The brutality escalates

Hopes of rescue have become faint for the family of Danish yachters captured by Somali pirates on February 24—three children among them—as reports confirmed that they had been transferred to a secret location near Bargaal after Puntland forces unsuccessfully attempted to free them. We can now only hope that they escape the fate of Americans Sean and Jean Adam, along with crewmates Phyllis Macay and Bob Riggle, who were murdered by pirates after their yacht, S/V Quest, had been hijacked 250 miles off the coast of Oman.

Executing hostages is never an economically sound decision on the part of the pirates. Provoked into panic by the rapid approach of US commandos, the decision to kill the four Americans was evidently made by two hijackers acting alone, who were then summarily shot by their own commander. Somali pirates are often more of a danger to each other than to hostages; the gangs are usually split along family and even clan lines, and the pressure of US warships bearing down on them can easily cause existing divisions to ignite into violent confrontations. Nonetheless, the Quest incident was an act of unprecedented brutality—one, I believe, that would never have been committed by the pirates operating just a few years ago.

In 2009, I spent three months in Somalia, fraternizing with pirates while conducting research for my forthcoming book. I shared their drugs (a leafy narcotic called “khat,” similar to the coca leaf), joined them in their homes, and visited their coastal bases of operation. I became closely embedded with a gang of former fishermen-turned-pirates, led by the locally infamous Abshir Abdullahi, a Godfather-like figure known by the sobriquet of “Boyah.” Boyah and his men were thieves, but not killers, expressing a surprisingly-evolved brooding introspection about the morality of their actions. By the time of my second visit, in June, Boyah had launched a “redemption movement,” inspired by a personal religious awakening, and planned to convert his entire pirate organization into a regional coast guard (his plans never really got off the ground).
“We would never have killed anyone,” Boyah once told me. “It was always just a bluff.”

Things, it seems, have changed since Boyah's day. The ranks are now filled by a new breed of pirate, petty inland gangsters with backgrounds in gunslinging rather than fishing. Last month, the Associated Press reported that Somali pirates had begun to “systematically torture” their hostages: beating them, locking them in freezers, and ligating their genitals with plastic ties. Though disturbing in its detail, the AP article described a trend that had been mounting for some time.

In 2009, former pirate hostages to whom I spoke reported being treated with courtesy by their captors, if not kindness (the pirates' courtesy, however, did not extend to allowing the crew to retain any of their personal belongings). Only one member of the pirate gang had a sadistic streak, threatening, over roast goat and rice one evening, to execute the entire crew if the ransom was not delivered. Such behaviour has now become the norm.

Ever-fattening ransoms are largely to blame for attracting the more recent, bloodthirsty brand of pirate to the business. Boyah's greatest prize, the Japanese chemical tanker MV Golden Nori, fetched a paltry $1.5 million in 2008; by contrast, the Korean oil tanker MV Samho Dream was ransomed for an estimated $9.5 million in late 2010. Pirate negotiators, known locally as dilals, are becoming more experienced and professional. With hijacked vessels and their cargos worth hundreds of millions of dollars (to say nothing of the crew's lives), the dilals are only beginning to realize that shipping companies are willing to cough up much more than 1-2% of a vessel's worth in order to have it released. Each record-setting ransom sets a precedent that drives up future payments, a fact that explains why many shipowners make it a policy not to publicly disclose ransom amounts. But in Somalia, whose inhabitants are interconnected by vast kin and clan networks, the word inevitably spreads.

As ransoms continue to rise at an unchecked pace, the violence is only going to escalate further. There is no end to the Somali pirate scourge in sight.

US cover!

From Pantheon Books:

Bargaal's "Anti-Piracy Committee"

While perusing the (excellent) recently-launched independent news website SomaliaReport, I stumbled upon a gem. Two years after organizing a vigilante raid that saw twelve armed pirates captured, it seems that elders in the northeastern town of Bargaal have come together to form an "Anti-Piracy Committee," which aims to prevent pirates from using Bargaal as a base of operations. This nascent institution lost no time in letting the media know what it was about, publicly issuing a seven-point charter:

Article 1- The pirates can not carry out operations from the town and with their captured ships be removed;
Article 2- The pirates must return two stolen cars;
Article 3- The pirates are forbidden from playing loud music and partying after ransoms are received;
Article 4- No weapons or discharge of weapons allowed in the town;
Article 5- No unauthorized meetings without coordination;
Article 6- No alcohol, wine or drugs allowed in town;
Article 7- Any individual who disobeys these lasy (sic) will be punished.

May I humbly suggest an eighth article?:
Article 8- All pirates are equal, but some pirates are more equal than others.

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My appearance today on CNN's American Morning: