Someone Took All the Fish First

Es triste.

It is sad.

La gente necesita comer.

People need to eat.

El pescado es importante para Somalia.

Fish is important for Somalia.

Fish is important for Somalia in ways that go beyond economics.

Coastal communities from Puntland down through the south have fished these waters for generations.

It's not a commercial enterprise for most of them, it's subsistence.

It's the protein source for entire villages.

So when we talk about a fisheries deal with Turkey, we are talking about something that touches food security for millions of people.

Y el atún es muy, muy valioso.

And tuna is very, very valuable.

El atún tiene mucho dinero.

There is a lot of money in tuna.

The tuna grounds off the Horn of Africa are genuinely among the richest in the world.

Yellowfin, skipjack, bigeye -- these are species that command serious prices on global markets, particularly for the Japanese sashimi trade.

Somalia's economic zone is estimated to have sustainable annual yields worth potentially over a billion dollars.

A billion.

And right now almost none of that is being captured by Somalia.

Es mucho dinero.

That is a lot of money.

Somalia necesita ese dinero.

Somalia needs that money.

Which brings us back to Turkey.

Because this is not just a fishing deal, it's a piece of Turkey's much larger strategic play in Africa.

Erdogan's government has spent the last fifteen years building an extraordinary footprint on the continent: hospitals, mosques, schools, military training facilities.

Somalia has been a particular focus.

Turkey has a military base in Mogadishu, it trains the Somali army, and now it wants a piece of the fishing economy.

Turquía construye muchas cosas en África.

Turkey builds many things in Africa.

Turquía es muy activa allí.

Turkey is very active there.

Very active.

And what's interesting about OYAK specifically -- that's the Turkish military pension fund behind SOMTURK -- is that it's not just a financial entity.

OYAK runs factories, builds cars, operates in the steel sector.

It's one of Turkey's largest conglomerates.

The fact that it's the vehicle for this fisheries deal tells you something about how seriously Ankara is treating Somalia as a long-term investment.

Pero, ¿quién gana con este acuerdo?

But who wins with this agreement?

¿Somalia gana?

Does Somalia win?

¿Turquía gana?

Does Turkey win?

That's exactly the question.

On paper, the deal is supposed to work like this: SOMTURK manages the licensing and regulation, takes a percentage, Somalia gets formal oversight over its own waters and some revenue.

Better than the free-for-all that came before.

But critics point out that the history of similar arrangements in Africa is not encouraging.

You get a foreign entity controlling the permits, and the actual fish -- and the money from the fish -- ends up mostly abroad.

Puntland tiene miedo.

Puntland is afraid.

No quiere perder su mar.

It does not want to lose its sea.

And I think that fear is legitimate.

Puntland's coastline is where a huge portion of Somalia's best fishing grounds actually are.

The region has been semi-autonomous since 1998, it functions more effectively than much of the south, and its coastal communities have a genuine economic stake in this.

From their perspective, a deal signed in Ankara between Mogadishu and a Turkish military fund, with no consultation with Puntland, is not regulation.

It's just a new form of the same old problem.

El problema viejo es: alguien toma el pescado y los somalíes no comen.

The old problem is: someone takes the fish and Somalis do not eat.

You put that better than most analysts I've read.

That really is the throughline.

And it raises a question I don't have a clean answer to: is formal regulation under SOMTURK, even imperfect, better than the current situation where the grounds remain largely ungoverned?

Or does formalizing Turkish control just lock in a new extraction arrangement for another generation?

Es una pregunta difícil.

It is a difficult question.

No tengo la respuesta.

I do not have the answer.

High praise from Octavio.

I'll take the honesty.

Look, what I keep coming back to is the food dimension here, because I think it gets buried under the geopolitics.

The Indian Ocean tuna that ends up in a tin in a European supermarket, or as sashimi in Tokyo -- that fish may well have come from waters off Puntland.

And the fishermen who have worked those waters for a thousand years are largely sitting on the shore watching it happen.

En Somalia, el pescado no está solo en la tienda.

In Somalia, fish is not only in the store.

El pescado está en la cultura, en la historia.

Fish is in the culture, in the history.

There's a Somali proverb I came across while researching this -- roughly translated it says something like: the sea does not ask permission, but the man who takes from it should.

Which captures the Puntland position pretty well, I think.

Sí.

Yes.

Y ahora Puntland espera.

And now Puntland waits.

El acuerdo está bloqueado.

The agreement is blocked.

Los barcos no pescan.

The boats do not fish.

The boats don't fish.

The deal is in limbo.

Mogadishu and Puntland are using it as a bargaining chip in broader constitutional talks that have been stalled for months.

And meanwhile, those tuna grounds -- worth potentially a billion dollars a year -- remain largely underdeveloped, as the Wikipedia article puts it.

Underdeveloped is one word for it.

Ungoverned is another.

La comida es política.

Food is politics.

Siempre es política.

It is always politics.

La comida es política.

You know, I've been in enough conflict zones to know that's true in ways most people in wealthy countries never have to think about.

When you control the food supply, or the fishing rights, or the arable land, you control the people.

Every negotiation I watched in post-conflict environments eventually came down to: who eats?

The fish is just the latest version of that question.

Exacto.

Exactly.

Y los niños de Somalia necesitan proteína.

And Somalia's children need protein.

El pescado es proteína.

Fish is protein.

So where does this go?

My honest read is that SOMTURK will eventually operate in some form, because Mogadishu needs the revenue and Turkey is deeply embedded in Somalia now.

Whether Puntland gets a meaningful share of the proceeds, whether coastal communities actually benefit, whether this becomes a model for governing fishing rights or just another extraction story -- that's genuinely open.

And it matters for food security across the whole Horn of Africa.

Esperemos que el pescado llegue a las personas de Somalia.

Let us hope the fish reaches the people of Somalia.

No a los barcos de Turquía solamente.

Not only the boats of Turkey.

Well said.

Alright, before we wrap, I want to go back to a word you used right at the start, Octavio, because it stopped me.

You said Somalia's waters are 'rico' -- rich.

And then later you used 'rico' about the tuna itself.

But I know 'rico' also means delicious.

Are those the same word?

Am I missing something?

Sí, es la misma palabra.

Yes, it is the same word.

'Rico' significa abundante.

'Rico' means abundant.

Y también significa delicioso.

And it also means delicious.

Depende del contexto.

It depends on the context.

So when you say 'el atún es muy rico' that could mean the tuna is very valuable or the tuna is very delicious, and only context tells you which.

Exacto.

Exactly.

También, 'este niño es muy rico' -- el niño es adorable.

Also, 'this child is very rico' -- the child is adorable.

No tiene mucho dinero.

The child does not have a lot of money.

Depende mucho del contexto.

It depends a lot on context.

So 'rico' carries abundance, deliciousness, and adorableness all in one word.

English needs three words for what Spanish handles with one.

I feel like my whole vocabulary-learning strategy has been wasteful.

Though I suppose this also means I could accidentally call Octavio's mother's cooking abundantly wealthy instead of delicious and it would barely matter.

La cocina de mi madre es muy rica.

My mother's cooking is very rico.

Y ella es adorable.

And she is adorable.

Las dos cosas son verdad.

Both things are true.