Who's really to blame for Somali Pirates?

This is the post on Somalia that I talked about in my last blog. Maybe it will have more of an effect here then it did on Facebook."

"Who's really to blame for Somali Pirates?"

Grayson Kelley

April 24, 2009

Welcome to my latest edition of "Its midnight, I'm bored, and I can’t stand the intellectual black hole that is formed by the collective brains of the American masses.” Also commonly referred to as “sometimes I pretend to be a political scholar”

I was recently at a dinner held in honor of an over commercialized Christian holiday which, in some odd way, incorporates both the resurrection of Christ and bunnies who lay chocolate eggs. It was a typical American Easter complete with people who eat too much, drink too much, and then talk too much.

Somehow, the conversation at the table ended up on the subject of the Somali pirate conflict. As a political science major with a strong interest in the UN and Africa, I was tingling with anticipation. Alas, I was sorely disappointed. The conversation was less an examination of foreign relations and more a rant full of strong language and empty threats towards the Somalis and overblown patriotic praises for the highly trained marine marksmen who used 50 caliber armor piercing rounds to blow the heads off three impoverished, uneducated, untrained, and unarmored men on an inflatable life boat.

First I want to be very clear that I support the American troops who executed a flawless conflict resolution strategy and I DO NOT support terrorism in any way shape or form.

Ok so lets get to the heart of the matter. Though many of you will disagree with me, I can’t help but think that a lot of the blame belongs in the hands of the top eight most powerful countries in the world (aka G8), mainly the US and Russia. We can break this down into two different sections.

Section 1) Weapons:
Google “Somali Pirates” and take a good look at the weapons they’re holding. Russian AK-47s and the American equivelant, the M16 assault rifle. Wanna know how they got these weapons? Well it happened two different ways:

1. After every war that the United States has been involved in since the Golf War (the first one) US military forces has had a surplus of weapons which pretty much just sat in warehouses thousands of miles away from American borders. As it turns out, it costs more money to transport those weapons home then it does to just replace them. This left a nice little treasure troves for black market arms dealers who don’t have to pay attention to silly formalities like weapons sanctions. Making them free to sell those arms at a fraction of there price to anyone who has money i.e. drug cartels, unruly religious clans, peoples liberation armies…. And pirates, ARRRRRGH MATEY!!



2. For the last 40 years or so, the United States has spent a total of 1.6 billion dollars on weapons and supplies which was spoon fed to almost every African country plagued with conflict… mainly for financial benefit. Need proof? The Democratic Republic of Congo is one of the most mineral rich regions in the world. It is also one of the most war torn regions in the world. Wars fought with American and Russian weapons. How does this provide financial benefit to the US? Well its a lot easier to exploit a countries resources when it’s in the middle of a brutal civil war and who’s centralized government is nothing more then a pile of rubble.
   To make matters worse Uganda and Rwanda, armed with US arms as well, invaded and occupied the northern region of the DRC. So basically the United States fuelled both sides of an ugly and long African conflict while exploiting the region of all its resources (sound familiar? Yeah, the US has a nasty habit of repeating itself)
   The US isn’t the only country that has done this; in fact the Russian Federation and The Peoples Republic of China are infamous for the billions of dollars worth of weapons put in the hands of Africans in unstable regions of the continent.

Section 2) Ignorance is NOT bliss:

In 1991 the Somali government run by General Mohamed Siad Barre collapsed around itself. What was to follow was a series of half baked IGO organizations led by the US and the UN. These “interventions” included the Unified Task Force (UNITAF) and the United Nations Operations in Somalia (UNOSOM 1 and UNOSOM 2… apparently UNOSOM 1 was so popular the made a sequel). After about four years the UNITAF and the UNOSOM twins did very little both the UN and the US withdrew all personnel and terminated peace-making operations by the end of 1995. From that point on, the United States ignored Somalia and so did the rest of the G8. That is until the Somali pirate cove affected international commerce, then the US State Department dealt with conflict the only way they know how, they got pissed and started shooting people. More often then not, ignoring a problem won’t make it go away.

So, we probably supplied the weapons and then let the whole thing fester. That just my opinion, I could be wrong.