Tackle Somalia's extreme poverty to put an end to piracy

Sir, Your editorial on "Tackling pirates the hard way" (April 29) epitomises what is wrong with European and US attitudes toward security crises in Somalia and farther afield in Sudan, Yemen, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.

You rightly say that the scourge of Somali instability must be solved on land, not merely by suppressing pirates at sea. Yet you completely miss the most obvious points.

You discuss the Somali crisis in conventional foreign policy and security categories - Islamism, nationalism, jihadism, radical militias, haven for extremists - without even a single word about Somalia's extreme poverty, hyper-aridity and water stress, extreme vulnerability to drought and climate change, massive illiteracy, unconscionable disease burdens, and bulging population growth rates resulting from the extreme poverty and the absence of family planning.

When people are starving to death, our diplomats, and apparently your commentators, invariably treat the unrest as signs of extremism. Why can't people just behave themselves, after all? It was almost a parody of misdirection that the recent "donor pledges" to Somalia of $250m were for a coastguard, not for Somalia's dying children, water crisis, livelihoods, or any other real solutions.

Somalia is of no interest to the west, as long as it doesn't block the sea lanes.