Quote:
Originally Posted by jollyburger
BC can start a new thriving industry with sea pirates  |
*Independent coast guard
I knew a girl from Somalia in university whose father used to be a diplomat for the former Somali government. When the government collapsed, their family was granted asylum in the country where they were stationed at the time and later immigrated to Canada. Anyway, I asked her once how the Somali "pirates" were viewed by her and her community.
She said that the pirates were originally fishermen, but when the government collapsed, foreign fishing fleets descended on the Somali territorial waters and essentially started strip-mining the place, taking advantage of the sovereignty vacuum to haul in wholly unsustainable catch numbers and muscle out the locals by sheer numbers.
The local fishermen began acting as an 'independent coast guard' to try and verbally dissuade the foreign fishing fleets. When they were ignored, the fishermen began going out with weapons to try and scare off the foreign fishing fleets. When that didn't work, they started shooting at, boarding, and commandeering the foreign fishing vessels (essentially what other nations' coast guard does, but with fewer white uniforms and more AK47s and RPGs).
Guess what? That worked.
But the moral hazard of the money to be made by seizing illegal foreign fishing vessels and ransoming them back soon attracted the desperate and organized crime alike during Somalia's failed-state years. Soon, the seizure of fishing vessels harvesting in Somali waters escalated to seizing them as they merely passed through, then they expanded to international waters, and then the seizures expanded progressively up the value chain (coastal freighters, private yachts, cruise ships, oil tankers, Tom Hanks, etc.). Put all that together and, baby, you've got a full-blown piracy going.
It's one of the most salient times in my life when I genuinely felt that I had acquired a better understanding of a complex foreign situation and understood it, at least superficially, from a different perspective. It doesn't excuse where it ended up, but it does help explain how it got there.
I wonder, too, how far Canadians would go were we to find ourselves in a similarly dire situation as Somalia? Does anyone doubt that our fishermen would take issue with foreign fleets pillaging our coasts were the Canadian government and maritime sovereignty to evaporate? Would a few irate fishermen, seeing American, Chinese, Portuguese, etc., fishing fleets plunder our waters, potentially take a rifle out to sea with them? Pop off a few shots to get the foreign crews' attention? Maybe pull alongside to have a word? Maybe board them? Where would it end, exactly?
Anyway, yes, haha, the BC cruise ship industry could be replaced by sea piracy. Indeed!
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