Shoot On Sight, Shoot To Kill

October 19, 2008: With over three million Somalis in danger of starvation, the UN and other NGOs have responded with a food and medical aid program. But very few foreign medical personnel remain in Somalia, because of the risk of kidnapping, and violence in general. The food aid program is falling apart because of attacks on the program workers (nearly all Somalis) and hijacking of the food. The trucks are either taken by armed bandits, or mobs of hungry people (450 tons was taken from trucks in Mogadishu earlier this month.) Even foreign journalists are at great risk, and foreign media must rely on Somali free lancers for stories, and pictures, about the violence and starvation.
The fighting in Mogadishu has caused over 60,000 to flee the city so far this year. Over half the population has fled in the past year, as Ethiopian and Somali gunmen fight to prevent Islamic Courts and native (to Mogadishu) clan gunmen regain control of the city.
In the north, the ransom money (perhaps as much as $30 million so far this year) has created a new upper class in Puntland. Not all that cash has hit the local economy. Ransom brokers from the Persian Gulf take their cut, and some of it is stashed in off shore banks by the more prudent pirate chieftains. But at least half of it appears to have come ashore, and been spread around to buy local support, or just to have a good time.
The pirates are media savvy, and are pushing the line that they are simply patriots, getting payback for the foreigners who illegally fish in Somali waters (common) and dump toxic wastes off the coast (rare, but makes for great headlines). There are over a thousand gunmen attached to pirate gangs in the north. Most of the 32 ships seized so far this year were taken closer to the Yemeni coast, thus showing that the entire Gulf of Aden (between Yemen and Somalia, with the Indian ocean to the east and the entrance to the Red Sea to the west) is subject to pirate attacks. Despite the scary headlines this has generated, world trade, or even traffic to the Suez Canal (at the north end of the Red Sea) is not threatened. While ten percent of world shipping traffic goes through the Gulf of Aden each year, most of it is in ships too fast for the pirates to catch, and too large for them to easily get aboard. These ships pay higher fuel costs (for the high speed transit), higher insurance premiums, and two days of "danger pay" for their unionized crews, and that's it. This increases the annual operating costs of these ships by a fraction of one percent. But for smaller, and slower, freighters, mostly serving local customers, the pirates remain a problem. These ships tend to be owned by African and Arab companies, and manned by African and Arab crews. more..http://www.strategypage.com/qnd/somalia/articles/20081019.aspx