6/16/2024
Today from Hiiraan Online:  _
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Down and Out in Nairobi: Somali Pirates in Retirement

Bashir was once a fisherman. The pirates wanted to hire him because he knew how to swim, a valuable skill he could teach other recruits. Bashir claims he was among the pirates who hijacked the MV Faina, a ship carrying 33 Soviet-era battle tanks to Kenya, on Sept. 25, 2008. He fled Somalia after that job, he says, because he fell out with the pirate leaders over pay. He earned $6,000, but his bosses deducted two-thirds of that to pay for the food he ate during the operation. "We are the ones out on the water taking all the risks and suffering," Bashir says. "That was how our differences began. I feared that because I disagreed with the boss about money, they would assassinate me."

When Somali piracy really hit the headlines in 2008, the first crop of stories told of young pirates who had struck it rich. They bought expensive cars and houses and married the prettiest girls. Then, everyone said, the pirates started looking for places to invest their money safely and fueled a building boom in Nairobi. Bashir and Ahmad headed to Nairobi for a different reason: asylum. Willing to risk police harassment, hunger and poor prospects, they arrived with a few hundred — maybe even a few thousand — dollars, but nothing like the riches they dreamed of when they joined the business. (See pictures of the pirates of Somalia.)

Good information on the inner workings of the piracy trade is hard to come by, but evidence from out of Somalia indicates that criminal syndicates with financiers and investors based in Dubai and London and Mombasa, Kenya, have taken over piracy in Somalia, which got its start in the early 1990s as a way to mete out retribution on ships that fished illegally or dumped toxic waste in Somali waters. Now the warlords at the top take almost all the money and pay the men at the bottom next to nothing. The pirates caught on camera bobbing in their skiffs are the high-sea equivalent of the Cosa Nostra's lowliest associates. "The people being arrested are actually foot soldiers. They are not the real pirates," says Dickson Oruku Nyawinda, a lawyer who represents accused Somali pirates in Kenya's jails. "We are dealing with people who have no idea where the ransoms are going."

The U.N. Monitoring Group on Somalia provided some illuminating details in a report in February. The report describes a corporate system in which pirates may be fined $1,500 for stealing from their ships or $500 for entering their bosses' offices without permission. On the flip side, pirates can win rewards of several thousand dollars for good behavior. "As the saying goes, 'the parents initially love their children equally, but it is the children who make them love some more than the others,' " says a document distributed to pirates by their bosses, according to the U.N. report. "It is up to your abilities to qualify [for] this easy-to-earn reward."



 





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