Johann Hari over at Huffington Post has an interesting perspective on the so-called Pirate Problem. The story takes the side of the so-called Pirates by suggesting that they are simply an impoverished defense force. After many decades of looting, military intervention, and the revokation of property rights–the Somalians have at least some point.
They call themselves the Volunteer Coastguard of Somalia – and it’s not hard to see why. In a surreal telephone interview, one of the pirate leaders, Sugule Ali, said their motive was “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.”
The pirates are well-liked by their countrymen for a reason, with over 70% of Somalians “strongly supporting piracy as a form of national defence of the country’s territorial waters.” It is hard to imagine the citizens of the United States supporting piracy, as the Somalians do now, but in 1776, it was a different story. George Washington and the continental congress paid privateers, pirates, large sums of money to gaurd their territorial waters and fight the British Royal Navy. Local populations in South Carolina, Louisiana, and Texas were known to support various local pirates, too.
