• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 882 0

the expenditures of those on leave), the expense sheet for Computer’s operation might have totalled $230,000, as in Table 4. Even allowing for additional discretionary expenses of $50,000 on top of this already liberal estimate, we still fall almost halfway short of Hersi’s $500,000 figure. One explanation is that Hersi’s estimate was simply a baseless guess. But his frequent repetition of the figure suggests otherwise; perhaps $500,000 was the “official figure” bandied about in casual conversation by members of the gang.

Recalling that operating expenses were subtracted directly from Computer’s 50 per cent share of the ransom, is it possible that the boss was exaggerating his contribution in order to justify his lion’s share? Only Computer and the group’s accountant are likely to have had an accurate knowledge of its financial structure. In light of the average pirate’s lack of mathematical skills, a budget inflation of 100 per cent would hardly be too big an accounting glitch to put over on the group’s lower-ranked members.

* * *

Computer had good reason to conceal the lucrative nature of his own payout. The necessary start-up capital—which went towards the purchase of a ten-to-twelve-metre boat, two outboard motors, weapons, food, and fuel—could not have exceeded $50,000 (see Table 5).

Of course, it is entirely possible that Computer already owned the boat and outboard motors, in which case his start-up costs would have been considerably discounted. But even if Computer’s initial contribution was in fact as high as $48,500 and his operating expenses were $230,000, he would have netted $621,500—a return on initial investment of an enviable 1,300 per cent. Sadly, Computer rebuffed my repeated attempts to interview him, and even instructed his underlings to avoid me altogether. Some months later, I again tried to reach him through my local journalist contacts, but received the following curt riposte: “Impossible. He is a Puntland government fugitive—will be shot or arrested on sight.”

I’ll wager that Computer will see the soldiers coming from miles away.

* * *

In many ways a typical Gulf of Aden hijacking, the Victoria was an ideal subject for a profile of a pirate gang. As I delved deeper into the operations of the Victoria gang, I gradually became aware of the similarities to a like-minded study conducted by then-University of Chicago grad student Sudhir Venkatesh and popularized by authors Steven Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner in their bestselling book Freakonomics. In Freakonomics, Levitt and Dubner explore the detailed financial statements of an inner-city Chicago crack gang, revealing that the most junior members of the gang, the street dealers—or, as Levitt and Dubner call them, the foot soldiers—earn a paltry $3.30 per hour. The point they make is simple: despite the glamorized wealth of the drug trade, very few people make a decent wage out of dealing crack.

A similar point can be made about Somali piracy. Media attention has focused on the multimillion-dollar ransoms paid to the pirates, but most of the members in a pirate gang earn barely more than a crack foot soldier. Once the ransom money is divided up, the middling amount received by the average gang member is quickly either spent or bled away by family and friends.

Even in the most high-profile hijacking cases, the ransom amounts can be deceiving. When Garaad complained (in Chapter 5) that everyone involved in the MV Faina hijacking “only got a few thousand,” he probably had a legitimate grievance. By the time the five-month-long negotiation for the Faina ended, four or five distinct pirate organizations were involved, and over a hundred pirates were stationed on board the vessel itself. Even though the $3.2 million ransom paid to release the ship was the largest at the time, if the Victoria is any guide, virtually the entire amount could have been swallowed by the costs incurred during the Faina’s captivity.

The parallels between crack and piracy go beyond finances. Like drug dealing for inner-city youth, piracy provides one of the few avenues