Essay: Are Pirates Really The New Real Threat?

Listening to the news lately you would be forgiven for believing that you were listening to a novel by Frederick Marryat or even watching Disney’s latest installment of Pirates of the Caribbean. No my friends, this is reality. The plethora of Somali pirate attacks in the past two weeks seem to have escalated rapidly. Just yesterday Hilary Clinton unveiled America’s counteract to the threat, a four pronged plan in what could be seen as a new war on piracy? Can a seventeenth century problem remaining dormant for so long really be the threat everyone believes it to be? Battalions of troops are being sent from all over the world to tackle Somali pirates in one of the most broken countries in the world! These heathens have to be stopped! But wait, are we getting both sides of the story here? A little history lesson is required. In no way am I justifying the Somali actions yet someone has to give their side of the story!

Firstly, pirates are not all we have been led to believe in the first place. The stereotypical view of senseless savages looting and killing at will was a successful propaganda effort from the British government. Life for any poor wretch that ended up in the British navy was a living hell; cramped, starved, worked till you dropped and if you were lucky enough not to be thrown overboard all you had to look forward to being cheated of your wages.

Pirates were the first to rebel against this abhorrent treatment. They mutinied and created a new way of life based upon collective decisions, sharing, probably the most egalitarian places to be in the whole of the eighteenth century. They even worked shoulder to shoulder with escaped slaves! However, they were still thieves when all is said and done.

In 1991, the government of Somalia - in the Horn of Africa - collapsed. Its nine million people have been teetering on starvation ever since. Never one’s to miss out on a great opportunity the western world saw this as a great chance to steal their food and offload some unwanted waste, namely nuclear. Mysterious Europena ships began dumping waste of the coast of Somalia making the people sick and offspring deformed. The true scale was only unearthed after the tragic 2005 tsunami which dumped countless leaking barrels onto shore only exacerbating the situation. Many have died as a result and nothing was done to relieve the situation.

At the same time, other European ships have been looting Somalia's seas of their greatest resource: seafood. After over exploiting their own resources they decided to move on others –vast amounts are being trawled illegally. The local fishermen have suddenly lost their livelihoods, and they are starving.

Therefore, this is the context in which the men we are calling "pirates" have emerged. As I said before, I am not trying to justify taking hostages. Some of them clearly are jumping on the bandwagon and are true gangsters. But Somalians are largely in approval of the pirates protecting their coasts, just as America was in favor of using pirates to protect their coasts during the revolutionary wars! The imperial oil guzzling giants are sailing in to save the day once again. Who is the real robber here? Pause for thought I think.