An unpleasant shiver coursed down my timbers as I saw the pictures of a party of terrified French yachters being held at gunpoint by Somali pirates. Like them, I too have had the chance to study the business end of a pirate's Kalashnikov close-up.
Back in November last year, while in northern Somalia reporting on the piracy problem for The Sunday Telegraph, a gang of them kidnapped my photographer and I, holding us hostage in caves for six weeks. During our time in captivity we lived on goat meat, received occasional death threats, and dodged bullets round the cave one day when the pirates fought with a rival gang.
But in general, we were lucky - we were released before anybody felt it necessary to risk an armed rescue on our behalf.
Sadly, that has not been the case in the two most recent pirate dramas. Captain Richard Phillips, the sole remaining hostage from the US-flagged Maersk Alabama, is now at the centre of an armed stand-off between the US Navy and his pirate captors.
Meanwhile, Friday's military operation to free the five French citizens ended in the death of the boat's captain, Florent Lemacon, 28, who was killed along with two pirates.
During the tougher moments of my own captivity, I sometimes hoped that similar tactics might be deployed to free us, although I equally feared the risk of blood being shed, be it my own or anyone else's. When pondered for real, the mere thought that somebody might die because of you - even if it is a kidnapper - is hard to face.
The death of the French sailor is the first time, to my knowledge, that a hostage of Somali pirates has been killed. Mostly they have been at pains to treat their hostages well, knowing that a business-like approach makes it all the more tempting for ship owners to resolve things by ransom.
Indeed, piracy is currently Somalia's only real booming industry. Up to 2,000 pirates are now believed to be sailing forth from its lawless coastline, doing up to half a dozen attacks per week. They operate mainly along traditional clan lines, the system of close family loyalties that has made Somalia all but ungovernable as a nation, but which provides a perfect social template for mini-mafias.
The simple modus operandi of modern day piracy also suits countries like Somalia well. Besides a couple of motor launches, all that is needed is a few Kalashnikovs and perhaps a rocket-propelled grenade launcher. Even the sailing expertise required is limited. These days most pirates steer not by the stars, but by hand-held mobile GPS systems - the nautical answer to the satnav - allowing them to range far out to sea without getting lost.
Otherwise, little, prior planning is needed: the Gulf of Aden is so packed with shipping that targets can be chosen at random.
The Maersk Alabama, which originally had 21 American sailors on board, shows how much potential there is for major disaster. US television networks are treating it as a tale of all-American heroism, focusing on how the ship's crew managed first to take one of their attackers prisoner, and how Captain Phillips volunteered for a hostage-swap.
They could so easily be reporting on a tale of all-American tragedy. Had the pirates got the sailors onto the Somali mainland, it could have been the worst US hostage crisis since the storming of the US Embassy in Tehran 1979. There are, after all, plenty of Somalis who would have been willing to pay the pirates good money for their catch - not least the Al Shebab group, whose alleged links to Al Qaida have led to them being targetted by US missiles.
Such a crisis might, however, have given the world a timely wake-up call about Somalia. The country has now been 18 years without a government, and has slipped into warlordism and criminal violence unheard of anywhere else.
As a bitter Somali joke puts it, the warlords only went into robbing foreigners at sea because there was nothing left to rob from their own people on land.
Indeed, many pirate recruits have literally nothing left to lose in life. For them, being arrested and caught by the international piracy force is little deterrent. At least they will get three square meals a day; if really lucky, they may get taken to a European jail, where they might have a chance of applying for asylum.
One of my own captors told me once how he had tried to flee to Europe after his parents had been murdered, travelling thousands of miles to Libya and then in an overladen boat to Greece, only to then be deported home again.
As long as Somalia is a nation where people are tempted to resort to such desperate measures, buccaneering is likely to remain a promising career option.
- The Telegraph Group Limited, London 2009
Your comments
Pirating in Somolia has reached the point that international intervention is required. Disrupting international trade lanes and threatening the lives of private sailors. I don't see how the world can ignore this. This requires more than a couple of nations throwing whatever bits of navy that's in the region. Planners need to sit down with the objective of obliterating this problem; Somebody needs to step forward and lead.
Greg Samsonite
Dubai,UAE
Posted: April 13, 2009, 11:36
