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The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Lisa Mullins: I’m Lisa Mullins and this is The World, a coproduction of the BBC World Service, PRI and WGBH in Boston.  The United Nations had planned to fly desperately needed aid to the Somali capital of Mogadishu today to help feed drought victims, but bureaucratic problems meant the planes couldn’t take off.  The UN declared a famine in two regions of Somalia just last week, and the crisis has brought new attention to a country that is essentially lawless. One artifact of that is the rise of piracy off Somalia’s coast.  Jay Bahadur spent considerable time there researching his new book, it’s called The Pirates of Somalia: Inside Their Hidden World.  In it he profiles a pirate leader known as Boyah.  Bahadur met him in a small town in the Somali region of Puntland.  Boyah exuded an air of superiority.

Jay Bahadur: Boyah was physically an absolutely gigantic specimen.  He was, I’m pretty tall, I’m abouat 6’5″ and Boyah had at least 2″-3″ on me.  But Boyah at our first meeting was completely contemptuous of me.  He very little looked in my direction and just sort of sat there grumbling and looking up at the sky, and complaining about how much time this was taking, the day was over, and so on.

Mullins: Great start for you, huh?

Bahadur: Yeah, he’s sort of the principle character in my book.  But he began in the early 1990s as a lobster fisherman in Eyl.  Eyl is a coastal town in Puntland that became kind of the epicenter of world piracy, the capital I guess you could say. And essentially what happened was foreign fishing came in and used steel pronged dragnets that really devastated the lobster habitats.  So, there’s many documented instances of foreign fishing running over local fishing gear, of shooting local fishermen, even one story I was told when I was in Eyl was a couple of lobster divers were actually swept up in a troller’s net and drowned.  There’s some really harsh depredations committed by foreign fishing.

Mullins: So tell us how that lead to the piracy that we’re seeing today.

Bahadur: Well, the reason that so much foreign fishing congregates around Somalia is essentially more or less the rest of the world has been fished out.  And so when you had foreign fishing that came in to coastal areas like Eyl it made it too dangerous for artisanal divers like Boyah to operate. So they essentially decided to start attacking these fishing ships that were coming into their territory.  And Boyah told me in 1995 he hijacked three South Korean fishing ships.

Mullins: So how reluctant was he to give you this kind of information?  And I wonder what were you able to find out from him, and what you weren’t?  I mean what part of the story is he not telling me?

Bahadur: It wasn’t just Boyah, but a lot of the pirates I felt were feeding me either their corrupted or just plain misinformation.  And one of the reasons for this is I was working for 1) with the government, right.  Working with the son of a man who was basically the head of their sub clan, and who was also the president of Puntland at the time. So, everything was being filtered to tailor to the ears of the president and his son.  So for example, Boyah back in an earlier interview claimed that 30% of all ransom money went to pay off local officials, and this was something I was very interested in.  So when I asked him this question with the president’s son translating for me, of course, he said no, no, no, no money has ever gone to any government official.

Mullins: You did manage to find out a lot about the pirate economy and how pirates divide up the ransoms that are parachuted directly onto the decks of ships.  And there’s one man who told you after the ransom has been divided each pirate has to throw his mobile phone into the ocean before he leaves the ship.

Bahadur: The reason why they toss their cell phones into the water was because they wanted to avoid anyone being able to setup an ambush for the other ones once the ransom came.  So, essentially they all took their money, they got to the shore, they dispersed or maybe stayed in small groups made up of their own family members, and made a mad dash for the capital city. And one kind of pirate insider I was interviewing told me that’s how you know when the ransom has come because you call them and none of their phones work because they’ve tossed them into the ocean.

Mullins: At the bottom of the ocean…  When do they decide and how to they decide to kill hostages?

Bahadur: There’s a recent report put out, a very accurate account of the 62 deaths that have occurred because of, indirectly or directly, because of pirate actions.  Seven of those deaths have been caused by pirates deciding to execute hostages.  One of those instances happened very recently in February when the four American yachters were killed. What happened is that the yacht was surrounded by four US warships and one of the pirates I guess panicked and fired an RPG at a US ship.  So they started loading, basically boarding troops in preparation for launching a rescue operation.  And then a small subset of the pirate group just panicked and shot two of the hostages.  When US forces heard the gunfire and started moving to board the ship the other two hostages were killed. This was a completely botched operation on all sides I think.  Generally though what you’re seeing is a lot more brutality in terms of torture, using them as human shields, tying them up, throwing them in freezers and so on.

Mullins: How did you manage to get out alive?  You were in the den.  You put yourself there.  You were around some very unsavory characters.  Why didn’t they take you hostage?

Bahadur: Well, it all comes down to the clan connections I had I think.  I was with the new government, the president of which is from the same sub clan as the pirates.  So essentially if they had done anything to me it would’ve been like a direct challenge to the ruling authority.  That being said, some of them were very skittish certainly when I showed up and accused me of being a CIA spy.  And when I came in with government troops actually we almost got into a fire fight with pirates. In those instances they were obviously very nervous that we were with the government, but to do something directly against me would’ve been kind of like declaring war on the ruling clan and obviously that was something they wanted to avoid.

Mullins: Jay Bahadur, thank you.

Bahadur: Oh, my pleasure.

Mullins: Jay Bahadur’s new book is called The Pirates of Somalia: Inside Their Hidden World.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

• Eight Somali pirates killed as South Korea rescues freighter crew

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The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Marco Werman: I’m Marco Werman.  This is The World.  Early this morning the South Korean navy launched a successful raid against pirates in the Arabian Sea.  Within five hours, 21 hostages had been rescued from a captured South Korean freighter, eight Somalian pirates had been killed, and five others captured. Many raids have been attempted against pirates who have hijacked ships, but few have been so successful.  James Holmes is a professor of strategy at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island.  He’s a former U.S. surface ware officer and a Desert Storm vet. Professor Holmes, are you surprised that the South Korean navy went so far from their home into the Arabian Sea to stage this rescue?

James Holmes: Actually, no I’m not.  The counter piracy mission in the Gulf of Aden has turned out to be really compelling for many governments not only throughout Europe and the west, but also in East Asia, plus Japan.  Japan has been a major player in the counter piracy mission rounding its Indian Ocean commitments.  

South Korea is obviously a major trading nation and a major flag state for a lot of shipping, so clearly the South Koreans have a stake in assuring the safety of shipping through those waters. It comes to no surprise to me that the South Koreans are there.  If it’s any surprise at all it’s that they waited as long as they did to join the mission.  South Korea had signed on about the middle of 2010.

Werman: Hm, what also is surprising though is that South Korea staged this rescue so quickly after that ship was captured, which was just last week.

Holmes: If you look at the difference in national contentions that have been involved in the counter piracy mission, there’s been a lot of debate and even some hand wringing over how to conduct these operations and then how to treat the pirates legally afterwards. But clearly, I would say this operation and the operation with the Maersk Alabama almost two years ago now would be the most forward leaning approaches to the problem of piracy off the Somali coast.

Werman: What did the South Koreans use in terms of people and weapons to take back the ship, the Samho Jewelry?

Holmes: Well, the details remain a little bit sketchy, but it was a special operations raid and apparently, as far as I know, the South Korean’s army is the leading institution for special operations in the South Korean military.  I do think the South Koreans have an army as well, but I do believe this was probably army special forces.  They had a destroyer nearby and they also had a Lynx helicopter that provided cover for these special forces troops as they boarded the vessel.

Werman: And the South Korean navy assisted them.  I mean, I gotta say it’s a little surprising to learn that South Korea even has a navy.  What scale of navy are we talking about?

Holmes: We’re talking about a small, but robust and indeed world class force.  And in fact, if you look at the South Korean force structure, one reason that the South Koreans have increased their military budget and also their naval budget is in order to procure warships outfitted with the combat system that represents the leading edge of technology in our own navy and also in the Japanese maritime self defense forces.  This is the state of the art system for air defense and for missile defense, and these other things that we hear so much about in Asia today.

Werman: So what do you take away from this episode?  I mean, is there something remarkable about how the South Koreans managed to take the ship back or is every piracy case different?

Holmes: Well, clearly, every piracy case is different.  I would salute the South Korean approach to this.  I’ve written just a little bit about counter piracy and have argued that it would be a mistake to carry the counter piracy operation ashore as the U.N. Security Council resolutions contemplate.  To me, you’re simply asking for trouble by going into Somalia with military forces.  Far better to do everything out at sea, essentially assume the strategic defensive; arm these merchants and essentially allow them to perform self help against pirates.  Because even with the size of the naval deployment, the Gulf of Aden is an enormous expanse.  It takes time for navy warships to respond to these things.  So to the extent that these merchant vessels can help themselves, they help all of us.

Werman: I mean it sounds like a victory, but maybe you can just put it in context for us.  Are there a lot of hijacked ships out there right now?

Holmes: Yeah, there’s a fair number of them.  They generally, pirates will go and seize them and bring them into Somali ports.  I don’t have the actual figures as far as number of ships and captives at this point, but it appears that piracy is cresting in recent months.  So yeah, it’s a significant impediment to shipping.  It’s not something that’s gonna bring shipping to a halt in those regions or anything like that, but it does impose costs on shippers and thus on the customers who buy goods that transit the waters.  It’s something that affects all of us indirectly.

Werman: James Holmes, a former U.S. navy surface warfare officer.  He now teaches strategy at the U.S. Navy War College in Newport Rhode Island.  James Holmes, thanks very much.

Holmes: Thanks, Marco.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

Read the Transcript
The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Lisa Mullins: The latest trove of Wikileaks dispatches sheds new light on a controversial arms shipment off the coast of east Africa.  Somali pirates stumbled on the weapons when they captured a Ukrainian freighter in September of 2008.  It was quite a haul.  The cache included 32 Soviet Arab battle tanks, anti aircraft guns, grenade launchers, and other infantry equipment. The cables made clear that the weapons were headed to southern Sudan, although at the time Ukraine and Kenya claimed that the weapons were for Kenya’s military. The New York Times’ Jeffery Gettlemen is in the Sudan capital of Khartoum.  He says that the leaked cables show Washington knew about the arms shipments, but looked the other way.

Jeffery Gettlemen: What the cables reveal is that the Kenyan government had been in consultation, the language used in the revealed cables, had been in consultation with the U.S. government to ship these tanks from Ukraine through Kenya, into south Sudan.  There isn’t an arms embargo on south Sudan.  There are different sanctions and embargoes on other parts of Sudan, but south Sudan is allowed to acquire some weapons.  This is part of a peace treaty that goes back a few years. And the south has been fighting for decades for independence against the north.  They won a semi-autonomous arrangement, and part of that arrangement was allowing them to build up their military.  So part of the deal was that they could then bring in weapons and begin to build up a professional military force. However, they’re supposed to disclose exactly what they’re bringing in.  And that’s what this arrangement through Kenya came to be as circumventing.

Mullins: And why did it have to be a secret operation though? As you say there was no arms embargo against weaponry in southern Sudan.

Gettlemen: That’s a good question.  I think a part of it is maybe they didn’t want anybody know they were building this sizable of a force.  There’s also questions about corruption and kickbacks, and maybe by bringing in the arms secretly, nobody knew exactly how much they were paying, possibly there were over payments.  You never know once, it’s not transparent how this government is being spent.

Mullins: Jeffery, clarify what the United States’ role was in this.  And this is under the Bush administration.

Gettlemen: The United States in 2005 helped broker a peace treaty between north and south Sudan.  There had been a civil war in Sudan for decades, going back to the ’60s.  It was very similar to what happened in Darfur, but actually worse. So in 2005 the United States and some other international players brought the two sides together and said enough, let’s have a peace treaty.  They told northern Sudan you have to grant the south some type of semi autonomy, and you have to allow them to be independent if that’s their choice. Now next month in January they’re finally gonna have this historic moment where they’re going to vote for succession from the north.  And it looks like that’s going to happen. But the upshot is that the United States knew that the south was circumventing this very peace treaty that the United States brokered.  And at the same time, the United States was trying to come across as a peace maker between north and south.  They’re still doing that.  Right now the special envoy of the Obama administration is in Sudan, where I am, and he is negotiating with both sides trying to make sure this referendum goes off okay. So that’s why these cables are interesting because it could be a setback to that effort because it puts the U.S. back in the camp of looking like it blindly sided with the south at the expense of the north, and that’s what the issue is right now.

Mullins: All right, Jeffery Gettlemen, the New York Times correspondent speaking to us from Khartoum, Sudan.  Jeffery, thank you very much.

Gettlemen: Thank you.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

A Somali refugee helped in the release of the British couple (Photo: 1st Class Edward L. Pruitt, US Navy)

Rachel and Paul Chandler spoke after their release of the horrors of their 388 days of incaptivity. Rachel Chandler said their capture by Somali pirates was terrifying enough. But the pirates would inflict more terror on the couple in the months to come. She says it was traumatic when the pirates separated she and her husband and they were distraught and frightened. She says when they refused to be separated, they were beaten.

Paul Chandler said they knew little of the efforts to free them , until they were finally released. He says it was confirmed that Somalis all over the world were helping them. And Chandler thanked the Somali government for what he called, “bringing things to fruition.”

What the Chandlers didn’t say was that the man who took them to safety that day was indeed a Somalian. He was Dahir Kadiye, a refugee who lives in London and is from the same village as the pirates. Kadiye says he believed he might have influence if he got involved in the hostage negotiations because he was ashamed as a Somali and for every other Somali person that Somali pirates were involved.

The talks went on for months between intermediaries.Kadiye says he kept repeating the same message, “we told them these people are not sheep. These people are not vessel cargo. They are human beings. They are elders, British elders so there was no reason to keep them any longer.”

Finally, two weeks ago, Kadiye drove to a prearranged meeting point. But bandits stopped his car and threatened to kill him. It took another ten hours before he was finally taken to meet the Chandlers at the bush camp where they were being held. Kadiye says he had to convince the couple that he wasn’t another pirate and showed them his British passport.

“I told them, I was from east London and I came here to release you. And from now on, we will be free and you will be free and we will go home together. We hugged each other and cried.”

There are reports that ransom money was paid. But Kadiye says he knows nothing about any funds changing hands. And he says he wasn’t paid a cent for his work to free the couple.

Kadiye is back in London now and he hopes international aid will flow into Somalia so young men there will no longer turn to piracy.
Download MP3 (Photo: 1st Class Edward L. Pruitt, US Navy)

Somali pirates release British couple (Photo: 1st Class Edward L. Pruitt, US Navy)

• Video: Rachel and Paul Chandler speak to the BBC’s Andrew Harding in Mogadishu
• Paul and Rachel Chandler are Free

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