Pirates Page 3

  The UN approved the insertion of a United States-led peacekeeping force. It was called Operation Restore Hope. If only. Anyone who has seen the movie Black Hawk Down will know something of the Battle of Mogadishu. A force of approximately 160 American soldiers, with 19 aircraft and 12 vehicles, was dispatched to capture a high-ranking accomplice of one of the warlords on the outskirts of the capital. A lot of muscle to pick up one guy. During the operation, however, militants shot down two Black Hawk helicopters with rocket-propelled grenades. A number of wounded American soldiers were trapped at the crash site and came under attack during the night in a fierce firefight on the streets of Mogadishu. A task force was dispatched the next day to rescue them, but the casualties had been high: 19 American soldiers and more than 1,000 Somali militia dead.

  The Battle of Mogadishu was a bloodbath, and it blunted the Americans’ appetite for involvement in Somalia. By 1995, all UN personnel had been withdrawn from the region, but Somalia was as volatile as ever, and its people were suffering just as badly.

  Fast-forward to now. After years of internal strife there is a transitional government of sorts, backed by Ethiopian troops, but it has very little in the way of actual authority. Most of the country is a violent mess and, as ever, it is the ordinary people who suffer the most. Killing, looting and gang rape are rife, instigated both by insurgent and government forces. One Amnesty International report tells of a 17-year-old girl being raped by Ethiopian troops. When her two brothers – aged 13 and 14 – tried to intervene, the soldiers gouged out their eyes with bayonets. Others tell of men having their testicles removed, and of people having their throats cut and being left to die in the street. They even have their own word for this method of slaughter, which roughly translates as ‘to kill like a goat’. Without a proper functioning government, nobody is held accountable for these crimes. And nobody stops them.

  The dire situation in Somalia is made even more difficult – and probably unsolvable – by the complicated system of clan loyalties and family groupings that exists there. Somalis themselves barely understand these loyalties; for a foreigner they’re almost impossible. The most prominent clans are the Hawiye, the Darod, the Ishaak and the Rahanwein, but within each clan there is a fiendish network of sub-clans with complex hierarchies and impenetrable webs of loyalties.

  The clan system has been an essential part of Somali politics for as long as anyone can remember. Any new leader will ensure all the plum jobs go to members of his own clan at the expense of others while inter-clan rivalries and arguments are constantly escalating into violence. Moreover, one of the characteristics of the clan system is the payment of any earnings to those further up the hierarchy of your clan – a kind of African Cosa Nostra.

  The result is a country ripped apart. Around 3.25 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance in Somalia – that’s about a third of the population. One in six children under the age of five suffers acute malnourishment; one in four dies before this age. Life expectancy at birth is 42. So if I lived there, I’d probably be dead. (Don’t say it.)

  The World Food Programme provides food aid to more than 2 million people a month. That’s a lot of food. It’s got to get there somehow. Like almost everything else in the world, most of the WFP’s supplies arrive in Somalia by sea. Ninety per cent, to be precise. But cargo ships are increasingly reluctant to make the dangerous voyage to the coast of Somalia. Why? Because just as the staff of the WFP – men like Ibrahim Hussein Duale – are not immune from the danger and unpredictability of the region, so their ships are not immune from the country’s other great problem.

  And that problem, as you might have guessed, is the pirates.

  Piracy is not new in the Gulf of Aden. It’s not for nothing, then, that sailors have nicknamed it Pirate Alley. The reason pirates, historically, have been drawn to this waterway is the same reason the colonialists were drawn to it centuries ago: it forms a vital passage for trade. Each year 23,000 vessels pass through this waterway. And where there are trade ships, there’s money to be made – legally or illegally.

  Off the coastline of Somalia lies the island of Socotra. Socotra falls under Yemeni jurisdiction, but in many ways it is its own place. A UNESCO natural world heritage site, Socotra has an amazing abundance of plant life. It is one of the few places in the world where you’ll find the dragon’s blood tree, whose bright red sap was once thought of as a powerful medicine and became a valuable commodity. In addition, Socotra was always rich in frankincense, myrrh and aloe. During the first century ad these commodities made Socotra an important staging post and a destination for ships from all over the world.

  Times changed. Global demand for frankincense and myrrh reduced; better medicines than dragon’s blood came along. Between the tenth and fourteenth centuries the beautiful island of Socotra, situated as it was in the centre of an important trade route, became notorious as a haven for pirates instead. From here they could run riot across the Indian Ocean and even up the Red Sea. Merchant ships often had to resort to the use of an ancient incendiary weapon known as Greek fire to keep them away. Greek fire was a mixture of chemicals that could be sprayed, burning, towards nearby ships, with the advantage that it continued to burn even on water. Really not what you want when your boat is made of wood.

  In 1507 Socotra was colonized by the Portuguese, followed by the British in the nineteenth century. At the start of the Second World War an RAF airfield was built, and following British withdrawal there were rumours that the Soviet Union maintained a naval base there. Nowadays its reputation as a pirate haven is firmly part of its history, but the Gulf of Aden hasn’t stopped being very important to a lot of people, and the pirates have found other havens on the Somali coastline from which to operate. Somalia, with its lack of anything remotely resembling law and order, is an obvious choice. Recently, the number of recorded pirate attacks has gone up dramatically. In 2004 there were five; in the first nine months of 2008 there were more than sixty. In 2008 Somali pirates raised an estimated $30 million in ransoms. Insurance premiums for cargo ships travelling through the Gulf of Aden have increased ten-fold.

  When my team and I make a documentary film, there’s a lot of work that goes on behind the scenes. We are given safety briefings and have to commission detailed risk assessments (I do sometimes wonder if I must be a risk assessor’s worst nightmare). We try to find local fixers in the countries to which we’re travelling, people with a knowledge of the area and a book of contacts that will help grease the wheels and make the shoot run smoothly and – with a bit of luck – safely. The process has served us well. It’s got us into some dangerous parts of dangerous countries, and facilitated interviews with dangerous men. It’s allowed us to meet paramilitaries in Colombia who’d kill you without a second thought; it’s taken us into slums as far apart as Rio and Kenya where you run a very real risk of having your throat cut for a handful of coins; it’s taken us into the most dangerous war zone in the world.

  Somalia, though, was a different matter. We were told that if we so much as set foot on Somali soil, we would be killed or kidnapped.

  Not might. Would. All the journalists to have set foot outside the port of Mogadishu in recent years have been shot.

  This point of view was reinforced when I went to meet a guy in London who freelances for MI6, the CIA and other intelligence agencies. His job title? Special Operations Operative. To you and me, he’s a spook, and I can’t reveal his name or anything else about him. His work regularly takes him into Somalia, and as we sat down to chat I asked him what it was, exactly, that he did for a living.

  ‘I fix problems,’ he told me.

  What sort of problems?

  ‘Pretty much anything. It could be issues between tribes, issues between certain persons, political issues…’ He didn’t seem too keen to elaborate, and I didn’t push it.

  I asked the spook what it was like to walk down the street in Mogadishu.

  ‘It can have its moments.’ He explained that there is
a standing kill order against Caucasian people in Somalia, and I asked him exactly what that meant. ‘A kill order is where different tribes, different groups or different factions decide they’re not going to allow certain people or an individual into an area. Word will spread on the streets that if this person, or type of person, is seen, then get rid of them. It might be that they take them and throw them in the back of a van somewhere, or it could be quite simply that they open fire.’

  But surely if you’re with the right people…

  ‘The problem with somewhere like Somalia is that there’s no right people. You can be on one side of the fence and the other side will always be after you. You take your chances. It’s 50-50 either way.’

  Was the spook armed when he walked around the streets of Somalia?

  ‘Most definitely.’

  And did he have close protection?

  ‘No. The more people you have, the more chance there is of drawing attention to yourself.’

  I asked what I thought might sound like a ridiculous question, but he didn’t seem to think it was ridiculous at all: did he wear a disguise?

  He nodded. ‘Depends on where I am, but yes, I can wear a disguise.’

  I wondered if our man had ever had a kill order placed specifically on him. He looked a bit uncomfortable. ‘There’s been people that have been unhappy with me,’ he conceded.

  From everything I’d learned about Somalia, I was intrigued to know how he got into the country – presumably he didn’t just turn up at the airport with his suitcase and passport. He explained that the methods of entry varied: a four-by-four across the border, small planes or a small boat across from Yemen. So how difficult would it be, I wondered, for myself and a camera team to get onto the mainland?

  ‘Getting there,’ the spook explained, ‘is not your hardest or biggest problem. It’s what’s going to happen when you’re there. Word would spread quickly – a film crew turns up with a famous presenter. There’s a good chance you could become another asset. At the same time there’s a good chance you could upset a few severe people and you’ll never leave the place.’

  I could tell by the look on his face and the sound of his voice that he wasn’t exaggerating. ‘Because of the work you do,’ I said, ‘you travel to a lot of dangerous places. How would you rate this on a scale of one to ten?’

  ‘It’s certainly up there as one of the worst places in the world at this moment in time.’

  Our spook knew his onions, and I was more than happy to believe everything he told me about Somalia. More to the point, his information was backed up by the other investigations we undertook. There was no chance of the camera team and me getting any kind of insurance to go there, and no matter how hard we tried, we couldn’t find a fixer willing to set things up for us – not for any money. We tried to arrange to join a World Food Programme ship taking food aid into Mogadishu. Nothing doing. If we set foot on land, it was explained to us, we’d be shot. Everyone said the same thing: risk going there and we’d barely last a few hours. No matter who we asked, the reply was identical: stay away. Somalia is just too damn dangerous.

  It was clear that we couldn’t even think about venturing into Somalia and I had mixed feelings about that. Half of me was disappointed: I knew that searching for a Somali pirate out at sea would not be straightforward. Unlike some of the gang members I’d met in the past, who often had a drum to bang or just liked the idea of being on TV, these guys would have absolutely no reason to talk to me and would be distinctly camera shy. The other half of me – the more sensible side, I suppose – couldn’t help thinking, Thank fuck for that. I’d had a pretty exciting couple of years, got myself into some hairy situations, and I didn’t fancy rounding them off by becoming another dismal statistic of the Somali civil war.

  However, instead of setting foot on Somali soil, if we were to track down some pirates there was no getting away from the fact that we’d need to spend a good deal of time in Somali waters, and that, as anyone who had been reading or listening to the news over the past couple of months knew, would be no picnic. It was some comfort that when the Sirius Star had been taken, the pirates had chosen not to mistreat their prisoners, but we all knew that hostage situations could have a very different outcome. Somali pirates were armed, dangerous and desperate. It’s not a good combination.

  Dangerous it might be, but if I was going to meet any pirates it was clear that I couldn’t avoid these waters. Our investigation did not start there, however. It started in London, at the sleek offices of the International Maritime Bureau – ironically just metres from the former site of Execution Dock, where pirates, smugglers and mutineers were hanged. Their bodies were not removed from the gallows when they were dead; rather they were left swinging there until the tide of the Thames had covered their heads three times. The corpses of the worst criminals were then tarred to preserve them and taken to Graves Point at the mouth of the Thames. Here they were gibbeted – strung up – as a warning to other sailors of what might happen if they were tempted by a life of piracy. (One of history’s most famous pirates, Captain Kidd, had his body displayed there for three years.)

  Attitudes have changed somewhat in the couple of hundred years since Execution Dock was abolished in 1830. The IMB is a non-profit-making organization whose role is to combat maritime fraud and suppress piracy. They’ve got their work cut out. The IMB has links with Interpol and was instrumental in the creation of the IMB Piracy Reporting Centre in Kuala Lumpur. Before this organization was established in 1992, ships that had been hit by pirates had nowhere to turn as more often than not local law-enforcement agencies would simply ignore the fact that they even had a problem with piracy. Now, acts of piracy can be described to the Reporting Centre, and the result is an ongoing live database of incidents that warns shipping exactly where the current hot spots are. Anyone can read it on the Internet, and it’s a pretty eye-opening source of information.

  At the IMB’s headquarters I met Captain Mukundun, a mild-mannered but no-nonsense former sailor. I asked him if he had any idea how many pirates were currently operating in the Gulf of Aden. The figures were as bad as I expected. ‘We are told,’ Mukundun said, ‘that there are many hundreds of young Somalis seeking a career in piracy. It’s one of the most sought-after careers in a country where there is no proper economy.’

  I wanted to know, from the mouth of an expert, how violent these pirates were. Mukundun explained to me that they were very well armed with automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenade launchers (like I hadn’t seen enough of those over the past few months). ‘In trying to board the ships,’ the captain said, ‘they will use as much violence as they can.’

  Captain Mukundun’s words really brought it home to me that while this trip might not present the more immediate dangers of Helmand Province, it still had the potential to be perilous. And where most people who travel through the area go out of their way to avoid pirates, we intended to do the very opposite: to seek out these dangerous, unpredictable and often desperate individuals. If we were going to spend time around the Gulf of Aden, we would have to take some pretty serious precautions.

  For my previous travels I had been on what are known as Hostile Environment Courses. Generally run by experienced former members of the military, these courses teach you techniques that to some people might sound like common sense, but which you’d be glad you knew if you found yourself in trouble. They teach you what to do if your vehicle finds itself in a minefield. (Answer: get out of the back of the vehicle and walk away along the tracks that it’s made. That way, you know you’re not going to step on a pressure plate.) They teach you how to ascertain who has the most serious injuries if your car is involved in a crash. (Answer: check the pulses and breathing of the injured passengers.) They teach you whether or not to move a seriously injured person. (Answer: only if their life is going to be put at greater risk if you don’t. If you can keep them still, do. You really don’t want to move someone with, say, a punctured lung if you can help
it, but if there are bullets flying through the windscreen and he’s going to get hit in the head, get him the hell out of there.) They teach you how to make a makeshift neck brace out of a shirt or jacket, and how to make a tourniquet if someone is losing blood at a ferocious rate. They teach you how to identify anti-personnel mines and where the best place is to take cover; they give you the low-down on some common weapons and show you how they work. And the most important thing they teach you? The closer you get to the front, the more chance you have of getting shot…

  Like I say, all useful stuff in its way, and of course I’d spent time in a highly hostile land environment anyway, which teaches you more than you can ever learn from any training course. But being at sea is different from being in the desert. Not necessarily more dangerous, but different. There might not be any anti-personnel mines in the Gulf of Aden; but equally it’s difficult to take cover when you’re surrounded by miles of open ocean. We could take certain precautions – each member of the crew was issued with a tracking device, for example, and a means of alerting London if we ran into trouble – but our first trip in search of pirates still had the potential to be a very hazardous operation. If the pirates were willing to board a vessel the size of the Sirius Star, just where would they stop? What we needed was a bit of protection. A bit of muscle. We wanted to be on board a boat that even the pirates of Somalia wouldn’t consider raiding.

  And that was where HMS Northumberland came in.

  3. Action Stations