International
Warships alone won't solve this problem
By Mike Peters (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-01-23 07:45
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According to US legend, the notorious criminal Willie Sutton was once asked why he robbed banks.
After a moment's startled silence, he said: "Because that's where the money is."
That's the dilemma the world faces as piracy becomes the biggest enterprise in Somalia. In the anarchy, poverty and outright terror that stirs that nation, we can understand but not condone how desperate people come to do desperate things. There is a similar climate in quake-striken Haiti today: If your parents or your children are starving, looting does not seem to be so wrong.
The international community is eager to show it can solve the Haiti problem right now, but Somalia is a different story. The country's recent history is ugly, no potential government is a very attractive option, and the outside world has pretty much written the place off as an ungovernable disaster.
But the high cost of piracy to international commerce may do what humanitarian and other assistance has failed to do so far for Somalia: Force the world to find a way to help because it can't afford to ignore the problem anymore.
My friend Barry Zellen, a military analyst in the Arctic and author of Breaking the Ice, has written a lot about the economic impact that global warming will have on the polar region.
Zellen is intrigued that the potential of ice-free seas will allow ships to get from the Atlantic to the Pacific by sailing north around Canada and Alaska. Besides giving international shipping a shorter, less contorted route around the world, Zellen says there will be another huge economic benefit: No piracy, since the Somali coast could be avoided.
Zellen and others believe that piracy is alien to the Inuit and other native cultures of Canada and Alaska. That's true, but there are plenty of poor, disenfranchised people there - some angry that they don't enjoy the economic benefits of the modern world.
And the Somali pirates? They may not care much for Arctic weather, but they do have boats. And, like Willie Sutton, they know where the money is.
Mike Peters is international news editor at China Daily.
(China Daily 01/23/2010 page6)
