The Pirates of Somalia: Inside Their Hidden World

by Jay Bahadur

Prev. ed.: Pirates of Somalia. New York: Pantheon Books, 2011.

Genres: Nonfiction, Africa, History, Somalia, Pirates, Politics, Crime

300 pages, Hardcover

First published July 1, 2011

Reviews

[Petra X · Rating 3 out of 5]

1. It is said that the pirates are the lesser of two evils as they guard the coast from illegal factory ships from Korea and China.

2. The pirates aren't doing it out of altruism, they are doing it to make money for themselves alone.

3. Should they fail to pay off the right authorities or those who want to find out just who is doing what, they are going to get shopped and stopped and then another set of pirates will take over that patch, so plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

4. It is undoubtedly true that if Somalia wasn't so poor, that people wouldn't need to become pirates or to be one of their many support services. It is equally true that those who think they can make bigger and faster bucks will become criminals in any economy, no matter that they aren't poor and their country is rich.

5. Piracy will only disappear from Somalia when the authorities want it to. Since they haven't got any money, the best, perhaps only way, of getting them to want to is to give them vast sums of financial aid that will by corruption filter down to the first law-enforcement level above the pirates and be a better and more regular source of income than the pirates' bribes.

6. Piracy is more or less irrelevant to the average Somalian who isn't a criminal and doesn't benefit or lose out in any way from it. So there is no real will to stop it because the only people harmed are foreigners from which they derive no benefit either.
_____________

Notes on reading the book I think I understand it now. If you accept that piracy is an unacceptable term to the government, because it is illegal, then if they are called coastguards, they are no longer scum, criminals, but praiseworthy individuals doing their duty. So therefore if the country's biggest (and most boastful) pirate who headed 20 pirate organisations now says he is 'reformed' and a coastguard protecting the country from illegal fishing vessels, everyone is happy. Except the shipping companies who couldn't care less what name you call the people with AK-47s boarding them and demanding ransoms.

It also appeases the people of the country who quite likely suffer from mass cognitive dissonance (and possibly khat addiction, which is widespread) who want to believe that the outside world hates them and says they are international criminals as pirates, when all they are trying to do is to protect their coastline from marauding fishing vessels. They especially want to believe that Japan and Korea and are stealing all their fish and therefore deserve "punishing" in the way that only pirates can.

However, it is not unlikely that Japan and Korea are illegally fishing there and have bully-boy tactics. Here in the Caribbean we have had the experience of Japanese fishing ships who do not bother even trying to obtain licences and have not stopped for our marine police to board them as they would all unknown ships passing so close to shore without checking in. However our marine police are not armed with AK-47s or anything else.
__________





Am I confused or is the wool being pulled over the author's eyes so he can't clearly explain the difference between a pirate who boards ships in the Gulf of Aden in order to extort money from them, or coastguard who are protecting their coastline from illegal fishing vessels? You'd think that a container ship or tanker would look very different from a fishing vessel wouldn't you? But...

"Sometimes the commercial vessels," he continued, "have the same names as the illegal fishing ships. They are owned by the same same companies... so that makes it legal to capture those commercial ships as well."

I wonder if there is a single shipping company in the entire world that owns both commercial and fishing vessels and calls them by the same names?

The book is repetitive, unclear, stinks of corruption, cheap guns and a generalised expensive addiction to the drug khat by the coastguard/pirates and associated people they may need to pay off.

What is interesting is that Shabaab, the local Islamist group, might threaten pirates/coastguards with death for their anti-Islamic activities, but they aren't above taking a large cut of the ransom money. They cannot indulge in piracy themselves because although there is no law in most countries forbidding the paying of ransom money, many countries have a law against paying that to terrorist organisations (depending on your definition of 'terrorist' which much like 'pirate' or 'coastguard' depends on whether you are for 'em or against 'em, no matter what they do).

I didn't finish the book. The characters in it were despicable and the book was so repetitive that there came a point when it was more of the same of the same of the same. The book wasn't going anywhere so I went. Bye.

[Ina Cawl]

As somalian individual i can say this
1-most somalian people are not pirates
2-pirates act like our national coast guards who guards our national coasts from illegal fisherman who comes from china and north korea
3-somalia is not all in war the northern parts of the country have relative peace

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Unfortunately, a monotone narrator made for a dull audiobook experience but the content was fascinating. Tons of historical, environmental, social, economic, and political factors at play when it comes to piracy. There is a function for every behavior...even being a pirate. It's called survival.

My favorite quote:
"Imprisoning them was like trying to use a bailer to drain the ocean: for each pirate captured by the authorities, there were dozens of desperate young men on shore ready to rush in and fill the void. At its very core, the solution to piracy lies in basic economic principles: the cost-benefit analysis for these men must be shifted to favour more legitimate pursuits. Naval battle fleets can do their part to boost the 'cost' side of piracy, but without the alternate 'benefit' of meaningful occupations on land, no permanent resolution is possible."

[Dianne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Somalia is one of the most dangerous countries in the world yet this young journalist chose to begin his career by investigating the piracy that has been occurring in the Puntland region of Somalia during the 21st century. He interviewed pirates and the leaders of pirate gangs as well as government officials who were making an effort to end piracy. He also travelled to Europe to interview hostages who had returned to their homelands after many months spent captured at sea. The ransoms being paid to pirates continue to grow in size. Although there have been only a few fatalities in these kidnappings, those crew members who have been hostages refuse to work on ships that sail the Somalian coast. This is a very interesting book.

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Before I start in on the contents of this fascinating book, I would just like to point out that (and pardon my language) this author has balls of steel. A few months fresh out of college, trying to break into journalism, he decides what better way to do that than to live in the heart of 'pirateville' - Puntland, and interview the headline making Somali pirates. Honestly, that simply blows my mind.

Bahadur combines the history of Somalia with interesting chapters on life in Somalia, and it's all threaded together with his fascinating interviews. What does it take to have a piracy problem? Apparently a lot of unemployed men with absolutely nothing to do besides chew khat (and by the way, his chapter on khat was pretty hilarious... feed a goat some khat and see what happens). I really appreciated his careful research into the funding for the pirates, and just as interestingly, he ran the numbers on the victims' side. One conclusion he drew that has stuck with me is that the 'piracy industry' is worth not more than $90 million, but the international community spends between $1-$1.5 billion each year combatting it. And if you look at the numbers of ships taken and lives lost in the history of modern Somali piracy, it's not as many as the media would have you believe. There are far more homicides and car jackings in the United States but that doesn't make international headlines. And what do the pirates do with the money they receive as ransom payments? They split some of it up between everyone involved and then 10 to 30 percent of it goes to charity. Our international media has us thinking they are building mansions with the money and that simply isn't the case.

Bahadur spends time debunking myths both on our side and the pirates side (apparently piracy isn't really a result of the encroachment of foreign fishing vessels into Somali waters) and he examines the results of the communist experiment in Somalia. Nomads were relocated to coasts and encouraged to start fishing enterprises, which they did, but then the 2004 tsunami struck and wiped out 75% of the boats and there was not capital left to repair and replace them. This created a downward spiral for the people, and after the tsunami piracy started to heat up because there was no other source of income.

This book is particularly timely. As I was reading it a couple was abducted from Lamu island in Kenya, the husband murdered, and the wife is being held for ransom. The fact that these pirates (and I'm not apologizing for their atrocious behavior) have ventured into foreign territory speaks volumes about the plight of the people in Somalia right now as they face continual war over their failed state and a devastating drought. I do not think that deploying more navy ships to the Gulf of Aden will eradicate the piracy problem. The only real lasting fix will be examining the causes of piracy and providing more help to the people of Somalia.

[Phil · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a piece of investigative journalism, TPOS really shines. Written when the Pirates of Somalia were in their heyday circa 2010, Bahadur goes beneath the alarmist headlines of news outlets and seeks to find out who these people are and why they are doing what they do. Bahadur spent several months in Somalia meeting people, and even some 'ring leaders' of the pirates. He also interviewed several politicians in Puntland-- a semi autonomous nation within the Northern borders of Somalia where the pirates operated openly.

What makes this volume shine is Bahadur's crisp prose and the sense of uncovering what is really going on; it is almost like unraveling a mystery. Bahadur traces the origins of Somali piracy to the headline grabbing era of 2008 when they started capturing ships far away from the Somali coast. While Bahadur often casts a sympathetic gaze toward the pirates, especially their rather humble origins, he argues that the pirates have been subsumed by what amounts to organized crime figures who get the lion's share of any booty. A very thoughtful, nuanced account to be sure. If you ever had an interest in modern maritime piracy, this is a must read!

[Osama · Rating 3 out of 5]

يتناول الكتاب تفاصيل لزيارة صحفي أمريكي للبحث عن أسرار قرصنة السفن في سواحل الصومال وخليج عدن. يقدم المؤلف وصفا دقيقا للحياة في الصومال ومعاناة شعبها من الحروب والتعصب القبلي وكذلك الصراعات السياسية بين أطرافها المتنازعة على الموارد المحدودة. ويقدم الكتاب مجموعة من الأسباب التي أدت لظاهرة القرصنة ومنها انتهاك سفن الصيد للسواحل الصومالية والجشع في الصيد الجائر، و عدم وجود القوانين العالمية المحددة للتعامل مع القراصنة وخصوصا في غياب السلطة القوية والموحدة في الصومال، والأهم من استعداد المجتمع الدولي لدفع مئات الملايين من الدولارات لحماية السواحل عسكريا بدلا من توظيف هذه الأموال لتطوير واستقرار الصومال والذي سيؤدي لحل المشكلة من جذورها.

[John Devlin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well written and never clunky, POS tells you everything you want to know about Somalia, their pirates, and the economics that surrounded this desperate David vs Goliath fight …where David was no saint

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

My Review: In The Pirates of Somalia Jay Bahadur talks about his investigative mission into the heart of the Somali pirate network as if he were recounting a casual family vacation to a welcoming foreign countryside. Indeed, under circumstances that would prompt a fairly rapid and instinctual fleeing response from most people, Bahadur, seemingly unfazed, assumes a seat on the dirin and enjoys a relaxed day of Khat (the local drug of choice) and tea consumption with internationally identified criminals.

Apart from the blatant disregard for his own personal safety, Bahadur exposes the true world (or one version of the truth) of the Somali pirates; successfully debunking many of the pillage, plunder, and buried booty myths that captivate the minds of thousands of Americans. Who knew that Johnny Depp and Captain Hook could get it so wrong?

Truly, and more poignantly, this is a story of a nation torn apart and a peoples thrown into chaos. It is unsurprising that, in the face of devastating poverty and constant government upheaval, piracy has become a relatively sane and stable option for many young men in Somalia. Jay Bahadur tells their story- and the story of our collective reactions to this budding maritime crime- from an objective standpoint. He approaches the Somali pirates and their predicaments with an open (albeit Khat-clouded) mind. The sheer amount of information in this short book is a testament to Bahadur’s incredible ability to turn what could have been a lengthy textbook into a readable, fascinating non-fiction novel of sorts.

[Glendora · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am impressed.

First, because Bahadur is so young (though I think only someone young and naive would have had the guts to put themselves in this position in the first place), I did not expect it to be such a credible journalistic undertaking. He struck just the right balance of story-telling and researched fact.

And second, I certainly did not anticipate such a carefully crafted prose from someone of his inexperience. Bahadur is an exceptional writer, and if he doesn't get the healthy dose of fear that usually comes with age and world-awareness, I'm sure he'll come through with many more investigative journeys to share with us in his lifetime.

Worth the read -- and this from someone who is nearly incapable of reading anything but fiction for pleasure.

[Spicy T AKA Mr. Tea · Rating 3 out of 5]

So this is the fourth book on Somali pirates that I have read and i have to say that this was one of the better ones. The author gets to interview 4 or 5 pirates, a few crew from a hijacked ship, locals--it just felt much more realistic. He was also attempting to debunk some of the myths about the pirates through his own observations and analysis. A lot of it was rehashing other history/attempted solutions that always seem to be apart of journalistic accounts like this. He pulls back further from the tree and is able to see more of the forest, but still, maybe not back far enough.

One of my problems with books like this is that the journalist/author is supposed to offer some kind of solution to the problems they've encountered. Up to this point, in books past, the solutions have relied on punishment and military solutions. While Bahadur is different in that he seeks to experience the truth from more of a Somali perspective, his "solutions" are some of the same that come from the military/punishment perspective.

For instance:
1. fund a Puntland police force; 2. upgrade and expand prisons across Puntland; 3. create a network of snitches and local informers through substantial bribes; his 4th point is to clamp down on illegal fishing and make it public to gain trust of the local population and finally passive security measures on ships.

The first three points simply expand the global prison industrial complex--they are punitive measures--not measures that actually address root causes of why piracy is seen as a viable financial solution. Right now there appears to be nothing sustainable and nothing that can offer a living that would be better than risking your life to hijack a ship and possibly end up dead, wounded, or arrested.

This is what i find so distasteful in books like this. Granted, he wasn't advocating invasion nor a violent response--although other navies have condoned such action with little to no fanfare--but it seems the only way to solve these issues is to lock away the surplus population and turn everyone against each other. It just really brought the whole book down for me.

Certainly, these are complex issues and while Bahadur does see this and has a grudging respect for the pirates, the critical questioning of how capitalism creates these vast inequalities and the potential solution of sharing resources/redistributing wealth in a global context never comes to the surface.

I did like his breakdown of the cost of a pirate mission where Bahadur debunks the myth that a Somali teenager can do a hijacking and become an overnight millionaire. Through his calculations and interviews, he figures the pyramid scheme (with financiers at the top and holders/assistant cooks at the bottom) the average a pirates makes per hour is somewhere between $11/hr to $5/hr depending on where you were in the pyramid--barely a living wage in western countries at the top and less than minimum wage at the bottom.

By far the best I've read thus far, but also not a radical take on the subject--and his punitive solutions were disappointing.

[Daniel Roy · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Pirates of Somalia is the most thorough investigation I've read into the world of Somalian pirates, but it still fails to truly dig deep enough. It's not a bad book by any means, but given how fascinating its subject matter is, I found myself wishing over and over that the author was more adept at exploring this world and connecting with its various actors.

The book is less about the true inner workings of the Somalian pirates than about the economics and politics of piracy. The resulting book is still fascinating, but less than it could have been for a book written by someone with direct access.

The author, Jay Bahadur, must be commended for the incredible temerity it took to get this book done: as the story goes, he was living with his parents when he took off on his first self-appointed journalism appointment, shed light on the lives of Somalian pirates. Unfortunately, I have to say, some of that inexperience shows in the resulting book.

For one thing, Bahadur lacks empathy for his subjects, and this shows in the distance the pirates afford him. They never open themselves to him, no matter how many sessions of khat-chewing he shares with them. Bahadur is pretty clear, for instance, that he doesn't believe the standard explanation of piracy being in reaction to illegal fishing in Somalian waters, and his subjects must have felt this. It's not that I'd expect him to become an apologist for their crimes, but it's clear from his many interactions with pirates that he failed to connect with them in a way that would have enriched this book.

Likewise, Bahadur is disinterested in Somalia beyond its pirate gangs. He never sets out to talk to regular Somalians about their attitude to piracy and how this affects their lives, and this has the unfortunate side-effect of making it seem as if the whole of Somalia is one big failed country overrun by khat-addicted thugs. It also means the book fails to even hint at a root cause of piracy.

The resulting book is still interesting, especially if you're interested in the subject matter, but I felt myself often yearning for the sensibility of Rory Stewart, with his intimate and empathic look at Afghanistan in The Places in Between. Because of this, as much as I admire Bahadur's guts and determination in traveling to Puntland to meet Somalian pirates, his book ends up as a missed opportunity, by and large.

[Tariq Mahmood · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another book by an investigative Canadian journalist, this time analysing the piracy phenomenon in Somalia and Puntaland. I wanted to gain understanding of piracy in the 21st century and this book pretty much sated my desire with a very objective and humanistic portrayal of Somalian piracy without the gloss of large media news corporations like Al-Jazeera or CNN. The author found no pirate pleasure domes and Islamic militancy, instead discovered the pirates living in shacks and Islam (for once) actually renouncing piracy, thus making pirates undesired individuals among the local community. For me the most interesting realisation was the way Islam probably worked in helping cultivate vile practices like piracy among African cultures before the West took over.
Jay's pirate comes across as a mildly frightened, impoverished, rebellious, frustrated yet courageous with a fair bit of usual romance attached to the image.
I found this book very original and believable and most of all a welcome respite from mainstream media bullshit propaganda which is frankly becoming impossible to ignore.

[SD · Rating 3 out of 5]

Honestly pretty fascinating. Knew nothing going in - so learnt a lot . 3.5 ⭐️

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

The fact that this book exists is amazing enough. Then, it is an interesting narrative of the world inhabited by actual 21st-Century pirates. Jay Bahadur goes damn-near gonzo, dropping himself into the middle of the Somali pirate world, searching for (almost hunting) and finding pirates to talk to, and comparing the stories he discovers with those of politicians, businessmen, paramilitary or state police squads (spoiler alert: those lines often blur) and plenty of other people to talk to in the pursuit of putting together the reasons why, and how, the pirates do what they do. The answers he finds are deeper and more complex than anything you thought you knew.

Desert Robin Hoods to some; international criminal thugs to others, the Somali Pirates are an interesting breed of modern law breakers. Ostensibly created to rid their seas of illegal fisherman, pirate bands began hunting fishing vessels in the early 1990s. Scoring larger "sums" either through cargo or ransom in the years following, as their country fell into civil war and anarchy around them and any measure of centralized law enforcement disintegrated, the pirates (or "Coast Guards") grew emboldened. Having few other opportunities to make a living, more young men fell under the allure of piracy until the waters from the Western Indian Ocean up into the Gulf of Aden became a maritime gauntlet for ships large and small alike.

Where Bahadur really succeeds is in his intrepid pursuit of first-hand accounts, most notably pirate leaders themselves. The first half of the book is comprised of introductions to a few main players, along with an overview of Somali history up until the attention-grabbing attacks of the late 00's. We are also led through the history of the local and international responses to (or sometimes lack thereof) pirate attacks, and the reasons for each. The water gets muddy in a hurry, and stays that way. The second half of the book moves a little bit quicker as it gets into more detail of some actual attacks and the subsequent holding of ships and hostages. Always leaving room for data to back up, or ven displace, his observations, Bahadur at one point breaks down the costs and returns of an operation that attacks and holds a ship for 70+ days, finding that the numbers end up greatly conflicting with those reported by the pirates. Turns out these guys make a lot less money than gets reported.

While never outright depicting the pirates as truly sympathetic characters - indeed the author runs into some pretty bad dudes at one point - Bahadur is fair and reasonable enough to present them in a measured, respectful manner that allows the reader an inside look into why they do what they do. He never strays into a clinical study and instead meets them on their terms, sometimes chewing khat with them for days before the questions start, just to gain trust. He gets people to truly open up to him. That their tales are often confusing and contradictory represents the complexity of a problem like piracy that blooms out of a broken state nestled on the corner of one of the most important trade neighborhoods in the world.

This book is truly a look inside what is otherwise, even to this student of Africa, an opaque world. It's good, intrepid, fearless (well that's not true; Bahadur admits to being pretty freaked out at times, betraying his own humanity) and data-supported journalism. And it reminds up that the people in those boats are human, too.

[Bob Newman · Rating 4 out of 5]

"it isn't, it isn't a glorious thing...."

Jay Bahadur took his life in his hands and went to interview the pirates of Somalia, the ones who hijack ships in a vast area off the coasts of East Africa and Arabia. But though he may not have thought of this himself, it seemed to me that his life resembled theirs in some way, the main difference being that his activities were legal, while theirs were illegal. He didn't like his life and so resolved to do something "completely different". He forsook writing dull reports and going to journalism school and instead, risked his life in a mad adventure designed to propel him into the ranks of the established journalists. It worked. (Though I think journalism school might have given him some better organizing skills in his writing.) The young pirates operating from such ports as Eyl, Garacad, Hobyo, and Harardheere on the long, mostly barren Somali coastline also risk their lives to hijack a commercial ship and bring it back to port. Some of them didn't even bring enough fuel to return to port if their venture proved unsuccessful. They had very few other options if they ever wanted to "be somebody", if they ever aspired to get a car, a house, a bride, or a regular supply of khat (qat), the ubiquitous drug of choice in Somalia and Yemen. Risk and adventure to achieve your life's goals---both Bahadur and the pirates took the challenge, but I'd say the author was ultimately more successful.

While I won't say this is the best-organized book I've ever read, it certainly is interesting. Bahadur (which by the way, means `brave' in Hindi and Nepali) lived up to his name. He befriended some top pirates, didn't chicken out when people got nasty, and chewed khat with everyone. He gleaned information about methods and finance of piracy, about distribution of ransom money, about the `government' of Puntland, the breakaway section of Somalia that is home to most pirates, and even--from some Romanian mariners--what it felt like to be a captive. He found that while illegal fishing by Asian and European trawlers off the unpatrolled coast of Somalia might have triggered piracy, the whole thing had gone a lot further by 2008, when any commercial ship from any nation became a target for the well-armed, GPS toting pirates. Somalia, the most failed of all the failed states of this world, hardly existed by the time the author got there. I think a bit more about this aspect of the situation would have been helpful, but the reader will definitely get the feeling of what it was like. Though both the provisional government of Somalia and warlike Islamic groups condemn piracy, they haven't been able to do much about it. The leaders often have pirate relatives and ex-pirates become coast guards or ex-coast guards become pirates ! There aren't enough jails to hold even the ones that get caught. If you'd like more details, I suggest you get a copy of THE PIRATES OF SOMALIA. Whether the pirates disappear or going there becomes too risky, I don't think there are going to be many other books on the subject.

[M.J. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bahadur’s “The Pirates of Somalia”, an investigative take on piracy off the coast of Somalia from the 2000s into the early days of the 2010s, is entertaining and manages to carry the right balance of humanity and skepticism about the people at the centre of his book, but what it has in breadth it can sometimes lack in depth.

Late in the book, Bahadur mentions Sudir Ventakesh’s anthropological work on the crack gang of a Chicago tenement when discussing the surprisingly low payoff (relative to the risk) of the low-level operatives within pirate organizations. This seemed serendipitous to me, because I had been thinking how much I had wanted this to have greater anthropological elements like Ventakesh’s “Gang Leader for A Day” (Bahadur references the chapter in “Freakonomics”, unfortunately, rather than Ventakesh’s own book). In many respects this was never an option: while Ventakesh seemed to stumble into his opportunity to be embedded within a Chicago street gang, Bahadur is actively rebuffed and his naïve persistence comes at greater personal risk (as his afterword makes clear with the abduction of another journalist not long after his departure). Even so, a bit more analysis of the incentives, local context and the organization structure would have been appreciated.

Written in the easy-to-read pop journalism style common to books of this type, it is easy to say the book succeeds in what it sets out to do. Like the author himself, the reader will likely find the lack of access frustrating and have not insignificant doubts about the surrounding cast of characters as the book drifts between an expanded long-form reporting piece and a travelogue in one of the least sought after vacation spots in the world. It paints a portrait of the Somali pirates and their world that has far more to it than was seen in the brief news clips at the height of the piracy crisis, but the palette provided to the author is itself limited.

[Chris · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is awful and I cannot recommend it. The choice of narrator was poor and he was horrible and read as if he was just citing statistics from an economics text book.

I looked up Jay Bahadur and see he works for the UN and that is part of the problem from my perspective and that is he has bought into the victim mentality of the pirates and he sympathizes with them.

At one point he argues that having armed crew or security on board merchant vessels is a bad idea for insurance and reinsurance reasons and that water cannons and high frequency megaphones are a better deterrent. Immediately after this he tells the story of a ship that was overtaken by pirates because their water cannons and high frequency megaphones did not deter the pirates. Go figure.

Later in the book he compares the pirates to bank robbers from a movie that the audience cheers for, the kind of robbers that don’t shoot their hostages, they just rob the bank and leave peacefully.

Jay, people not movie audiences do not cheer for bank robbers nor pirates!

This book is horrible and I sped it up to 1.75 speed to get through it faster and even started and finished another horrible book before returning to finish this one.

[Andy Chu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well researched and interesting... this guy definitely made something of a name for himself. He went to Somalia via the Ukraine multiple times and chewed khat with tons of pirates. The pictures of huge cargo ships sitting off of barren coastlines in Somalia are quite striking.

They were clearly trying to convince him that piracy is over in Somalia. There's evidence of it changing in response to military/diplomatic pressure, but it doesn't show signs of going away.

He draws an analogy the crack dealers in Freakonomics, where the lower rungs of pirates basically do an extremely dangerous job for very little pay, in hopes of achieving some status. They go out on a tiny boat into the Indian ocean with not enough fuel to get back -- they have to hijack a ship and use its fuel in order to get back.

I read a NY Times magazine article about a retired British couple who were held for over a year in Somalia, which piqued my interest. What a nightmare... and awkward asking your extended family to hand over their entire life savings to save your life.

[Fiona · Rating 4 out of 5]

A non fiction exposé of modern piracy around Somalia. It was published in 2011 so it´s history now, not current affairs. Interesting.

The author visits Somalia several times over a period of 6 months to learn everything possible about piracy. He met some of the original pirates Boyan and Mommon. He asked if he could board the MV Victoria, a German-owned cargo ship that was hijacked and sitting off the coast of Somalia. However, the gang members on land refused his request thinking that he was CIA. He did manage to talk to two of the crew members after their release when they returned to their home in Romania.

This was a very thorough exposé of piracy from their justification (illegal fishing from non-Somalis) to the costs incurred in hijacking and to response by foreign navies and courts.

I found this book fascinating. In fact, I wouldn't mind traveling to Somalia one day - when there is no more piracy or crime.

[Ray · Rating 3 out of 5]

"The Pirates of Somalia" provides insights into the men who turned to piracy in the failed state of Somalia. Journalist Jay Bahadur spent months living among the people of Somalia, including the leaders of pirate groups, and explains the origins of piracy, how the acts are carried out, the reaction of shippers and affected nations, and describes the lives of the pirates. The answers are far from the images we might have in our minds from stories of pirates of the Caribbean.

There is much to learn from the book, including how the Country is divided, the problems of leadership, and some (unlikely) ways to discourage or eliminate the problem.

[Josh · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Pirates of Somalia (2011) is an interesting and enjoyable look at modern piracy in the Horn of Africa. The author went to Somalia, living with and traveling among the locals for several weeks, a colorful experience that most writers are unable to match. His narrative employs many effective components, including interviews with former pirates and criminal operatives, historical records of Somalia’s recent past, statistics and news reports, descriptions of the failed state’s warring regions, political theories, and an engaging personal account of his journey.

[AJ Payne · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this to be a pretty decent journalistic take on the pirates of Somalia. The journalistic view makes it easy and entertaining to read, but don’t expect this to be an exhaustive look at piracy in Somalia. But for what it was, I thought it was quite good. The author included some history, statistics, and other data to improve the narrative and add some context. I also liked the layout of the book as it went from the beginnings of the piracy movement and followed certain cases through.

I would recommend this one as a primer for the lay reader on piracy off the Horn of Africa!

[Marcus · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's impressive that someone had the cojones to go over to Somalia and interview these guys, and it was nice learning some about the geo-political system of the "country," in the end though, it felt like the book could have been condensed to an article without losing too much. It turns out that the Somali pirates really aren't that interesting when it comes down to it. They hijack ships and use drugs a lot. I'm bailing on this one after about 1/4 of the book read and skimming bits of the rest.

[Michelle Shephard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Impressive. And glad he made it out to tell the tale. He had luck on his side and some great contacts. Here's an edited Q&A I did with him for the Star: http://www.thestar.com/news/world/art....

[Lauren H · Rating 5 out of 5]

An incredibly interesting glimpse into the realities of the Somali pirates as well as a more indirect look at Somali culture. Sort of depressing yet informed analysis of the future not only of the pirate profession but of Somalia in general.

[Gregg · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was ok and provided some insight into Somali pirates. However, piracy has become much less of a problem and the solutions proposed have not been enacted. Being wrong on an area in which you are allegedly an expert drops you 1 to 2 stars automatically.

[Dennis Delbarone · Rating 1 out of 5]

Got half way through it and quit. I can't believe he actually made pirates boring.

[Glenn Robinson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating book on the Somalian Pirates. Eye-witness account by the writer of the culture of piracy, the failed-state status of Somalia and the quazi-independent states of Puntland and Somalialand.

[Kevin Tracy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such an interesting book and how the author went about getting the material to make it.