Along with the fall of the Somali government in 1991 and years of unrest came hard economic times. Besides a shattered economy and foreign fishing fleets, European companies also used the cover of the nation’s fractured state to illegally dump toxic waste into its waters, sickening hundreds of Somalis and further destroying its fishing waters, per Al Jazeera and the GlobalPost. These factors helped birth Somali piracy.
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“This is a fact, this is not something we are making up. And this is how [piracy] started,” Abdiweli Mohamed Ali, Somalia’s prime minister at the time, told the GlobalPost in 2012. “I’m not condoning the hijacking of ships off Somalia but … if we’re going to address piracy we should address both piracies.” He also blamed “the toxic waste dumping in our coastal waters.” From 1991 to 1999, more than 200 foreign fishing vessels used unsustainable fishing methods, pushing out locals and devastating the industry, per “Somalia’s ‘Pirate Cycle.'”
