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Old 07-19-2011, 08:08   #1
Richard
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The Pirates of Somalia: Inside Their Hidden World

Might be an interesting read.

Richard


The Pirates of Somalia: Inside Their Hidden World
Jay Bahadur

http://www.amazon.com/Pirates-Somali.../dp/030737906X

Quote:
Secrets of Somali pirates revealed in new book, written by Canadian who lived among them
WaPo, 18 Jul 2011

The pirates were nervous. A rookie author — a white man from Canada — had unexpectedly arrived in their cliff-top Somali village to ask about the captured ship anchored offshore.

Locals fearing a showdown quietly melted away into a small collection of shacks.

The encounter with the deadly gang forms the final chapter of “The Pirates of Somalia: Inside Their Hidden World,” a first-of-its kind book that saw author Jay Bahadur live among the pirates. Bahadur’s book is being released Tuesday in the U.S.

“They were paranoid beyond belief. They thought I was a CIA agent,” the tall, soft-spoken writer told The Associated Press. “I thought they were going to shoot us.”

Sweating with heat and nerves, Bahadur questioned the pirates and secretly filmed them before being whisked off by his own gang of armed bodyguards.

Bahadur spent months in Somalia at a time when pirate attacks were skyrocketing in both frequency and violence. His book takes readers through the evolution of the pirate groups from garrulous, self-proclaimed vigilantes who claimed they were protecting Somalia’s waters from illegal fishing vessels to the deadly criminal gangs they are today.

The author, now 27, was living with his parents and writing marketing reports about pet food and napkins when he began planning his trip to Somalia. He had never been to Africa before.

“I was thinking I better get picked up at the airport because if I hadn’t I would have been kidnapped in 30 minutes,” he said. “I was frantically making friends on the plane and I was going to beg one to take me home if no one was there.”

But the bodyguards he had arranged for did indeed pick him up, and after a few shaky starts Bahadur was calling on pirates at home, wearing local robes and indulging in local pastimes such as chewing on narcotic khat leaves and gossiping about women and guns.

Bahadur needed the protection. Pirates have turned dangerously violent over the last year, as spiraling ransoms attracted ruthless criminals to a trade once dominated by aggrieved local fishermen. Hijacked crew members have been tortured and ships set on fire. In February, pirates hijacked a yacht and killed the four Americans aboard.

In a trip to the pirate stronghold of Eyl, Bahadur discovered pirates who are afraid of phantom U.S. navy divers and believe in psychic powers. He even describes an incident of panty-thieving on the high seas.

He also found that many widely held beliefs about pirates are wrong, including allegations that they are controlled by international criminal cartels, have alliances with Islamist rebels or use sophisticated intelligence networks. Such assumptions help shape the multibillion dollar fight against piracy.

“You have a lot of people with agendas making claims that aren’t backed up by anything,” said Bahadur. “I don’t really have an agenda. I just tried to use common sense. ... I actually met these people and spoke to them. Most of them had no idea of the outside world.”


But it wasn’t always easy to get the information he wanted.

Bahadur spent time with a pirate who hit him up for car repairs and even asked for the jeans he was wearing, a request Bahadur politely declined. Eventually the man helped provide a detailed ransom breakdown, matching pirate accounts with the recollections of crew members about the ransom division.

Bahadur discovered that though pirates were paid a $1.8 million ransom to release the Victoria — the ship he saw in Eyl — the guards on board made only $12,000 each, which averaged out to about $10.40 an hour. The biggest share went to the investor backing the pirate team.

The high risks — of arrest, injury or death — that the low-ranking pirates take for a relatively small cut of the ransom reminded him of the situation faced by teenage drug dealers on the corners of American streets.

“Piracy in Somalia and the drug trade in the U.S. have a lot in common,” said Bahadur. “They both provide status and an opportunity to advance in society that would be hard to get otherwise.”

Bahadur’s own relationship to the pirates is complex. He was protected by bodyguards supplied by the son of the president of Puntland, a semiautonomous pirate-infested region in the north, and he does not speak Somali.

One group he interviewed allowed him to test-fire a rifle during a picnic, and he brought back a Toronto Blue Jays baseball T-shirt as a gift for a pirate leader. By his own admission, Bahadur felt some slight admiration for the “reckless courage” of the men he interviewed.

But by the end of the book, the young author was forced to confront the new generation of pirates, gunmen from the interior drawn by the lure of riches and controlled by wealthy financiers. During the tense back-and-forth on the Somali cliff top, a pirate insisted that his hostages are being so well-fed that they would prefer to stay captive.

Bahadur later learned that one hostage was already dead, another gravely wounded.

“I had had the distinct impression that the Dhanane gang would have been as perfectly at ease with slaughtering their captives as ransoming them,” he wrote. “Later, when reading news of the casualties the crew had suffered, I was struck by the chilling realization that I had shared tea with murderers.”


These men, Bahadur concludes, are the future of piracy.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/...qLI_story.html
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Old 07-20-2011, 10:41   #2
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Just put it on hold at my library. It's on order.

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Old 02-11-2013, 17:45   #3
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Have hired guns finally scuppered Somali pirates?

Have hired guns finally scuppered Somali pirates?

Been a while since the Somali Pirates were on the front burner.

http://news.yahoo.com/hired-guns-fin...090535971.html

"ABOARD RMS QUEEN MARY (Reuters) - Posted between septuagenarian passengers in deck chairs, lookouts stand watch over the Gulf of Aden, scanning the horizon for pirates.

After more than half a decade of Somali men attacking Indian Ocean shipping from small speedboats with AK-47s, grappling hooks and ladders, the number of attacks is falling fast.

The last merchant ship to be successfully hijacked, naval officers monitoring piracy say, was at least nine months ago. It's a far cry from the height of the piracy epidemic two years ago, when several ships might be taken in a single week to be traded for airdropped multi-million dollar ransoms...................."
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Old 10-16-2013, 04:51   #4
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Somali piracy: A broken business model?

Somali piracy: A broken business model?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-20549056

"The business model that has underpinned maritime piracy off the coast of Somalia for the past few years has effectively been broken, according to the Operation Commander of the European Union Naval Force (EU Navfor) in the region, Rear Admiral Duncan Potts........"

From way down in the story we have ......

"...He puts the drop in piracy down to four factors:

The deployment of armed private security guards on board ships who have been 100% successful in deterring or defeating attacks;

Better management practice by shipping companies, such as hardening their vessels or taking evasive action;

Pre-emptive action by combined navies in the region, helping to ensure that pirates do not get out of their anchorages;

A change in Somalia at national and local level, with Somalis far less tolerant of pirates....."
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Old 03-19-2017, 04:37   #5
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They're back

They're back.

Mostly the captain's fault on this one.

"Somalia ship hijack: Maritime piracy threatens to return"

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-39283911

"..."For a vessel passing that close to the coast of Somalia without armed guards shows a level of complacency," said a spokesman for Neptune Maritime Security, which is currently running armed protection teams on around 70 vessels this month as they pass through the area of the western Indian Ocean known as the High Risk Area (HRA)..."
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Old 03-19-2017, 15:25   #6
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Pete View Post
They're back.

Mostly the captain's fault on this one.

"Somalia ship hijack: Maritime piracy threatens to return"

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-39283911

"..."For a vessel passing that close to the coast of Somalia without armed guards shows a level of complacency," said a spokesman for Neptune Maritime Security, which is currently running armed protection teams on around 70 vessels this month as they pass through the area of the western Indian Ocean known as the High Risk Area (HRA)..."

It's going to be amusing....... they probably didn't follow the loss of the American muslim leader......... I can already hear President Trumps answer to Somali pirates hijackings.....

To the Joint Chiefs: "Stop the Somali pirates by all means necessary."

And If I were currently a CIF member I'd have my shitte in order cause the next muslim takeover of an American Embassy will be met with Americans sending hundreds of muslims terrorists to meet allah.
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