The Pirates of Somalia

by Jay Bahadur

  7. Puntland Ministry of Planning and Statistics, Puntland Facts and Figures 2003 (Garowe: 2003), http://siteresources.worldbank.org.

  8. Of the population, 43 per cent is aged fifteen or over. If the population distribution for men and women is identical, which cannot be the case, then 21.5 per cent of the men are at least fifteen. As a rough estimate it is adequate.

  9. I have not used these three women’s real names. From the way she described it, Maryan’s union with Garaad was a form of Islamic pleasure marriage, an institution designed to provide a veneer of religious propriety to a casual sexual relationship (see Chapter 12). When I asked Maryan where her “husband” was, she nonchalantly replied, “I have no idea.”

  10. A 2004 paper estimated that 57 per cent of Somalia’s foreign exchange had made its way to Kenya through the khat trade in the few years prior. Cited in Anderson et al., Khat Controversy, 61.

  11. Tim Marshall, “Yemen: Legal High Is ‘Fueling’ Extremism,’ ” Sky News, January 15, 2010, http://news.sky.com.

  12. “Somali Gunmen ‘Renounce Piracy,’ ” BBC News, May 25, 2009, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news.

  CHAPTER 7: THE LAND OF PUNT

  1. Quoted in Jalal al-Sharaabi, Khaled Mahmoud, and Courtney C. Radsch, “Somali Leaders Accuse Islamists of Piracy,” Al Arabiya News Channel, December 2, 2008, http://www.alarabiya.net.

  2. Abdirahman Farole, speech before the US House of Representatives Subcommittee on Africa and Global Health, June 25, 2009, author’s copy.

  3. “Anti-Piracy Campaign Begins Today in Puntland,” Garowe Online, April 24, 2009, http://www.garoweonline.com.

  4. Ibid.

  5. Puntland also employs an extensive system of religious, or sharia, law courts, which deal mostly with matters of family law.

  6. Quoted in “Puntland Has Sacrificed for Its Peace, Says Pres. Farole,” Garowe Online, November 17, 2010, http://www.garoweonline.com/.

  7. UN Monitoring Group on Somalia, Report of the Monitoring Group on Somalia pursuant to Security Council resolution 1853 (2008), S/2010/91, March 10, 2010, http://www.un.org/sc/committees/751/mongroup.shtml, 39.

  8. According to the terms of the arrangement, Range Resources was granted exploration rights for $25 million to be paid in monthly instalments of $200,000.

  9. “Puntland Govt Arrests Official with Alleged Links to Pirates,” Garowe Online, February 24, 2008, http://www.garoweonline.com.

  10. UN Monitoring Group on Somalia, Report, March 10, 2010, 41.

  11. “Puntland Leader Sacks Deputy Police Chief,” Garowe Online, October 13, 2008, http://www.garoweonline.com.

  12. Not only did Farole fail to win an ally in Congress, House committee chair Donald Payne issued a report highly critical of the Puntland administration, accusing it of a litany of human rights abuses. Alisha Ryu, “US Congressman Criticizes Puntland for Abusive Behavior,” Voice of America, November 23, 2009, http://www.voanews.com.

  13. “Puntland’s Leader Says UN Report Is ‘Politically Motivated,’ ” Garowe Online, March 22, 2010, http://www.garoweonline.com.

  CHAPTER 8: MOMMAN

  1. UN High Commission for Refugees, Mixed Migration Task Force, Mixed Migration Task Force Update No. 8, August 2009, http://ochaonline.un.org.

  CHAPTER 9: THE POLICEMEN OF THE SEA

  1. These figures have been taken from the Nairobi-based NGO ECOTERRA, and include attacks that may not have been reported to more conventionally cited sources, such as the International Maritime Bureau.

  2. These success rates are probably somewhat exaggerated, due to the number of failed pirate attacks that go unreported to any authority.

  3. Stig Jarle Hansen, Piracy in the Greater Gulf of Aden: Myths, Misconceptions and Remedies, NIBR Report 2009:29 (Oslo: Norwegian Institute for Urban and Regional Research, 2009), http://en.nibr.no, 36.

  4. Only two deaths have been attributed to NAVFOR, however. The majority of the fatalities (thirty-eight) were caused by individual navies (figures are from the Belgian defence news website Bruxelles 2, http://bruxelles2.over-blog.com). The journalist tracking these statistics stopped in May 2010 because he found it too difficult to obtain accurate information.

  5. ECOTERRA, Somali Marine & Coastal Monitor 291, November 19, 2009.

  6. Quoted in Kathryn Westcott, “ ‘Pirate’ death puts spotlight on ‘guns for hire,’ ” BBC News, March 24, 2010, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news.

  7. US Department of Transportation, Economic Impact of Piracy in the Gulf of Aden on Global Trade, September 2010, http://www.marad.dot.gov.

  8. See David Osler, “Sonic Solution May Not Be a Sound Investment,” Lloyd’s List, December 2, 2008.

  9. “Chinese Ship Uses Molotov Cocktails to Fight Off Somali Pirates,” Telegraph (London), December 19, 2008, http://www.telegraph.co.uk.

  10. After first announcing its intention to prosecute the ten captured pirates in Moscow, the Russian government reversed its position and decided to release the men in an inflatable boat without any navigational equipment. Afterwards, the Russian defence ministry reported that the pirates had “probably died” at sea. The summary execution scenario is far more likely, and supported by a comment by President Dmitry Medvedev on the day the Moscow University was stormed: “We’ll have to do what our forefathers did when they met the pirates.” Mansur Mirovalev, “Pirates ‘Have All Died,’ Russia Says, after Decrying ‘Imperfections’ in International Law,” Associated Press, May 11, 2010.

  11. Based on International Maritime Bureau statistics, IMB Piracy Reporting Centre, http://www.icc-ccs.org/home/piracy-reporting-centre.

  12. This estimate is based on the cost to the shipping companies; once financial, legal, and private security fees are tacked on, the total cost of delivering a ransom roughly doubles.

  CHAPTER 10: THE LAW OF THE SEA

  1. Marie Woolf, “Pirates Can Claim UK Asylum,” Times (London), April 13, 2008, http://www.thetimes.co.uk.

  2. Preceding the UNCLOS treaty of 1982, Somalia was one of a handful of states to claim a territorial sea of two hundred nautical miles, through its Law No. 37 of 1972. One of the primary motivators behind UNCLOS was the need to standardize the width of territorial seas, which the convention achieved by limiting its signatories to a territorial sea of twelve nautical miles. Though Somalia was amongst the first countries to ratify UNCLOS, Law No. 37 was never subsequently repealed, leaving an ambiguity surrounding the status of Somalia’s territorial seas. “From the behaviour of states patrolling the waters off the coast of Somalia it would seem clear that they assume that the external limit of the Somali territorial sea is 12 miles,” writes Tullio Treves, a judge at the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea in Hamburg. “Whether this is also the assumption of the TFG [Somali Transitional Federal Government] is uncertain.” Treves, “Piracy, Law of the Sea, and Use of Force: Developments of the Coast of Somalia,” European Journal of International Law 20, no. 4 (Apr. 2009): 408.

  3. The Security Council extended this patchwork legal arrangement for another twelve months in December 2008 (Resolution 1846), and again in November 2009 (Resolution 1897).

  4. Resolution 1816 and its successors were issued under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, which authorizes the use of military force to counter threats to “international peace and security.” Given that Chapter VII permits the violation of national sovereignty, Resolution 1816’s emphasis on obtaining the authorization of the Somali government seems redundant. According to Tullio Treves, the requirement served three objectives: “The first is to pay homage to state sovereignty … The second is to strengthen the TFG, which, while maintaining the Somali presence at the United Nations, does not exercise effective power in Somalia, and in particular lacks the capacity to fight pirate activities off its coasts. The third, through the designation by the TFG of the states whose vessels are authorized to act in its territorial sea, would seem to consist in limiting the foreign fleets’ presence in Somali waters to those of the states most involved, and to states ready to cooperate with e
ach other.” Treves, “Piracy, Law of the Sea, and Use of Force,” 407.

  5. After the far-reaching expansion of piracy into the Indian Ocean, the Seychelles also entered into an agreement with the EU to detain suspected pirates, though its capacity to try them is extremely limited.

  6. David Morgan, “U.S. Delivers Seven Somali Pirate Suspects to Kenya,” Reuters, March 5, 2009.

  7. James Gathii, “Jurisdiction to Prosecute Non-National Pirates Captured by Third States under Kenyan and International Law,” Loyola of Los Angeles International and Comparative Law Review 31 (Summer 2009): 25–26.

  8. Quoted in Christopher Thompson, “Suspected Somali Pirates in the Dock,” Financial Times, January 8, 2010, http://www.ft.com.

  9. Quoted in Gathii, “Jurisdiction to Prosecute Non-National Pirates,” 19.

  10. The legal argument used to reject the appeal rested on two principles: first, that piracy on the high seas was a crime under the Kenyan penal code; second, that piracy was a crime under international customary law, or jus gentium, and thus the Kenyan High Court was justified in extending its jurisdiction beyond the nation’s borders. Ibid., 4, 8–9.

  11. “Jail Sentence for Somali pirates,” BBC News, November 1, 2006, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news.

  12. Quoted in Gathii, “Jurisdiction to Prosecute Non-National Pirates,” 11–12. Article 101 of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea defines piracy as follows:

  (a) any illegal acts of violence or detention, or any act of depredation, committed for private ends by the crew or the passengers of a private ship or a private aircraft, and directed:

  (i) on the high seas, against another ship or aircraft, or against persons or property on board such ship or aircraft;

  (ii) against a ship, aircraft, persons or property in a place outside the jurisdiction of any State;

  (b) any act of voluntary participation in the operation of a ship or of an aircraft with knowledge of facts making it a pirate ship or aircraft;

  (c) any act of inciting or of intentionally facilitating an act described in subparagraph (a) or (b).

  13. Gathii, “Jurisdiction to Prosecute Non-National Pirates,” 19.

  14. Quoted ibid., 26.

  15. Ibid., 24.

  16. In response to a Russian-led Security Council initiative in April 2010, UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon proposed seven options for prosecuting suspected Somali pirates, including the creation of an international tribunal. To date, the Security Council has rejected this option due to its prohibitive cost, as well as the difficulty of finding a nation to host the proceedings. In January 2011, the UN’s special advisor on piracy, Jack Lang, issued a report urging the creation of regional piracy tribunals in Puntland, Somaliland, and Tanzania. The proposal, estimated to cost $25 million over three years, also called for the construction of additional prisons in Somalia.

  CHAPTER 11: INTO THE PIRATES’ LAIR

  1. Jonathan Clayton, “Somalia’s Secret Dumps of Toxic Waste Washed Ashore by Tsunami,” Times (London), March 4, 2005, http://www.thetimes.co.uk. The claims of the local people and the initial UN Environmental Programme assessment mission were challenged by a subsequent UN fact-finding mission to Puntland’s coastal areas, which failed to find evidence of widespread radiation sickness. “UN Mission to Puntland on Toxic Waste in the Coastal Areas of Somalia,” Somaliland Times, October 7, 2005, http://www.somalilandtimes.net.

  CHAPTER 12: PIRATE INSIDER

  1. Though tempting to believe (and completely consistent with other accounts of pirate behaviour), Hersi’s claims contradict the statements of both former Victoria hostages I interviewed, Matei Levenescu and Traian Mihai, who asserted that the pirates on the ship never consumed alcohol and never progressed beyond fist fights. The incidents Hersi discussed may have taken place on land.

  2. In the case of the Victoria, intra-group tensions may have been due to the lack of familial homogeneity within the gang. According to former hostage Traian Mihai, the gang was composed of multiple families from various towns in Puntland; however, they were almost certainly all members of the Isse Mahamoud sub-clan.

  3. This is almost certainly an exaggeration, though if one considers the money the gang spent on khat (see Chapter 14), potentially not a very gross one.

  CHAPTER 13: THE CADET AND THE CHIEF

  1. German defence ministry spokesman Thomas Raabe reported that a Turkish frigate had been within eighty to one hundred nautical miles at the time of the attack. Katharine Houreld, “Somali Pirates Seize German Ship, 11 Crew,” Associated Press, May 6, 2009.

  2. Informed as it is by his own unfortunate experience, Levenescu’s condemnation of the transit corridor—not to mention the international naval forces—is hardly fair. The IRTC, in conjunction with scheduled convoys and greater naval coordination, greatly reduced the number of successful attacks in the Gulf of Aden.

  3. So hazardous were the winds that in one instance a supply boat being hoisted by one of the Victoria’s deck cranes was blown onto the deck, damaging its hull.

  4. The other hostage I interviewed, Traian Mihai, noted that one of the three leaders, a “foreigner” to Eyl, spent only two days on shore during the entire length of the Victoria’s captivity.

  5. Not surprisingly, Somalis have a predisposition for diabetes. The primary cause is supposedly genetic, though the Somali cultural proclivity for using tea and other drinks as mediums for consuming sugar probably has something to do with it.

  6. This start-up sequence is necessary to heat the ship’s highly viscous bunker fuel to a temperature of seventy degrees Celsius, the point at which it is properly combustible. All large cargo ships possess a diesel-powered heating unit specifically for this purpose.

  7. Mihai was able to fill in a few details of Loyan’s biography. Contrary to Hersi’s description, Loyan spoke English fluently, having studied for five years at an Indian university. This fact suggests that, like Hersi, he is a relatively well-off member of the Somali diaspora.

  8. There could hardly be better evidence of the hijackers’ fear of the Puntland security forces. This behaviour is inconsistent with claims by various commentators that the Puntland government is complicit—or even actively involved—in piracy. It is also evidence that the Puntland security forces are disorganized to the point that an easily obtainable set of clothing is all the identification required to prove membership.

  CHAPTER 14: THE FREAKONOMICS OF PIRACY

  1. There are three differing accounts of the number of men who assaulted the Victoria: Hersi claims there were ten men in two boats; Matei Levenescu says there were nine in one boat; and the media reports of the incident state that there were eight attackers. Given that he was an eyewitness, Levenescu’s figure is almost certainly the accurate one, and it is the number I will use in this analysis.

  2. The $150,000 paid to one attacker (Mohamed Abdi) might explain why Hersi was under the impression that each member of the attacking team would receive a commensurate share ($140,000 of a $3 million ransom, according to him).

  3. These estimates are based on a tally of the total number of pirates killed (60), injured (24), and taken into custody (454) by the combined international naval forces since August 2008, as of May 2010. These figures are taken from the news blog Bruxelles2 (http://bruxelles2.over-blog.com), which compiles data from EUNAVFOR, NATO, the US Navy, the US Department of Justice, and the Royal Navy. Given the large number of assumptions and unknown variables (such as the number of pirates dying from causes other than naval intervention, such as starvation or dehydration), my estimates are only a very rough account of the perils of piracy.

  4. Les Christie, “America’s Most Dangerous Jobs,” CNNMoney.com, October 13, 2003.

  CHAPTER 15: THE ROAD’S END

  1. When I spoke to them in Dhanane, the pirates told me that they were expecting a ransom of $2.5 million.

  2. Quoted in Sapa-AFP, “Dead Crew Member Identified,” Independent Online, June 24, 2009, http://www.iol.co.za.

  EPILOGUE: THE
PROBLEMS OF PUNTLAND

  1. Malkhadir Muhumed, “Pirate on US Wanted List Arrested in Somalia,” Associated Press, May 20, 2010.

  2. Katharine Houreld, “Somali Pirates Torturing Hostages,” Associated Press, February 1, 2011.

  3. For example, in April 2009 former US ambassador to the UN John Bolton told Fox News that a ground invasion of Somalia was the only way “to end [the piracy] problem once and for all.” Slightly more reasonable voices have recommended targeted bombings, a strategy that would claim the lives of far more civilians than pirates and serve only to inflame anti-Western sentiments.

  4. Al-Shabaab’s targets were thoughtfully chosen to deliver that message. In Hargeysa, the organization bombed the presidential palace, the Ethiopian embassy, and UN Development Programme headquarters, perhaps in response to Somaliland president Dahir Riyale Kahin’s plans to pass a (largely toothless) anti-terror law. In Bossaso, the target was the Puntland Intelligence Service, a CIA proxy funded by the American government. The two bombings claimed the lives of at least thirty people.

  5. UN Monitoring Group on Somalia, Report of the Monitoring Group on Somalia pursuant to Security Council resolution 1853 (2008), S/2010/91, March 10, 2010, http://www.un.org/sc/committees/751/mongroup.shtml, 39.

  6. William Bolitho, Twelve Against the Gods (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1929), 8.

  APPENDIX 2: THE VICTORIA GANG

  1. The material in the following analysis draws heavily from Stig Jarle Hansen’s comprehensive report, Piracy in the Greater Gulf of Aden: Myths, Misconceptions and Remedies, NIBR Report 2009:29 (Oslo: Norwegian Institute for Urban and Regional Research, 2009), http://en.nibr.no. All subsequent quotations are from this report.

  2. Ion Tita-Calin, “Dezvşluirile foştilor prizonieri ai piraşilor somalezi” [Revelations from former Somali pirate prisoners], Cuget Liber, July 28, 2009, http://www.cugetliber.ro.