by Richard Watkins

Created on: April 21, 2009

Somali-Canadian rapper K'naan, explains that Westerners really do not understand why the Somalians have a hard time condemning piracy, he says this is because the media is leaving out some pretty important details regarding what happened to the waters in 1991 after the Somalian government collapsed. It wasn't just fishing in their waters and stealing their food supply that hurt the Somali people, no. In addition to starving them out, he claims that governments were paying these companies to dump nuclear waste. After the government collapsed, these companies saw the perfect opportunity to get rid of the radioactive waste cheaply and make themselves even more of a profit. Governments have always had a problem as to what to do with toxic nuclear waste that comes from power plants. K'naan says that they store it in barrels and pay these private companies to dispose of it. He claims that in 1991 the private companies began dumping it in the waters of Somalia because there was no government in place to stop them. The fisherman who witnessed this illegal activity from the coastal lines complained to the United Nations Security Council and they were ignored. Months later these concerned fisherman who we now call pirates decided to align themselves with street militias and mobilize themselves in order to protect the Somali waters. Knaan says, initially they would hijack ships that they believed were involved in suspicious activity and hold them for ransom. It did not take long for greed to take over, and turn these concerned fishermen into real pirates. This is when the rise to today's piracy really began and why it did.

That explains why our governments will negotiate with pirates via private companies but not with terrorists. That was something I couldn't understand up until viewing this interview. I even began to wonder why not just take away the money? Refuse to meet their ransom demands. But, if its true the waters are being used to dump nuclear toxic waste in, then that would explain how the pirates got the leverage they did over these merchant ships and transporters. It makes sense that the companies who own the vessels that have been captured would rather just pay off the pirates, then to be exposed for their own greedy wrongdoings, not to mention give up their habits that afford them so much more profit.

Furthermore in an article entitled, "You are being lied to about Pirates" describes what happened after mysterious European ships began appearing off the coast

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