters were pretty peaceful and the prospects of
seafood and banana exports
were high and successful. Now, it
is Africa’ s dirty linen hung up for all to see, and whether the
world will succeed in taking this
horn of Africa country by the
horns is yet to be seen.
Recently, with a few million
dollars and elbow grease, several pirates have been
drowned in justice and have
faced the not-so-long fins of
maritime law. Since the IMB gave
them a few years head start,
the pirates have swam way ahead of the game and only
time will tell where the ebb and
flow of piracy will end, if ever. There is a thin line between
truth and fiction. This is that
line.