Note to Somali Pirates: Bad PR to Starve the Poor

I admit it, I love Robin Hood, especially the animated Disney version from the early '70s.  Taking from the rich, feeding the poor, not to mention a roguishly charming fox in the title role.

For a while, it seemed the Somali pirates might be cut from the same cloth, at least in terms of protecting the Somali coast from illegal fishing and dumping.  Also a charming penchant for keeping their hostages alive.  (Unlike, say, other Somali groups we could mention.)

Alas, not so much.  Over the past two weeks, the pirates have attacked three ships carrying food for the World Food Program and other aid groups.  The most notorious incident was the April 8th pirate attack on the Maersk Alabama, including the US Navy's dramatic rescue of Captain Richard Phillips five days later.

The ship was carrying food aid destined for Kenya, Somalia, Uganda and Rwanda.

Then, last Tuesday, pirates captured the Sea Horse, a ship heading to India to load food destined for Somalia. 

That same day, pirates also attacked the ship Liberty Sun, which had just offloaded food in Sudan.  (The Liberty Sun was able to escape - to read emails sent by a crew member during the fighting, see here.)

Together, these attacks threaten the food lifeline that keeps millions of people alive across east Africa.  According to the World Food Program (WFP):

"If food assistance cannot arrive through Mombasa for Somalia, Kenya, Uganda, southern Sudan and the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, millions of people will go hungry and the already high malnutrition rates will rise."

Reuters AlertNet reports that, this year alone:

"[T]he U.N. food aid agency aims to feed 3.5 million people in Kenya, 3.5 million in Somalia and 970,000 in the Karamoja region of northeastern Uganda, where drought and high food prices have brought widespread hunger.

It relies on Mombasa as a key entry point for food supplies for eastern and central Africa. In 2008, more than half a million tonnes of food arrived there on 200 ships."

The impact is already being felt. For instance, over 260,000 people are crowded into Dadaab camp in northern Kenya, the vast majority Somali refugees who've fled the fighting in Somalia.

Dadaab is now the world's largest refugee camp, with more refugees arriving all the time. Yet the pirate attacks have made it increasingly difficult to get desperately needed food to the hundreds of thousands of people in Dadaab.  According to the Independent:

"Food supplies to the camps were delayed by this week's surge of hijackings and the refugees' rations have been cut by one third. A recent report on Dadaab by Oxfam described conditions as 'conducive to a public health emergency'."

As WFP spokesman Peter Smerdon explained:

"If ships are going to be hit as they are heading to Mombasa, we could see in the coming months millions of people going hungry if food assistance is delayed for extended periods."

For a map showing the location of pirate attacks this year and last, see here.  For more about the situation in Somalia itself, see the most recent UN OCHA Somalia Situation Report.

[Photo of Somali pirates from warisboring.com]