Somalia - current situation and a recommendation
The current spate of ship piracy is all coming from Islamists in Somalia. They have found out that very few nations actually have the stones to open fire on their attack boats and are holding the ships for ransom which is inevitably and quietly paid. More productive than holding a bake sale that's for sure...
Neptunus Lex has an outline of
what it is like in Somalia these days and a suggestion:
Ungovernable
Reports out of Somalia say that 80% of the soldiers and police of the Transitional National Government have deserted their posts, giving their weapons over to militant Islamists. The same report says that most of the UN security aide to the “country” - 70% of the “government’s” budget - has disappeared through corruption.
The Ethiopian army, which swept the armed forces of the Islamic Courts Union aside two years ago, grows weary of the struggle to maintain order. Mogadishu, the Somali “capital” that in 1993 played host to the Blackhawk Down incident, is a ghost town, with half the “pre-war” population having fled to the countryside.
The UN is begging African Union “peacekeepers” from Burundi and Uganda to stay on after the Ethiopian army withdraws.
With appropriate deference to the UN, I humbly offer a counter-proposal:- Build a wall around the place.
- Come back after 50 years and build a door.
- Wait another 50 years and open the door. Carefully.
- Re-assess.
Short of taking off and nuking the site from orbit - the only way to be sure - I believe my plan offers the world the best chance for success.
I think that wall can be put around a lot of the middle east to the great benefit of the rest of the world...
Posted by DaveH at December 12, 2008 9:56 PM
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