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Piracy raises pressure for new international tack on Somalia

The world is not willing to allow this strategic nation to remain ungoverned. Can a coordinated effort create a stable government?

By Scott Baldauf | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

from the January 6, 2009 edition

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Johannesburg - With Islamist militias in control of much of the country, pirates using Somali coasts to attack commercial ships with ease, and mounting hunger among civilians, Somalia is a failed state begging for new ideas in 2009. US-backed Ethiopian troops who've been propping up an unpopular transitional government are now fleeing the country. Yet as the growing presence of European, American, Indian, and, soon, Chinese navies off the Somali coast show, the world is not willing to allow this strategic nation in the Horn of Africa – with its long coastline along key shipping routes – to remain ungoverned. One of the central questions for 2009: Can a coordinated international effort help create a lasting and stable government?

Who are Somalia's Islamists and what would their return to power mean for the country?

The vast majority of Somalis are Sunni Muslim, and Islam has historically been one of the few things that binds this nation of competing clans into a functioning and stable society. Some of the more fiery Islamist parties – particularly the radical Al Shabab, listed as a terrorist group by the US State Department – have caused regional experts to worry that Somalia could become a jihadi breeding ground, but the majority of Somalia's Islamist parties are more moderate and pragmatic, and eager to prove their governmental abilities.

A coalition of these different parties, called the Union of Islamic Courts, formed a government for six months in 2006, but its grandiose talk of creating a "Greater Somalia" – taking away territory from neighboring Kenya and Ethiopia where ethnic Somalis live – prompted Ethiopia to send in troops in December 2006 to back a secular transitional government. The failure of that government to extend its hold beyond the city of Baidoa is prompting many experts to suggest that the more popular Islamists should be given another try at government.

"People see the Islamists as bringing law and order, security, and stopping the fleecing of people through roadblocks and unnecessary taxation," says Iqbal Jhazbhay, a Somali expert at the University of South Africa in Tshwane, as Pretoria is now called. Somali clan elders are likely to "be a check and balance on the hardness of the Islamists," he predicts, and "the international community can use back channels through the Saudis and the Qataris to make sure that the Islamists don't make use of terror outfits" to get arms or recruits.

"One way or another, Somalia is likely to be dominated by Islamist forces," says Daniela Kroslak, deputy director of the International Crisis Group's Africa Program, in a recent report. "It makes sense, therefore, to offer the incentives of international recognition and extensive assistance in return for an agreement that is based on compromises by all major Somali actors and promotes the rights and well-being of all Somalis."

Who are the pirates – and can they be reined in?

Piracy has plagued the Somali coasts for generations, but only became a sophisticated criminal enterprise in recent years, when profit-minded militia leaders teamed up with coastal fishermen to attack the many commercial ships passing through the Gulf of Aden on their way to and from the Suez Canal.

Since commercial ships, such as the Saudi-owned oil-tanker Sirius Star, are relatively unprotected, piracy on the high seas is an attractive business in a country with few business opportunities.

Recent brazen attacks – including the capture of the Saudi-owned Sirius Star, carrying $100 million worth of oil, one-quarter of Saudi Arabia's daily production – have prompted some security experts to question whether Somali Islamist groups, or even foreign terrorist groups, might be using piracy to fund their military ambitions.

While the pirates have become more sophisticated, their ties to Somalia's Islamists are tenuous at best. Their bases are in the quasi-autonomous Puntland region – far from the Islamist-controlled south, where courts have recently sentenced pirate crews to 20 years in jail.

"Nomadic peoples have mastered the idea of survival, and even now, with a huge number of patrols, pirates can reasonably think they have nothing to lose," says Mr. Jhazbhay. Piracy can be controlled only if Somalia is stable and has an effective government, he adds. "When the Islamists were in power for six months, the message went out, piracy will not be tolerated."

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