The RUF and Somalian pirates: Blurring the Lines of Legitimacy

          The Revolutionary United Front and the pirates that operate off the coast of Somalia both began as honest groups of individuals that worked off the land to supply their needs and nothing more. The RUF began as a group of diamond miners that lost their jobs and resorted to exploiting the booming diamond market in Sierra Leone. The Somalian pirates began as fishermen that used the waters of the Somalian coast to supply their families and villages with food and resources, but due to outside competition, they resorted to piracy to meet and exceed their needs. Both groups attempted or are attempting to legitimize their intentions through merit, but their ideals have mutated into conflicting feelings of crime and community service.

          The RUF grew out of unrest after vast job layoffs and closing mines in Sierra Leone. The miners formed a sort of union to address growing unemployment and to influence the growing youth presence. These ideas would undoubtedly be reasonable in anyone's eyes. Their terms are fair, and any community should have a right to pursue these ends. Their legitimacy crumbled, however, once they answered the unemployment by exploiting the diamond market and using the money to fuel a war against the government while simultaneously addressing the growing youth by kidnapping and arming child soldiers. This is a far cry from the initial intentions of disgruntled miners. The RUF quickly became an organized criminal network that stripped the environment of its resources to fuel a violent revolution.

          The story of the RUF bears a resemblance to the case of the pirates in Somalia. Contrary to common arguments, these men are no longer protecting their waters from fishermen, or as one of the leaders of a pirate group said, "acting as a sort of coast guard." The pirates grew as a result of international companies pushing into Somalian waters and devastating the fishing stock, at which point the Somalians retaliated in an effort to save their waters and livelihood. Again, like the RUF, their actions can potentially be justified as self-defense and defending their loved ones from outsiders, but this legitimacy was ruined once their "defense" became an "offense" and they began robbing, plundering, kidnapping...piracy. There is no question that these Somalians used the facade of protecting their fishing stocks to justify what they quickly realized was a lucrative venture.

          The foundation of this issue is the simple debate over recognition in the international market. In the case of the RUF, at what point do you legitimize and recognize the RUF as an official government entity? How do you intervene in a war torn country to address the violent government that replaced the corrupt and ineffective government? As for the Somalian pirates, how do you identify a boundary that all parties can agree on? And even if these boundaries are recognized by all parties, who's to say the pirates will refrain from the robbing and kidnapping? Once a group taps into a lucrative endeavor such as diamond mining or looting ships, they reach a point where their power becomes legitimized simply because of their purchasing power in the region.

          These blurred lines in regards to legitimacy and recognition are difficult to address and when the cases such as the RUF and the Somalian pirates resort to violence and conflict with other entities, their legitimacy should come into question. Their initial intentions should be put on trial and addressed by the international community. Regardless of how each group interprets their intentions, the Revolutionary United Front was a criminal organization guilty of war crimes, and the Somalian pirates are exactly what they are labeled as...pirates.