It seems as though the world has turned absolutely up-side down. General Motors, for years, the bluest of Wall Street’s so-called “Blue Chip stocks,” is apparently on its “last leg,” with a share of its common stock recently selling at $2.88. The president of the U.S., in a little more than a month, will be a man of partial African descent, and now, we’re told that the most dangerous pirates in the entire world are small, black men on fishing boats, off the coast of Somalia.
Is there anything left to believe in? Well, let’s try to sort it all out…
We’ve all been up to our ears, recently, with news coverage about the nation’s economic crisis, specifically the stories about the poor, Detroit auto manufacturers who flew to D.C. in private jets (at $20,000 per person) to beg the U.S. Congress for a $25 billion bail out package for their industry. Initially dismissed and banished back to Detroit for their ill-advised choice of transportation, among other things, they quickly returned in hybrid automobiles, this time asking unabashedly for $34 billion. Sooner or later, the whole auto industry bailout thing will be resolved. I know it's important but, at the same time, I am getting a little tired of watching the same political dance being played out day after day.
And unless you actually have been living in a cave in Western Kentucky, or somewhere, over the past 22 months, you, like the rest of us, have been exposed to absolute saturation-level news coverage of Barack Obama’s historic presidential election victory on November 4. All day, every day, everywhere. But now that national media outlets are starting to find time and space for things “not-Obama,” we can begin, again, to focus on critically important issues that are evolving in other places around the world.
That brings us right to the story about the Somalian, African pirates, who reportedly attacked or hijacked 20 ships off their coast in 2007 and, so far, in 2008, have attacked or hijacked an additional 88.
These are the same Somalian pirates who, just last month, while zooming along their coastline in their trademark, small, outboard-powered skiffs, with a very small crew, hijacked the Sirius Star, a Saudi Arabian tanker with a cargo of $100 million in crude oil and 24 crew members aboard. The news accounts say the Sirius Star is three times the size of an average aircraft carrier.
These are the same Somalian pirates who reportedly also hijacked, earlier this year, a Ukrainian ship that carried, among other things, 33 military tanks. It's being reported that these African pirates are holding those two ships, and about 12 more, in addition to more than 200 captured crew members.
Somalia happens to be a country with a little more than 10 million people (less than the State of Pennsylvania’s 12.4 million) and it’s located on the “Horn of Africa,” that eastern projection that juts out from the rest of the land mass and looks like the continent’s "nose."
Like many African nations, Somalia is populated by extremely beautiful people. Perhaps the most famous Somalian to those of us in the U.S. is the stunning, runway model and actress Iman, who came to the U.S. in 1975 and, overnight, became a global, high-fashion phenomenon. I remember very clearly, back then, a fashion writer asking Iman what she did to achieve her uniquely classic runway model’s appearance, grace, and posture. Iman’s response: “Where I come from, everyone looks like this.”
As a child in North Philly, we learned that pirates were people of European descent, and they were always presented as noble, fun-loving, swashbuckling heroes. They sailed the seas and robbed other ships pretty much because they were “forced” to do so by circumstances beyond their control. Pirates, even in our history books, were always heroic. We didn't learn about famed Haitian freedom fighter and buccaneer Toussaint L’Ouverture until much later in life. So when I hear about fearless, 21st century, African pirates, I really don’t know whether to be outraged about their acts of piracy or secretly proud that the "little guys" in Africa are playing a “heroic” role and are finally striking back.
From the pictures I’ve seen of the Somalian pirates, these guys are definitely not anything at all like Johnny Depp and, deep down inside I find myself actually rooting for them – amazed at their courage, navigational skills and risk-taking ability, and rooting for them, all at the same time.
But here's the part that worries me: At some level, the whole thing just looks too easy. Parts of the U.S. fleet and other U.N.-member fleets are patrolling those waters, equipped with every modern weapon known to man and the pirates still manage to sail safely away with ship after ship, cargo after cargo, crew after crew.
I’m also worried because I remember the stories about the country's civil wars and its anti-American "war lords" in the early 90’s. You may recall that, during that time, TV news coverage generally showed, over and over again, images of starving Somalian babies with distended bellies and flies on their faces, just to let us know how bad things had gotten in that country. That was right before the U.S. sent the marines in to “stabilize” the government, in 1992.
Although the arrival of the U.S. troops was portrayed as a humanitarian effort, it was not lost on the rest of the world that Somalia’s location on the “Horn” placed it just north of Kenya, just east of Ethiopia, and right across the Gulf of Aden from Yemen and Saudia Arabia, which happens to have 262 billion barrels of crude oil reserves, substantially more than any other nation on earth.
Add to that the fact that there have been recent stories that imply that Puntland, a northeast province of Somalia, may, itself, be the source of up to 10 billion barrels of untapped oil reserves.
Coincidentally, most of the recent Western news reports about the "dangerous" pirate activities off the coast of Somalia have emphasized that the center of most of those activities just happens to be in the same, potentially oil-rich Puntland.
I don’t know about you, but I really do want to believe the backstory about why the Somalians have turned to piracy, the one about the large, technologically efficient fishing vessels from countries such as France and Spain, in recent years, over-fishing off the country's coast, ignoring Somalian protests and depleting the “catch” available to local fishermen. With their traditional fishing business having been largely taken away from them, the story goes, the Somalians have had little recourse to earn money, other than to turn to piracy.
I wish all of that were true. It makes for a really good story.
At the same time, I am aware that the large, western nations, having now made a loud and public case of the "danger" posed by the Somalian pirates, are currently drafting a U.N. Security Council resolution that will allow them to track down, seize, and destroy the “pirates” wherever they find them, including on their own land.
Being fully aware that, back in 1884, the European nations and the U.S. met in Berlin, Germany to carve up the African continent and all of its natural resources, knowing that the British, French, German, Portuguese and Belgian colonies they created back then lasted straight through the 1960’s, I find myself, as I’ve said, secretly rooting for the so-called pirates when I hear stories about Somalia.
I want to believe the whole pirate thing, but I’m just not sure that all of this isn’t just one more global excuse being made for re-invading and re-abusing another targeted nation on the African continent.
I guess we’ll just have to wait and see how this all plays out.
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