Pirates of Somalia (24 page)

Not surprisingly, Nyawinda already had a remedy in mind. “This is my proposal: create a proper group of international investigators to deal with any arrested pirate,” he explained. “The moment so-called pirates are arrested, this group should rush to the scene and take charge. Identify the alleged pirates and find out where they come from; then notify their relatives. Inform the detainees within twenty-four hours which country is going to charge them, and then take them there. The way it is now, the person testifying in court as the investigator is a Kenyan police officer. They were not there during the arrest, and they have never visited the scene of the crime.”

The solution, in Nyawinda’s view, was for the international community to fund specialized tribunals tasked solely with processing suspected pirates. “These people are a special group, and should be treated in a special way,” he said. “They shouldn’t be mixed up with other cases, and their trials should take no more than a week to one month.”

If Nyawinda’s vision had a fault, it lay with its naive optimism, not its core prescriptions. With international tribunals established to resolve issues ranging from war crimes to bilateral trade disputes, it is inexplicable that an issue of such obvious global dimensions as high seas piracy should have been relegated to Kenyan courts. Lacking even a home government to defend their rights, Somali detainees are amongst those most in need of international protection—a view that Nyawinda echoed in his closing arguments. “It is them against the entire international community,” he implored. “No one is standing by them.”

* * *

Like a tattered quilt that has been patched too many times, the international legal framework governing piracy is worn and inadequate, with legislative stitching like Resolution 1816 and the Merchant Shipping Act barely keeping it from coming apart at the seams. Still, given an array of imperfect solutions, the “dumping ground” option may be the best choice for the present. For all the flaws of its legal system, Kenya is a relatively stable, democratic country. It possesses a large and vibrant Somali community that can lend its support to detainees during the trial process, provide links to their families, and aid in their possible integration into Kenyan society following their release.

In September 2010, hopes for a permanent Kenyan solution were dealt a setback. After months-long wrangling over what the Kenyan government deemed to be unsatisfactory financial assistance from the international community, Kenya barred its prison doors to future waves of captured pirates. Two months later, a senior Kenyan judge issued a controversial ruling ordering the release of the approximately sixty suspected pirates brought into custody prior to the passage of the Merchant Shipping Act.

Spurred by Kenya’s increasing unreliability as a partner, Western countries have since begun to take justice into their own hands. In the first trial of its kind in almost two centuries, on November 29, 2010, a Virginia judge sentenced one pirate to thirty years for his involvement in a (clearly confused) assault on a US warship; five of his colleagues will face possible life imprisonment when they are sentenced in March. At around the same time, Germany announced that it was to try ten pirates captured in an attack on the German cargo vessel MV
Taipan
, and the following month both Spain and Belgium revealed their intentions to follow suit. In December, the Netherlands became the first European country to prosecute pirates who had not been involved in an attack on its own nationals, agreeing to try five Somalis captured by the HNLMS
Amsterdam
following an attack on a South African yacht. In January 2011, South Korea joined the fray; following a commando raid on the commandeered oil supertanker MV
Samho Jewelry—
the first of its kind on a vessel whose crew had not retreated to a secure area—the Koreans flew five surviving pirates back to Seoul, where they were charged with attempted murder (soon after, Somali pirates began appearing as characters on Korean television shows). At present, these à la carte prosecutions seem more piecemeal reactions to specific incidents, rather than a true indication of the “global diversification” of pirate justice. Whether a consistent alternative to the Kenyan solution will be necessary will depend on the outcome of its government’s ongoing feud with the international community.

With all these prosecutions, there is the danger that the defendants’ rights surrounding issues like family access, evidentiary rules, and reintegration following acquittal or release may not be adequately protected. While Nyawinda’s Guantanamo Bay parallels may be alarmist or extreme, a similar kind of legal purgatory could be created by current practices. James Gathii, for instance, warns that the “huge militarization of combating piracy is likely to create large numbers of suspected pirates being held in undisclosed locations inconsistently with their rights to process under international law.”
¹⁵
The creation of international tribunals composed of representatives from a cross-section of countries—Somalia included—would go a long way towards ensuring that suspected pirates receive a fair trial.
¹⁶

Some of them, after all, may just have been fishing.

11

Into the Pirates’ Lair

T
HERE WAS A TIME WHEN THE PIRATES’ OFT-INVOKED FISHING
defence was more than mere self-exculpating propaganda. The defence originated in Eyl, among the fishermen-pirate pioneers of the 1990s, born out of just indignation over the abuses of foreign fishing vessels. Since then, what was once a justification has become a rationalization. Successive waves of pirates, attuned to the international media sympathy the fishing story generates, continue to rail about the plunder of Somalia’s waters, while pushing over 1,500 kilometres into the Indian Ocean in search of ever-increasing ransoms.

In the middle of June 2009, halfway through my second visit to Puntland, I finally found my way to where it had all begun: the infamous “pirate haven” of Eyl, the small fishing village that had launched a new breed of pirate into the modern world. We left Garowe at quarter past six in the morning, the sun hanging distorted and brilliant on the horizon. Colonel Omar, dressed in jungle combat fatigues, turned to me and locked my eyes in a menacing stare. “I am in command during this trip,” he said. “You take orders from me. Understand?” I nodded.

Our convoy consisted of two Land Cruisers, the first holding me, the two Omars, and Mahamoud, our driver. The second contained the cavalry: Said and Abdirashid (my two Special Police Unit guards) and three Puntland government soldiers (including Ombaali, the former pirate), led by a grizzled veteran named Yusuf, whose fingers on one hand had been partially shot off. A few kilometres outside of Garowe we stopped at a squalid roadside restaurant to stock up on water bottles and quickly eat a dubious breakfast of
sukaar
, a goat stew that I managed to hold down for only a few hours on the road.

After about a quarter hour of speeding along the deserted highway, our driver abruptly slowed and struck off-road, creeping down the steep embankment. I was uncertain what reference point on the uniform landscape had identified the turnoff, but after a few minutes across open terrain we joined the path running eastward to Eyl. There was nothing but empty land ahead and empty sky above, and a twin set of sandy tire tracks leading into the Wild West.

The constant passage of pirate vehicles over the last few years had worn multiple tracks into the ground that continually diverged from the main path, weaving around obstacles before rejoining it several hundred paces down the road. In spite of the frequent traffic, the behaviour of the local herd animals resembled that of wild-life on a game reserve. Herds of grazing sheep and goats, caught on their haunches with hooves tangled in the upper reaches of bushes, careened wildly into the bush as we passed. Even the camels were more vigilant, watching us from a distance with wary eyes, while their solitary human guardians, staffs in hand, waved friendly greetings. Occasionally the igloo-shaped dome of a
mudul
, the traditional bush hut of the Somali nomad, poked through the shrubbery.

Our two vehicles descended into valleys and mounted plateaus, the vegetation changing as quickly as the terrain. We passed under the outspread canopies of thick-trunked trees hanging over the desiccated beds of dry rivers, then onto powdery red sand cutting through a virtual desert of ground-hugging shrubs and acacia trees, our four-wheel drives fishtailing through every high-speed turn.

We stopped for lunch in Hasballe, a bush town situated at roughly the halfway point of our journey. The corridor running from Garowe to Eyl is almost exclusively populated by the Isse Mahamoud, and Hasballe is home to Nugaal region’s clan chief, or
islaan
. He had recently inherited this title from his father, who was rumoured to have lived over a hundred years and had been so influential that his standing threat to curse errant hunters had single-handedly rescued the threatened local population of dik-diks from extinction. It is said that two men who had insulted his name were swallowed up by the earth.

We were ushered into an amalgam of a
mudul
and a pavilion, constructed around a single living tree. It was covered with the traditional woven grass mats of the Somali nomads and lined with aluminum panels onto which rudimentary algebraic equations had been scratched. The gathering quickly turned into a family reunion, friends and relatives shaking hands and hugging over plates of spaghetti and cups of
shah
. My entire party was of the same sub-clan as the inhabitants of Hasballe, which meant that virtually everyone present was at least second or third cousins.

Colonel Omar introduced me to the townspeople as “the son of Levish,” a local man renowned for his light skin. The Colonel had taught me to recognize the Somali question “Which clan are you?” and to respond with Reer Jarafle, the name of his own sub-clan, five levels deep on the Somali clan tree. I performed the routine repeatedly, like a jester, to great acclaim; it invariably provoked hearty peals of laughter from the assembled crowd. So amused was he by his joke that from time to time the Colonel would elbow me, winking and exclaiming, “Eh, Levish? What clan do you belong to?”

As we were preparing to leave Hasballe, an old man approached the car window. “Please don’t kill the pirates,” he pleaded. “You need to give them jobs.”

From the townspeople in Hasballe, we had learned that the
islaan
was currently residing in his bush hut, some distance down the road. My interpreter Omar made it clear that passing by without stopping was not an option. “It would be the ultimate show of disrespect,” he said.

Three-quarters of an hour later we turned off the road and crossed a lush plain of green grass, towards a
mudul
no different in size from the others I had seen along the road, amidst a herd of grazing camels. One of the
islaan
’s wives informed us that he was napping and would be out shortly. Wiping the sleep from his eyes, the
islaan
soon emerged dressed in the simple nomad’s attire of a shawl and
ma’awis
and exchanged warm greetings with the two Omars, as I stood awkwardly by. Just when I was starting to think that he had not noticed my presence, the
islaan
turned to me with an expectant glance.

“Do you have anything to say to him?” Omar asked me.

For the first time in my life, I found myself completely tongue-tied, frozen under the spell of pomp that Omar had lent to the meeting.

Mercifully, Omar stepped in. “He thanks you for welcoming him to the homeland of the Isse Mahamoud,” he said, relaying my phantom message.

“I thank you for coming to visit us,” the
islaan
replied in Somali. “Foreigners are always welcome here.” Omar stood between the two of us, hands solemnly folded in front of him as he translated. I requested to take a photo with him, but the
islaan
demurred.

“I will gladly take a photo with you, but not here. Wait until I am in Garowe, when I’m dressed properly.”

The last stretch of the journey took us across a sparse plateau where the only sign of human presence was a curious sequence of pipes punctuating the road every few kilometres, from which arrow-straight dirt trails jutted at right angles into the distance—the long-abandoned boreholes and service roads set up during Conoco’s oil exploration in the 1980s, before the company declared
force majeure
and departed Somalia in the wake of the civil war. Colonel Omar pointed out a landing strip, now little more than open bushland, which British forces had used to transport supplies during a nineteenth-century siege of Eyl. From this escarpment, said the Colonel, colonialist forces had unleashed their bombardments on the town below. As if in silent testament to his statement, we passed by a crumbling graveyard containing the remains of Somalis killed during the anti-colonial struggle.

It was three o’clock in the afternoon when we finally reached the outskirts of Eyl. It had taken us seven hours to cross 220 kilometres.

* * *

The town of Eyl is a historic place. Long before it became known to the world in 2008 as the infamous “pirate haven,” it had served as a base for an equally notorious character, anti-colonial freedom fighter Muhammad Abdullah Hassan, nicknamed the “Mad Mullah” by his British adversaries. A warrior-poet in the purest sense, the beauty of Hassan’s verses attracted a diverse following to his Dervish movement, which for twenty years successfully held off British colonial expansion into the Somali interior (notwithstanding their common association with dancing and whirling, the Dervishes also knew how to fight). Despite considerable brutality towards his own people, Hassan remains a nationalist hero to Somalis and a point of pride for the people of Eyl. His residence-cum-fortress still stands on a summit overlooking the town, built with camel milk mixed into the mortar in order to render it invulnerable to attack. Hassan reputedly severed the hands of the structure’s Yemeni architect after its completion, to ensure that it would be the last he ever built. The architect’s descendants, it is said, still live in Eyl.