EDITOR'S NOTE : This analysis is part three of a four  part series from Dr. Kapchits’s visit to Somalia, where he served as a translator and consultant for a Russian Television team which has done an in depth report on Somali piracy. WardheerNews is pleased to share Dr. Kapchits’s thorough analysis of the situation with its readers. Dr. Kapchits's understanding of Somali culture and language has given him an unparalleled edge on Somali affairs.

Piracy was unknown in Somalia before the 1990s

3. Pirates of the 21st century

NARRATOR: The Voice of Russia observer Georgi Kapchits has just returned from Somalia where he served as an interpreter and consultant for a Russian television crew. He visited numerous parts of this formerly integrated country, met with political leaders and cabinet members, as well as fishermen, pirates, city residents and rural villagers. His third report is entitled “Pirates of the 21st Century”

KAPCHITS: Before 2004 the word “pirate” did not exist in the Somali language, nor did the term “piracy” which denotes theft, brigandage and lawlessness on the open seas.  With hindsight, we can see that the prerequisite geographical conditions for piracy had existed along the extensive ocean coastline of Somalia. The Indian Ocean and the Gulf of Aden that form the eastern and northern shores of Somalia have long been venues for active and diverse forms of long-distance trade. The reliability of the annual monsoon wind patterns enabled seafarers from south Arabia, the Persian Gulf, the Indian sub-continent and even China to sail back and forth across the Indian Ocean, including frequent stops at Somali ports such as Mogadishu, Merca, and Brava.

Although the Somali people were primarily pastoralists, farmers and city dwellers, the individualist nature of their culture (despite its occasional bellicosity) was tempered by the limited tradition of ocean navigation and mitigated against any history of piracy. Cases of assaults against foreign vessels are extremely rare in the annals of modern Somali history.

During a phone conversation with him from his base in Kenya, General Hersi Morgan, the former chief of safety, admitted that before 1990 no one in Somalia had ever heard of pirates. That is not surprising since the dictatorship of Siyaad Barre had spared no efforts in the formation and conservation of raw power without limits. In that sense, modern piracy is a manifestation and reflection of the anarchy that has escalated to such prominence following the collapse of the regime of Siyad Barre, even though the first seizure of a foreign vessel by Somali pirates only occurred in 2004.

Ruins overlook streets where fighting tore the capital apart in the early 1990s, leaving the city, and the nation, in chaos

From 1991 to the present day, Somalia has been wrecked by a violently destructive civil war. It has had its peculiar characteristics. At war were not “tops and “bottoms”, though there are both in Somalia – gob (nomads, fishermen and other “free people”) and gun (craftsmen from the “lower ranks” who enjoy their protection). The fighting was initially between clans (groups of tribes), but then escalated to violence between the tribes within the clans. Those who sought to exterminate each other were actually kinfolk, who had lived together for centuries, had spoken the same language, and worshipped the same God.

The Somali traditional law obliged an assailant to pay one hundred camels for murdering a man. In the past two decades, as warfare became total, the oral laws were gradually ignored or forgotten – the six million camels which were in Somalia during that time were never enough to “pay” for the enormous loss of life. The warning of the ancestors has come true: If brothers love each other they have much cattle and few tombs, but if they hate each other they have little cattle and many tombs.      

The enclave of Eyl is the homeground of pirates who are wreaking havoc on the waters off the coast of Somalia.

Since the late 1990s, the human resources of Somalia have been depleted. At least one million people have fled the country and a comparable number have perished from combat, murder, disease and hunger.  In some places, however, the intense warfare shows signs of abating: first, in the northwest where Dir and Darood sub-clans established the Republic of Somaliland; and second, in the northeast where the
semi-autonomous state of Puntland emerged ten years ago, inhabited mainly by other sub-clans of the Darood. In the south meanwhile (in Somalia) the war continues but nowadays it is waged less under the sky-blue color of the flag of Somalia and much more for the bright-green banner of Islam, as religious fanatics try to overthrow the current government of national unity.   

The Somalis say: “War is evil, but
men learn at it each other’s value”.  They have five age groups. At war were two of them – the “shield-bearers” (youths between fifteen and twenty-two) and the “black-bearded” (mature men aged from twenty-two to thirty-five). Those who survived and returned home saw widespread filth and squalor as enterprises constructed with the assistance of Soviet friends lay in ruins. The co-operative societies, created in the 1970s when thousands of nomads had been transferred to a sedentary life, ceased to exist.  Worse still, the coastal waters were furrowed now not by tiny feluccas of local fishermen but by huge vessels of foreign poachers. Soon after acquiring modern weaponry, the Somali fighters captured a few trawlers. In a tempest, having taken the fish, they released the ships, threatening to drown their crews if they ever returned. Some other ships came, were seized, but no longer escaped with the catch.   

Pirates operate mainly from the coastal waters of Puntland, “driving” captured vessels to the town of Eyl (on the shore of the Indian Ocean), the city of Laas Qorey (in the Gulf of Aden) or to obscure deep-water bays remote from human habitation and visibility. When we arrived in Eyl there were three captured bulk carriers in its harbor and negotiations over the conditions of their release had been under way for several weeks.

Abdirizak Yusuf Muse, the good-spirited mayor of Eyl and owner of the inn where we spent one night, answered our request to connect us with pirates by offering to bring one to us. He was abiding on land “because he had been wounded in a leg and had temporary lost his earning capacity”.  We waited for the pirate a long time but he failed to appear.

President Farole addressing a rally in Garowe, the capital of Puntland

The next morning, there were only two ships in the sea. The third one had been redeemed and floated away. The money among the bandits had been divided by the lame man who received a “handling fee” of 15 thousand dollars. Everybody was talking about it in Eyl where, like the rest of Puntland and all across the entire Somali peninsula, there are few secrets.  How can it be otherwise if “what is uttered in a whisper comes to where people gather?”

In Garoowe, the capital of Puntland, an “anti-piracy” rally was underway. About two hundred men, women and children were listening to a fiery speech of President Abdirahman Mohammed Mohammud “Faroole”. When the rally ended he invited us to his residence. The President is about 50 years old and was born, studied and worked in Somalia. He assumed the leadership of Puntland in January 2009. He prefers to wear traditional Somali clothes – a round “chieftain hat”, a lunghi  (man’s skirt of colored material) and a shirt worn over it. 

“Piracy is one of the biggest problems, but not just ours”, he said. “Safety is one for all, and if you threaten someone, you threaten all. We are revolted with seizure of foreign ships. By undermining international navigation the pirates hurt their country. Ships do not come to our ports anymore.  That is why we are struggling against pirates with all one's might. But we don’t have enough force. There is neither army, nor coast guard. Warships of many countries are trying to bring the situation under control. But they won’t manage without us. This is one side of the case. There is another one, too.  We have a lot of young people, but there is nothing to occupy them with. They need education, but we don’t have universities. They need job, but we don’t have enterprises. We count on the help of the international community. Recently we have condemned 60 pirates. Some were sentenced to two years, the others – to life imprisonment. The rest, I am sure, will suffer the same fate”.

Bosaso central jail where those pirates who were captured or handed over to the authorities of Puntland are serving their sentences.

The one-storied prison in the town of Bosasso, where pirates serve their sentences, is surrounded by a three meter-high wall.  It is encircled by a right-of-way. A hundred meters away is the Gulf of Aden. From the cells (they are five or six) it is certainly not visible. A cell has only three walls. Instead of the fourth, facing the courtyard, there are bars. The temperature in the open yard exceeds 50 degrees Celsius so in the cells it is not less. The hands of the prisoners are free, but their feet are chained. The chains clanked when, having seen us, they jumped up to snuggle to the bars.   
   
Those pirates who are handed over to Puntland authorities by foreign sailors are sentenced to two years in jail.  This lenient punishment is defended by the lack of compelling evidence – they are captured unarmed and not “in action”. Those pirates who are actually apprehended by Puntland authorities (always at or near the crime scene) are sentenced to serve a life term. But there seems to be no difference. Bosasso prison offers neither of them a chance of freedom.

Each participant at the 10th Conference of the International Association of Somali Studies held in 2007 at Ohio State University (USA), in addition to the usual materials – a folder with the program, a notebook and writing-materials – received a big poster with a photograph of the Somali Peninsula taken from outer space. Its shape resembles the horn of an African buffalo and an elephant’s tusk.  And the bowsprit of a pirate ship, whose brigands are about to board its prey.

George Kapchits
WardheerNews Contributor
E-mail:geedka@aha.ru
Website: www.kapchits.narod.ru

Related articles

* Geroge Kapchits REPORTS ON SOMALIA (Part I) :The Country of Poets and Pirates
* Georgi Kapchits REPORTS ON SOMALIA (Part II): Mogadishu: Twenty years later
* Georgi Kapchits REPORTS ON SOMALIA (Part IV): Meetings

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