Somali Pirates: Some Answers

As an undergrad at some state college, I found myself horrified at the sheer lack of correct information about the Somali pirates disseminated within Western media over the course of the last few months. If the information was so utterly available to me, was it very hard for pundits or policymakers to crack open any ol' book on Somalia? Apparently so. I wrote this not only to fill a paper requirement but also for the purpose of spreading it around so people can actually understand what the situation in Somalia is what it is.

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In contemporary times, it is sometimes difficult to sift through all the information available in order to find the cold facts – the reality – of current events. This is made even more difficult due to the Internet, a source that is so perfect in its ability to disseminate data and educate its users yet so flawed as a result of the sheer amount of incorrect material within it. After months of close attention to the issue of the Somali pirates and a devotion to the general topic of contemporary Somalia, the reasons behind the actions of the Horn of Africa’s “buccaneers” still seemed to be steeped in myth and conflicting narratives. Branded as savage criminals by those unfamiliar with Somali history (i.e., most of the West), it is very unsurprising to see American media display such a woeful lack of knowledge on the subject of why the Somali pirates exist. This short essay was written with the intent of simply explaining the conditions that contributed to the birth of the Somali pirate ‘movement’; the information used in its composition was drawn from the most reliable sources on the subject in an attempt to ensure accuracy, a feat that the Western media has not been able to accomplish in its explanation of the Somali crisis in recent months.

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The residents of the self-destructing Somali Republic were in a dark situation upon the formal collapse of the state. Siyad Barre, the harsh dictator who had effectively enabled the collapse of the Republic through his supporting of clan violence and manipulation of Somali cultural norms through the doctrine of Scientific Socialism, had fled the country amidst a rebel invasion of the former capital at Mogadishu in 1991; after draining the treasury dry, Barre failed in his attempts at reestablishing power and was forced to flee to Kenya and eventually Nigeria. The organization which pushed Barre’s government out of Mogadishu – the United Somali Congress, led by former Somali National Army general Muhammad Farah Aideed – made an attempt at supplanting the ‘Supreme Revolutionary Council’ (SRC) of Barre with their own armed authority. This new government was populated primarily by members of the Hawiye clan, a group persecuted heavily due to their perceived opposition to Barre’s own Marrehan clan; the former government’s policy of arming pro-SRC clan militias had resulted in savage culling of groups such as the Mogadishu-based Hawiye and the northern coastal Isaq for their perceived disloyalty – a move which sparked the creation of a multitude of rebel groups that had not existed in any capacity until Barre’s attempts at clan cleansing .

Despite attempts at stabilization, the Somali Republic completely fragmented in the face of the old regime’s dissolution. Battles between the rival USC forces of General Aideed and Ali Mahdi, his chief official rival, led to the organization’s fall from power in Mogadishu; soon, the capital was claimed by multiple factions and city-wide fighting led to a virtual depopulating of the locale . The rest of the region followed suit as warlord-led rebel groups consolidated their power, establishing centers of authority across the former Somali nation through combat; the Somali National Movement, originally an Isaq militia formed in response to attacks from Barre supporters, gained enough influence in the war-torn northwest to declare the formation of an independent state based around the former administrative center of Hargeisa. This autonomous polity, Somaliland, remained unrecognized by the international community after its formation in 1991; later instability in eastern Somaliland led to declarations of independence by local militia groups – including the Somali Salvation Democratic Front, another anti-Barre defensive group formed to protect members of the local Majerteen clan – and the eventual establishment of the Puntland governate in former northeastern Somalia. The two powers became fast rivals as their declared territories overlapped, leading to diplomatic difficulties in the north and even occasional skirmishes.

Foreign influence would soon have a large impact upon the new power structure of the former Somali territories. While two states vied for power in the north, local Islamist forces – empowered with foreign support from hardline Islamic organizations – emerged from the tumult and managed to establish its own power bloc in the south . Consisting of many different Islamist organizations at first, the number of organizations joined together under a system of Islamic law to form the loose affiliation that would come to be known as the Union of Islamic Courts. Although very conservative in their theological outlook as strict supporters of shari’ah law, the Courts managed to gain large public support and were able to batter the warlord-led militias from their centers of power in the south by the mid-1990’s. The decisive victories of the Islamists assisted in garnering even wider encouragement due to the granting of weapons and money to the warlords by the American Central Intelligence Agency for the purpose of combating Somali ‘terrorism’ . The Islamist forces, despite incursions from Western-backed Ethiopia and occasional clashes with other foreign forces including those of the United States, have continued to expand their influence across southern and eventually central Somalia; other than the small enclaves of territory held by the Somali Transitional Federation Government, an entity largely unrecognized by the Somali public and existing solely due to foreign (namely Ethiopian) support, the politics of the south are driven largely by the Union of Islamic Courts.

Before and during this period, the quality of life in Somalia was facing a stark decrease. The varied infrastructure in the country as a result of its colonial past – the region was ruled over by multiple states who dealt with their holdings in varying degrees of support – was falling apart due to the expiration of the state; Siyad Barre’s Scientific Socialist programs, largely criticized due to their disagreement with Somali traditional customs but supported due to their positive impact on the nation’s infrastructure and economy, were no longer in effect . Aid from the Ogaden War’s influx of refugees into Somali territories had disappeared by 1991, leaving the country with a large amount of people who could not be supported by the crumbling Somali economy; the state’s collapse did nothing to help support the many new residents Somalia had gained in the last decade, leading to a massive increase in financial poverty and health issues . In addition, constant warfare between Somali factions and incursions from foreign entities (including the United Nations) had weakened the already unsupported infrastructure of the region. This allowed for an effective disintegration of the Somali economy; an increase in crime and militia activity for the purpose of survival soon followed. By this point, militias loyal to General Aideed had begun raiding aid convoys arriving from the coast, depriving any residents who would have received the food and contributing to the rapidly worsening regional food crisis . Undoubtedly, the fall of the government and the subsequent regional infighting played a massive part – if not contributing the most – in impoverishing the Somali public.

The collapse of the state not only heralded the beginnings of massive internal problems but also the arrival of new ones. Sensing opportunity in the troubled region, Western forces began to utilize Somalia and its nearby waters – now unguarded due to the complete lack of a Somali naval force – for a number of purposes, all of which harmed the effectively defenseless Somalis in varying degrees. According to an essay written by Somali entertainer and former Mogadishu resident Kanaan Warsame, European commercial organizations had begun to take advantage of Somalia’s political chaos by acquiring “dumping licenses” from regional warlords, including USC figure Ali Mahdi, which allowed them to deposit hazardous waste along and on the Somali coast . As stated by Johann Hari in the Huffington Post, many of the commercial organizations discovered to be dealing with Somali warlords for the purpose of dumping were business fronts used by reputable European companies to quietly (and frugally) dispose of their toxic materials; as is the case in the least with Ali Mahdi, the authority figures that Western sources dealt with in securing dumping contracts did not actually represent the areas where the material was dumped, leading to widespread pollution along the Somali coast in exchange for amounts of money that are very paltry (approx. $3/ton) in comparison to what the companies would have had to pay to legally dispose of the toxic material (approx. $1000/ton) . Respected European entities were not the only organizations utilizing Somalia as a place for hazardous dumping: according to retired United Nations Environmental Programme director Mustafa Tolba, La Cosa Nostra – the worldwide Sicilian crime ring well known for its participation in the disposal of Mediterranean chemical waste – contributed heavily to the pollution of Somali waters . Waste management facilities, hospitals and scientific facilities were the largest sources of the very chemicals which would wash up on Somali shores after the regional tsunami of 2005 – entire communities were inflicted with toxic sicknesses and several deaths from exposure to nuclear materials were reported .

While the dumping of toxic materials was taking place, another aspect of the West’s influence was felt by residents of the Somali coasts. By 1991, the global stock on free fishing had begun to dwindle due to overfishing and many foreign (from Asia and Europe specifically) suppliers had begun securing contracts with smaller coastal countries that did not have the capacity to fully utilize their own offshore stock in order to avoid profit loss . At the time of the state collapse, Somalia’s waters were rich with fish and largely utilized by local Somalis for substinence: state failure had turned fishing into an essential industry for most coastal Somalis since trade and most industries had been completely disabled. The waters around the Horn of Africa were also completely unguarded due to the lack of state authority; they quickly came under review by European companies who had begun to look away from traditional fishing locales due to a European Union-imposed restriction on overfishing. Reportedly, Russian and Spanish commercial fishing assessors began to research the capacity of Somalia’s offshore territory for commercial fishing and discovered that the region could prove to be immensely lucrative to their endangered industries .

By 1992, unmarked foreign ships illegally gathering large amounts of fish from Somali waters were an increasingly common sight. Soon enough, these alien crafts came into contact with Somali substinence fishermen; relations between the two groups quickly entered the realm of violence as the crews of the illegal ships battered and killed most fishermen with whom they came into contact. According to Kenyan analyst Mohamed Waldo, incidents of physical assault, sabotage of Somali fishing equipment and outright destruction of Somali fishing vessels came to characterize the relationship between the foreign fishermen and the Somalis . Over the course of the 1990’s, more varied ships began to arrive in Somali waters yet many followed a similar pattern: after driving off local fishermen, the vessels would overfish the areas and move on to the next most fertile territory before laundering their goods at Indian Ocean island polities such as the Maldives or the Seychelles . In denying the fishermen access to their regular fishing areas, the livelihood of coastal villages in Somalia began to falter and its residents not only suffered monetarily but also faced a new challenge due to a lack of food, as much of the fish was caught in order to simply feed the populations; at the same time, the foreign vessels were utilizing this desperately needed resource for their own profits, earning over $300 million (approx.) every year as a result of their illegal fishing .

The interference of foreign crafts into the Somali fishing industry – one of the few options that coastal residents could still turn to in order to survive – was a breaking point for some Somalis. For most of the 1990’s, the generally weak but still recognized Somali authorities had named the foreign destruction of the environment and interference in Somali substinence fishing as two chief concerns. The Somali public, too, regarded the issue of foreign damage done to the coasts as a major problem in the process of restabilizing the country: the overfishing removed a source of economic prosperity from the Somali commercial sector while the dumping generated widespread pollution that generated health problems along the coast . However, as acknowledged by famed linguist and lecturer Noam Chomsky, the global community had all but forgotten about the failed state of Somalia after the brutality experienced by United States Marines in the capital at Mogadishu in 1993 at the hands of rival militias and Islamists . Forced into poverty by violent instability and now foreign involvement, groups of coastal residents began to follow the model of the inland clan militias and armed themselves. Weapons were plentiful in every region of Somalia: dealers worked out of Mogadishu, readily shipping weapons north, and others traveled from Yemen to reap profits from the turf battles experienced across the Gulf of Aden . Supplied with weapons and already possessing boats, former Somali fishermen began to strike out against the foreign crafts responsible for the acts of dumping and illegal overfishing. These ‘pirates’ began to take control of any and all foreign vessels in Somali waters, bringing them to bases on land such as the city of Eyl and the former provincial center of Bosaso and demanding ransom for their return of the crafts themselves as well as their crews and supplies. The countries of origin of the many crafts brought in by the Somalis were quite varied: “Italy, France, Spain, Greece, Russia, Britain, Ukraine, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, India, Yemen, Egypt…” and even crafts from neighboring Kenya were captured and ransomed . The pirates were not all joined together into one central faction: three major rival blocs emerged, the strongest of which was the “Somali Marines” – a highly structured, well-armed faction possessing a veritable fleet of converted fishing crafts and skilled fighters . The funds brought in by the various pirate factions removed the difficulty of substinence living for the largely underprivileged coastal Somalis: by spending a generally small amount of money on weaponry and supplies in order to execute high-risk missions against foreign vessels, the pirates were obtaining comparably gigantic gains .

The Somali pirate factions immediately garnered the attention of the region’s Islamist groups. Stating that the piracy being committed by coastal Somalis is un-Islamic and not in accordance with their strict shari’ah law, the Union of Islamic Courts concluded that the threat of regional piracy needed to be ended in order for an Islamic Somali state to emerge . The contributions made by the burgeoning pirate economy toward the production and consumption of khat, an intoxicating herb considered by many Somalis to be a “social drug”, did not improve relations between the two power blocs . Drawing on the former funding of warlords by the US Central Intelligence Agency, the Union of Islamic Courts accused the pirates of being agents of foreign interest and, as dangers to the Islamic Somali state, those who had to be punished Islamic militias from the south moved into regions of Puntland to disrupt pirate activities, effectively cutting communications between the various nautical groups and pushing them out of their landed center of power at Eyl as well as the surrounding region. Sensing a threat in the expansion of Islamist authority, Ethiopian forces quickly entered the already occupied Puntlander territories, routing the ICU forces from the region; within just a few months, the pirates had returned and were more powerful (and popular) than ever before .

The impact of the pirates upon landed Somali was quite noticeable in all sectors of coastal life. The actions of the pirates produced massive profit – according to one source, at least $150 million a year – which quickly found its way back into the Somali coastal economy . ABCNews reported that the city of Harardhere, a village used the pirates as a place of resupplying due to its proximity to the shore, had a booming economy with many new jobs and active industries due to the highly profitable nature of their business; the 2008 hijacking of a Saudi Arabian oil megatanker – the MV Sirius Star – netted the pirates several million dollars, most of which was directed into local construction and luxuries . According to one Sugule Dahir, a businessman in the “pirate city” of Eyl in southeastern Puntland, the general public supports the pirates due to their economic impact which has allowed modern industries such as cellphone providers and even internet cafes to open in the region . The pirates began to garner even greater support among the people for their positive impact on the general anarchic state of Somali society.

Thus, the Somali pirates emerged due to the combination of internal state collapse and the threat imposed upon the coastal population by foreign marauders. Regardless of foreign opinion and even some local sentiment in the Islamist south (now controlled by competing organizations due to the failure of the Union of Islamic Courts in the face of direct Ethiopian assault in 2008), it is evident – as seen through the public support gained by the pirates and the integral nature of a criminal industry as central to the Somali coastal economy – that the issue of Somali piracy is an extremely complicated one that is most certainly not limited to simple, opportunistic criminal behavior. The situation in Somalia is a sudden focal point in local news due to the recent attack by pirates on the MV Maersk Alabama, a Danish ship crewed by Americans; recent calls have been made by the Somali Transitional Federal Government’s Prime Minister, Omar Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke, in favor of a Western land invasion of central and northern Somalia to oust pirates from their ‘lairs’, drawing the worry of Somalis in the area whose only real livelihood is the piratical industry . A forceful hand will not prove useful in dealing with this situation – it is an informed mind that is required in reining in the Somalia issue.
Works Cited

Boukhars, Anouar. “Understanding Somali Islamism.” Terrorism Monitor 4 (10), 2006.

Chomsky, Noam. “The Somalia Syndrome.” Khaleej Times, December 23 2007, final edition, via http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?section=opinion&xfile=data/opinion/2007/december/opinion_december88.xml.

Dalton, Christopher and Richard Lobban. Providence Journal. December 18 2008, Opinions section. “Richard Lobban/Christopher Dalton: An action plan against Somali pirates.”


Freeman, Colin and Justin Stares. “Pirates fear the lash of shariah law.” Telegraph, January 6 2009, final edition, via http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1531507/Pirates-fear-the-lash-of-sharia-law.html.

Hari, Johann. “You Are Being Lied to About Pirates.” The Huffington Post, January 4 2009, final edition, via http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari.

Hassan, Mohamed Olad and Elizabeth Kennedy. “Somali Pirates Transform Villages Into Boomtowns.” ABC News Online, November 19 2008, final edition, via http://abcnews.go.com/International/WireStory?id=6288745&page=1.

Lewis, Ioan M. Understanding Somalia and Somaliland: Culture, History, and Society. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008.

Marchal, Roland. “Islamic Political Dynamics in the Somali Civil War Before and After September 11” in de Waal, Alex (ed.). Islamism and its Enemies in the Horn of Africa. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004.

Scahill, Jeremy. “Putting Today’s ‘Pirate’ Attack in Context.” The Huffington Post, April 9 2009, final edition, via http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeremy-scahill/putting-todays-pirate-att_b_184752.html.

Waldo, Mohamed Abshir. “The Two Piracies in Somalia: Why the World Ignores the Other?” Wardheer News, January 8 2009, final edition, via http://www.wardheernews.com/Articles_09/Jan/Waldo/08_The_two_piracies_in_Somalia.html.

“Pirates attack US-flagged vessel.” Al Jazeera English, April 15 2009, final edition, via http://english.aljazeera.net/news/africa/2009/04/200941535812735766.html.

“’Toxic waste’ behind Somali piracy.” Al Jazeera English, October 11 2008, final edition, via http://www.english.aljazeera.net/news/africa/2008.

“Kenya ‘will try Somali pirates’.” BBC News, April 16 2009, final edition, via http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8003031.stm.

“Somalia’s pirates face battle at sea.” BBC News, September 29 2008, final edition, via http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7358764.stm.

“Somali pirates vow to stand and fight.” Times Online, October 5 2008, final edition, via http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/africa/article4882260.ece.

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It is important to stay informed about these sort of things, and that is why I did the paper. If you think anyone you know could use it, by all means send it to them - it's an interesting situation.