Piracy in Somalia

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Piracy in Somalia has come about due to years of internal fighting and weakened government. With the overthrow of the president in 1991, Somalia has been a complete anarchy with only the laws of rival clans who have been in power. Though long before that the country has been in constant war between the people of the country because money and food have been always been scarce. Small amounts of money have been made through some exports but the real money came from the fishing off the coast. Recently because of the lack of laws commercial fisherman from all over the world have been over-fishing the waters and leaving the Somalis with too few fish to survive. European companies have used this lack of laws as a way to easily dump their waste. This has caused the Somalis living near the water to sicken and to die. The Somalis, with no food, money, or leaders, have had no other option than to turn to piracy.

The pirating has, of course, been making the world look down on the Somalis as terrible greedy people but they have no other options to keep their families alive. It might be the wrong thing to do but other countries are doing things just as bad that aren’t getting the negative media’s attention that the Somalis are. The world doesn’t see Somalia as much so they sort of look away from people dumping waste in their water. This waste has caused sickness and mutation and death in newborn babies and, after the tsunami of 2005, hundreds died after old nuclear barrels washed onto the land (Hari). This dumping started to happen as soon as the government fell and there was no one to stop these people from dumping. If no one else is going to help the Somalis then they have to do it for themselves. Without much of a government...

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...oyal Navy along with American ships and Chinese ships are planning to sail into Somalia and to fight the pirates of Somalia and essentially stop them from ever having a chance to become a country that can fight for itself (Hari). If we attack them they will be in the same position they are now and still be fighting survival but now they wouldn’t have any protection from other countries. The only thing they would be able to do is get more pirates its not like Somalia is against the pirates a vast majority of Somalis are for the pirates because there the only thing keeping them alive.

If we used the ships that are about to attack them to fend of the dumpers and fishers then they could start to rebuild. It seems like the world thought of the quickest solution to the problem and didn’t think of why the Somalis would be doing this except that they most be greedy.

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