The Pirates of Somalia_ Inside Their Hidden World - Jay Bahadur [15]
A capitalist at heart, Afweyne was the first to realize the potential of piracy as a business, and went about raising venture funds for his pirate operations as if he were launching a Wall Street IPO. One repentant potential investor recalled Afweyne’s sales pitch: “He asked me to invest USD 2,000, as he was gathering money for his new business venture. He was begging … [but] I did not invest and I regret it so much today.”8
Like any conscientious employer, Afweyne sought to provide the very best training for his employees. Though the old boys of Eyl belonged to the rival Majerteen clan, Afweyne was not one to allow tribalism to get in the way of business, and he personally recruited the most locally renowned pirates—including Boyah and Garaad Mohammed—to work as instructors. The Eyl veterans did not limit their role to that of mere consultants but travelled up and down the coast, organizing and even participating in pirate operations. Even in 2007–2008, after most of the Eyl pirate leaders had returned to Puntland—attracted by the easy hunting offered in the Gulf of Aden—piracy remained the incestuous province of the Majerteen and Habir Gedir clans. Boyah, during our numerous conversations, was not shy about discussing the Eyl–Harardheere connection, readily speaking about “joint operations” between the two groups; one such collaborative effort was the hijacking of the MV Faina, the tank-laden Ukrainian transport ship that first splashed Somali piracy across international headlines. Boyah was upfront about Afweyne’s business acumen: “Afweyne hand picked his pirate group,” he later testified, “carefully designed it to keep costs low, profits high and to maximize efficiency.”9
In contrast to previous groups, the Somali Marines were extremely well organized, employing a military-style hierarchy with titles such as fleet admiral, admiral, vice admiral, and head of financial operations (Afweyne himself).10 They exhibited an operational sophistication that matched their corporate professionalism, employing motherships that extended their attack radius hundreds of kilometres from the coast.
Around the same time, other professionally organized groups began to appear. Garaad Mohammed was not content to remain as Afweyne’s underling, but formed his own organization, the National Volunteer Coast Guard (NVCG), in the major southern port of Kismaayo.11 Not only were groups like the NVCG and the Somali Marines more sophisticated in an operational sense, their creative names—which cast them as the defenders of Somali waters against the imperialist incursions of foreign vessels—showed that their PR acumen was keeping pace.
But though their official raison d’être might have been to prevent the theft of Somalia’s fish, the Somali Marines showed no shame in attacking those whose intentions were quite the opposite. From 2005 to 2007, the gang targeted World Food Programme (WFP) transports delivering vital food aid to the famine-stricken population of southern Somalia, attacking five vessels and hijacking at least two. Perhaps Afweyne was aware of his potential vulnerability to accusations of hypocrisy; following the seizure of the MV Semlow in June 2005, he claimed the vessel’s 850-tonne cargo of rice in the name of the people of Harardheere, accusing the international community of neglecting the region.12 The threat to WFP vessels did not disappear until late 2007, when the French navy began to escort the shipments to port.
As for Afweyne, he has since entered a comfortable semi-retirement, handing over many of the day-to-day operations of the family business to his son Abdulkhadar. Afweyne is perhaps one of the few men to fit the media stereotype of a cash-flush pirate kingpin, having allegedly converted his pirate earnings into a business empire stretching from India to Kenya. He has even enjoyed the dubious distinction of