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There was a lull in the conversation, and Ali, having just learned that I had fired a Kalashnikov for the first time two days ago, turned and brazenly challenged me to a shooting contest.

“Laag?” For money? I asked, showing off one of the few Somali words I knew.

“Yes, for money,” he replied, with a crooked grin. I gestured to the backgammon board I had brought along with me, and asked him if he would match my wager on the gun with his own wager on the dice. He meekly demurred.

* * *

Since giving up the piracy trade, Boyah and his men had put their time to good use. Garaad, whose dealings with SomCan had begun some months earlier, had spread his career ambitions to his former colleagues—or so my sources said; the rumours were that Boyah’s gang had also recently entered a partnership with the SomCan Coast Guard. But I soon discovered that the rumours were out of date. “We used to work with them, but that’s all over,” said Boyah. “What they wanted and what we needed were totally different.” What Boyah’s men had needed, apparently, was a fresh start.

“We want to start our own coast guard,” he said. “In fact, we’ve already started.” Their efforts to date, however, had not extended much beyond signing up the men presently lounging around me. “We’re hoping the Puntland government will give us the job,” said Boyah. “Once they do, we’ll get the ships and weapons we need from them.” Until then, it seemed, Boyah’s coast guard would remain landlocked. His confidence, nonetheless, was unshaken.

“We know how to fight with pirates,” he said. “You can’t teach us anything about hijacking ships.” But immediately his bellicose tone softened: “Of course, we would never kill anyone, even the pirates. There are other ways—peaceful ways—we can get them to release the ships. Before you shoot someone, you can talk to him. If we were in charge, no one would ever have to pay any ransoms, nor would anyone ever die on those ships. We would work it out some way.” Despite my pressing, Boyah and his colleagues would not be more specific about what their method would entail.

In defiance of Boyah’s optimism were the two ships currently being held hostage at Eyl, their hijackers unreceptive to his efforts at moral suasion. For these men, Boyah had a simple explanation. “They still have the old system in their heads, and they don’t want to let it go. Plus, they’ve already spent so much money while waiting for the ransom. If they leave it now without being paid, there are thousands of people they owe money to who will kill them. Maybe when they get off they’ll change their minds, and not return to piracy.”

For all his talk of persuasion, Boyah believed that a military solution would be just as effective. “If a warship attacked them, they would run, just like we would have,” said Boyah. “These people are not Al-Qaeda; they just want money. They don’t kill people.”

On land, Boyah claimed that his group was already making a difference. Under the guidance of preeminent Muslim scholar (and Puntland’s unofficial grand mufti) Sheikh Abdulkhadar Nur Farah, Boyah’s gang of reformed pirates had taken on a role similar to the ex-convicts who speak to high school student assemblies; along with Sheikh Farah, Boyah and his men would drag groups of misguided youth to mosque, where they would make them swear on the Koran to live piracy-free for the rest of their days. According to Boyah, his group had helped reform seven hundred pirates and would-be pirates from around Puntland (though the BBC, which had run the story three weeks earlier, reported the number of rehabilitated pirates at around two hundred).12 Altruism was probably not Boyah’s sole motive, however; in exchange for their efforts, the Puntland government had granted Boyah and his associates full legal amnesty for their past crimes.

Their services as coast guards, on the other hand, were not being so eagerly sought. President Farole was on his own quest to rehabilitate Puntland’s damaged