Ummm...Ok...?

A recent post on the US Naval Institute's blog left me feeling vaguely confused as to the significance of the following story:

Pirate training in USSR? - A RETIRED rear admiral of the Soviet navy reportedly admitted today that some Somali pirates had been trained at USSR naval academies.

Sergey Bliznyuk told the Ukrainian newspaper Gazeta Po-Kievskiy that he had personally come across some men he now believes are behind many hijackings.

“There are many former military men among the Somalis who have perfected the tactics of sea combat,” he said. “The majority of these 40-50-year-olds were trained in the former Soviet Union.

“I myself taught at one point at a school in Baku [Azerbaijan], where we had 70-80 Somalis a year studying.”

Bliznyuk told the newspaper that Soviet officers had trained naval personnel from the government of President Siad Barre, who ruled Somalia in 1969-91 after a military coup.

Further, Bliznyuk told the newspaper: “The USSR taught not only Somali natives but also those of Yemen, Ethiopia and others. Who would have assumed then that they would turn against us?”

The notion of professionally trained seafarers turning pirates is not an isolated concern: at least one security company trained Puntland coastguards before Somalia’s government collapsed some years ago.

I think by now most of us already know that Somalia was a client state of the USSR way back in the Cold War, and we also know that as a result the Soviets did in fact equip and train the Somali navy. OK, so yes, there are many Somalis who have received training on Soviet-era ships and weaponry.

But, there are some more things that we already know, such as the fact that those boats from the 1970s are so old and decrepit that they can't function anymore, and that when the Soviet Union went down, Somalia's own government followed shortly thereafter. With no functioning naval vessels, let alone a central government to command them, all of those Soviet trained Somali men who were formally members of Somalia's navy and coast guard were left unemployed and seeking new avenues to pursue income through. Throw in some illegal fishing in Somalia's exclusive economic zone, and one of the world's most heavily traveled shipping lanes right off the coast, and ta da...piracy! I feel a little like I've already heard this explanation for piracy in ways that articulated the issue less as a soviet conspiracy and more as a natural result of Somalia's lack of government.

Maybe we should be focusing less on the fact that some of the pirates may have received Soviet training, and turn our attention instead to the root causes of piracy, which are also partially grounded in the Cold War...just a thought...