Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: da pescatori a pirati

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1892376,00.html?xid=newsletter-daily
Saturday, Apr. 18, 2009
How Somalia's Fishermen Became Pirates
By Ishaan Tharoor
Amid the current media frenzy about Somali pirates, it's hard not to
imagine them as characters in some dystopian Horn of Africa version of
Waterworld. We see wily corsairs in ragged clothing swarming out of
their elusive mother ships, chewing narcotic khat while thumbing GPS
phones and grappling hooks. They are not desperate bandits, experts
say, rather savvy opportunists in the most lawless corner of the
planet. But the pirates have never been the only ones exploiting the
vulnerabilities of this troubled failed state — and are, in part, a
product of the rest of the world's neglect.
Ever since a civil war brought down Somalia's last functional
government in 1991, the country's 3,330 km (2,000 miles) of coastline
— the longest in continental Africa — has been pillaged by foreign
vessels. A United Nations report in 2006 said that, in the absence of
the country's at one time serviceable coastguard, Somali waters have
become the site of an international "free for all," with fishing
fleets from around the world illegally plundering Somali stocks and
freezing out the country's own rudimentarily-equipped fishermen.
According to another U.N. report, an estimated $300 million worth of
seafood is stolen from the country's coastline each year. "In any
context," says Gustavo Carvalho, a London-based researcher with Global
Witness, an environmental NGO, "that is a staggering sum."
In the face of this, impoverished Somalis living by the sea have been
forced over the years to defend their own fishing expeditions out of
ports such as Eyl, Kismayo and Harardhere — all now considered to be
pirate dens. Somali fishermen, whose industry was always small-scale,
lacked the advanced boats and technologies of their interloping
competitors, and also complained of being shot at by foreign fishermen
with water cannons and firearms. "The first pirate gangs emerged in
the '90s to protect against foreign trawlers," says Peter Lehr,
lecturer in terrorism studies at Scotland's University of St. Andrews
and editor of Violence at Sea: Piracy in the Age of Global Terrorism.
The names of existing pirate fleets, such as the National Volunteer
Coastguard of Somalia or Somali Marines, are testament to the pirates'
initial motivations.
The waters they sought to protect, says Lehr, were "an El Dorado for
fishing fleets of many nations." A 2006 study published in the journal
Science predicted that the current rate of commercial fishing would
virtually empty the world's oceanic stocks by 2050. Yet, Somalia's
seas still offer a particularly fertile patch for tuna, sardines and
mackerel, and other lucrative species of seafood, including lobsters
and sharks. In other parts of the Indian Ocean region, such as the
Persian Gulf, fishermen resort to dynamite and other extreme measures
to pull in the kinds of catches that are still in abundance off the
Horn of Africa.
High-seas trawlers from countries as far flung as South Korea, Japan
and Spain have operated down the Somali coast, often illegally and
without licenses, for the better part of two decades, the U.N. says.
They often fly flags of convenience from sea-faring friendly nations
like Belize and Bahrain, which further helps the ships skirt
international regulations and evade censure from their home countries.
Tsuma Charo of the Nairobi-based East African Seafarers Assistance
Programme, which monitors Somali pirate attacks and liaises with the
hostage takers and the captured crews, says "illegal trawling has fed
the piracy problem." In the early days of Somali piracy, those who
seized trawlers without licenses could count on a quick ransom
payment, since the boat owners and companies backing those vessels
didn't want to draw attention to their violation of international
maritime law. This, Charo reckons, allowed the pirates to build up
their tactical networks and whetted their appetite for bigger spoils.
Beyond illegal fishing, foreign ships have also long been accused by
local fishermen of dumping toxic and nuclear waste off Somalia's
shores. A 2005 United Nations Environmental Program report cited
uranium radioactive and other hazardous deposits leading to a rash of
respiratory ailments and skin diseases breaking out in villages along
the Somali coast. According to the U.N., at the time of the report, it
cost $2.50 per ton for a European company to dump these types of
materials off the Horn of Africa, as opposed to $250 per ton to
dispose of them cleanly in Europe.
Monitoring and combating any of these misdeeds is next to impossible —
Somalia's current government can barely find its feet in the wake of
the 2006 U.S.-backed Ethiopian invasion. And many Somalis, along with
outside observers, suspect local officials in Mogadishu and in ports
in semi-autonomous Puntland further north of accepting bribes from
foreign fishermen as well as from pirate elders. U.N. monitors in 2005
and 2006 suggested an embargo on fish taken from Somali waters, but
their proposals were shot down by members of the Security Council.
In the meantime, Somali piracy has metastasized into the country's
only boom industry. Most of the pirates, observers say, are not former
fishermen, but just poor folk seeking their fortune. Right now, they
hold 18 cargo ships and some 300 sailors hostage — the work of a
sophisticated and well-funded operation. A few pirates have offered
testimony to the international press — a headline in Thursday's Times
of London read, "They stole our lobsters: A Somali pirate tells his
side of the story" — but Lehr and other Somali experts express their
doubts. "Nowadays," Lehr says, "this sort of thing is just a cheap
excuse." The legacy of nearly twenty years of inaction and abuse,
though, is far more costly.

 
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1892376,00.html?xid=new.
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io ho fatto già 3 post che dicono più o meno le stesse cose, ma se le
posto io faccio lingua in bocca coi pirati, se lo fa Nahum, nessuna
reazione. Prendo atto della vigliaccheria dei miei accusatori

reazione. Prendo atto della vigliaccheria dei miei accusatori
se uno fa il pirata sa a cosa va incontro...il resto può essere molto 
interessante ma non è una giustificazione 

 ma se le
posto io faccio lingua in bocca coi pirati, se lo fa Nahum, nessuna
reazione. Prendo atto della vigliaccheria dei miei accusatori
"Accusatori"? Dai troppa importanza a te stesso. A me, almeno, non interessa 
nulla accusare te, ma mostrare ad altri che i testi che ricicli sono 
tendenziosi, quando non semplicemente falsi. Come noterai, non mi interesso 
della tua persona nemmeno per quanto riguarda il mio intento esplicativo.
Perchè ad altri e non a te?
Perchè
a) tu hai scelto di esentarti dal leggere i miei messaggi (difficili!), e
b) c'è un ragionevole dubbio che queste siano comunque sottigliezze 
eccessive per te.