Somalia (II): Fishermen are impoverished, how do Western countries force Somalis into piracy?

On December 17, 2008, the Chinese transport ship Zhenhua 4 was surrounded by Somali pirates while passing through the Gulf of Aden. When the crew found that the pirates were not even wearing shoes, they smashed the glass bottle into pieces and scattered it on the deck. The pirate who climbed barefoot onto the deck was embarrassed by the glass and jumped off the ship. After asking the crew for a few pairs of shoes, the pirates took some things and left. People can't help but ask, how can pirates who make a living by robbing ships and asking for huge sums of money at sea not even be able to afford a pair of shoes? More than that, on April 21, 2009, Somali pirate Pudiwari Moussa appeared in court in New York, United States. Moussa was involved in the hijacking of the U.S. cargo ship THE Alabama in 2009. After being captured, he was immediately sent to the United States for trial. He was still grinning optimistically as Moses walked into the courtroom, but when the judge said he had been assigned a defense lawyer, she covered her face with her hands and began to cry. Why? Finally, he said a word.

I don't have any money.

Apparently, Moussa did not know that court-appointed lawyers were free. Sending him a lawyer is asking him for money, making him more miserable. It can be seen that the shadow of poverty has taken root in this young man. The arrested Moussa was only 16 years old and was already the eldest son in the family. There are also 12 younger brothers, a total of 14 people. His family only earns a few bucks a day. Against such a poor background, Somalia has thousands of families.

Somalia was once a prosperous country. Its coastline is the longest in Any African country, with a length of more than 3,200 kilometers. This area is particularly rich in fish stocks. Somali fishermen used to live a good life. So what makes Somalis so poor? How did Somalia become a pirate state? Behind this pirate country is actually the bitter history of an unknown country. After 1840, Somalia became a British and Italian colony, and its resources were constantly plundered. In 1969, Somalia gained its independence and established a democratic republic headed by Mohammed, Siad and Barre. After Somalia's independence, the main problems it faced were a series of problems arising from the colonial differences between Italy and Britain, including language, taxation, trade, and so on. In order to further promote social stability, the Barre government decided to follow the example of the Soviet Union, nationalizing and collecting enterprises and confiscating many enterprises controlled by foreign capitalists. With the help and guidance of the Soviet Union, Somalia was adopted.

Due to the relative stability of development, it has a certain role in promoting the industry. But the good times were short-lived. Somalia began war in 1977 as a result of a long-standing border dispute between Somalia and neighbouring Ethiopia. The reason is that Ogaden is the main concentration of Somalis in Ethiopia, and Somalis with a lot of Somali thinking think that Ogaden belongs to Somalia. At that time, the Soviet Union abandoned Somalia for the sake of national interests and Ethiopia, and Somalia was defeated. After the war, Somalia severed ties with the Soviet Union and a large influx of refugees had a very negative impact on Somalia. Later, Somalia's Barre government was forced to seek Western support. With the intervention of Western governments, democratic reforms were carried out in Somalia, but these democratic reforms did not have the desired effect and led to a resurgence of tribalism. For their own benefit, the tribal members banded together in 1991 to overthrow the Barre government, followed by a decade-long warlord civil war.

As a result, Somalia has become a multi-regime and anarchic state. Under the long-term political turmoil in Somalia, European and American fishing boats with offshore fishing capabilities have begun to fish in muddy waters. Seeing the fragmentation of Somali warlords and the lack of unified and effective government jurisdiction, they go fishing in Somali waters at will, often returning with full loads and making a lot of money. Somalia is best known for two fisheries, sharks and tuna. The former is used to make shark fin soup, and the latter, also known as tuna, is a precious ingredient in canned food. Almost all of the advanced foreign fishing boats are mechanized, and they are all packaged in an extinct manner. U.S. fishing vessels have strict weights and measures when fishing in their own waters. Alaskan crabs, for example, must grow to more than 20cm to be delivered to the market.

If they don't meet the standards, they will be severely punished. However, when fishing in Somali waters, these vessels do not care about any rules and regulations, even small fish. To make matters worse, Somali fishermen, as hosts, fish in their own waters are sometimes chased away by European and American fishing boats. The helpless fishermen had to swallow their anger. During the extraordinary period, the fisheries on which Somali fishermen depended were gradually taken away by European fishing boats. Some young somali people resisted, and they spontaneously organized teams like the Somali Coastal Defence Self-Defense Organization to protect their rights. However, without the support of state power, these civil self-defense forces are like guns without bullets, and they cannot play a role at all. In addition to the invasion and wanton fishing of foreign fishing boats, marine litter has also made Somalis miserable. In 2004, the Indian Ocean tsunami hit the northern coast of Somalia with huge waves, pushing tons of nuclear and toxic waste onto beaches and exposing them to broad daylight. But in 2005, one.

In Somalia, just over 300 people have died from the virus carried by garbage. So where does all this garbage come from? Almost all of this waste is nuclear radiation waste and chemical waste, dumped by chemical plants and medical institutions in Europe, including radioactive uranium, lead, cadmium, mercury and various toxic wastes from industry, hospitals and chemical industries. These toxic wastes can cause cancer and are life-threatening. In 1997 and 1998, Greenpeace and Italian authorities in Somalia conducted investigations and discovered the fact that two Swiss and Italian waste companies dumped wastes off Somalia and transported toxic substances to Somali beaches for arbitrary disposal. Later, the investigative agency obtained copies of the contracts signed between the two companies and the Somali authorities, and the truth was revealed. It turned out that for every 10 million tons of garbage dumped by garbage companies in Somalia, the Somali authorities would receive a reward of $80 million. The Somali authorities are willing to destroy the marine environment for money.

At the cost of human lives, Somali fishermen have come to realize that their survival will be difficult to guarantee if no action is taken. At the moment, there were only two paths in front of them, either death or war. The desire to survive is that the Somalis choose to fight. Due to the natural geographical advantages of the Somali sea, they chose the sea as a battlefield. The waters off Somalia are bordered only by the Gulf of Aden. About 18,000 ships pass through the Suez Canal every year, most of them through the Gulf of Aden. This important international sea lane is the ideal place for piracy. So the Somalis of Golden Water poured all their hatred into passing foreign ships. Prior to 2006, sharia courts based on Sharia law replaced the government, and piracy was strictly illegal. So before 2006, Somalia had pirates, but it couldn't be a climate. After the events of 9/11, the Bush administration in the United States suspected that the Somali sectarian forces were at the time.

Terrorists have provided support and shelter, so the United States has made every effort to prevent sectarian forces from controlling the Somali regime. In October 2006, the United States secretly supported Ethiopia's invasion of Somalia, which eventually led to the overthrow of the sectarian regime by Ethiopia and the Somali Transitional Government. The new U.S.-controlled Somali government came to power and failed to take effective measures to improve the country, and much of Somalia remains anarchy. The total population of Somalia is more than 10 million. As a result of the protracted civil war, more than 1 million people have been displaced and more than 3.2 million people have barely survived on humanitarian relief from the United Nations. Somalia is gradually becoming one of the poorest countries in the world. Under such circumstances, pirate organizations that are good at judging the situation and buying people's hearts and minds have won the support of more than 70% of the coastal population. In their view, in the lawful territorial waters of Somalia, the hijacking of international ships by pirates is the masturbation of the militias at sea in anarchy. So in.

With support, One Piece Evya was born, and more and more fishermen joined the pirates, forming One Piece. The next issue predicts that since the 1990s, the United States has often carried out various military activities in Somalia under the pretext of fighting terrorism. In October 1993, the United States suffered a major setback here. Delta Special Forces, America's elite forces, were slaughtered and American corpses were humiliated. It was the most humiliating overseas military operation in U.S. history, the Black Hawk Falls.