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The explosion of piracy off Somalia's coast is an attention-grabbing product of internal chaos in the Horn of Africa country - but what are the underlying causes of economic, political and humanitarian meltdown in Somalia?

23rd December 08 - Anne Gearan, The Associated Press 

The Bush administration inherited a mess in strategic Somalia and may be leaving President-elect Barack Obama with a worse one. The explosion of piracy off Somalia's coast is an attention-grabbing product of internal chaos in the Horn of Africa country, and a problem that will outlast the administration's success this past week in winning U.N. backing for possible pirate-hunting raids on Somali territory.

"We have a framework in place now to deal with this issue, but it's not going to be a very easy one," State Department spokesman Robert Wood said. Wood meant that there is more to do to combat piracy, and indeed Somali gunmen seized two more ships the day the Security Council voted unanimously to authorize nations to conduct land and air attacks on pirate bases on Somali coast. Bandits are taking over more and larger ships and ranging farther from land to do it. Last month they seized a Saudi oil tanker carrying $100 million worth of crude.

The larger problem, however, is the hollowness of nearly every institution that makes a working country, despite more than 15 years of international help. The Somali pirates may be bandits and thugs, but they also are entrepreneurs making do in a place without a functioning government, laws or normal commerce.

"Once peace and normalcy have returned to Somalia, we believe that economic development can return to Somalia," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said following the U.N. vote. In the meantime, however, she wants a pirate crackdown. "This current response is a good start."

The resolution sets up the possibility of increased American military action in Somalia, which has not had an effective government since 1991, when warlords overthrew a dictatorship and then turned on one another. A U.S. peacekeeping mission in 1992-93 ended with a humiliating withdrawal of troops after a deadly clash in Mogadishu, the capital, as portrayed in the movie "Black Hawk Down." A massive U.N. humanitarian program withered.

The country is now at a dangerous crossroads. Ethiopia, which has been protecting the ineffectual and fractured Somali government, recently announced it would withdraw its troops by the end of this month. That will leave the Western-baked government vulnerable to Islamic insurgents and further chaos.

Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen singled out Somalia as a danger zone during a recent Pentagon news conference. "I try to pay a lot of attention to the evolution of potential safe havens" for terrorism, Mullen said. "We need to do all we can to impede the arrival of more safe havens out of which we can be threatened."

The United States accuses the most powerful Islamic faction, al-Shabab, of harboring the al-Qaida-linked terrorists who blew up the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. Many of the insurgency's senior figures are Islamic radicals; some are on the State Department's list of wanted terrorists.

To address Somalia's underlying problems, the U.S. and the rest of the world would have to spend money building or rebuilding basic services and structures and encourage charities, development organizations and the Somalis themselves to do the same.

The Obama team should also ditch the myopic view of Somalia as little more than a hatchery for Islamic terrorism, said J. Anthony Holmes, head of the Africa program at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York and a former top Africa official at the State Department. He was working there when terrorists trained in what had become a terrorist haven in Afghanistan struck the U.S. on Sept. 11 2001.

"There was a very serious concern that Somalia could be the next Afghanistan, and we've been reacting to that possibility ever since, but only in the most short-term respect," Holmes said. "We've been trying to kill terrorists rather than to facilitate the rebuilding of a state that would be inhospitable to terrorists."

At the least, Muslim Somalia represents a missed opportunity for a Bush administration that made a special project of promoting democratic ideals and good governance in the Muslim world.

Somali civilians have suffered most from the violence surrounding the insurgency, with thousands killed or maimed by mortar shells, machine-gun crossfire and grenades. An estimated 1 million people have been forced from their homes. The U.N. says there are 300,000 acutely malnourished children in Somalia, but attacks and kidnappings of aid workers have shut down many humanitarian projects.

A support economy has grown up in port towns flush with ransom cash. Pirates have made an estimated $30 million hijacking ships for ransom this year, seizing 40 vessels off Somalia's 1,880-mile coastline.

There are three NATO and Russian vessels and up to 15 other warships from a multinational force patrolling the area, along with a number of U.S. Navy ships. China said Thursday it plans to send ships to join the effort. Just a day before, a Chinese cargo ship's crew — aided by an international anti-piracy force — fought off an attempted hijacking in the Gulf of Aden using Molotov cocktails and water hoses. On Saturday, Iranian state radio reported that Tehran had sent a warship to the coast of Somalia to protect its cargo ships against piracy.

The commander of the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet has expressed doubt about the wisdom of pursuing the pirates onto land. Vice Adm. Bill Gortney told reporters it is difficult to identify pirates and said the potential for killing innocent civilians "cannot be overestimated."

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Somalia Nearing Disaster

19th December 08 - Jeremy Sare, New Statesman

The international community now seems resigned to Somalia’s status as the world’s most failed state yet - almost unimaginably - the country is perilously close to a wider human catastrophe.

6,500 Ethiopian and African Union troops are due to withdraw from Somalia at the end of this month. Their legacy will be a complete power vacuum which risks triggering an even fiercer civil war between the heavily armed factions riven by competing visions of extreme Islamic militancy.

The major world powers have only engaged again in the region because of a spate of pirate attacks in the Gulf of Aden. The possibility of unrestrained anarchy in Somalia has naturally heightened diplomatic activity on wider security issues in the Horn of Africa.

But the prospects for the Somali people look bleak from any perspective. Edward Mason of Independent Diplomat, said: “It’s a slow burn disaster largely ignored by the world’s media and governments – the result in large part of a catastrophically negligent international policy towards Somalia.”

UN resolution 1851, agreed this week, now permits any country to employ, “any means necessary” to pursue pirates on land and air. The emphasis of the international community’s response to Somalia is clearly still on force. The US could exert huge influence but since 2001 their agenda has not extended beyond what is deemed necessary action in the “war on terror”. They were strong supporters of the Ethiopian incursion into Somalia two years ago.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon has tried and failed to persuade 50 countries to lead or contribute to a peacekeeping force. There were hopes Turkey might volunteer but Ankara has now refused. Their reluctance is understandable; the UN has not even sent a reconnaissance mission to fully assess the security risk.

Somalia now looks too difficult a political issue for any power to resolve. The prospects for peace are as derelict as the ‘ghost capital’ of Mogadishu.

The current Transitional Federal Government (TFG) has never exerted anything like controlling power; what little they had is dwindling fast. The dominant military force of insurgents amongst the various splinter groups in southern central Somalia is Al-Shabab (or the ‘lads’). They have overrun several towns in recent weeks, including the strategic ports of Kismayo and Merca – they are now threatening Mogadishu.

Al-Shabab adhere to an extreme interpretation of Sharia; like the former Taliban Government in Afghanistan, they wield severe punishment for anyone indulging in the ‘un-Islamic’ activities of listening to music or watching a film. One local commentator blamed the US for the irresistible ascendancy of Al-Shabab: “America has created precisely the radicalised security threat they so feared."

Somalia already has the worst famine situation in the world. World Food Programme spokesman, Peter Smerdon, based in Nairobi, said: “The figures are very substantial. There are now 3.4 million Somalis entirely dependent on humanitarian aid. This year we have supplied 260,000 tonnes of food.”

Al-Shabab’s control of the main port for aid supply, Merca, makes the supply routes of food look increasingly precarious. Smerdon said, “so far their presence has not been affected the aid programme. We are impartial. We deal with the authorities on the ground whoever they are. Security is our biggest problem. Across Somalia, 33 aid-related workers have been killed since January. It’s been a bad year.”

The Human Rights Watch report, So Much to Fear published last week, sets out in chilling detail the oppression and degradation of the people of Somalia.

The author, Chris Albin-Lackey, provided ample evidence of casual murders carried out regularly by troops from the TFG as well the Ethiopian occupiers effectively acting in a “climate of impunity”.

Sally Healy of the international analysis organisation, Chatham House, said the future was, “unpredictable and negative,” but blamed the Ethiopian intervention itself for, “generating a terrible insurgency” and fuelling the “historical enmity” between the two countries.

The threat to the lives of the main population is clear; already one million people have been displaced, another million live abroad. More than 800,000 have left the capital since last year. The Dadaab refugee camp, just over the border in Kenya, holds over 220,000 people - about the same population as Derby.

The fragile democracy of the former British Protectorate of Somaliland in the north has also been targeted. Al-Shabab set off a series of co-ordinated suicide attacks in Hargeisa in October killing about 30.

Michael Walls of Somaliland Focus UK said: “It is high time western nations reconsidered their strategies and looked to support those bits of Somalia that are currently functioning. Otherwise, we risk once again losing those rare flickers of hope that have so long been extinguished as the developed world continues to blunder its way through the world's most protracted and profound 'national' political crisis.”

After the troops withdraw, a few sparks of hope may yet emanate from a new more, enlightened US presidency. Obama has a long list of international crises to unpick following eight years of Bush/Cheney unilateralism.

But not even Barack Obama, blessed with the unique presidential attributes of a constructive and collegiate view of international relations, combined with an East African heritage may be able to resolve the intractable problem of Somalia. After twenty years of bloody chaos there are no levers left to pull.

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Prelude to Piracy: The Poor Fishermen of Somalia

4th December 08 - Horand Knaup, Spiegel

Firing shots at a luxury cruise ship, taking a super tanker hostage: the papers are full of Somalia's audacious pirates. But the local fishermen grab fewer headlines -- and have a stricken existence.

The outcry, addressed to the United Nations and the international community, was loud and bitter. "Help us solve the problem," said professional fisherman Muhammed Hussein from the coastal city of Marka, about 100 kilometers (62 miles) south of the Somali capital Mogadishu. "What is happening here is economic terrorism."

Jeylani Shaykh Abdi, another Somali fisherman, added: "They are not just robbing us of our fish. They are ramming our boats and taking our nets -- including the catch."

It wasn't long ago that Somali fisherman were loudly complaining about the poor state of their lives and livelihoods. About 700 ships from other countries, they said, were casting their nets along Somalia's roughly 3,300 kilometers (2,050 miles) of coastline, using practices that showed little consideration for the fish stocks or local fishermen. None of the trawlers, the Somali fishermen claimed, had a license or an agreement with the government in Mogadishu. Of course, that government has wielded practically no influence over the past 15 years.

The intruders, Hussein and Shaykh Abdi complained, used nets with very small mesh sizes and fished with banned dragnets, and with dynamite in some cases. The foreign fishing boats would ram local fishing vessels, pour boiling water on them and, if they still refused to budge, shoot at them. It was not unusual for the intruders to hire Somali militias to drive away the local fishermen.

That was in 2006. The outcry was loud and clear -- but without any results.

Back then the Somali fishermen were doing badly. Today they are even worse off. Trawlers from faraway places continue to ply the waters off the long coastline, ships from Japan and India, as well as Italy and Spain. The Spanish fishing cutter that pirates hijacked in May and the Thai trawler an Indian warship inadvertently sank in early November provided evidence of just how attractive the Somali fishing grounds are worldwide.

Sardines To Sharks

And for good reason: The coast of Somalia has among the highest concentrations of fish in the world's oceans. Somali fishermen catch a wide variety of seafood -- from tuna to sardines, dorado to perch, shark to lobster -- in their nets. At the turn of the millennium, Somalia was home to about 30,000 professional fishermen, along with 60,000 occasional fishermen.

Fishing was never a thriving business in Somalia. Somalis are not enthusiastic fish eaters, and the bulk of their catch was traditionally exported. But today there is little left of what was already a relatively small and unprofitable industry. Fish processing, especially for export, has ceased to exist. There is no reliable transportation and there are no longer any functioning refrigeration facilities in the country, nor are there any ships left that could dock in Mogadishu.

Somali fishermen have another problem: toxic waste. Initially dumped on land, toxic waste was increasingly dumped at sea after the collapse of the regime of former President Siad Barre in 1991. Because the country has no coast guard, for the past 20 years the Somali coastline has had no protection against European ships dumping waste at sea. Although hard evidence was rare, there have been periodic and mysterious incidents. In early 2002, tens of thousands of dead fish washed ashore at Merca, south of Mogadishu. The causes remain unclear.

In the spring of 2004, fishermen spotted two large containers floating in the water near Bosaso. Whether they were deliberately tossed overboard or accidentally fell of a container ship in rough seas is unclear. The Indian Ocean tsunami in December 2004, which also reached the African coast, unearthed dozens of containers of toxic waste and deposited the waste along the Somali coast. According to a United Nations report, many coastal residents suffered "acute respiratory infections, heavy coughing, bleeding gums and mouth, abdominal haemorrhages, unusual skin rashes, and even death."

Experts and environmentalists have long been aware of the problem. In 2006, a team of specialists sent to the region to investigate discovered nine toxic waste sites along 700 kilometers (435 miles) of coastline in southern Somalia.

The UN envoy to Somalia, Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, said last October that the UN has "reliable information that European and Asian companies are dumping toxic waste, including nuclear waste, off the Somali coastline."

An Excuse for the Pirates

In Mombasa, Kenya, pirate expert Andrew Mwangura complains "that toxic waste has been dumped in Somalia for a long time," and that the international community is looking on and "doing nothing about it," thereby giving the pirates "a convenient excuse to legitimize their actions."

The words of UN Envoy Ould-Abdallah were confirmed only a few days later, when leaking containers of toxic waste were washed ashore in Harardhere, about 200 kilometers (124 miles) south of Mogadishu. Animals in the area contracted unusual diseases, and coastal residents suffered coughing and vomiting attacks. The lack of scruples displayed by foreigners using Somali waters to dump their toxic waste is not all that surprising: proper waste disposal in Europe costs about 400 times as much as illegal dumping in Somalia.

The extent of ocean dumping of toxic waste is just as poorly documented as the claims of adverse effects on fish populations off the coast. Speculation abounds, and yet there are no reliable studies from the last 20 years. The fact is, however, that Somali fishermen, for various reasons, have been catching fewer and fewer fish in their nets for years.

While the fishermen complained quietly, the members of another profession -- the pirate trade -- have been quick to claim the plight of the fishermen as their own. The Somali pirates have repeatedly argued that they were forced into piracy by the demise of fishing and the practice of dumping toxic waste at sea. But the truth is that only a small fraction of traditional fishermen have switched to piracy. When the recently hijacked supertanker Sirius Star dropped anchor off Harardhere, former army General Mohamed Nureh Abdulle told the BBC that the hijackers were unknown, and that they had not attempted to establish contact with the coastal population. Elsewhere along the coast, it is often unknown men -- not former local fishermen -- who are guarding the ships and waiting for ransom money.

Attractive Piracy

Nevertheless, toxic waste and illegal foreign fishing are convenient arguments for the pirates. "The Somali coastline has been destroyed, and we believe this money is nothing compared to the devastation that we have seen on the seas," said Januna Ali Jama, a spokesman for the pirate group that is still waiting for its ransom for the MV Faina, a Ukrainian vessel carrying tanks and military hardware.

Pirate life is attractive. The profits are immense, even though the men carrying out the hijackings keep only about 30 percent of the ransom money. Of the remainder, 20 percent goes to the bosses, 30 percent is paid in bribes to government officials and 20 percent is set aside for future actions.

The pirates are quick to accept losses. Even though a number of pirates are now in prison in Paris, in the Kenyan port city of Mombasa and in Bosaso, Somalia's main port, and although the international community has sent a small armada of warships to Somalia, the hijackers are getting more and more audacious, targeting supertankers and ships transporting weapons, luxury yachts and chemical tankers.

In what was apparently a coordinated effort, on Tuesday night they attempted to attack five ships simultaneously in waters east of Somalia. A short time earlier, they had attacked the luxury cruise ship MS Nautica, with more than 1,000 passengers on board.

None of the attacks succeeded -- but this will not deter the pirates. Bosaso, Eyl and Hobyo, which, until recently, were miserably poor fishing towns, are barely recognizable today. Small mansions are popping up by the dozen, new restaurants are opening their doors, giant weddings are all the rage and the imports of four-wheel-drive SUVs are booming. Clan affiliation, long one of the key impediments to development in Somalia, is suddenly irrelevant. With ransom money pouring into coastal towns, former differences are fading into the background.

Everyone profits from the sudden influx of cash: construction firms, gas stations, restaurants and outfits specializing in providing food for the hostages. Even the government of Somalia's semi-autonomous Puntland region appears to be in on the take. "Presumably, all key political figures in Somalia are profiting from piracy," says Roger Middleton, an analyst with the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London. Only one professional group is getting nothing from the boom along the coast: Somali fishermen.

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Further Resources

Link to International Crisis Group Report: Somalia: To Move Beyond the Failed State