Somalian Pirates, who is to blame?

There is usually two sides to a story, this is the case of the Somalian pirates.

The only thing that makes the news about this country are the acts of piracy. The last two weeks the number of ships taken by pirates has increased exponentially. The quantities asked as ransom are in the millions of dollars. The last ship taken is a tank ship with oil worth 100 million dollars.

This ships are usually boarded on international waters or in waters of countries that can not fight this actions, so different national and international authorities are taking measures to protect the ships that travel this area. This week one of this pirate ships has been sunk by the Indian navy. NATO ships are also patrolling this waters to discourage more pirate attacks.

As usual the only response that international community has is to take military actions.

Somalia is a forgotten country that obtained its independence from Britain and Italy in 1960. The country has been involved in different civil wars almost since 1970 and has not been an stable state authority since then.

This means that the country has none of the minimum services that population needs to live a decent life. No education, no sanitation, no healthcare, no water supply, no justice system, no police, nothing.

Recurrent droughts and recent floods has destroyed almost all the means of surviving of the populations, no agriculture, no cattle, no commerce, nothing.

Most of the pirates were fishermen that have lost their mean of surviving. No state authority means no protection of jurisdictional waters. Most of the areas where Somalian fishermen used to work are now used by fishermen from other countries. It is interesting a story that has just appeared on BBC news explaining this situation. The story adds some other points that I did not knew, like the illegal dumping of wastes on Somalian waters. It is not enough to stole their resources, we have to poison their waters too.

Developed countries have done nothing about Somalian problems, its a poor country with no resources, so the people of this country are no priority, they do not exist.

It is absolute hypocrisy to use military actions against people that has been driven to piracy by desperation. It is morally regrettable to waste resources in military actions that could be used to help Somalian people.

Maybe International courts that can judge acts against humanity should raise a criminal case against developed countries for genocide by omission in the case of Somalian people.