Peoples Geography — Reclaiming space

… or, more precisely, only being told half the story. With news of Somali pirates taking a US cargo ship captain hostage (now released by US navy rescue, involving a shoot-out that has killed three Somalis), it is worth revisiting Johann Hari’s corrective on piracy from January. The media’s sins of omission are particularly grave when one considers that the US military’s recent fatal use of force has likely inflamed the situation.

The heroism of US Captain Richard Phillips, especially in volunteering to go with the pirates in exchange for his crew aboard the aid-carrying, US-flagged Maersk Alabama, is not in doubt and he is to be commended and his freeing roundly applauded.  Nor is kidnapping in any way excused or condoned. Up until now, all hostages have generally been treated well and to date, no hostage has ever been killed by essentially ransom- or levy-seeking — or resource-defending — pirates. With the killing of three pirates by US Navy snipers however, this is expected to change and it raises the violence stakes.

So what else is this story of pirates all about?  “Some are clearly just gangsters”, Hari writes. “But others are trying to stop illegal dumping and trawling” (bold emphasis editorial):

Who imagined that in 2009, the world’s governments would be declaring a new War on Pirates? As you read this, the British Royal Navy – backed by the ships of more than two dozen nations, from the US to China – is sailing into Somalian waters to take on men we still picture as parrot-on-the-shoulder pantomime villains. They will soon be fighting Somalian ships and even chasing the pirates onto land, into one of the most broken countries on earth. But behind the arrr-me-hearties oddness of this tale, there is an untold scandal. The people our governments are labelling as “one of the great menaces of our times” have an extraordinary story to tell – and some justice on their side. Read the rest of this entry »