The Pirates of Somalia_ Inside Their Hidden World - Jay Bahadur [115]
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Implementing the above recommendations would not require additional foreign aid to Somalia, but rather the reinvestment of the hundreds of millions of dollars already being spent on the bloated—and largely ineffectual—international marine flotillas. If the (mostly Western) countries contributing to the naval effort—the United States, France, and the United Kingdom principal among them—coordinated with one another to cut the annual budgets of the NATO, EU, and US-led coalition task forces by as little as 10 per cent (approximately $100–$110 million per year), sufficient funds would be freed to finance my suggested course of action.
The method of delivering financial and technical assistance, however, is as critical as the assistance itself. After years of foreign meddling in their affairs, Somalis have become wary of outside intervention, and Puntland’s cooperation with Westerners, particularly the United States, could provoke and attract support to an Islamist insurgency. The simultaneous Al-Shabaab suicide bombings in Bossaso and Hargeysa (Somaliland) in October 2008 demonstrated that the Islamists have both the capacity and the will to strike at their northern neighbours when they perceive them to be cozying up to the United States.4 In mid-2010, moreover, an Al-Shabaab-linked insurgency sprang up in northern Puntland, led by the Warsangali warlord Mohamed Said Atom from his mountain base in Galgala, thirty kilometres outside Bossaso. Consequently, the visible foreign presence on the ground would have to be kept to a minimum; even unarmed military or police advisors on Somali soil would risk a very high chance of eliciting, or exacerbating, an extremist response.
Is the Puntland government up to the task? Many would argue that the current administration is too kleptocratic, institutionally weak, and clan-oriented to be a trustworthy partner. Some—such as the UN Monitoring Group on Somalia—have come close to calling Puntland a criminal state, and might easily argue that funding the Puntland government is merely one step removed from buying off the pirates themselves.5 Moreover, with the deaths of American yachters in February 2011, it is increasingly tempting to equate giving aid to Somali political institutions with helping the people responsible for the brutal murder of US citizens.
To these detractors, I have two responses. First, Puntland is all we’ve got. If an on-the-ground solution is required, then perpetuating the farce that the TFG is in control of the entire country is an unproductive delusion. Second, even if one assumes the worst excesses of corruption from Puntland government officials, muscling in on the international donor scene would be, for them, a far more profitable racket than piracy. In order to be assured of continued international assistance, the Puntland government would have to deliver concrete results, and if the price were scuttling its alleged pirate associates, their choice would be easy. My point here is not to suggest another way to line the pockets of corrupt officials; rather, it is a cynical assessment of how we might incentivize such officials into working for our advantage.
I have one last caveat. Enhancing the Puntland government’s capacity to enforce law and order will not end piracy completely, because pirate bases south of Puntland—most notably Harardheere and Hobyo—have become the new centres of the trade. However, success in Puntland would provide a model for similar action in the far weaker semi-autonomous region of Galmudug, where these two towns are situated (though the Galmudug administration is yet to bring them under its control). The lynchpin of my approach is that valid local partners—wherever they may be found—are vital to any serious attempt to curtail Somali piracy. The same dogmatic inflexibility that has permitted the TFG-focused