The Delta Solution

by Patrick Robinson

There are only two truly safe enclaves in the entire place. The first is the wide, expansively built quasi-government and political region on the seaward side of Mogadishu, off-limits to the populace but protected by 4,000 soldiers, who form a peacekeeping force. This private army, backed by the UN-sponsored African Union, controls the seaport, the airport, and all main routes into town.

  Somalia’s other safe haven is the southeastern corner of Haradheere, world headquarters of the Somali Marines, a highly disciplined pirate organization whose chain of command reaches upward to the dizzying ranks of Fleet Admiral, four-star admiral, vice admiral, and head of financial operations.

  All of these ranks square off nicely with that of the late Ugandan dictator and former British Army sergeant Idi Amin, whose normal working rig was the full, heavily medalled dress uniform of a field marshal.

  Amin would have enjoyed the luxurious part of Haradheere—big, new opulent houses, heavily guarded and occupied by the new economic elite—men mostly between the ages of twenty and thirty-five, professional pirates who have money, power, new cars, and big guns. They married the most beautiful girls on the entire coastline and dined on grilled fish, roast meat, and freshly made spaghetti. Usually they scorned the traditional native camel and goat meat, preferring instead imported beef and lamb, which was affordable only to them.

  Alcohol was plentiful, too plentiful, but it fuelled a prosperous local industry despite the strict Islamic ban that applied to almost everyone in the country. Except them. Nothing applied to the pirates because they made up their own rules, and they had the money to protect a way of life that grew increasingly lavish with every passing year.

  They were able to share the wealth, making deals with the local warlords, which bought them protection from any other authority. They created businesses in the town, designed to cater to their needs. They patronized a local shipyard, which serviced and built their boats.

  They handed over substantial sums of money to a local authority which they controlled. This in turn built a hospital in Haradheere and funded doctors and nurses. It also provided the best school in the country with textbooks and teachers shipped in from Nairobi and Addis Ababa.

  Haradheere, with its dusty dirt roads, is without doubt East Africa’s boomtown, and at the heart of this prosperous black Wild West, there is a brand new stock exchange, selling shares and bonds in the pirate operations.

  The locals refer to it as “a co-operative.” But in every sense, it is a stock exchange. The modern office is situated in the heart of the pirate lair, and all criminal activity perpetrated by the sea gangs is funded from this financial center.

  Each and every pirate operation comes through here. Newly formed gangs arrive with their “business plans,” which normally involve a leaky fishing boat and a few lethal weapons that could in the fullness of time kill them all. But if the exchange directors like what they see, they advance cash to the fledgling pirates in the form of a bridging loan.

  When the boat is brought up to scratch, and more effective modern weaponry is purchased, the exchange deems the young men in good enough shape to go out and risk their lives trying to capture a ship and its crew in order to demand a multimillion-dollar ransom from the owners. Then the Haradheere Stock Exchange begins to issue shares in the operation. Typical is an issue of 100,000 stocks, priced at $10 each. Anyone can buy shares, and not for just cash. The exchange takes anything that could be useful to the pirates, in the form of equipment and especially weapons. In turn they issue stock to the client who then sits back and waits for a return.

  If the ransom comes in hot and heavy, say $5 million, it all goes into the central exchange, and the original loan, plus a low rate of interest, is taken off the top. Very often the value of the stock multiplies five times.

  One local lady, a twenty-five-year-old divorcée, came in with a brand-new missile launcher plus two Stinger ground-to-air rockets given to her by her husband in lieu of alimony. Originally stolen from the Russians in Ethiopia, the rockets were worth $5,000 minimum on the open market. The lady was given five hundred $10 shares, which ultimately traded out, after the operation, at $50 each.

  The merry divorcée rolled over her profits into a new operation involving a Greek-owned VLCC (very large crude carrier) and cashed out just before Christmas for $78,000. She subsequently bought a new house and a smart four-wheel-drive automobile, and once more the local Haradheere economy boomed.

  Her story is not unusual. The stock exchange stacks away money faster than any bank in Africa, almost all of it in hard cash, delivered by air to the decks of the captured ships.

  Every pirate operation on the coastline is backed by the exchange. There are an estimated eighty “maritime corporations” attached to the operation, and twelve of them have pulled off at least one successful hijack. The Somali Marines Inc. is the biggest and the best of them, with probably four or five notches on their AK-47s.

  Not all of the shares issued by the exchange make a profit, and from time to time, pirates get shot or killed. But the success rate is so high, and so many people are making good money, that hope springs as eternal as it can get in the sand dunes.

  The exchange is open twenty-four hours a day and transactions are conducted through the night, stock certificates issued to the music of the loud SUV horns blaring in the potholed streets outside. The profusion of alcohol has brought an even more lawless edge to nightlife around Haradheere. This is where East Africa’s Wall Street meets the wild rhythms of the tribal hordes in the most dangerous country on earth.

  Inevitably, from an operation that risky and that brilliant, there emerges a heavyweight brain who keeps everything moving. In Haradheere he was the thirty-eight-year-old Mohammed Salat, who started in the export business up in the north, shipping agricultural products to Europe.

  In fact, Salat started his career in the United States, having gained his master’s degree in finance at the revered Ross Business School at the University of Michigan. The guy was a Wolverine in the sand dunes, a lawyer’s son from the Puntland Peninsula, and he was in command of the most notorious illegal operation on the planet. He was the Godfather of the Dark Continent.

  Salat was wearing a grin as wide as the African equator as he watched his twelve tribesmen leap aboard the skiffs in readiness for the one-mile dash out to the waiting Mombassa. These were the Somali Marines, his favorites, and they always brought home the bacon.

  It seemed they had everything in their favor. They knew the ship they were seeking, and there were no visible warships in the area; no signs of that heavily armed but ineffective European Union fleet, which was supposed to offer protection in the shipping lanes.

  Indeed, just that morning Salat had received a communication from a Somali mole deep inside the EU that even more laws were being drawn up to protect the human rights of the pirates.

  The trembling, liberal heart of the EU was concerned as ever with those brigands who may have suffered an unhappy childhood, deprivation, or poor schooling. And their latest laws were specifically designed to discourage, if not forbid, trigger-happy navy gunners from opening fire on the raiders, even as they held crews and passengers at gunpoint all over the Indian Ocean.

  Mohammed Salat loved those guys in Brussels, loved them with all of his heart. And his stock exchange had an ample budget to hire London’s best human rights lawyers, and they were confident they could get the Somali Marines out of trouble, any time, any place.

  Life for him was as happy as it could be. He lived in a sixteen-room, walled compound, which included his private mansion, adjacent to his combined office, operations room, and strong room. This in turn adjoined the armory, where all of the ammunition and assault equipment was stored under permanent guard, 24/7. These three heavily constructed buildings occupied the entire north side of the compound.

  Salat had full control over all of the millions and millions of dollars in his care. He had married the beautiful Miss Somaliland 2006, who was fifteen years his junior, and the golden coup
le was guarded day and night by a staff of armed servants, many of them ex–Somali military.

  Of course, a man of his intelligence was very aware the roof could fall in on his world any time. If an international shipping company ever became seriously angry, he could quickly find himself shot, bombed, or incarcerated.

  But he had made his arrangements. There was an ever-growing Swiss Bank account, an unobtrusive residence on the shores of Lake Como, and access to a private aircraft out of Mogadishu airport.

  His friends in the Somali arms business owed Salat so many favors they had lost count. Their only permanent obligation was to ensure that a private plane was ready at all times to whisk Mohammed and his lovely wife to Nairobi and then to Europe at a moment’s notice.

  The pirate crews had started the Yamaha 250s with echoing roars across the water. The departing assault troops were waving, and the helmsmen were revving. On the Mombassa, Captain Hassan gave a couple of whoops on the ship’s klaxon to signify the operation was a go.

  “WHOMBA!” yelled Mohammed Salat. And he clapped his hands in rhythm with the crowd, as they pressed forward down the beach. “H-E-E-E-E-Y WHOMBA!”

  EIGHTEEN HUNDRED MILES to the east of this joyous gathering on the Somali shore sits the US Naval Base of Diego Garcia, situated right in the middle of the Indian Ocean. The island, a large coral atoll in the Chagos Archipelago, is owned by the British. However, the US Navy leased Diego Garcia from the Crown for many years, and the island stands under two flags: the Union Jack and the Stars and Stripes. It has a wonderful deepwater harbor and provides regular support for even the biggest American warships, including the 100,000-ton Nimitz-class aircraft carriers.

  The place is a strategic masterpiece, around 8,000 miles from major US Navy bases on both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts—Norfolk, Virginia, and San Diego, California. It is a safe haven for US submarines, with facilities to refuel and service. Its unique location makes Diego Garcia a modern gateway between West and East. Geographically, the base is situated on the Maldive Ridge, almost 1,000 miles off the southern tip of India, and 1,700 nautical miles east of the Somali coastline.

  Its remoteness in this vast ocean makes it very nearly impregnable. The seas around it are swept by the most powerful radar systems in the US Navy, and their ever-watchful fighter-bombers hammer their way through azure skies above the sprawling archipelago at all hours.

  The entire place is flat—no mountains and no hills. Its perfect naval airfield stands only nine feet above mean sea level. The largest bombers and freighters can land and take off with ease. The forty-mile-long island is an electronic paradise, home to the US Space Tracking and Satellite Surveillance Station. It even boasts an emergency landing facility for the space shuttle.

  Diego Garcia, once a bucolic, rural outpost for a couple of thousand Hindu farmers, stands today as a somewhat secretive modern naval and military city. It is unusual for any merchant marine vessels to call here, except for those delivering US aid to stricken communities.

  The US is always the first to offer the hand of friendship, always the first to recognize the scale of the problem, always the first to make big, practical decisions to bring in relief, food, shelter, fresh water, medicines, and skilled workers.

  Even Somalia, the cause of so much catastrophe, so much self-inflicted heartbreak, counts on the United States for help.

  Yet another crop failure, yet more starvation, sickness, and disease, had again caused a weary America, fighting back from its own financial ills, to step up to the plate for Somalia. Which was why the 18,000-ton Mars Class combat storeship Niagara Falls, deactivated and under civilian command, had just spent four days on the jetties at Diego Garcia being loaded to the gunwales with aid—food, tents, water, medication, and relief workers hoping to save Somali lives in the north.

  It was a big ship, over forty years old and a veteran of many conflicts but capable of transporting 2,600 tons of dry stores plus 1,300 tons refrigerated. Under a full load, her 22,000-horsepower turbines would propel her through the water at a comfortable 12 knots for 10,000 miles before needing to refuel.

  She was probably the most capable of the US aid ships, fully equipped with freight elevators and on-deck cranes. She took her orders from the heart of Washington, DC, from deep inside the spectacular Ronald Reagan Building on Pennsylvania Avenue, headquarters of USAID.

  This building is one of the most majestic landmarks in DC, set beneath a domed rotunda with an eight-story foyer. The building is an everlasting symbol of America’s massive generosity to its neighbors near and far, allocating billions of dollars annually for global food programs under the direct guidance of the US secretary of state.

  Millions of underprivileged people all over the world have reason to thank the kind and thoughtful administrators of the US aid programs. And yet, the tide of evil that so often emanates from the profound envy of the Islamic Middle East recognizes no good in anything that comes from the West.

  And in Room 609, near the top of the towering edifice of that entrance foyer in the Reagan Building, lurked a mole—a thirty-two-year-old USEDUCATED Somali named Yusuf Kalahri, a computer programmer by trade. Kalahri was on the payroll of Mohammed Salat.

  His task was one-dimensional: to report the global positions, directions, and destinations of the big US aid ships as they carried out their missions of mercy around the world. This applied even when those ships were steaming toward the shores of Yusuf’s homeland, trying to help those who could no longer help themselves.

  The Niagara Falls was carrying a multimillion-dollar cargo to thousands of destitute, still virtually homeless people in Somalia’s north. The enormous resources of the US Navy had been seconded to load her, on specific instructions from the Pentagon, via the secretaries of defense and state.

  She was unarmed and bound for Mogadishu with its improved harbor facilities. But whether or not her priceless food and aid cargo ever completed the 500-mile land journey north was essentially in the hands of the gods. African gods, that is, which too often come in the form of tribal warlords, men whose grasp of normal decency hovers permanently around the zero mark.

  The US aid, currently in the huge cargo holds of the Niagara Falls, might or might not be stolen directly off the potholed, sandy highways of this lawless land. US government officials, who are inclined to treat tribal cutthroats as if they are mild-mannered midwestern bank managers, felt, in this case, that an armed naval escort would not be required since the supply ship was on a mission of mercy, trying to help Somalia itself.

  Right now she steamed west-northwest in waters 10,000 feet deep under the command of her veteran master, Captain Fred Corcoran. Fully laden, Niagara Falls was making around 12 knots, holding a course of three-zero-eight under clear skies and calm ocean waters. The temperature hovered near 102 degrees Fahrenheit. Every air conditioner on board was running hard as they headed up to the equator.

  Since Diego Garcia stands just north of the seven-degree southern line of latitude, and Mogadishu almost directly on the two-degree northern line, the big freighter moved three degrees closer every day to the hottest temperatures on earth.

  Captain Corcoran barely left the bridge and stood between his first and second mates, Charlie Wyatt and Rick Barnwell, who constantly scanned the enormous horizons for signs of maritime activity.

  For forty years, Captain Corcoran had plied the world’s oceans, mostly the South Pacific and Indian Ocean cargo routes, normally taking the Red Sea-Suez-Mediterranean journey back to Europe. After a ten-year spell driving tankers, he was one of the acknowledged experts on the Indian Ocean and was growing more wary by the month of the dangers of piracy.

  Reluctantly he had acquiesced to the US recommendation that no formal naval escort was required since the Somalis were unlikely to hijack a massive cargo bound for their own starving people, entirely free of charge.

  Fred Corcoran was not entirely certain about that. And after his second request had been discouraged, he fired off an e-mail to the R
onald Reagan Building confirming he understood the executive point of view, and that he hoped a cruising naval warship might be close enough to come to his rescue if rescue was needed.

  Without telling a soul, he had acquired an M-4 rifle—a light machine gun—and, with the kind of dexterity that comes with a lifetime spent on oceangoing ships, he smuggled it on board expressly against the advice and authority of about 10,000 European Union and US protocols and bylaws.

  He stowed it in a locker on the bridge, fully loaded with a new magazine. There was no way any bunch of half-naked savages was going to take his ship without feeling a few volleys of hot lead. Fred Corcoran was a big, redheaded fellow, with an Irish temper to match his size, and he was ready to defend his vessel at all times.

  Right now the Niagara Falls was close to 750 miles west of Diego Garcia on a hot, dry morning, with more than 1,500 fathoms beneath the keel. So far they had seen a couple of fishing boats, probably from the Inner Islands, which guard the northern approaches to the Seychelles.

  But Captain Corcoran’s course would take him through lonely waters, running a couple of hundred miles northeast of the main Seychelles shallows, and then taking a straight shot across the deep Indian Ocean basin, and picking up the north-running Somali current that swirls up the Kenyan coast to Mogadishu.

  They were in peaceful waters right now, more than nine hundred miles southeast of Mogadishu, and although pirate attacks out here were almost unknown a couple of years earlier, the much better financing and solid success rate of the Somali operations had made the area dangerous.

  The American first and second mates, Charlie Wyatt and Rick Barnwell, while lacking the rearmament skills of their leader, were nonetheless aware of the inherent danger in these waters and had a couple of baseball bats tucked away on the bridge.

  They were both ex—US Navy petty officers who had seen combat in the second Gulf War and could be relied upon to come out swinging if the chips were really down. But pirate gangs generally came in heavy-handed, usually with a twelve-strong boarding party, all armed.