In Somali Civil War, Both Sides Embrace Pirates
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HOBYO, Somalia -- Ismail Haji Noor, a local government official, recently arrived in this notorious pirate den with a simple message: we need your help.
With the Shabab militant group sweeping across Somalia and the American-backed central government teetering on life support, Mr. Noor stood on a beach flanked by dozens of pirate gunmen, two hijacked ships over his shoulder, and announced, "From now on we'll be working together."
He hugged several well-known pirate bosses and called them "brother" and later explained that while he saw the pirates as criminals and eventually wanted to rehabilitate them, right now the Shabab were a much graver threat.
"Squished between the two, we have to become friends with the pirates," Mr. Noor said. "Actually, this is a great opportunity."
For years, Somalia's heavily armed pirate gangs seemed content to rob and hijack on the high seas and not get sucked into the messy civil war on land. Now, that may be changing, and the pirates are taking sides -- both sides.
While local government officials in Hobyo have deputized pirate gangs to ring off coastal villages and block out the Shabab, down the beach in Xarardheere, another pirate lair, elders said that other pirates recently agreed to split their ransoms with the Shabab and Hizbul Islam, another Islamist insurgent group.
The militant Islamists had originally vowed to shut down piracy in Xarardheere, claiming it was unholy, but apparently the money was too good. This seems to be beginning of the West's worst Somali nightmare, with two of the country's biggest growth industries -- piracy and Islamist radicalism -- joining hands.
Somalia's pirates are famous opportunists -- "we just want the money" is their mantra -- so it is not clear how long these new alliances of convenience will last. But clan leaders along Somalia's coast say that something different is in the salty air and that the pirates are getting more ambitious, shrewdly reinvesting their booty in heavy weapons and land-based militias, and now it may be impossible for such a large armed force -- the pirates number thousands of men -- to stay on the sidelines.
"You can't ignore the pirates anymore," said Mohamed Aden, a clan leader in central Somalia. "They're getting more and more muscle. They used to invest their money in just boats and going out to sea but now they're building up their military side."
First Published September 2, 2010 2:01 am
