Terrorism and Piracy
April 13, 2009
There are no more crimes today. There are only victims seeking justice.
The latest victims are the Somali pirates. It appears to be fashionable now among media outlets of distinctly progressive bent to explain why poor Somali farmers and fishermen have turned to piracy on the high seas. It is an explanation that we have heard many times before. It has three components – economic deprivation, political tyranny and justice for those victimized by the developed world.
April 13, 2009
There are no more crimes today. There are only victims seeking justice.
The latest victims are the Somali pirates. It appears to be fashionable now among media outlets of distinctly progressive bent to explain why poor Somali farmers and fishermen have turned to piracy on the high seas. It is an explanation that we have heard many times before. It has three components – economic deprivation, political tyranny and justice for those victimized by the developed world.
It has been reported that a Swiss front company called Achair Partners and its “subsidiary,” an Italian waste company called Progresso, made a deal with one of the Somali warlords, Ali Mahedi, to dump containers of toxic waste in Somali waters. While the identity of the European companies behind the dumping has not surfaced, the toxic effects of the waste have been documented. Why Somalia? According to several articles, Achair Partners paid the warlord at a rate of three dollars per ton to dump the waste. The going rate in Europe is some one thousand dollars per ton.
Thus begins the origin of piracy explanation. Only after months of the worst forms of illness including cancer, skin burns and abdominal bleeding, as well as the ruination of farmland and poisoning of fish stocks, the poor Somali fishermen, in order to protect themselves, organized with street militias to go out onto the waters and stop the pollution of their coastline by force. In fact, it has been claimed that the very first ships assaulted by Somali pirates were the very same ships that condemned the Somalis to a slow toxic death as well as ships that had been illegally fishing in Somali waters.
To date, the argument has gotten little traction because the pirates are considered mercenaries. If this argument or explanation does get traction it will be the West’s fault. For years, it has been acceptable to justify terrorism as a reaction to victimization. If the Palestinians can justify acts of terror in order to compel the West to address their grievances, if in the name of justice the Palestinians and other aggrieved parties can kill women and children then why can’t the Somalis seize the commercial symbols of their own abusers? Some have already made the arguement that the West brought the Somalis to this state. And, as for the ransom money, does the West not owe the Somalis that?
The issue at hand is not whether the Somalis are justified in their grievances. There is sufficient third party documentation that the grievances are real. The question is do the grievances justify the Somali piracy and are they really the cause of the piracy?
Unfortunately, as you look around the world people are disenfranchised everywhere. It is safe to assume that better than 70 percent of the world is either poor, disenfranchised or politically aggrieved. Yet 70 percent of the world’s citizens are neither terrorists nor pirates. So what is the difference between those who express themselves violently or illegally and those who do not? It is not the extent of the grievance; rather it is a difference of culture and values.
When the West crossed the line that says acts of terror can be justified then the West also opened the door for the case made by the Somali pirates. It is an unfortunate precedent that either we have to correct or face with increasing frequency in the future.