by Jesse Benjamin
Piracy is in the news again and this time in has nothing to do with
Johnny Depp. Rather, the alleged threat comes from hordes of heavily
armed Somalis in speedboats, attacking helpless trading ships passing
through the lawless region. In response, a whole host of Western
powers have been forced to send their armed forces into Somali
territorial waters. However, this depiction of the piracy situation
in Somalia is just as flawed as the depiction of pirates throughout
history. It is a one sided story, created by the powerful to excuse
their crimes against the powerless.
The origins of piracy dates back to the earliest uses of the high seas
for trade routes. Various island peoples resisted the ancient Greeks
and Romans by acting as havens for pirate groups to resist their
colonization and integration into the empires. Throughout the middle
ages, the lack of centralized authority permitted the development of
Viking, Muslim, Irish, Slavic and other pirate bands across the
European sub-continent. While some forms of piracy were legalized as
privateers (essentially pirates who were licensed by one power so long
as they only attacked rival powers), generally pirates were considered
a scourge of the seas to be killed on sight.
To understand why a ship’s crew would risk death by turning to piracy,
one must consider the hellish conditions on ships of the royal navies
during the “golden age” of piracy. Crews worked long hours of heavy
labour in cramped ships, subsisting on rotten meat and hard biscuits.
Half the crews were not even volunteers. They had been forced into
service by press-gangs and would be shackled below decks while the
ships were in foreign ports to keep them from deserting. They would
never again set foot on dry land until they were released from
service. Ordinary seaman were paid paltry wages, from which the
captain of the ship could institute various “taxes” and deductions as
a way of skimming into their own pockets. Since the poor wages were
not enough to ensure loyalty, order on the ships was maintained with
the most brutal discipline, most frequently with the cat o’ nine
tails. More rebellious crewmen could be thrown overboard, or “keel
hauled” – dragged by rope under the body of the ship so that depending
on the speed at which they were pulled they either drowned or their
flesh was shredded by the razor sharp barnacles that encrusted the
hulls. As an assistant to Winston Churhill once famously quipped,
“Don’t talk to me about naval tradition. It’s nothing but rum, sodomy
and the lash.”
Compared to the brutality and rigid hierarchy of the royal navies,
life aboard a pirate ship was surprisingly egalitarian. In an age of
feudal autocracies and colonial exploitation, the pirate ship was
one of the few areas of democratic participation and racial equality.
Pirate captains were elected by the crew based on their courage and
ability and could be recalled at any time. Most important decisions
were arrived at collectively and stolen loot was distributed fairly
evenly. The pirates undermined the system of slavery by frequently
liberating the prisoners on captive slave ships and adopting them as
fellow crew members, with the same rights as the rest of the crew.
Some former slaves such as Black Caesar even became pirate captains.
Despite these advantages to the outlaw life, piracy was not a route to
prosperity. The life as a pirate was about as close to the Hollywood
stereotype as the life of a rank and file drug dealer is to the movie
Scarface. Often living in dire poverty, pirates frequently subsisted
on a diet of bananas and limes. The booty seized by pirates was
usually not chests of gold doubloons. More often it consisted of
basic elements of survival such as food, clothing, and weapons, or
basic household items such as medical equipment, soap, rope, anchors,
or wood and tools for ship repairs. For this “bounty”, most pirates
died young.
Even limited freedom and rebelliousness of the pirates was deeply
threatening to the feudal autocratic order, the much propaganda was
spread about the nature of pirates. The British in particular went to
great lengths to portray pirates as being bloodthirsty savages. Myths
were spread of captives being forced to “walk the plank” and other
even more depraved horrors. In actuality pirates tended to spare the
crews of ships that laid down their arms and let them sail away in
peace once relieved of their valuables. For instance, it is doubtful
that even Blackbeard, the most pirate infamous of his era, ever
actually killed anyone. Despite pirates being unproductive thieves,
the working classes of the feudal societies recognized the propaganda
for what it was and frequently rescued captured pirates from the
gallows.
One hopes that working people today are as media-literate as 18th
century peasants and crafts workers, since this demonization of
pirates continues into the modern era. This is particularly the case
with the pirates currently operating off the coast of Somalia.
Footage of RPG and AK-47 armed Somalis in speedboats have been splashed
across front pages around the world. The pirates are depicted as
blood thirsty maniacs, with one Fox News headline blaring “Somali
Pirates Vow to Hunt Down, Kill Americans in Revenge.” The United
States, Britain, France, China, and Turkey have justified sending
military forces into the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean based on the
threat of pirate attacks on trade ships passing through the region.
There is also talk of bringing private security companies into the mix
to act as armed escorts, something we can be sure BlackWater and other
mercenary firms eagerly await.
As with the anti-pirate propaganda of earlier centuries, the depiction
of Somali pirates is devoid of any context. The most importance of
which is the actions of imperialist powers that have led to the
current state of Somali society. During the “scramble for Africa”,
the various European powers divided Somalia amongst themselves as five separate colonies. After Somalia achieved its independence in 1960, the United States government worked hard to replace European
colonialism with American neo-colonialism. What was to be avoided at
all costs was the independent national development of African
countries, particularly if it brought them closer to the socialist
camp. By the 1980s, two thirds of Somalia’s oil resources allocated
to American corporations, including Conocco, Amoco, Chevron and
Phillips. The US also provoked a war between Somalia and Ethiopia
which greatly weakened both countries and led to the eventual collapse
of the Somali government in 1991. The country fell into chaos and
warlordism, with the UN puppet “Transitional Federal Government of
Somalia” acting as a fig leaf for Western interference. When the
Union of Islamic Courts looked to be close to establishing a genuinely
popular government for Somalia, the imperial powers sent in the
Ethiopian army to destroy the fledgling movement. The country
returned to the rule of the warlords.
With no central government to defend their territory, the seas of the
coast of Somalia fell prey not to Somali pirates, but to Westerners
seeking exploitable resources and available dumping grounds. Every
year, over $300 million dollars worth of fish and shell fish are stolen from
Somali waters, rapidly depleting the local fish stocks and further
impoverishing the already desperate local fishermen. Adding to the
devastation, European ships have been sighted dumping barrels into the
ocean. Locals began to experience nausea, rashes, and a massive
increase in birth defects. After the tsunami of 2005, hundreds of
barrels were washed ashore and 300 people died from radiation
sickness. The barrels were likely dumped by the Italian Mafia, paid
off by European hospitals to get rid of the waste quietly and cheaply.
Filling this vacuum for national defence, local fishermen began to arm
themselves and formed the Volunteer Coastguard of Somalia – the group
derided by the media as “pirates”. Many of the armed “attacks” on
foreign ships were attempts to drive off illegal fishing or dumping in
Somali waters, or at least levy taxes against the offenders. In an
interview with Johann Hari of The Independent, one of the pirate
leaders described their motivation as being, “to stop illegal fishing
and dumping in our waters… We don’t consider ourselves sea bandits.
We consider sea bandits [to be] those who illegally fish and dump in
our seas and dump waste in our seas and carry weapons in our seas.”
No wonder then that the pirates enjoy widespread popular support in
Somalia, with an estimated 70 percent of Somalis strongly supporting
the activity of the pirates as a legitimate form of national defence.
It is true that some of the pirates are little more than thugs, but
viewed in the wider context it starts to become clear who are the real
pirates – those who seek not just a ransom here or there, but
dominance and exploitation of the entire Gulf of Aden and Indian
Ocean. It is foolish to expect Somalis to passively accept their fate
as disposable people. The piracy problem will not stop until Somalis
are able to create their own government, free from foreign
interference and build a better society.