They dress in rags, look malnourished, and appear innocent, but never let the appearance of the sea gangsters fool you – their prowess to menace is monstrous. They hijack vessels, take crew members hostage, demand and receive ransoms to finance their savagery and to live large. By all standards, these criminal gangs from lawless Somalia are part of an infinitesimal group of Africans who create the impression in some Westerners that the continent is populated mainly by poverty-stricken people, with sick and starving children living on flies. 

There’re so many names that re-awaken our shame – Jonas Savimbi, Laurent Kabila, Charles Taylor, Foday Sankoh, Robert Mugabe, just to name a few. But never in our time had any Africa nation been at the center of a crime ring with such global ramifications as those being perpetrated by the Somali pirates. The Kenyan foreign minister reported last month that Somali pirates pocketed over US$150 million in ransoms in just 12 months prior to November 2008, and the bandits are currently holding nearly 20 vessels with over 300 crew members. Ironically, some of the vessels are on a SOS mission to deliver food aid shipments to innocent Somalis.  

The United Nations Security Council last October adopted resolution 1838, authorizing nations with vessels in the area to use military force to repress acts of piracy. But costs associated with such an operation, coupled with safety concerns for crew members and vessels and vastness of the area involved, are rendering shipping more difficult, including the delivery of critical food aid shipments. 

What is even of greater concern is that the pirates have extended their operations beyond the Gulf of Aden, attacking vessels headed for the port city of Mombassa, Kenya. 

Even the presence of NATO’s anti-piracy mission in the area has done little to deter the criminals, and with every member nation of NATO involved in the mission utilizing its national laws to deal with captured pirates, the gangsters are being arrested and released on grounds that they did not commit a crime against the nation or the interests of the nation whose nationals effected their arrests. As a result, the pirates are now using more sophisticated weapons such as explosives to attack vessels. Piracy of the coast of Somalia is firmly institutionalized. To defeat it, NATO needs to face this growing threat with a unified command. 

But why should the necessity of such a mission arise in the first place? Why are Somalis embarrassing the rest of Africa by taking to international waters what destroyed their country and made it so ungovernable? 

Arguably, one may attribute the proliferation of criminal gangs in the Horn of Africa to years of lawlessness occasioned by a brutal civil war. But the failure to see reason to live together as one people in one nation for so long constitutes no justification to terrorize the rest of the world. What the people of Somalia should realize is that the solutions to most of their problems lie in their own hands. And no matter what strategy the international community devise for peace in the world-torn nation, peace will come to Somalia only when the people of Somalia decide they want peace. 

But can the functioning of violent criminal gangs serve any useful purpose in finding peace? According to Globalsecurity.org, four main pirate groups comprising local fishermen, ex-militiamen, and technical experts with knowledge in the use of high-tech equipment, operate off the coast of Somalia. 

The “National Volunteer Coast Guard”, Globalsecurity.org reports, specializes in intercepting small boats and fishing vessels around Kismayu on the southern coast, while the “Marka Group”, comprising “several scattered and less organized groups” operates around the town of Marka. “Puntland Group” draws its numerical strength from Somali fishermen and operates around the town of Puntland.The “Somali Marines”, the most powerful and sophisticated pirate group in Somalia, is said to have a “military structure, a fleet admiral, admiral, vice admiral and a head of financial operations.” These pirate groups, according to reports, are supported by powerful warlords and exiled Somalis who provide navigational support and information on ships traveling through the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean.  

Shockingly, the composition of these pirate groups reveals that ordinary people as well as the highly educated are fully involved in the larger network of Somali piracy, thereby dismissing any suggestion that only ex-militiamen bear responsibility for the hijacking of vessels. 

With such a grave situation, one would have thought that the central government of Somalia would flex its muscles to restore some order, especially now that most parts of the country have been criminalized. But that’s a wishful thinking, given the precarious Somali state of affairs: the government of Somalia is largely symbolic, occupying just a portion of the capital, Mogadishu, with no backbone to talk tough on issues involving the powerful pirate groups and the warlords with the big guns.  

Sensing the danger, the Somali president recently appealed to the international community to help save his government from threats posed by acts of piracy. He said the pirates have amassed so much money that they now “threaten my government”. 

But where does Africa stand in all of this? What have the African Union (AU) and its current chairman Libyan leader Col. Muammar al-Gaddafi done regarding the Somali piracy crisis? These are questions that only the AU and Col. al-Gaddafi may have answers for. 

However, the Godfather of Africa’s destabilization  who has now seen reason to unite the continent, calling for the establishment of what he calls, the “United States of Africa”, must first do more to restore order in individual rogue African nations such as Somalia.

Col. al-Gaddafi takes personal responsibility for training and unleashing insurgents on many pro-Western African states in the 1980s and the 1990s.In the process, victimized nations such as Liberia experienced momentous catastrophes. In Liberia alone, Col. al-Gaddafi-backed insurgency led by former warlord turned President Charles Taylor left more than 250,000 people dead and the country devastated. There are now calls for the Libyan leader to pay reparations for the war in Liberia. 

So the ball is now squarely in the AU chairman’s court – to mend what he has broken, to put together what he has taken apart. Let the first step to establishing the “United States of Africa” begin with bringing the people of Somalia to unite, thereby saving the continent from shame and embarrassment.