A different view of Somalia's pirates

The press in the United States has been all over the Somali pirate story since they had the nerve to attack an American ship last week; the pirates themselves have been portrayed at best as bloodthirsty mercenaries and worst as outright terrorists.

But the pirates have a different view of themselves, according to a piece published by AllAfrica.com, some think they are the 'marines of the Somali coast', defending their territorial waters from foreign ships looting the seas. They turned to piracy - they claim - after spending much of the last two decades watching foreign ships both illegally fish just off their coastline and dump a stew of pollutants into the water. A poll conducted by the Somali news site WardheerNews found 70 percent of Somalis asked "strongly supported" the idea of piracy as a type of national defense.

Since the attack on the Maersk Alabama, this piece by journalist Johann Hari - originally published back in January - has been making the rounds on the Internet. In it, Hari makes the claims that since the government of Somalia collapsed in 1991, European ships have taken advantage of the absence of Somali legal authority by both fishing and dumping in their territorial waters.

I have to admit being a little skeptical of Hari's claims - it doesn't make sense that you would dump hazardous materials - including apparently nuclear waste - in the same place where you would also hope to catch fish for food. But back in 2005 the United Nations Environment Program issued a report that found the South Asia Tsunami in late 2004 washed ashore a number of barrels of nuclear waste, that had been illegally dumped at-sea, onto the Somali coast, causing some severe health problems among Somalis living in coastal communities. According to the UN, there is evidence that the dumping of hazardous waste had been going on for 15 years - beginning at just about the same time that the Somali government collapsed in the early 90s. The report said that it cost European companies just $2.50 per ton to dump wastes off the coast of Somalia rather than $250 per ton to dispose of it legally in Europe.

So perhaps the fish poachers simply didn't know about the illegal dumping that was also going on in their fishing grounds. Whatever the explanation though, it does add a dimension to the piracy problem that's lacking in the mainstream media. It's also another indication that the piracy problem won't be solved until the rule of law is reestablished in Somalia and it once again becomes a functioning nation.