Countries should boost government, not navies, if they want to fix piracy problem, he warns
There is a weariness when Abdullahi Ahmed Abdulle Azhari talks about the piracy raging off the coast of Somalia.
Not that his sighs are an attempt to underplay its significance, or even that he wants to discourage the attention. It's just that Azhari wonders why has it taken the high-seas drama to attract international interest in his war-torn homeland.
"I understand when the international community sees the piracy and they're shocked with it," says Azhari, Somalia's newly appointed minister of the diaspora. "But we've been subjected to this terror inside Somalia for almost 20 years."
Azhari says the pirates are simply the newest incarceration of marauding militias who have undermined peace efforts in Somalia since the government collapsed in 1991. Any long-term solution won't come from international military might, he argued in an interview with the Toronto Star.
"Unless we establish a Somali army, police forces and security forces, foreigners won't solve the Somali problem. The international community organizes peace and reconciliation conferences for Somalia, and that has been happening for a
while, and then whenever we establish a transitional government they tell us, `Go home and solve your problems,'" he said."But we are inheriting a corrupt state so we need resources."
Azhari was on a trip this month through Canada to meet with the community and government officials, including Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff and representatives from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Canada's spy service.
Although Canada has not been a major donor to Somalia, it is believed to be home to the largest Somali diaspora outside Africa and dozens of Canadians have returned to serve in the new government.
Azhari's message to Ottawa was threefold: Recognize Somalia's government, establish a direct relationship instead of working through humanitarian and non-government agencies, and then let Somalis help themselves.
Somalia has captured attention lately due to the pirates' brazen attacks on multimillion-dollar vessels and the hostage-taking and subsequent dramatic release of American captain Richard Phillips. It is a sensational story after all, about pirates, and that evokes images of the seafaring swashbuckler, or as U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called it last week, "a 17th-century crime" that needs a 21th-century solution.
Until recently, Somali pirates did not harm hostages, instead holding them for hefty ransoms. But with the recent deaths of both hostages and pirates, the stakes are now different. And those who have followed Somalia closely are bracing for the reaction.
Ken Menkhaus, a former special adviser to the UN operation in Somalia and a leading scholar on the country, said proposed solutions include increased naval patrols, military strikes on the pirates' home bases, freezing their finances and bolstering a local government. Like Azhari, he believes only the last option would be successful.
"Most people agree that increased naval patrols are just not going to work. ... The sea is just too vast, the number of ships are too many and the incentives for the pirates to continue are too great," he said.
Attacking on land would only risk civilian deaths and decentralize the piracy, he argued.
"Worse," Menkhaus said, "it raises the prospect of the American military killing Somalis on shore, which would inflame anti-American passions in a country that has already been very anti-American."
But with 15 past attempts to form a government – failures largely due to rivalries between Somali warlords – there is an understandable wariness about propping up the new government. As well, uncertainty over how the new government will approach sharia law will set off alarm bells in Washington.
But a functioning government in Somalia is important not just for stabilizing the volatile Horn of Africa and shipping in one of the world's busiest sea routes, but also for the greater fight against a global terrorist movement, say analysts.
What worries some in the intelligence community is Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden's focus on Somalia in recent broadcasts. When Ethiopia invaded Somalia with U.S. backing in 2006 in an attempt to overthrow an Islamic government, support for an emerging militant group known as al Shabaab (the Youth) increased.
Somalis, angered by Ethiopia's incursion, backed the group, which has since been designated a terrorist group by the U.S. (There were instances of al Shabaab luring recruits from Canada and the U.S.)
But once Ethiopia withdrew, most believe al Shabaab lost much of its strength. "Somalis are fed up with the 20 years of unnecessary and avoidable statelessness," says Abdirashid Hashi, the Toronto-based editorial page editor of the popular Somali website Hiiraan.
Many hope that without an invading force as its target, al Shabaab will see its support wither.
"I must, however, add that many Somali Canadians strongly feel that the international community is going about the Somalia problem in a wrong way," Hashi said.
"The world, particularly the West, seems to be obsessed with the symptoms of the failed state reality – piracy, radicalization and terrorism – while conveniently ignoring the prime cause of the pirates and the terrorism, which is the absence of functioning state institutions."