Somaliland Struggles In Effort To Fight Piracy

[Wiil Cusub]

Somali piracy has become an epidemic.

 

Last year, Somali pirates seized more than a thousand hostages — a record. This year, they have already hijacked 15 vessels, including an American yacht whose four passengers were killed.

 

 

EnlargeFrank Langfitt/NPR

Somaliland's coast guard has just eight boats to patrol more than 500 miles of coastline along the Gulf of Aden.

The government of Somaliland, a self-ruling part of Somalia, is trying to fight the problem with a ragtag coast guard and a new prison, but battling piracy is like fighting a stiff current.

 

A visit to the local jail in Somaliland's port of Berbera goes a long way toward explaining why.

 

Duale Jama Sirat is sitting on the jail's concrete floor. The cell reeks of urine, and the walls are etched with names and phone numbers.

 

Sirat has been here ever since the Somaliland coast guard boarded his skiff last month about 50 miles off the coast in some of the world's most pirate-infested waters.

 

"We don't know why they captured us," says Sirat, feigning surprise at his predicament. "The coast guard from Berbera fired on us and ordered us to stop."

 

More In This Series

 

Catching Pirates With A Kind Of Neighborhood Watch

As Somaliland works to build a sense of civic duty, ordinary citizens are turning in pirates.

Dressed in a black T-shirt and a Somali-style sarong, Sirat says the coast guard found no weapons. He insists he is innocent.

 

"I'm not a pirate," he declares in English. "Fishing. I fishing."

 

This is the mantra in the jails of Somaliland. People accused of piracy claim they are misunderstood fishermen.

 

There's just one problem with that defense.

 

When Sirat and his crew members were picked up in the Gulf of Aden, they had no nets, no fishing gear — just a global positioning system. Sirat struggles to explain.

 

"We didn't bring the equipment," he says. "First, we had to look for the fish."

 

 

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From about a hundred miles away — that's how far Sirat lives from where he was picked up in the water.

 

Fighting Piracy With No Anti-Piracy Law

 

Sirat's story is laughable, but he's almost certain to walk, because it's hard to catch pirates in the act and the evidence against them is often painfully thin.

 

"Some of those captured pirates, when they are on the boat and they see the coast guard, they throw their guns in the sea," says Guleid Ahmed Jama, a Somaliland prosecutor.

 

Jama says there's another legal problem: Somaliland is working on an anti-piracy law but doesn't actually have one yet.

 

"In reality, I don't see anyone who has been accused of piracy," Jama says. "They have been accused of illegal weapons ... accused of breaching immigration law ... accused of attempting to make a robbery."

 

Nobody sleeps when we enter these waters. We're on a 24-hour lookout for pirates.

- Osman Daud, captain of the Safina Al Ibrahimi, an Indian freighter

Somali piracy exploded several years ago. Criminals took advantage of the country's lawlessness and began attacking ships with a vengeance. Pirates now hold nearly 30 vessels and more than 600 hostages, according to RiskIntelligence, which monitors the problem.

 

Staying Alert In A High-Stakes Game

 

Osman Daud captains the Safina Al Ibrahimi, an Indian freighter docked at the Port of Berbera. Standing on the deck of the wooden dhow, Daud says sailing to Somaliland through the Gulf of Aden is perilous.

 

"I have 20 people on the boat," Daud says. "Nobody sleeps when we enter these waters. We're on a 24-hour lookout for pirates."

 

Daoud says he does everything he can to avoid them, including changing his route. He uses his radio to monitor reports of pirate attacks and to find out where foreign naval vessels are providing protection. Then, he plots his course accordingly.

 

Daud says he has been held up at sea and robbed of radios and cellphones.

 

"I've been boarded so many times, I can't remember," he says wearily.

 

 

EnlargeFrank Langfitt/NPR

Somaliland Adm. Ahmed Osman says his coast guard needs just three things: "Boats. Boats. Boats."

But his boat, which carries everything from food and SUVs to brooms and TVs, has never been held for ransom.

 

Daud says that's because in the high-stakes game of Somali piracy — where multimillion-dollar ransoms are common — a small freighter like his just isn't worth it.

 

Boats And Prisons

 

While naval warships try to protect the sea lanes, Somaliland's coast guard uses small patrol boats to monitor the waters closer to shore. The trouble is that there aren't nearly enough of them.

 

Somaliland is desperately poor and mostly made up of desert, scrub and camels. It has more than 500 miles of coastline, but only eight working coast guard vessels.

 

Asked what are the top three things his coast guard needs, Somaliland Adm. Ahmed Osman answers without hesitation: "Boats. Boats. Boats."

 

Perhaps. But even if Somaliland had enough boats to catch pirates, where would it put them all?

 

The prisons here are dreadful. The one in Berbera was built in 1884 during the Ottoman Empire and doesn't look like it has changed much since. Piles of garbage dot the prison yard. Prisoners reach out through rusted bars to complain about conditions, including a lack of food.

 

The United Nations is working to change this. Last year, it completed a new, $1.5 million prison in Hargeisa, Somaliland's capital. The prison has freshly painted walls, a medical clinic and the ability to handle more than 400 inmates.

 

Alan Cole, who runs the counter-piracy program for the U.N.'s program on drugs and crime, says the new prison is a big improvement over the old one.

 

"They've got beds, properly secure cells, in-cell sanitation," Cole says during a tour. "It's still rudimentary but meets the minimum U.N. standards."

 

Cole says in the old prison, inmates slept on rugs on the floor.

 

Where To Put The Pirates

 

The new prison is part of a strategy to help Somalia handle the pirate problem itself. Because the country has few effective institutions, most pirates are tried overseas.

 

Cole says right now more than 900 Somali pirates are held in 17 countries.

 

"What we're looking to do in the longer term is to move the pirates back to Somalia," he says, "to serve their prison sentences there."

 

But the complexity of Somalia's politics is making that difficult. Somaliland is the best-governed part of the country, and it considers itself an independent state — even if nobody else does.

 

At a news conference, Somaliland's minister of justice, Ismail Aar, said his government refuses to take pirates from other parts of Somalia — much to the consternation of the U.N.

 

 

EnlargeFrank Langfitt/NPR

Farah Ismael Idle is a pirate serving his time in Somaliland's new prison in the capital, Hargeisa. Idle says when he gets out in three years, he is going to attack more ships.

"We accept all Somalilanders," Aar said, "but each country should receive its own pirates."

 

Imprisoned Pirate: 'I Will Go Back'

 

Farah Ismael Idle is one pirate Somaliland does claim. Unlike most inmates, Idle admits he's a pirate, though, he insists, not a very good one. Idle claims he tried to hijack three boats, but failed.

 

"I had a very small boat; it wasn't that fast," says Idle, who wears a yellow prison jumpsuit and a white skull cap. "It couldn't catch up with the big ships."

 

Idle says he used to work as a fisherman but turned to piracy four years ago after foreign trawlers decimated Somalia's fishing grounds. Then, in 2008, police arrested him as he was preparing to attack another ship.

 

"Some people who knew me told the coast guard," he says. "I was sleeping in my home when I was caught."

 

Chatting with foreign reporters, Idle fingers plastic prayer beads and alternates between magnetic smiles and steely glares. For someone who has already spent three years behind bars, he brims with self-confidence. As the warden listens, Idle says when he gets out, he'll return to piracy.

 

"I'm happy and I support the boys, particularly those who are going for the ships," Idle says. "The more the ships we get, the happier we are. I will go back myself."

 

With ransoms now topping $8 million and $9 million, it's easy to see the appeal, even for someone who claims he has never had a big score.

[Wiil Cusub]

Catching Pirates With A Kind Of Neighborhood Watch

 

The second in a three-part series.

 

Somalia is among the world's most lawless countries. That's one reason piracy thrives there. After hijacking ships, pirates return to shore, where government turns a blind eye — or may not even exist.

 

But one part of Somalia — a self-ruling region called Somaliland — is slowly trying to build the rule of law and a sense of civic duty. The result: Ordinary citizens occasionally catch pirates and turn them in. It's an informal, coastal neighborhood watch.

 

 

EnlargeKabir Dhanji for NPR

Suleman Ahmen Aden shades himself beneath his fishing raft. Last year, he helped catch pirates who were forced to beach their boat because of a disabled engine.

Suleman Ahmen Aden fishes along the windswept beaches of the Gulf of Aden, one of the world's most dangerous stretches of water. Just last Friday, a pair of pirate skiffs tried to overtake a chemical tanker, according to the International Maritime Bureau. The week before, another skiff fired on another tanker.

 

Aden fishes from a raft made of wood and Styrofoam lashed together with rope and wire. From a distance, it looks like a pile of garbage. But when the winds subside, he pushes his raft into the waves and paddles out more than a mile. Aden says he rarely sees pirates this close to shore.

 

"We saw some once, a year ago," says Aden, who has a long black beard and wears a red-checked scarf on his head. "Their boat engines were stuck. So, they had to beach here."

 

Aden said the pirates were armed with rocket-propelled grenade launchers and AK-47s. Despite their fearsome reputation, Aden says he wasn't afraid of the pirates.

 

"They were so tired and exhausted," he recalls. "They had been in the sea a long time, floating and sailing without food. They were hungry."

 

Aden offered them tea. Then, he called the coast guard.

 

 

EnlargeFrank Langfitt/NPR

Omer Ahmed is a clan leader on the coast who helped fellow villagers arrest more than a dozen suspected pirates.

"We pretended we were welcoming them," he says. "That's how we arrested them."

 

'We Even Fought Them'

 

Pirates, though, are not always so easy to subdue.

 

Omer Ahmed is a clan leader in Karin, another town down the coast. He says last year villagers captured more than a dozen suspected pirates. One citizens' arrest came after a tip that a suspicious boat was heading their way. Ahmed says residents fanned out to look for the vessel.

 

"The pirates came off the boats onto the beach, and went into hiding," says Ahmed, who has dyed his beard and hair with red henna, a Somali tradition. "We chased them. We even fought them, but were able to overpower them."

 

Ahmed said villagers traded a few gunshots with the men, who then surrendered.

 

A Fledgling Democracy

 

When people think of Somalia, they imagine Mad Max on the Horn of Africa, but the country is more complex.

 

 

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Somalia is actually divided into three very different parts. To the south is Mogadishu, an urban warzone. To the northeast is Puntland, a semi-autonomous region and hotbed of piracy. And to the west is Somaliland, a fledgling democracy that sees itself as an independent country — though no one else does.

 

Scholars give Somaliland high marks for fighting piracy. Stig J.Hansen, who teaches international relations at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences, says Somalilanders have a national identity and a sense of duty that inspires them to crack down on pirates.

 

"The local population believes in the concept of Somaliland," says Hansen, who has studied Somali piracy since 2005. "That means it's very hard for the pirates to operate in Somaliland."

 

Hansen says Somalilanders also arrest pirates because they want to impress the outside world in hopes of gaining diplomatic recognition. But he says sometimes citizens go too far and arrest innocent fishermen from Puntland, a neighboring pirate hot spot.

 

"They are stereotyping," Hansen says. "They are claiming all these [people] are pirates, but there are innocent people there."

 

More In This Series

 

Somaliland Struggles In Effort To Fight Piracy

It has eight coast guard vessels to patrol 500 miles of coastline, and many prisons are dreadful.

'I'll Never Be One'

 

Life is harsh along the Gulf of Aden. Ali Samater Abdi herds camels in the dunes near the beach. Three years ago, he had more than 100 camels, but drought killed most of them, leaving just 15. So, Abdi has turned to fishing.

 

"I have no equipment to fish or boats, nothing," says Abdi, who wears a torn white T-shirt and matching Somali sarong. "When I cast my net in the sea, I just sit on the piece of wood and paddle and catch as many fish as I can."

 

Some days Abdi catches two fish; other days, four. He keeps a couple for his family to eat. Then he walks three hours in rubber sandals to the market in Berbera, a port city, where he trades them for vegetables.

 

The quickest way for Abdi to turn his life around would be piracy. One good hijacking can pay a pirate $35,000 to $50,000 — a fortune in this part of the world. Has Abdi ever considered it?

 

His answer is swift and direct. "Pirates are bad," he says. "It's an issue that is bad for the country and for the world. As a result, I'll never be one."

 

Of course, not everyone in Somalia feels that way. Year after year, month after month, piracy continues to grow. Last week, pirates seized a German-owned cargo ship with 10 crew members. It was the 15th hijacking so far this year.