Somali Pirates, Russian Tanks, and Islamic Extremism

While news about the American presidential election and the proposed bailout of Wall Street has dominated the front pages, many people have missed an interesting story about the hijacking of an Ukrainian cargo ship off the coast of Somalia.  According to the New York Times, the cargo ship, known as the Faina, was carrying a variety of heavy arms including “tanks, artillery, grenade launchers and ammunition” when it was taken over by Somali pirates last Thursday.  The hijacking occurred two-hundred miles off of the Somali coastline, which is a nearly unpoliced stretch of over two-thousand miles that many reason consider to comprise the most dangerous shipping lanes in the world.  Since 1991, when the government of Somalia collapsed into a failed state, there has been little monopoly over the use of force and pirate attacks are common, with over twenty-five occurring this year alone.  The hijacking business is quite lucrative, as pirates routinely receive multi-million dollar ransoms to release crews and cargo.  American warships, reported to be five in number, have cornered the pirates near the Somali shore in order to monitor the weapons and oversee the hostages.  The owners of the ship are currently engaged in negotiations with the pirates and a Russian frigate is on the way to the region to “assist” the United States.

Sugule Ali, the leader of the pirates, granted a 45-minute interview via satellite phone and spoke a great deal about the pirates’ motivations and objectives.  “We don’t consider ourselves sea bandits,” he said. “We consider sea bandits those who illegally fish in our seas and dump waste in our seas and carry weapons in our seas. We are simply patrolling our seas. Think of us like a coast guard.”  Indeed, the failure of the Somali state seventeen years ago has resulted in an international free-for-all in their shipping lanes. Commercial fishing vessels from Europe and Asia routinely plunder the tuna-rich waters, which provide an essential income and food supply for the Somali population.  As for Sugule’s contention that arms are funneled through their coastline, he does not need to look far for proof.  He currently possesses 30 Russian T72 tanks, rocket-propelled grenades, and Zu-23 anti-aircraft guns, although there are conflicting reports as to where the arms were destined.

Kenyan officials in Mombasa have publically stated that the heavy arms were part of a legitimate arms deal they had undertaken in for their military.  Other reports say that the arms were inbound to the Southern Sudan via Kenya, but it is not clear for whom they were intended.  Sugule preempted concerns about the pirates selling the weapons by saying that, “Somalia has suffered from many years of destruction because of all these weapons,” he said. “We don’t want that suffering and chaos to continue. We are not going to offload the weapons. We just want the money.”  Sugule claims that pirate operations finance a great deal of the food supplies for local villages, which in turn pool resources to finance the pirates.  Without a real state in Somalia, the population is forced to engage the black-market through piracy and the arms trade in order to survive and protect their assets.

This story is interesting because it paints a highly accurate picture of the political realities at play in Africa.  Somali pirates, who are hired to hijack ships to pay for food, seize a shipment of Russian arms inbound to either Kenya, Somalia, or Sudan, to either aid or repel Islamic extremists, depending on where this particular shipment was going.  American and Russian battleships surround the Somali pirates to ensure that the arms reach a favorable destination, which could be anywhere in a region where loyalties can change instantly with some financing.  Islamic extremists wage a daily war against the transitional Somali government and their Ethiopian allies, fueled by arms imports from Russia and China.  The Sudanese wage genocide in Darfur as black Africans are targeted in the south by the Arab-dominated north.  The Kenyans secretly funnel arms and money to their black African relatives in Southern Sudan to strengthen their claims to independence in the upcoming elections against the Arabs.  Worse, the Americans and the Chinese have competing stakes in the oil supply of Darfur and the Russians don’t want to get left out of the market either.  All the while, international corporations openly take the natural resources of the region, forcing locals to arm themselves and resort to piracy.

In this highly volatile region of the world, the negative externalities of each state fuel the political strife of them all.  Violence for one is violence for all.  As such, the United States, Russia, and China have to stop fueling the African arms race.  The immense power that comes with the delivery of modern weapons to Somalia and Sudan is preventing the stabilization of those regions, whose governments have crumbled in the wake of 20th-century colonialism and the proxy-building that followed.  Amidst the power vacuum that has been created, Islamic extremism has once again taken root in a place without an effective governance structure.  It’s occurring everywhere – Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, the West Bank, Gaza.

The United States, instead of attacking a relatively strong state like Iraq, which had the power to prevent power-sharing with terrorists, should have been working to cut off the arms supplies into the weak states of Northeastern Africa.  In reality, the United States is probably helping to funnel arms into the region – there’s a reason it’s the world’s number one arms dealer.  The Clinton and Bush era of using NATO as a bully pulpit against the Russians has come back to bite us as well.  Putin has become increasingly angered by Americo-European advances into Russia’s backyard, like the deployment of SAM missile batteries in Poland.  Putin knows that Bush is a sap and has exploited him from day one, when Bush “looked into his soul.”  Russia has grown emboldened, as its recent adventure into Georgia showed, and it is quietly arming the 21st century’s proxy wars.  This time around, they won’t be in Eastern Europe or Southeast Asia, but in the failed states of Africa.

There is a perfect storm of violence brewing in Africa, combining governance failures with an externally funded arms race and a culture of ethno-religious extremism.  We cannot ignore the signs.  The international community must invest in African governance now, before a regional war erupts.

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