The costs of piracy in this region are clear. Somalia lies along some of the world’s most important shipping lanes, and piracy in these lanes raises the cost of international commerce. Eleven percent of the world’s petroleum passes through the region, which is colloquially known as “Pirate Alley.” Ships making that journey today pay nearly twice what they would have paid a year ago for ransom insurance, in addition to the cost of increased onboard security. Furthermore, attacks on oil tankers and other ships carrying hazardous materials raise the possibility of a serious environmental disaster in the region. Finally, the possibility that piracy could fund terrorism represents a significant threat to the U.S.

But how exactly did the current era of Somali piracy begin? In 1991, Somalia’s government collapsed, and the lack of authority allowed pirates to take control of the seas. Today, the country is nominally ruled by the Transitional Federal Government (TFG), but other groups, such as the Islamic militia al-Shabbab, constantly challenge the TFG for control. In such conditions, poverty has driven many to piracy. The World Bank reports that 73 percent of Somalia’s population lives on less than $2 a day. Primary school enrollment stands at 22 percent, among the lowest in the world. In the absence of government, there is an absence of opportunity, and for many in Somalia, the profitable life of piracy holds understandable appeal. In 2008 alone, pirates collected more than $150 million in ransom.

Overfishing off the coast of Somalia has also pushed many Somalis to take part in piracy. The earliest pirates were fishermen who sought to force out commercial ships that plundered Somali waters. Somalia’s Gulf of Aden is one of the most fertile fishing grounds in the world, and without a coast guard, Somalia’s territorial waters are unprotected. Boats from Europe and Asia illegally reap over $300 million worth of fish per year from Somali seas, depriving local fishermen of the livelihood of which they once relied. The foreigners often utilize invasive and illegal methods of fishing, such as nets with tight meshes that catch small and young fish. Without regulation, fish populations have been decimated, creating a classic “tragedy of the commons.” When too many individuals fish the same waters, the ecosystem collapses, and Somalis who could have once made their living fishing turn to piracy as an alternative.
The illegal dumping of toxic waste off Somalia’s coast by European and Asian corporations has only aggravated the problem. The UN Environmental Program notes that dumping hazardous waste in Somalia can cost as little as $2.50 a ton, while disposing of that same waste in Europe can cost $250 a ton. Following the great tsunami of 2004, a significant amount of waste washed up on Somali shores and sickened the local population. By damaging local fisheries, waste dumping makes piracy a more attractive career option. Yet Somalia lacks the resources and institutions needed to prevent this problem, and the international community has done little to help.

Somalia’s dysfunctional government is unable to combat the pirates, and although several nations have dispatched naval patrols to the Gulf of Aden, piracy remains an ever-present threat. The U.S. and the European Union have standing patrols in the region, and China helps escort ships through the treacherous gulf. Yet piracy cannot be eliminated until the Somali government is stable enough to control the problem internally. Unfortunately, calls for good governance are more easily put onto paper than put into practice. In the short term, at least, stable government in Somalia is a fantasy. While lining the Gulf with warships might eliminate piracy, it would be prohibitively expensive. The best option, therefore, is to implement cost-effective measures to control the problem. A moderate expansion of anti-piracy efforts would help limit robbery at sea at reasonable expense.

In order to combat piracy, the U.S. and its partners must combat not only the pirates but also the aggravating factors that encourage them, such as illegal fishing and toxic waste. Anti-piracy forces working to protect the seas and prevent the dumping of hazardous waste will earn some measure of good will from Somalis even as they crack down on pirates. By protecting the region from overfishing, the international community can create economic opportunities for those who might otherwise have turned to piracy. Furthermore, pirates will no longer be able to justify their attacks by claiming that they are simply protecting their fishing waters. Still, piracy is profitable, and managing these environmental issues will not solely eliminate the problem. Most pirates will not lay down their guns and pick up fishing poles as the environmental situation improves. But if U.S. forces and others already in the region begin to protect fisheries, they will deprive pirates of their stated motivation to attack, thus exposing those who continue to board ships as nothing more than common criminals. Pirates need support on land for their operations, and by revealing the pirates’ true motivations, the U.S. can minimize the backing these buccaneers receive from the Somali population.

The creation of a Somali coast guard managed by the United Nations would help quell piracy today and create the infrastructure for Somalia to manage the problem in the long-term. Roger Middleton, of the thinktank Chatham House, proposes the development of such a force, noting, “The cost of running a coast guard could be met, at least in part, from collecting fishing dues and import revenue. The money and the force could be held in trust for Somalia.” Such a force would separate pirates who are out for profit from those who genuinely hope to protect Somalia’s seas. If and when a stable government does take root, it would have a capable navy to police its waters. Unfortunately, recruiting for and managing the group would be no easy task. In the short term, this auxiliary force could not replace the more experienced international force needed to control piracy. In the future, though, such efforts would allow Somalia to take greater responsibility for its own territory.

Piracy in the Gulf of Aden presents a significant threat to global commerce, and there are no simple solutions. Until Somalia has a stable, functional government, pirates will continue to haunt key shipping lanes, threatening American citizens and American interests. But by understanding the circumstances that lead to piracy, the international community can better control these modern-day buccaneers. The lack of central authority in Somalia has paved the way for illegal fishing and the dumping of toxic waste. By controlling these factors, the international community can, over time, undermine Somalia’s pirates.

The Kimberley Process certification scheme tracks diamonds from the mine to the store by issuing certificates indicating the stones are conflict-free. The process relies on self-regulation by the member nations’ governments. Though an admirable ideal, the Kimberley Process has already shown that it is unreliable in practice. The conflict diamond trade declined in Sierra Leone and Angola following the ends of both countries’ civil wars, but the Kimberley Process acknowledges continued smuggling in both countries, which Human Rights Watch calls “rampant.” The Democratic Republic of Congo has been plagued by conflict diamond problems exacerbated by rising instability, despite the D.R.C.’s Kimberley Process membership.
These ongoing problems show that while the Kimberley Process has been a good first step, a stronger independent body composed of both exporters and importing firms is needed to regulate both sides of the diamond trade. If enforcement is reliable enough, the profits from the legal trade should be the only incentive needed to ensure participation.

In 2007, a Kimberley Process team was sent to Zimbabwe to review allegations of smuggling, illegal mining, and human rights abuses by the military supervising the mining. The team publicly reported that Zimbabwe was in compliance with the Kimberley Process’s minimum standards. However, a confidential report from the Kimberley team, as well as accounts from Human Rights Watch and other humanitarian organizations, paint a different picture. Miners interviewed by the team said the military attempted to cover up corruption and committed violent acts against workers, including children. The Kimberley Process team’s confidential report also expressed concern over serious discrepancies in Zimbabwe’s statistical data on diamond production. Because many firms will not buy conflict diamonds directly from their country of origin, the diamonds are often smuggled into, and sold by, secondary countries. Conflict diamonds from other countries such as the Congo could easily be mixed in with Zimbabwean diamonds and certified as legal. Although Zimbabwe’s share of the global diamond market is small, the threat to the legitimacy of the Kimberley Process, and therefore to the entire diamond trade, is real.

Obtaining Kimberley Process certificates is the only way to legally trade in diamonds, so there should be a powerful incentive to comply with the process’s requirements. However, there are many opportunities for both importing and exporting nations to evade the rules. Governments looking for extra revenues through increased diamond sales would not find it difficult to pass off smuggled diamonds as legitimate — the governments control the certification process. While companies importing diamonds are legally obligated to purchase only certified, conflict-free stones, Global Witness reports that many firms are known to work around the process.

When corruption and smuggling are suspected, the Kimberley Process requires a consensus of the 75 represented countries to act, making it less likely that abuses will be addressed. Despite a Kimberley Process report stating Zimbabwe did not seem to be complying with the minimum standards for membership, Zimbabwe was allowed to remain a member, provided it adhered to a work plan created by the country itself. Instead of encouraging compliance, this sends the message that abuses will be tolerated.

Under the current system, it is also very difficult to target firms that import diamonds without certificates. The system calls for action by the country, but one cannot reasonably blame a government for one firm’s corruption. The World Diamond Council, the industry’s representative, also cannot be held at fault. The Kimberley Process has few tools to deal with corruption among diamond importers beyond asking governments to implement stricter industry regulations.

This flaw also means that the Kimberley Process currently has almost no way to stop the flow of conflict diamonds from rebel groups. Limiting the rebels’ opportunities to sell the diamonds deters them from creating conflict diamonds. One way to achieve this would be to require diamond-importing firms, as well as the nations that host them, to join the Kimberley Process and trade legal, certified diamonds.

The Kimberley Process would be more powerful and more reliable if it were not self-regulated but run instead by an independent regulatory group needing only a majority to act. Under this system, nations and importing firms would be far more likely to incur effective penalties, such as suspension from the Kimberley Process, if they failed to prevent the proliferation of conflict diamonds. An independent regulatory agency would also encourage more accurate record-keeping, making it more difficult to introduce smuggled diamonds into the legal market and harder for importers to knowingly purchase tainted diamonds. Because the Kimberley Process is the sole way to legally trade diamonds, a reintroduction process for suspended countries would be essential. This tool would ensure that these countries would not simply sell their diamonds to less exacting importers and enter the illegal diamond trade.

Although difficult, obtaining diamond producers’ participation in an organization capable of penalizing them is essential. If diamond traders concluded that the only profitable path was compliance, the legal diamond industry would free itself from the taint of conflict diamonds. An end to these concerns would increase consumers’ demand and increase profits for both importers and exporters. These benefits would reinforce commitment to keeping conflict diamonds out of the legal trade.

The inevitable question is where the responsibility for this independent regulator will fall. The United States is certainly in a position to exercise leadership by showing its commitment to stricter regulations. Yet the credibility of the Kimberley Process would be jeopardized if one nation, particularly one with such a significant share of the imports, took charge. The US cannot monitor the entire diamond trade; this is not one nation’s responsibility. The World Trade Organization is a logical candidate for this role. Its status as the accepted authority on global trade and experience monitoring trade issues would benefit a Kimberley Process group. Both governments and industry members could still be involved through an already-existing organization.

Although the conflict diamond trade may never be entirely eradicated, we should not dismiss the potential for improvement. As a more powerful regulatory agency, the Kimberley Process could harness its strengths to change the incentive structure for trading in diamonds, creating a lasting decline in conflict diamonds, greater revenues for diamond-exporting nations, and an end to the human rights abuses tied to the “blood diamonds.”

Almost as if on cue, columns of foreign men come marching down from their hilltop encampments, invading every joint in sight in search of a good time. These, however, are not the colonizers of old (in fact, Ethiopia remained a singularly free country throughout the continent’s dark history of colonialism), but rather, a new breed of pioneers. The hardened, but eager, faces of these expatriates signify the rise of a new kid on the African block – the People’s Republic of China.

These men are vastly different from the conquerors who scrambled for Africa’s riches centuries earlier. Instead of the safari suits and velvet top hats that their European predecessors donned, the Chinese frontiermen of the 21st century come decked in loose overalls and somber hardhats. Unlike the infantrymen who arrived bearing rifles and muskets before them, the newcomers are contractors, technicians and engineers equipped with cranes and bulldozers. Nor do they live in exorbitantly fancy villas and seclude themselves in exclusive neighborhoods. When not toiling at their work sites or resting in their Spartan dormitories, most prefer the same (cheap) pleasures that their local counterparts enjoy.

It is men like these who have breathed life into the economies of little towns like Sekoru and surrounding areas, not only in their patronage of local hangouts, but in the big things they are accomplishing all around them. In this remote corner of the Great Rift Valley, several dozen Chinese engineers and construction workers are busy constructing East Africa’s biggest hydroelectric dam, Gilgel Gibe IV. Upon completion, it is expected to supply the urban centers and rural peripheries of southern Ethiopia and even neighboring Kenya, Djibouti and Sudan. This dam will not only bring electric power to hundreds of villages for the first time, but it will also be an indispensable catalyst for rapid industrial growth in the region.

This mammoth project, jointly financed by the Ethiopian and Chinese governments and the World Bank, is merely one of many similar undertakings that have sprung up all across Africa in the past decade. In its unfettered ambition to join the highest ranks of world powers, China has set its sights on Africa, aiming to establish deep, friendly relations with the continent. In countries like Angola, Nigeria, Ethiopia and Sudan, the Chinese government has been hard at work providing much-needed developmental assistance, not only embarking on comprehensive projects to build schools, hospitals, roads, bridges and dams, but also training the robust human resources needed to maintain them. Nor is China’s largesse limited to the mobilization of fleets of engineers, architects and construction workers.

The People’s Republic has had to reach deep into its pockets to finance its expensive relationship with Africa. According to the terms of a robust assistance package announced by Chinese President Hu Jintao at a summit of African Heads of State and Government in Beijing in 2006, China pledged to double aid to Africa by the year 2009 and provide $3 billion in preferential loans for development ventures, further establishing an Africa development fund expected to reach $5 billion. At this watershed event, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao also proposed that China and Africa take steps to strengthen their commercial ties, bringing trade volumes up to $100 billion dollars by the year 2010. Indeed, since 2006 trade has grown even faster than the premier expected, reaching the $100 billion mark in 2008, a whooping 45 percent increase from a year earlier. According to figures released by China’s General Administration of Customs for the 2008 fiscal year, China imported $56 billion worth of goods and services from Africa, while exports to the continent reached a staggering $50.8 billion. This makes China Africa’s second biggest trade partner, behind only the United States and ahead of both Britain and France.

The benefits of closer ties with China for Africa are clear. China’s financial and technical resources allow for the construction of much-needed infrastructure, the gleaning of valuable expertise and the growth of trade and industry, among other things, all at a much lower cost than arrangements with Western countries would entail. Furthermore, the “no-conditionality” nature of Chinese assistance allows aid to be used to meet the priorities identified by African governments, as opposed to the dictates of Western governments and monetary institutions.

Moreover, China has striven to demonstrate its deep commitment not only to the economic well-being of the continent, but also to its peace and security. In the last two decades, the Chinese government has mobilized thousands of its armed forces and civilian observers to conflict zones in Southern Sudan, Liberia and the Democratic Republic of Congo. More recently, China has deployed a formidable naval contingent to the East African coast, where piracy has threatened to cripple international shipping.

All these generous overtures, however, have raised western eyebrows, perhaps because China’s newfound zeal may be reminiscent of a bygone era in which Africa was overrun by the imperial and commercial ambitions of different foreign powers. Because of a rapidly booming economy insatiable in its appetite for raw materials and markets for finished goods, Chinese multinationals have demonstrated their capacity and willingness to go to great lengths to secure both. In particular, they have demonstrated a strong desire to gain sustainable access to the sources of crude oil and natural gas in places like Angola, Nigeria and Equatorial Guinea, where the culture of good governance and strength of civil institutions are still lacking in maturity. Consequently, the unrivalled spending power and political clout of Chinese businesses has occasionally bypassed the needs of local populations and served to exacerbate their already impoverished conditions. Unrestrained drilling and loose safety practices by Chinese energy companies in the oil-rich Niger Delta and elsewhere have led to the pollution of drinking water sources, dislocation of inhabitants and rife corruption.

China’s willingness to overlook gross violations of democratic practices and human rights by its African trade partners has also made it the target of much criticism. China has played an obstructionist role in the UN Security Council in implementing resolutions targeting the Sudanese government for gross violations of human rights committed by government-backed rebels in Darfur, including the dislocation, rape and mass murder of hundreds of thousands of civilians. Moreover, the high prevalence of Chinese small arms and light weapons in several conflicts zones abets the further deterioration of peace and security in Africa. Either through the medium of international arms dealers or corrupt African governments, these arms fall into the possession of rebel groups in places like the DRC, where they are used to inflict serious harm upon civilians.

In spite of all this, however, there is no denying China’s invaluable contribution to the economic development of African states and its increasing assistance in bringing about peace and security. Nonetheless, the government of the PRC needs to re-evaluate the precise nature of its objectives on the continent and the extent to which its own interests are served by maintaining the policy of near complete “non-interference” in the domestic affairs of the nations it deals with. China could play an immensely constructive role by joining the international community of nations in demanding that African governments live up to the principles of transparency, accountability and respect for human life that they supposedly espouse. Pulling the weight of its enormous economic leverage and its permanent status on the UN’s Security Council, China could exert decisive pressure to facilitate the end of some of the most tragic human catastrophes of this decade. Not only would such a strategy pay dividends in creating political stability in the states that are increasingly vital to China’s economic interests, but it would also shine positively on the image of an emerging superpower that aims to be taken more seriously on the global stage. China has the unprecedented opportunity to be the catalyst of much-needed change on a continent that has been starving for it. It is an opportunity that the Chinese government and businesses need to seize for their own interests and for those of their African friends.