An Easy Way to Snuff Out Somali Piracy: Brigadier Smith's Method

I understand that another in the team of contributors to this project has undertaken to tackle the subject of piracy on the Somali coast.  As such, I am loath to poach on grounds that have been spoken for by another.  I merely wish here to put forth a few ideas for the world community that they may employ to eradicate the scourge of Somali maritime looting.  To do this, a few passing remarks on the origin and evolution of the phenomenon of piracy on the Somali coast.  Two recently published pieces shed some light on how maritime robbery came about as a kind of vigilante response to foreign abuse of the Somali shores.(12)   Abdulkadir Egal's "Suspected Correlation between Cancer Incidence and Industrial and Nuclear Wastes" and Zainab Hassan's "Dumping on Somalia: a Plea for Evironmental Justice" are of a piece.  Egal, a Somali medical doctor, and Hassan, an independent researcher who is interested in environmental causes, tell a horror story, notably the wholesale poisoning of Somalia's once pristine shores by foreign interlopers--Italian mafia?--through nearly two decades of indiscriminate dumping of nuclear waste and other hazardous industrial materials.  Egal examines the catastrophe from a medical viewpoint, while Hassan does so from that of the environment.  As well, Hassan takes a telescopic look at the recent global commotion over the issue of piracy in Somali waters. 

On the Somali side, the pieces implicate a local warlord along with assorted shady characters in these nefarious business transactions, resulting in the degradation of the Somali coast. Somalia was once reputed as having one of the world's richest tuna fish catches on its shores.  From the combination of over-fishing by alien poachers and the pollution of the coastline in this unprotected land, the fish population has all but crashed, wreaking havoc on the livelihood of fishers and on the life of the local fishing industry.   Worse still, two decades of sustained dumping has thoroughly contaminated large swaths of the Somali coast.  The result has been an outbreak of alarming, myriad forms of cancer and equally deadly diseases, hitherto unknown in Somalia, devastating people and livestock alike.  Horrendous tales in these reports of fertility afflictions among Somali women proliferate, of large-scale abnormal births--miscarriages, stillborns and infants born with ghastly disfigured features.Read More