by Jay Bahadur
As Said and Abdirashid watched warily, Hersi and I unrolled a prayer mat onto the whitewashed floor of a westward-facing enclave tucked into the side of the principal residence, as far out of the path of the raking wind as possible. Even so, powerful gusts briefly turned our dirin into a billowing sail, upending our 7-Up bottles and sending our stainless-steel water cups clanging down the steps of the veranda. We finally managed to pin a variety of weights onto the corners of the dirin, and, pouring cups of sweet tea, we started to chew the khat. A few minutes later, feeling out of place in my jeans, I excused myself and changed into my only ma’awis, a cheap piece of fraying yellow and green cloth I had picked up in Bossaso.
When I returned, Hersi was the first to fire off a question. “Is it all right if I borrow a hundred dollars from you, man?” he asked. “I’ll send it back to you in a few days, through Dahabshiil,” referring to Somalia’s largest hawala (money transfer) company. I informed him that I would be making a trip to a Dahabshiil branch later in the afternoon to pick up some much-needed cash, and would be happy to give it to him then. He smiled, stuffing another khat stalk into his mouth. Hersi had been spending most of his recent days in Eyl, chewing khat and waiting, quite literally, for his cousins’ ransom to fall from the sky. To his credit, he did not wish to remain a welfare case, but was looking for gainful employment as a pirate interpreter—the man responsible for communicating with the crew on board a captive vessel, and often for negotiating with the shipping company. Unfortunately, it was the wrong season for hiring new pirate help; the Victoria hijackers had been grounded, along with all other pirate groups, since the monsoons began. That fact, however, had not stopped Hersi from anxiously monitoring the international news in the hopes of catching wind of a hijacking—a ship he could call his own.
Though the Victoria remained in captivity, Hersi had temporarily returned to Garowe. Since our encounter in Eyl, he had been calling two or three times daily with one of two invariable themes: arranging a time to chew khat together (at my expense), or asking for a $900 video camera with which to shoot a documentary about pirates. While the latter desire remained beyond my ability or inclination to fulfil, I gladly obliged Hersi’s request for a khat picnic. Since my attempts to get aboard the Victoria during my visit to Eyl had been rebuffed by Computer—the gang’s leader—as the machinations of a CIA spy, Hersi was likely the furthest I would get in my attempts to infiltrate the organization. “They’re my cousins,” he explained. “I can hang out with them, and nobody can touch me.”
Hersi had already succeeded where I had failed. A few days after I returned to Garowe from Eyl, he had called me at three o’clock in the morning from on board the Victoria, obviously high on khat. “I need a video camera, man, so I can film what’s going on here, so I can show the world!” After I patiently pointed out that his request was impossible, he calmed down and promised to contact me once he was back in Garowe. Sitting with me now, Hersi explained what he was doing that night. “Computer is on [the Victoria] now. He offered me some money, but I told him that I didn’t need it, but that I did want to chew some mirra with them,” he said, using the Kenyan word for khat. “So since I am their cousin, they let me come on the ship and chew with them.”
Shortly after Hersi phoned me, the Romanian captain of the Victoria had reported an unknown vessel approaching on radar, throwing the pirates into a panic. A civilian in wartime, Hersi was ordered back to shore as the pirates prepared for battle. He recalled the scene around him as he made ready to leave the ship. “Boof! [The pirates] ran to the edge of the deck with their weapons raised, ready to fight,” he said, pointing an imaginary rifle in my face. “They turned the ship’s spotlights on, and cut off all outgoing communications for the next three hours.” The Victoria’s captain then radioed the other ship, warning it to back off. Hersi claimed that the mystery shadow had been an American military ship, trying to catch the pirates off guard under the cover of darkness.
“They’re afraid,” said Hersi. “Attacks can happen at any time.”
I asked Hersi to tell me about Computer, the group’s leader and sole financial backer; the nickname was too unusual not to have a good story behind it, and I was not disappointed.
“His name is Abdulkhadar,” said Hersi, “but everyone calls him Computer.” Once a police lieutenant in Mogadishu, Computer, like many Darod, had returned to Puntland in the wake of the civil war in 1991, where he gained a local reputation as a psychic. Disturbed by his claims, a group of Sufis—Muslim holy men—came and confronted him. “Only God can see the future, not people like you,” they said. “If you’re a psychic, prove it to us.” To test him, they bundled some money and buried it in the desert, far outside of Garowe. “Now go find it, if you can,” they told him. As spectators looked on, Computer made a beeline into the bush, right to the spot where the Sufis had hidden their treasure. Combining their ascetic mysticism with a dubious understanding of the capabilities of modern technology, the Sufis reached a startling conclusion: “This man knows everything!” they exclaimed. “He is a computer!”
Following the Sufis’ pronouncement, Computer’s legend only grew. Pirate leaders began to come to him for advice—whom to choose for their missions, how to avoid foreign warships, which day to depart, even the exact time of day at which to launch their boats. When Computer’s advice yielded munificent ransoms, they were quick to show him their appreciation, presenting him with gifts of up to $100,000, according to Hersi. Before long, Computer decided he could make more money as a venture capitalist than as a psychic.
“He called some of his cousins together, and chose ten of them, very carefully,” said Hersi. “You, you, you; not you,” he continued, pointing his finger in imitation of Computer. “You—you’re good.” After his team had been assembled, Computer provided them with specific instructions. “Right after you leave, you’ll meet a ship. Leave that one alone—it’s no good—and pass it on the right side. The second ship you’ll see will be the one you want; it will be moving slowly. You’ll see it within eight hours of leaving shore. Call me when you’re on board.”
“It happened just as he predicted,” said Hersi. “I’m telling you, man, he’s psychic.”
The ship was the MV Victoria.
* * *
Once Computer had chosen his employees, the gang’s next step was travelling to Puntland’s northern coast undetected from where they would set sail into the Gulf of Aden. In order to conceal themselves from the Puntland authorities, the pirates travelled alone or in pairs, arranging rides with transport trucks on the route from Galkayo to Bossaso and stashing their weapons amidst the vehicles’ cargo. “It’s easy to hide there,” explained Hersi. “The police don’t check those trucks.” Such surreptitiousness would not have been necessary in 2007–2008, but since the new administration began to rebuild the Darawish in early 2009, frequent security sweeps had made planning pirate operations a more delicate task.
Once his attacking team was in place, Computer sent money from Garowe to Bossaso for the purchase of various supplies—boats, outboard motors, fuel, and food—as well as for the accommodations and entertainment of his men during this preparatory phase. In order to escape the scrutiny of the Bossaso police and their notoriously tough anti-pirate chief, Colonel Osman Hassan Afdalow, the gang made its way to a location a few hours’ off-road drive east of Bossaso—perhaps the village of Marero, a common launch site for pirates, as well as human traffickers.
Within a few days, Hersi said, on May 9 the attack group sighted the Victoria; following a forty-minute chase, she was boarded without a fight. “The first one to jump on the ship, his name was Abdi,” said Hersi. “Computer bought him a fifteen-thousand-dollar Land Cruiser as a gift.”
The bestowing of such gifts on the first to board a vessel—the piratical equivalent of what in more traditional workplaces would be called performance-linked bonuses—is commonplace in many pirate groups, and Land Cruisers are a typical choice. Such incentives must have arisen out of
a need to encourage understandably hesitant pirates into climbing up metres of hull on flimsy ladders while carrying out the seaborne equivalent of a high-speed chase. According to Hersi, his cousins were the right type of people for the job.
“They’re suicidal,” he said. “As they are heading into the ocean, they say to themselves, ‘Either I capture a ship, or I die.’ One or the other. They say, ‘If I don’t get a Land Cruiser to drive in Garowe, it’s better to be dead.’ All of them, except for Computer and the interpreter, are between eighteen and twenty-five years old. This is their mentality.”
* * *
Like most eighteen-to-twenty-five-year-olds, Hersi’s cousins enjoyed experimenting with mind-altering substances, alcohol included. “When they drink, they go wild,” he said. “They start fighting each other. The young guys, they don’t know how to drink—they take a bottle of tequila and glug-glug-glug-glug,” he said, emptying an imaginary bottle into his mouth. “Then they start shooting.” According to Hersi, drunken duelling had cost the life of one gang member and resulted in another being wounded.1 Unruly behaviour, however, carried consequences.
“Inside the ship they’re organized like a military,” Hersi said. “There are officers, subordinates … everyone has a title. If you refuse to take orders, they take your weapon away and tie you up, hands behind your back, and beat you.”
Hersi obliged me with accounts of two incidents that had resulted in this punishment. He described how one member of the original nine-strong attacking party had been testing out his recently acquired Land Cruiser on the rocky bluff overlooking the Eyl valley. Having drunk large quantities of Ethiopian liquor, he decided that his new prized possession was able to leap the gorge. The next part played out like a bad Hollywood movie: “The guy in the passenger seat grabbed the driver and pulled the hand brake, stopping the car just in time,” said Hersi. “It was teetering back and forth on the edge of the cliff.” Computer sent eight members of the gang to stabilize the situation (literally), and bring the two joyriders down to him. They were tied up and subjected to a gang beating, as the other pirates encircled and repeatedly kicked them. Still inebriated, they were then locked together in a small room (the Victoria’s version of a drunk tank) and thoroughly doused with water. The next day, having sobered up, they begged Computer’s forgiveness. He granted it, but declared an era of prohibition, forbidding any member of the group to consume alcohol thereafter.
In Hersi’s second yarn, one of the members of the attacking team—having evidently decided that he was above guarding prisoners—refused to serve his scheduled shift aboard the Victoria, and conveyed his position to Computer with an obscenity-laced tirade. Computer did not bother to argue; he ordered the man tied up, dropped bodily into a supply skiff and taken back to shore, where he was released, fined $10,000, and told not to return until the ransom had been delivered. Five days later, the man came back to Computer, apologizing for his transgressions and pleading for his old job. Not only was he reinstated—let no one claim that pirate justice is unfair—he was given special consideration for good behaviour: his fine was reduced by half.
Such stories were surely caricatures, but they no doubt somewhat faithfully reflected a highly dysfunctional working environment. Indeed, for all the talk I had heard about mutual affection and solidarity born of a common struggle, the pirates often seemed to mistrust each other as much as they did outsiders.2
Hersi confirmed this impression when he steered the conversation back to the forthcoming ransom, a topic that was clearly weighing heavily on his mind. “After the ransom has been divided, each pirate has to throw his phone in the ocean before he leaves the ship,” he said. This unusual divestment of their coveted mobiles ensured that no member of the gang was able to arrange an ambush for any of the others once they left the safety of the ship. Once they reached shore, it was every man for himself, with each pirate attempting alone the perilous dash from the wilderness of Eyl to the relative shelter of Garowe. “When you call members of the gang and their phones aren’t working, that is the sign that the money has arrived,” Hersi explained.
* * *
If the Victoria gang was a military hierarchy, then Computer, the outfit’s commander-in-chief, was an armchair general—he rarely made personal appearances aboard the ship, but issued orders to his gang from his Garowe hideout. On board the Victoria, authority was exercised by his plenipotentiary, known as Loyan, the group’s interpreter. Loyan had been the logical choice for field commander—the eldest pirate after Computer (at thirty years old), he was the only one capable of communicating effectively with the crew, and was also a veteran of three campaigns, coming on board the Victoria a mere two days after his previous interpreting assignment had ended. Hersi, it appeared, could not resist taking a few shots at his more successful rival.
“Loyan is a khat addict,” he said. “He ran up a $37,000 khat bill before Computer finally cut him off.3 He told him to stay on the ship and shut up.” Hersi continued, “He doesn’t even speak very good English. He only knows how to say basic things, like ‘We want more money.’ ” His statement seemed to imply that Loyan was also responsible for negotiating with the Victoria’s shipping company—a position that would have further enhanced his status within the gang. While pirate organizations often hire outside, professional intermediaries, in less sophisticated operations the interpreter will double as negotiator, engaging in a routine “ask high, settle low” back-and-forth exchange.
Hersi paused, lighting another cigarette, and said, “Once the first ten guys caught the ship and brought it to Eyl, there was another group waiting to relieve them.” They were quickly brought on to guard the hostages. “The attackers had done their job, and had earned the right to do anything they wanted. Immediately, they went on land, bought cars, started to party.”
Each one of the “holders,” he said, would receive $20,000 from the ransom, while each attacker would receive $140,000, which they had begun to spend almost as soon as the Victoria’s anchor hit the ocean floor. Their subsequent spending binges—made possible by the almost limitless credit extended to them by anyone with anything to sell—would have made the most reckless subprime mortgage look like the model of fiscal responsibility. “As soon as the ship gets to its destination, the party is already on, the money is already flowing,” explained Hersi. “No one knows when the ransom will come. It could take one month, two months, three months. But [the pirates] want to have fun, they want a car now.” The value of a ransom-backed IOU, it turned out, was about fifty cents on the dollar. “In the end, they pay double for whatever they buy on credit—a Land Cruiser will cost them $16,000 or $17,000,” and, like most luxury goods coming into Somalia, would be imported from Dubai. “If they want a house, the regular price might be $20,000, but for them it’s $30,000 or $40,000.”
Each purchase was carefully noted by the group’s accountant, a man called Mustuku, who acted as a kind of underwriter, assuring understandably wary proprietors that they would eventually be paid for their goods. “If one of the guys wants a car, the accountant will speak to the seller. He’ll tell him, ‘Okay, give him the Land Cruiser. You’re dealing with me now. Just hand him the key and don’t worry about anything—I have your money.’ ”
The next specialized member of the gang was a man to whom Hersi referred only as the “commander of the khat,” whose purpose was simply to manage the mammoth logistical task of keeping the pirates on board the Victoria amply supplied with the drug. “The gang has one or two Land Cruisers at their disposal at all times to take care of things like that,” Hersi explained. “Whatever they need.”
Rounding out the crew was the cooking staff. “The pirates have their own cook, plus an assistant, on the ship,” said Hersi. “They cook their own food, and so does the crew. The pirates never touch the crew’s food, because they’re afraid of poison.” He claimed that both the cook and the sous-chef would receive $15,000 for their services.
Computer, it turned out, was the gang’s b
ig winner. “When I left them, the pirates were coming close to agreeing on a ransom, around $3 million,” said Hersi. Computer, he said, would receive half of this predicted amount—$1.5 million—without ever having set foot in a skiff. But he was also solely responsible for financing the gang’s operating expenses incurred during the lengthy ransom negotiation period. Like the other members of the gang, he had taken out a loan to help pay the bills.
“Everything is twice as expensive,” Hersi explained. “Food, guns, mirra, cigarettes, a glass of water, whatever. They pay 100 per cent interest on everything.” The credit was issued in two forms, either as deferred payments to merchants—for example, a khat vendor (who in turn would obtain credit from her supplier)—or as direct cash loans from local businessmen. Under such usurious conditions, footing the bill for dozens of men over a period of more than two months added up to a staggering sum, even in Somalia. Hersi guessed that Computer was on track to spend $500,000 on expenses. But if Computer was feeling the pressure of his financial responsibilities, he was not showing any signs of it.
“Once, a woman came crying to Computer, telling him, ‘Computer, Computer, I love you,’ ” said Hersi. “ ‘Why are you crying?’ he asked. ‘Everyone has a car, I need one too,’ she says. So Computer shouts at a young guy driving a white Land Cruiser on the street to stop his car. And he stops. ‘How much for this car?’ he says. ‘Sixteen thousand dollars? Here you go, give me the keys.’ And he gives the car to the woman! ‘Why are you crying?’ he says. ‘Take the keys.’ I saw this with my own eyes, I swear.”
