The Pirate Tapes

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The Pirate Tapes: Response As a country, Somalia has always somewhat intrigued me and somewhat harboured my attention with all of its internal unrest and conflicts. After watching the documentary, The Pirate Tapes, that interest has been heightened as it displays all of the issues and struggles of the nation. Many countries have been involved with Somalia in the past, however in the 1990s the majority of them left, leaving Somalia in a poor, ravaged state as civil wars led to further degradation of the country. Somalia has made very little progress since, if at all, and without a proper central government, it lacks a defining structure. Citizens are fleeing the country by the day, as it pumps out refugees like water from a garden hose, with one of the highest refugee rates in the world; even those who do not leave the country are often displaced within. The lack of a good foundation has led to the method of relying on violence as a means of survival with a heavy influx of guns, as evidenced in a quote from the documentary by a Somali pirate nicknamed “The Poet”, who states: “After 23 years of civil war, poverty, destruction, causing only more self-destruction. You can’t sleep without the sound of a gun, they can’t eat without the sound of a gun, they can’t even pray or beg without the sound of a gun. I mean, where do they get all those weapons from? You know what I’m saying? They have a $500 gun, AK-47, and he can’t even feed his belly, that’s weird.” The Soviet Union were big proponents in military establishment in Somalia and played a large part in bringing weapons over to the country; other nations such as Saudi Arabia also brought military assistance. Eventually the U.S. also became involved, and the effect of weapons greatly hindered the development of life in Somalia. Mass human rights violations were committed against innocent civilians as the country

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