Our fair Nairobi press corps has gotten good mileage in the last couple weeks out of the Somali pirates story. The pirate spokesman, Sugule Ali, is written about with great snark and bemusement. Some have made great bones about speaking with him (Hey! I'm interviewing a real-life pirate! Look at me! No hands!) even though he has been quoted more often, and by more people, than Britney Spears.
An enchanting job Ali has done, indeed. Amid all the Johnny Depp comparisons and pirate accents, people seem to have forgotten that along with the 20 hostages aboard the Faina, the pirates are holding all of Somalia captive. They're called pirates because they go around in boats. Otherwise, they're no different than zonked-out kids with guns manning roadblocks and extorting cash from all the passers by.
Actually, they're a lot worse. I hate to get all self-righteous, but c'mon, folks. As 52 NGO's said today, half of Somalia's 7 million people are in critical need of food aid. I thought the release was extraordinarily well-timed. Sobers you up a bit when you start feeling inclined to write another cute story about how you interviewed the pirates (Wacky, huh?!). The World Food Program supplies aid to about 2.5 million, and its shipments now must be escorted by the military because pirates hijacked three WFP ships in the last three years. That's pretty sick _ hijacking ships with food aid.
I suppose it's a good thing that attention is turning to Somalia, even if everyone is missing the point. Somalia now faces as big a crisis as it has in its history. Hopefully these idiotic pirates, by seizing a bunch of tanks and embarrassing the world into maybe doing something, have just done themselves in. I doubt it, unfortunately.
A source I spoke with today said some things I found interesting. Ultimately, I couldn't put any of it in a story I wrote. For obvious reasons, the person did not want to be identified in any way.
"These perverts are pimping out the survival of millions, not just a handful of hapless sailors being held for ransom. This is not funny. It paints a picture of just how fucked up the Horn is. Kenya's corruption meets Somalia's opportunists and everyone is making millions off the increasing instability in south Sudan where elections are due to be held next year. You sort of have to admit there's a crime problem in a neighborhood when a street kid sticks up a mafia capo's truck and finds out it's loaded with with false passports for Lehmann Brothers."
You can hear my pirate impression here:
http://minnesota.publicradio.org/radio/programs/in_the_loop/archive/2008/10/03/index.shtml
Posted by: Rob | October 08, 2008 at 09:00 AM