Pirates of Somalia (38 page)

7.
Puntland Ministry of Planning and Statistics, Puntland Facts and Figures 2003 (Garowe: 2003),
http://siteresources.worldbank.org
.

8.
Of the population, 43 per cent is aged fifteen or over. If the population distribution for men and women is identical, which cannot be the case, then 21.5 per cent of the men are at least fifteen. As a rough estimate it is adequate.

9.
I have not used these three women’s real names. From the way she described it, Maryan’s union with Garaad was a form of Islamic pleasure marriage, an institution designed to provide a veneer of religious propriety to a casual sexual relationship (see
Chapter 12
). When I asked Maryan where her “husband” was, she nonchalantly replied, “I have no idea.”

10.
A 2004 paper estimated that 57 per cent of Somalia’s foreign exchange had made its way to Kenya through the khat trade in the few years prior. Cited in Anderson et al.,
Khat Controversy
, 61.

11.
Tim Marshall, “Yemen: Legal High Is ‘Fueling’ Extremism,’ ” Sky News, January 15, 2010,
http://news.sky.com
.

12.
“Somali Gunmen ‘Renounce Piracy,’ ” BBC News, May 25, 2009,
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news
.

CHAPTER 7: THE LAND OF PUNT

1.
Quoted in Jalal al-Sharaabi, Khaled Mahmoud, and Courtney C. Radsch, “Somali Leaders Accuse Islamists of Piracy,” Al Arabiya News Channel, December 2, 2008,
http://www.alarabiya.net
.

2.
Abdirahman Farole, speech before the US House of Representatives Subcommittee on Africa and Global Health, June 25, 2009, author’s copy.

3.
“Anti-Piracy Campaign Begins Today in Puntland,” Garowe Online, April 24, 2009,
http://www.garoweonline.com
.

4.
Ibid.

5.
Puntland also employs an extensive system of religious, or sharia, law courts, which deal mostly with matters of family law.

6.
Quoted in “Puntland Has Sacrificed for Its Peace, Says Pres. Farole,” Garowe Online, November 17, 2010,
http://www.garoweonline.com/
.

7.
UN Monitoring Group on Somalia,
Report of the Monitoring Group on Somalia pursuant to Security Council resolution 1853
(2008), S/2010/91, March 10, 2010,
http://www.un.org/sc/committees/751/mongroup.shtml
, 39.

8.
According to the terms of the arrangement, Range Resources was granted exploration rights for $25 million to be paid in monthly instalments of $200,000.

9.
“Puntland Govt Arrests Official with Alleged Links to Pirates,” Garowe Online, February 24, 2008,
http://www.garoweonline.com
.

10.
UN Monitoring Group on Somalia, Report, March 10, 2010, 41.

11.
“Puntland Leader Sacks Deputy Police Chief,” Garowe Online, October 13, 2008,
http://www.garoweonline.com
.

12.
Not only did Farole fail to win an ally in Congress, House committee chair Donald Payne issued a report highly critical of the Puntland administration, accusing it of a litany of human rights abuses. Alisha Ryu, “US Congressman Criticizes Puntland for Abusive Behavior,” Voice of America, November 23, 2009,
http://www.voanews.com
.

13.
“Puntland’s Leader Says UN Report Is ‘Politically Motivated,’ ” Garowe Online, March 22, 2010,
http://www.garoweonline.com
.

CHAPTER 8: MOMMAN

1.
UN High Commission for Refugees, Mixed Migration Task Force, Mixed Migration Task Force Update No. 8, August 2009,
http://ochaonline.un.org
.

CHAPTER 9: THE POLICEMEN OF THE SEA

1.
These figures have been taken from the Nairobi-based NGO ECOTERRA, and include attacks that may not have been reported to more conventionally cited sources, such as the International Maritime Bureau.

2.
These success rates are probably somewhat exaggerated, due to the number of failed pirate attacks that go unreported to any authority.

3.
Stig Jarle Hansen,
Piracy in the Greater Gulf of Aden: Myths, Misconceptions and Remedies
, NIBR Report 2009:29 (Oslo: Norwegian Institute for Urban and Regional Research, 2009),
http://en.nibr.no
, 36.

4.
Only two deaths have been attributed to NAVFOR, however. The majority of the fatalities (thirty-eight) were caused by individual navies (figures are from the Belgian defence news website Bruxelles 2,
http://bruxelles2.over-blog.com
). The journalist tracking these statistics stopped in May 2010 because he found it too difficult to obtain accurate information.

5.
ECOTERRA, Somali Marine & Coastal Monitor 291, November 19, 2009.

6.
Quoted in Kathryn Westcott, “ ‘Pirate’ death puts spotlight on ‘guns for hire,’ ” BBC News, March 24, 2010,
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news
.

7.
US Department of Transportation,
Economic Impact of Piracy in the Gulf of Aden on Global Trade
, September 2010,
http://www.marad.dot.gov.

8.
See David Osler, “Sonic Solution May Not Be a Sound Investment,”
Lloyd’s List
, December 2, 2008.

9.
“Chinese Ship Uses Molotov Cocktails to Fight Off Somali Pirates,”
Telegraph
(London), December 19, 2008,
http://www.telegraph.co.uk
.

10.
After first announcing its intention to prosecute the ten captured pirates in Moscow, the Russian government reversed its position and decided to release the men in an inflatable boat without any navigational equipment. Afterwards, the Russian defence ministry reported that the pirates had “probably died” at sea. The summary execution scenario is far more likely, and supported by a comment by President Dmitry Medvedev on the day the
Moscow University
was stormed: “We’ll have to do what our forefathers did when they met the pirates.” Mansur Mirovalev, “Pirates ‘Have All Died,’ Russia Says, after Decrying ‘Imperfections’ in International Law,” Associated Press, May 11, 2010.

11.
Based on International Maritime Bureau statistics, IMB Piracy Reporting Centre,
http://www.icc-ccs.org/home/piracy-reporting-centre
.

12.
This estimate is based on the cost to the shipping companies; once financial, legal, and private security fees are tacked on, the total cost of delivering a ransom roughly doubles.

CHAPTER 10: THE LAW OF THE SEA

1.
Marie Woolf, “Pirates Can Claim UK Asylum,”
Times
(London), April 13, 2008,
http://www.thetimes.co.uk
.

2.
Preceding the UNCLOS treaty of 1982, Somalia was one of a handful of states to claim a territorial sea of two hundred nautical miles, through its Law No. 37 of 1972. One of the primary motivators behind UNCLOS was the need to standardize the width of territorial seas, which the convention achieved by limiting its signatories to a territorial sea of twelve nautical miles. Though Somalia was amongst the first countries to ratify UNCLOS, Law No. 37 was never subsequently repealed, leaving an ambiguity surrounding the status of Somalia’s territorial seas. “From the behaviour of states patrolling the waters off the coast of Somalia it would seem clear that they assume that the external limit of the Somali territorial sea is 12 miles,” writes Tullio Treves, a judge at the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea in Hamburg. “Whether this is also the assumption of the TFG [Somali Transitional Federal Government] is uncertain.” Treves, “Piracy, Law of the Sea, and Use of Force: Developments of the Coast of Somalia,”
European Journal of International Law
20, no. 4 (Apr. 2009): 408.

3.
The Security Council extended this patchwork legal arrangement for another twelve months in December 2008 (Resolution 1846), and again in November 2009 (Resolution 1897).

4.
Resolution 1816 and its successors were issued under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, which authorizes the use of military force to counter threats to “international peace and security.” Given that Chapter VII permits the violation of national sovereignty, Resolution 1816’s emphasis on obtaining the authorization of the Somali government seems redundant. According to Tullio Treves, the requirement served three objectives: “The first is to pay homage to state sovereignty … The second is to strengthen the TFG, which, while maintaining the Somali presence at the United Nations, does not exercise effective power in Somalia, and in particular lacks the capacity to fight pirate activities off its coasts. The third, through the designation by the TFG of the states whose vessels are authorized to act in its territorial sea, would seem to consist in limiting the foreign fleets’ presence in Somali waters to those of the states most involved, and to states ready to cooperate with each other.” Treves, “Piracy, Law of the Sea, and Use of Force,” 407.

5.
After the far-reaching expansion of piracy into the Indian Ocean, the Seychelles also entered into an agreement with the EU to detain suspected pirates, though its capacity to try them is extremely limited.

6.
David Morgan, “U.S. Delivers Seven Somali Pirate Suspects to Kenya,” Reuters, March 5, 2009.

7.
James Gathii, “Jurisdiction to Prosecute Non-National Pirates Captured by Third States under Kenyan and International Law,”
Loyola of Los Angeles International and Comparative Law Review
31 (Summer 2009): 25–26.

8.
Quoted in Christopher Thompson, “Suspected Somali Pirates in the Dock,”
Financial Times
, January 8, 2010,
http://www.ft.com
.

9.
Quoted in Gathii, “Jurisdiction to Prosecute Non-National Pirates,” 19.

10.
The legal argument used to reject the appeal rested on two principles: first, that piracy on the high seas was a crime under the Kenyan penal code; second, that piracy was a crime under international customary law, or
jus gentium
, and thus the Kenyan High Court was justified in extending its jurisdiction beyond the nation’s borders. Ibid., 4, 8–9.

11.
“Jail Sentence for Somali pirates,” BBC News, November 1, 2006,
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news
.

12.
Quoted in Gathii, “Jurisdiction to Prosecute Non-National Pirates,” 11–12. Article 101 of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea defines piracy as follows:

(a) any illegal acts of violence or detention, or any act of depredation, committed for private ends by the crew or the passengers of a private ship or a private aircraft, and directed:

    (i) on the high seas, against another ship or aircraft, or against persons or property on board such ship or aircraft;

    (ii) against a ship, aircraft, persons or property in a place outside the jurisdiction of any State;

(b) any act of voluntary participation in the operation of a ship or of an aircraft with knowledge of facts making it a pirate ship or aircraft;

(c) any act of inciting or of intentionally facilitating an act described in subparagraph (a) or (b).

13.
Gathii, “Jurisdiction to Prosecute Non-National Pirates,” 19.

14.
Quoted ibid., 26.

15.
Ibid., 24.

16.
In response to a Russian-led Security Council initiative in April 2010, UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon proposed seven options for prosecuting suspected Somali pirates, including the creation of an international tribunal. To date, the Security Council has rejected this option due to its prohibitive cost, as well as the difficulty of finding a nation to host the proceedings. In January 2011, the UN’s special advisor on piracy, Jack Lang, issued a report urging the creation of regional piracy tribunals in Puntland, Somaliland, and Tanzania. The proposal, estimated to cost $25 million over three years, also called for the construction of additional prisons in Somalia.