Is the party over for Somali pirates?

By ABDI GULED and JASON STRAZIUSO

The empty whisky bottles and overturned, sand-filled skiffs that litter this once-bustling shoreline are signs that the heyday of Somali piracy may be over. Most of the prostitutes are gone, the luxury cars repossessed. Pirates talk more about catching lobsters than seizing cargo ships.

Armed guards aboard cargo ships and an international naval armada complete with aircraft that carry out onshore raids have put a huge dent in Somali piracy and might even spell the end of the scourge.

One piracy expert said it’s too early to declare victory. But the numbers are startling: In 2010, pirates seized 47 vessels. This year they’ve taken only five.

NOTHING TO DO HERE

“There’s nothing to do here these days. The hopes for a revitalised market are not high,” said a pirate in the former pirate haven of Hobyo who gave his name as Hassan, a high school graduate who taught English in private school before turning to piracy in 2009.

Faduma Ali, a prostitute in the inland town of Galkayo that also became a pirate haven, longs for the days when her pirate customers had money.

As she smoked a hookah in a hot, airless room last week, she sneered as she answered a phone call from a former customer seeking her services on credit.

“Those days are over. Can you pay me $1,000 (Sh85,000)?” she asked, the price she once commanded for a night’s work. “If not, goodbye and leave me alone.” She hung up and groaned out loud: “Money.”

The caller, Abdirizaq Saleh, once had bodyguards and maids and the attention of beautiful women. When ransoms came in, a party was thrown, with blaring music, bottles of wine, khat and women for every man.

Now Saleh is hiding from creditors in a dirty room filled with the dust-covered TVs and high-end clothes he acquired then.

SMALLER RANSOMS

“Ships are being held longer, ransoms are getting smaller and attacks are less likely to succeed,” Salah said while sitting on a threadbare mattress covered by a mosquito net. A plastic rain jacket he used while out at sea dangled from the door.

Somali pirates hijacked 46 ships in 2009 and 47 in 2010, the European Union Naval Force says. Last year, pirates launched a record number of attacks – 176 – but commandeered only 25 ships, an indication that new on-board defences were working.

This year, pirates have hijacked just five ships, the last on May 10 when the MV Smyrna and its crew of 26 were taken. They are still being held.

“We have witnessed a significant drop in attacks in recent months. The stats speak for themselves,” said Lt Cmdr Jacqueline Sherriff, a spokeswoman for the European Union Naval Force.

Sherriff attributes the plunge in hijackings mostly to international military efforts that have improved over time.

Japanese aircraft fly over the shoreline to relay pirate activity to warships nearby. Merchant ships have also increased their communications with patrolling military forces after pirate sightings, Sherriff said. Ships have bolstered their own defences with armed guards, barbed wire, water cannons and safe rooms.

ABORT ATTACKS

No vessel with armed guards has ever been hijacked, noted Cyrus Moody, of the International Maritime Bureau. A June report from the UN Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea said armed guards have forced pirates to “abort attacks earlier and at greater ranges from targeted vessels”.

Some of those who live around Hobyo along central Somalia’s Indian Ocean coastline say they never wanted the region to become a pirate den. Fishermen say piracy began around 2005 as a way to keep international vessels from plundering fish stocks off Somalia. But in the absence of law and order – the country has not had a powerful central government for the last two decades – small ransoms grew over time and criminal networks planned more organised and sophisticated attacks on the high seas.

The town is mostly quiet, except for the sight of legitimate fishermen taking their boats out to sea. The price of a cup of tea – which cost 50 cents during the piracy boom – has fallen back to around five cents. The lobster haul has replaced international freighters as the topic of conversation.

“The decline of piracy is a much-needed boon for our region,” said Hobyo Mayor Ali Duale Kahiye. “They were the machines causing inflation, indecency and insecurity in the town. Life and culture is good without them.”

— Associated Press

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Somali pirates