القرصنة الصومالية: رؤية من الداخل

Somali Piracy: A View from Within

This text is the first part (“Piracy: A View from Within”) of “Somali Piracy”, an analytical paper written jointly with Mohamed Sharif Mahmoud and Samir al-Abdali and first published on the website of the Al Jazeera Centre for Studies (Al Jazeera Net) on 29 December 2008. Link to the original text

Piracy off the Somali coast and in the Gulf of Aden has become a troubling international issue, and it has taken on far-reaching dimensions that threaten the security and trade of states. Hardly a week passes without news agencies and the media reporting that some large and important ship has been seized by Somali pirates. This has driven the United Nations, NATO and the major powers to intervene, as though we were facing a crisis that might set off a third world war. So what is the story, and who are these pirates? What drove them to piracy? What do they want, and what are their aims? Who stands behind them, if indeed any person or organisation does? And how do they carry out their operations at sea?

The Beginnings of the Phenomenon in Somalia

The phenomenon of piracy dates from the collapse of the Somali state in 1991¹ and the seizure of Somalia's various regions by gangs of warlords and their clan militias. These men were unable to fill the vacuum left by the state's collapse. Instead, a ruinous civil war broke out, and it gave foreign fishing vessels an early opportunity to invade Somalia's shores and plunder the sea's abundant riches. Somalia's coastline, estimated at 3,300 km, is regarded as the longest in Africa, and it holds rich and varied marine wealth, including seabirds, whales, sharks, many species of turtle, dolphins and so on.(1) With no state authority to guard it, it became an open pasture for all comers.

Local fishermen complained that their small nets and other fishing gear were being destroyed by the giant foreign vessels again and again, and this led to direct confrontations between the foreign ships and the fishermen in waters close to the Somali shore. The people of the Somali coast cried themselves hoarse asking for help to put an end to the practices of foreign fishing fleets they were powerless to resist, but nothing of the kind happened.

Some of the young men grew eager for revenge and tried to chase these vessels in speedboats, armed with the rifles they used to defend themselves amid the chaos of the civil war. At this point the intruding companies changed their methods to meet the challenge. They sought licences granting them the right to fish along the coast from the warlords, who smoothed the way in return for millions of dollars paid to them by these companies. Each area was under a warlord and his clan militia, and each group patrolled the area under its control, claiming to be acting as a coastguard. In this way the vessels were able to go about their business without fear of the local young men. They ploughed the sea under the protection of militias belonging to the profiteering warlords, which kept the local youths from interfering with them.(2) If the very large vessels came so close to shore that they robbed the local fishermen's boats of their daily livelihood, the fishermen were forced to resist them; in response, the large vessels met them with excessive violence, using heavy firearms and high-pressure water hoses to capsize their small boats.

In this way Somali waters became the haunt of large fishing vessels using gear banned worldwide, including nets with very small meshes, sophisticated underwater lighting systems to lure fish into traps, internationally prohibited trawling, and gill nets that wipe out inshore fisheries. All this exposes biological resources to the danger of a collapse that would harm the social and economic welfare of coastal communities in the long term. Lobster, sharks and other resources were plundered. The catch these vessels have scooped from Somalia's coast is estimated at 25,000 tonnes a year.(3) The benefit was mutual between the foreign fleets and the militias and warlords who obtained the licences for them, and so all of them worked to keep stability from returning to Somalia. The countries whose companies profited included France, Spain, Honduras, Japan, Kenya, Sri Lanka, Korea, Pakistan, Taiwan and others. The vessels flew the flags of little-known states so as to evade the regulations of their own countries.(4)

Frustrated once the warlords' militias had taken over the protection of the fishing vessels, the young men turned from fishing vessels to merchant ships, which, with speedboats armed with an assortment of weapons, made an easy target. Once they have seized a merchant ship and its crew, they demand a ransom for their release. The warlords' militias later joined them, after their men saw that this was a quicker way to make money than working for the warlords. Here piracy began to stray from its course, attacking ships delivering World Food Programme food aid to the Somalis themselves, whose lives are threatened by natural disasters and civil wars. There are also reports that disputes within the groups sometimes end with one group wiping out another.(5)

The militias claiming to act as volunteer coastguards would also seize ships that did not pay them, so that a ransom would be paid for their release. This began in the early years of the civil war, and the first attempt at piracy may have taken place in March 1995, when militiamen fired mortar rounds at a British yacht named Longobarda in the Gulf of Aden and tried to board her, and would have done so had the Canadian naval vessel Fredericton, which was passing through the area, not drawn near.(6)

In January 1998 militiamen in north-eastern Somalia seized a Bulgarian ship lashed to a Syrian one. Clan elders and businessmen in Bosaso, in north-eastern Somalia, helped with the negotiations, and the crew and ship were released in February in exchange for $110,000.(7) Since then the administration of Puntland² in north-eastern Somalia has offered to issue licences to fishing vessels on condition that they keep to what it called “sound fishing operations”.(8)

The confrontations between fishing vessels and pirates went on in silence, stirring no one, until by 2005, according to some studies, the number of foreign vessels fishing illegally in Somali waters had reached about 700.(9) A UN official estimates that illegal fishing in Somali waters brings in more than $300 million a year.(10) According to the International Maritime Bureau, the acts of piracy, carried out or attempted, reported in East African waters from 2000 to 2004 numbered 28, 22, 19, 18 and 13 respectively.(11) This indicates that the rate of piracy was in marked decline. But it began to rise from 2005 onwards and has gone on rising to the present day, except during the period of the Islamic Courts,³ that is, the second half of 2006.

The Dumping of Toxic and Nuclear Waste on Somalia's Coast

Western companies were not content with exploiting the situation by fishing in ways banned internationally; they also dumped hazardous waste in Somalia during the Somali civil war. Reports indicate that this began two years before the collapse of the central government, in 1989, but it began to surface in the media in the autumn of 1992, when reports in the international media pointed to European companies, without naming them, illegally dumping hazardous and toxic waste in Somalia.(12)

What stirred controversy at the time, in 1992, were reports that European companies had concluded contracts with Somali warlords and businessmen to dump waste in the country. The companies accused at the time were Italian and Swiss. In a press statement, the then Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), Dr Mostafa Kamal Tolba,(13) who was based in Nairobi at the time, said it had become clear that European companies were disposing of their hazardous waste in Somalia. Yet the UN programme did not begin to investigate the matter until five years later, in 1997, when it delegated a team headed by a Somali to carry out a field investigation in many parts of Somalia, especially the coastal areas. The startling thing is that the findings the team set down in its report were never published at all. The Italian magazine Famiglia Cristiana (“Christian Family”), however, succeeded in obtaining a copy in 1998. The magazine also carried out investigations of its own and then published several articles on the subject.(14)

In the light of these reports, and of the uproar they caused at the time by accusing Italian and Swiss companies of involvement, the Italian parliament called for the matter to be examined, and a fact-finding commission was set up. Its final report, published in 2000, concluded that the so-called “environmental mafia”⁴ runs companies that handle 35 million tonnes of waste a year.(15)

European companies found that, amid the Somali chaos, they could dispose of hazardous waste for less than $2.50, when it cost them $250 in Europe. All kinds of waste are dumped in Somalia, including radioactive uranium waste, heavy-metal waste such as mercury and cadmium, industrial and chemical waste, hospital waste and so on.(16) The dumping of waste and the prohibited fishing continue to this moment, as the UN Secretary-General's Special Representative for Somalia, Mr Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, has confirmed on more than one occasion.(17)

What angers Somalis in general is that states and organisations did not lift a finger, but kept silent, while foreign ships were illegally exploiting the fish stocks and dumping toxic and nuclear waste in the country; yet they set the whole world in uproar when their own ships fall prey to piracy. Somalis regard this as double standards and political hypocrisy. The well-known Somali academic Professor Abdi Ismail Samatar, of the Department of Geography and International Studies at the University of Minnesota in the United States, commenting on UN Resolution 1838,⁵ which gives states targeted by piracy the right to defend themselves, says: “The United Nations must look at the issue of toxic waste dumping, and this was not addressed in Resolution 1838.”(18) What is strange and worrying is the international clamour that has accompanied the recent acts of maritime piracy, while no mention is made of the political piracy that the warlords practised with regional and international backing, and that claimed millions of Somali victims.(19)

Who are these pirates? Out of the cooperation between young men in the coastal areas of north-eastern Somalia and remnants of the militias that had broken away from the warlords, powerful groups have emerged, made up of three basic elements:(20)

• The militiamen who used to work for the warlords, who make up the military force.
• The local fishermen, who supply the necessary knowledge of the sea.
• A group of technicians skilled in handling the sophisticated equipment these men use.

It is this last group that communicates with the outside world and speaks to the crews, since its members have a good command of foreign languages, and so on. Some sources indicate that a number of Puntland police officers, as well as a number of teachers and lawyers, have left their jobs to join the pirates. Indeed, large groups of young men are now coming from all over Somalia, including the capital, Mogadishu, to find themselves a foothold in the lucrative piracy market.(21) There are also news reports that some Yemeni fishermen have joined the Somali pirates, but the picture on this point is not yet clear enough.(22)

How is it done? All the hijacked ships are held in places such as Eyl and Garacad in Puntland, or in Harardhere and Hobyo, which are under the control of the Hawiye clan.⁶ The pirates own a number of “mother ships”, on board which they store weapons, fuel and other supplies. When they spot their precious prey among the large ships, they set off towards it in speedboats equipped with weapons and with men carrying AK-47 rifles, and they climb aboard on twisted rope ladders, which take them up onto the decks of the big ships. Intelligence sources say there are three fishing vessels in the Gulf of Aden believed to belong to the pirates.

Three speedboats may be used in a single attack, each carrying between six and ten men armed with AK-47 assault rifles and sometimes rocket-propelled grenades. As for weapons, they use none that cannot be found in Somalia: all the rifles and rocket-propelled grenades in their possession are of the kind available in Somalia, and some may be smuggled in from Yemen.

The Pirates' Life

The pirates live like kings, a life that makes many mouths water. It is paid for by the ransoms they receive, which show in the luxury and pomp of their lives. They live in the upmarket districts of Garowe and Galkayo⁷ in Puntland, and in Harardhere and Eyl. Their way of life has won the admiration of girls, so that every girl dreams of a pirate sweeping her off to marry her. They have comfortable villas and four-wheel-drive vehicles, and they own the most expensive mobile phones, satellite phones and laptops. They take more than one wife and hold astonishingly lavish weddings. The ransoms, after all, run into millions of dollars.(23)

Yet for all the money the pirates make, their spending usually goes no further than buying houses and luxury cars and chewing khat, the narcotic plant.(24) They have also found a way to launder the proceeds of these activities without leaving a trace, as happens in some money-laundering cases: quite simply, they keep the money inside their own country.(25) Some leave piracy to make their money clean by going into purely commercial business, such as setting up hotels in towns in Puntland or importing goods. At times this process tempts some of the poor to take up piracy for a while until they grow rich, and then to move on to another trade.(26)

Their common goal is the most important bond among the pirates, despite their different clan affiliations: most of them belong to the Majeerteen clan,⁸ which predominates in north-eastern Somalia, and some to the Hawiye clan of central and southern Somalia. They have what might be called a “code of ethics” in their dealings, including that no disorder is to be spread on land, that no hostage is to be harmed, and that none of his belongings is to be taken. Anyone who breaks these rules pays a heavy fine from his share of the ransom.(27)

The pirates do not see their work as a crime, and feel no prick of conscience as they tell their stories. On the contrary, one of them insists: “It's just a job for us. We look at it the way anyone looks at his profession.” They roam the ocean to hunt ships down and seize them, and they say: “We are defending our waters from foreigners who dump waste in them.”

How do people see them? Feelings are mixed in the coastal villages of north-eastern Somalia from which the pirates set out. Some of the villagers hold them in high esteem and truly regard them as volunteer coastguards devoted to the public good, while others see them as tarnishing the image of Somalis and bringing woe upon these coasts.

There is no doubt that the traders whose business thrives because the pirates, who never give a thought to the price of goods, have a purchasing power that ordinary people lack are among those who benefit from piracy. Many people look at the pirates in terms of the gain they bring, and so their eyes turn to the pirates' pockets, and to what they pay out, more than to anything else. Nor are the pirates stingy with some of what they have: “they share it out among their friends and relatives – and in Somalia kinship extends to embrace the whole clan – and the money passes through many hands, which in turn earns them support within society.” In some parts of Puntland, word spreads fast when pirates return to land laden with bags of banknotes. The pirates often head straight for an expensive restaurant or hotel and celebrate their return by chewing khat.

Many people come to see them at the hotel, where the pirates spend the day handing out money to their visitors and talking about their laptops, the very latest craze, as if they were leading businessmen. This display of wealth sometimes awakens unexpected appetites in some people. Teachers in Bosaso, for example, have left their classrooms to work as interpreters for the pirates, earning in a few days the equivalent of their monthly salary.(28)

Aims

Not once have the hijackers announced any political aim, beyond the ransom they name and bargain over. Some try to justify their actions by saying that they act as volunteer coastguards protecting Somali waters from illegal fishing and waste dumping, and that the ransoms they demand are a fine on those who violate these waters, and so become lawful earnings for them. But in view of the ships targeted recently, it seems clear that such talk is a way of finding some justification so as not to be seen as criminals. This, at least, is how things appear with those who carry out the operations; but there may be political aims on the part of those who push them or facilitate their operations, if there is anyone doing so. This has not yet become clear, despite strong suspicions.

There have been attempts to link piracy and the pirate groups to the fierce resistance against the Ethiopian occupation and the transitional government it brought in.⁹ Much Western press writing links the issue of piracy to the resistance, suggesting that the pirates pay their money to the resistance or are organically linked to it. But this claim does not hold up once we subject it to a logical reading of the facts, because:

• Piracy, as we have seen, has a long history, whereas the resistance began only after Ethiopian forces occupied the country at the beginning of 2007.
• The background from which piracy emerged, as explained above and as most students of piracy in Somalia agree, is at odds with the spirit and background of the Islamic resistance. Indeed, the two may be regarded as standing at opposite poles.
• The pirates have repeatedly declared that they have no connection with any political faction inside Somalia. This does not mean that some political factions do not benefit from the existence of piracy, if only indirectly.
• The resistance, in all its shades, has repeatedly declared war on piracy; the latest reports say that Harakat al-Shabaab al-Mujahideen¹⁰ is to attack the pirates to force them to free the ships and the hostages.
• If the pirates had any link with the resistance, the Somali people would be the first to benefit from it, and they would have unloaded the weapons they seize and handed them over to the resistance to fight the Ethiopian occupation: weapons enough not only to drive out the occupation but to liberate the remaining parts of Somalia.¹¹
• Most of the ships the pirates seize carry large cargoes of goods, commodities and food. If they had any link with the resistance, which is working to liberate a starving people, the resistance would have unloaded the cargoes and distributed them to the poor everywhere.

But the search for a link between the resistance and piracy aims, first, to tarnish the image of the resistance and, second, to hold it responsible for undermining security in the sea lanes of the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean, so that strikes against it can easily be justified without embarrassing anyone.

One negotiator with the pirates, who has dealt with them for years from his base in Mombasa, Kenya, says that gangs working with crime lords in Dubai and Nairobi scour the shipping routes for lucrative targets and then pass information on ships' movements to as many as five pirate gangs, who pay “licence fees” to warlords or clan elders.(29)

On the other hand, a number of Arab researchers and security experts point to some link between Israel, or Western circles, and the pirates. This has not been proven so far, although they may be the first to benefit from piracy. Salah al-Din Nabawi, an Egyptian security expert specialising in maritime affairs, has accused the United States and “Israel”¹² of being behind the acts of piracy in the Red Sea.(30) Others point to intelligence and technological support from Israel and certain other parties. But none of this has so far been proven by conclusive evidence.

Yet this does not rule out a kind of “turning a blind eye” to the matter by many international and regional powers, or their pushing it along by other means until it grows worse, so as to profit from it and exploit it by inflating it out of all proportion, until it is portrayed as “the mother of all calamities”.¹³ Regional and international schemes, such as the plan to internationalise the security of the Red Sea, can then be passed under its cover.

The first external thread that may unravel other secrets, still unknown, is the recent episode in which the pirates wrote, on the Saudi and Ukrainian ships, the name of a woman said to be linked to military operations carried out by US forces in Somalia in 2006, using her pet name, “Amira”.¹⁴ In an interview with an American military website, she said that she was in regular contact with the pirates by satellite phone.(31) This woman's thread may lead to the opening of other files and secrets that may be covered up.

Notes

1. Scott Coffen-Smout, “Pirates, Warlords and Rogue Fishing Vessels in Somalia’s Unruly Seas,” http://www.chebucto.ns.ca/~ar120/somalia.html. ↩
2. See: Abdulkadir Khalif, “How Illegal Fishing Feeds Somali Piracy,” The East African, November 15, 2005, http://www.somalilandtimes.net/200/08.shtml; see also: Mahdi Hashi, “Shabakat al-Ṣūmāl al-Yawm lil-Iʿlām – Qarāṣinat al-Ṣūmāl… Ruʾya Mukhtalifa” (Somalia Today Media Network – The Pirates of Somalia… A Different View), al-Ṣūmāl al-Yawm (Somalia Today), http://somaliatodaynet.com/news/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1788&Itemid=29. ↩
3. Ibid. ↩
4. Ibid. ↩
5. Khalif, “How Illegal Fishing Feeds Somali Piracy.” ↩
6. Ibid. ↩
7. Coffen-Smout, “Pirates, Warlords and Rogue Fishing Vessels in Somalia’s Unruly Seas.” ↩
8. Ibid. ↩
9. Mary Ann Palma, “ANALYSIS OF THE ADEQUACY OF THE PHILIPPINE LEGAL, POLICY, AND INSTITUTIONAL FRAMEWORK TO COMBAT ILLEGAL, UNREPORTED, AND UNREGULATED FISHING ” (PhD Thesis, UNIVERSITY OF WOLLONGONG, 2006), 6, http://www.library.uow.edu.au/adt-NWU/uploads/approved/adt-NWU20070320.121526/public/02Whole.pdf. ↩
10. “Illegal fishing off Somalia nets $300m a year ,” Mail & Guardian, September 1, 2005, http://www.mg.co.za/article/2005-09-01-illegal-fishing-off-somalia-nets-300m-a-year. ↩
11. Wayne K. Talley and Ethan M. Rule, “PIRACY IN SHIPPING” (Maritime Institute, Old Dominion University, September 21, 2005), Google Scholar, http://bpa.odu.edu/port/research/talley.piracy.doc. ↩
12. See: The Guardian (September 11, 1992); European Information Service (September 12 and October 6, 1992); BBC Somalia Branch (September and October 1992); Agence France Presse AFP (September 14, 1992); Inter Press Service (September 10, 11, 24, and 30, 1992); Saudi Gazette (September 13, 1992); Chicago Tribune (September 11, 1992); Reuters Limited (September 11, 1992); Somali Local Newspapers in Mogadishu. According to the local people, the waste was seen being dumped off the Somali coast into the Indian Ocean. ↩
13. Tolba, Mustafa. Kamal, 1992. “Disposal of Hazardous Wastes in Somalia”. United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) News Release, Statement by UNEP executive director, 9 September 1992. ↩
14. See: Famiglia Cristiana, 1998a. Somalia: UNA PARTITA TRUCCATA. N8 published on 4th March, 1998. See http://www.stpauls.it/fc98/0898fc/0898fc18.htm, Familgia Cristiana, 1998b. Somalia: Commercia di armi, stive pienne di rifiuti tossici, traffici vecchi e nuovi: E LA NAVE VA.. N13 published on 8th April, 1998. See http://www.stpauls.it/fc98/0898fc/0898fc18.htm, Familgia Cristiana, 1998c. Somalia: IL TRAFFICO CHE UCCIDE. N47 published on 29th Nov., 1998. See http://www.stpauls.it/fc98/4798fc/4798fc84.htm. Familgia Cristiana, 1998d. Somalia:QUEI TRAFFICI DI ARMI E SCORIE, La testimonianza di Franco Oliva, collaboratore della Farnesina. See http://www.stpauls.it/fc98/0898fc/0898fc22.htm ↩
15. Strangely, the report indicates that the Italian soldiers stationed in Somalia as part of the UN force in the failed operation of the early 1990s may have been exposed to nuclear radiation, while saying nothing of the Somalis who actually were exposed to it. ↩
16. Ryu Alisha, “Waste Dumping off Somali Coast May Have Links to Mafia, Somali Warlords,” Voice of America, March 15, 2005, http://www.voanews.com/english/archive/2005-03/2005-03-15-voa34.cfm. ↩
17. See: Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah and David Stephen, “The Crisis in Somalia” (Chatham House, June 19, 2008), www.chathamhouse.org.uk/events/download/-/id/852/doc/transcript/; Najad Abdullahi, “’Toxic waste’ behind Somali piracy,” Al Jazeera English, October 11, 2008, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/africa/2008/10/2008109174223218644.html ↩
18. Saeed Shabazz, “Somali Piracy Connected to Toxic Dumping, Illegal Fishing,” New America Media, November 23, 2008, http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=84b309cb375a71013072e8158b583353&from=rss. ↩
19. Hussein Abdo Adam, “al-Ṣūmāl bayna al-Qarṣana al-Baḥriyya wa-l-Qarṣana al-Siyāsiyya” (Somalia between Maritime Piracy and Political Piracy), al-Ṣūmāl al-Yawm, http://somaliatodaynet.com/news/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2389&Itemid=29. ↩
20. Chris Boutet, “Today in Piracy: Who are the pirates off Somalia’s coast?,” National Post, November 19, 2008, http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/posted/archive/2008/11/19/today-in-piracy-who-are-the-pirates-off-somalia-s-coast.aspx. ↩
21. Ibid. ↩
22. “Bawwābat al-Yaman: Ṣayyādū al-Yaman.. Ḍaḥāyā am Shurakāʾ al-Qarāṣina?” (Yemen Gateway: Yemen’s Fishermen: Victims or Partners of the Pirates?), http://www.ye26.net/home/news372.htm. ↩
23. “Izdihār al-Qarṣana fī al-Ṣūmāl al-Ghāriqa fī al-Faqr wa-l-Yaʾs” (Piracy Flourishes in Somalia, Sunk in Poverty and Despair), http://www.alquds.com/node/109213. ↩
24. Abd al-Rahman Yusuf, “al-Qarāṣina al-Judud.. Ḥulm Fatayāt Ṣūmāliyyāt” (The New Pirates: The Dream of Somali Girls), Islām Online, October 21, 2008, http://www.islamonline.net/servlet/Satellite?c=ArticleA_C&cid=1224583815515&pagename=Zone-Arabic-News/NWALayout. ↩
25. Haidar al-Battat, “al-Ṣūmāl: Dawla Fāshila wa-Qarṣana Muzdahira” (Somalia: A Failed State and a Flourishing Piracy), BBC, November 21, 2008, sec. Akhbār al-ʿĀlam (World News), http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/arabic/world_news/newsid_7742000/7742000.stm. ↩
26. Ibid. ↩
27. Ibid. ↩
28. “al-Qarṣana fī al-Ṣūmāl.. Mutʿat al-Ḥayāt bi-Amwāl al-Fidyāt!” (Piracy in Somalia: The Good Life on Ransom Money!), October 15, 2008, http://somaliatodaynet.com/news/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2018&Itemid=26 ↩
29. Rob Crilly, “Pirates stolen your supertanker off Africa? Here’s the man to speak to – The Scotsman,” The Scotsman, March 15, 2008, http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/latestnews/Pirates-stolen–your-supertanker.3881777.jp. ↩
30. “Khabīr Amnī: Amrīkā wa-‘Isrāʾīl’ Warāʾ al-Qarṣana al-Ṣūmāliyya li-Ḍarb Iqtiṣād Miṣr” (Security Expert: America and ‘Israel’ Behind Somali Piracy, to Strike at Egypt’s Economy), Mufakkirat al-Islām (Islam Memo), http://www.islammemo.cc/akhbar/Africa-we-Europe/2008/11/22/72764.html ↩
31. Clark, Colin. “Somali Pirates Call on American Benefactor.” Military.com, November 25, 2008. http://www.military.com/news/article/somali-pirates-call-on-american-benefactor.html?col=1186032311124 ↩

English translation prepared by artificial intelligence and reviewed against the Arabic for accuracy of meaning and rhetoric.