...[It] is within Somalia’s own business sector that pirates, of the airwaves in particular, are responsible for another circular logic bedeviling successive governments: tax avoidance. Without tax compliance the best of governments flounder — and cannot sufficiently finance police, army and other forms of security...Somalia’s big six telecommunications “companies” are all offshoots of, or modelled on, those business pirates who seized government facilities after the collapse of the last government in 1991...Moreover, these self-styled telcos continue to control and exploit Somalia’s citizens in ways both unfair and corrosive. What is immediately damaging, in terms of lives, is their ability to prevent a fragile government from starving militia of communications. An electronic blockade could help isolate a militia known to be trained largely by foreign terrorists. With control of mobile-phone technology authorities could accurately identify, profile and locate offenders simply by regulating the users. [refers to Barclays]