So let me get this straight: so they have business portfolios in their industry that people can invest in (piracy), they invest some of their wealth in local communities to curry favor with the average American I mean local Somalis, they keep the lion’s share of the wealth and buy expensive mansions, luxurious cars and throw lavish, drug-laden parties…and they make disingenuous claims to justify their actions. They make a claim they’re using their funds for environmental projects, but then don’t. Also they hinder efforts intended to benefit local communities probably because it would harm their own efforts and their own income.

But they’re from the global South (Africa specifically, and they’re black too), so hence they’re called warlords, while ours are called businessmen. Their efforts harms Western countries so they’re dangerous warlords, while Western operations harm countries in the global South and are at worst called controversial.

I’m not going to defend what these guys do, but I’m entirely fine with waiting on fixing this problem until Western countries knock off the crap they’re engaging in first or actually actively fix it (rather than just stick a band aid on the problem). I wonder how many of these problems in the global South end up disappearing as a consequence of cleaning up Western actions.