Puntland President Deni argues foreign “anti-piracy” presence is a door to fish and seabed wealth: after 1991 state collapse, IUU fishing and waste dumping seeded piracy; navies after 2008 protected shipping, not stocks (~$300m/year IUU; Chinese, Iranian, Yemeni boats documented).

The Aug. 2026 LUTUF hijacking and Garmaal/Jiifle strikes (families say fishermen died; Ankara claims “no information”) sit on a federal–state fight: Puntland banned SOMTURK under its constitution’s blue-economy claim; Mogadishu says maritime security is federal and Turkiye’s 2024/2026 pacts suffice.

The piece fact-checks both sides—Puntland’s 2019 licensing scandal and PMPF’s UAE-era drift weaken the purity claim—and urges pre-strike notice, an inquiry, a public license registry, split ROE for escorts vs. raids, revenue-sharing, artisanal livelihoods, and a reformed PMPF.

Puntland President Said Abdullahi Deni stood in Garacad in late August 2026 and said what Puntland officials have muttered for two decades: the fight against piracy has become a door foreign powers walk through to reach something else — the fish, the seabed, the “blue economy” Puntland’s constitution claims as state property. “We are being told that Puntland has failed to defend against piracy, and then foreign forces are brought to the coast to take our resources,” Deni said. Not a new grievance. An old one, freshly armed.

A history that keeps repeating

The story begins in 1991, when the Somali Navy dissolved with the state that funded it and roughly 3,300 kilometers of coastline went unpatrolled. Foreign trawlers moved into the vacuum; fishermen described boats rammed and nets cut. By the mid-1990s, reports circulated of a ship, the Red Jolly, dumping toxic waste off Puntland’s shore. Proof arrived in 2004, when the tsunami washed rusted waste containers back onto the same beaches and U.N. agencies documented radiation-consistent illness among coastal residents.

Out of that collapse came the “Volunteer Coast Guard of Somalia” — fishermen turned enforcers, taxing the trawlers they couldn’t otherwise stop. Pirate leader Sugule Ali’s line has outlived him: “We consider sea bandits those who illegally fish in our seas and dump waste in our seas.” The self-defense framing was partly self-serving, but researchers don’t seriously dispute the underlying fact: illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing and state collapse were the seedbed piracy grew from, not the whole of it.

International navies arrived to fix a shipping problem, not a fishing one. EU Naval Force Atalanta, NATO’s Ocean Shield and the Combined Task Force 151 deployed starting in 2008 to protect commercial traffic, not enforce fisheries law. Piracy fell sharply after 2012, but the mandate gap never closed. Puntland has long argued the naval umbrella meant for merchant ships incidentally shielded the fleets stripping its fish stocks.

That argument gained fresh material in the 2020s. China’s Liao Dong Yu fleet, tied to the Liaoning Daping Fishery Group, has been linked to illegal yellowfin tuna operations dating to at least 2019. Iranian dhows and Yemeni boats using banned “hawi” nets have been detained by Puntland’s marine forces. A 2019........

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