The Pirates of Somalia_ Inside Their Hidden World - Jay Bahadur [9]
Boyah himself had not gone on a mission for over two months, for which he had a two-pronged explanation: “I got sick, and became rich.” His fortune made, Boyah’s call to end hijackings came from a position of luxury that most others did not enjoy. I questioned Boyah on whether his ceasefire had been at least partially motivated by the NATO task force recently deployed to deal with him and his colleagues.
“No,” he said, “it has nothing to do with that. It’s a moral issue. We started to realize that we were doing the wrong thing, and that we didn’t have public support.” Their public support, according to Boyah, had taken a plunge last summer when a delegation of local clan and religious leaders visited Eyl and declared to the local population that dealing with pirates was haram—religiously forbidden.
The current NATO deliberations regarding possible missile strikes on Eyl did not seem to concern Boyah. “Only civilians live there, it would be illegal for them to attack,” he paused, before continuing, “if they do … that’s okay. We believe in God.” Forgetting for the moment his erstwhile promise of a ceasefire, Boyah’s tone suddenly turned vehemently passionate. “Force alone cannot stop us,” he said, “we don’t care about death.” Boyah’s vocal display of courage was not idle bravado, but the plausible truth of a starkly desperate man. His desperation was not as stark as before he had accumulated his small fortune, but how long his current state of affluence would last was unclear—Boyah announced with pride that he had given his money away to his friends and to the poor, and that he hadn’t built a house or a hotel like many of his more frugal colleagues.
As for his plans for the future, Boyah refused to give a straight answer. “That is up to the international community,” he said. “It needs to solve the problem of illegal fishing, the root of our troubles. We are waiting for action.”
* * *
Throughout our conversation, Boyah had been gazing off into space between my questions, looking bored. Soon he grew restless, mumbling discontentedly as he glanced at the two o’clock sun that “the day is already over.” I managed to slip in one final question, asking him for his most exhilarating high seas chase. He immediately brightened up and launched into the story of the Golden Nori, a Japanese chemical tanker he had captured in October 2007 about fourteen kilometres off the northern Somali coast.
“Almost immediately after we had boarded the ship the US Navy surrounded it,” said Boyah, with the destroyer USS Porter the first to respond. Boyah’s memory, perhaps augmented with time, recalled seven naval vessels encircling him. Clearly he had told this story before; with obvious pride, Boyah recited by rote the identification numbers marking the sides of four of the vessels: 41, 56, 76, and 78 (the last being the designation of the Porter). The swiftness and gravity of this response nearly spooked Boyah’s men into fleeing the ship and attempting an escape in their overmatched fishing skiffs. Fortunately for them, the Golden Nori was carrying volatile chemicals, including the extremely flammable compound benzene. With mirth lighting up his face, Boyah told me how the American ships were too afraid to fire on the ship for fear of detonating its payload, seemingly undisturbed by the fact that had his assessment been incorrect, he and his men would have been incinerated.
The standoff dragged on through November and into December. “We ran out of food,” Boyah said, “and we almost abandoned the ship so we wouldn’t start eating the crew.” Attack helicopters whirring overhead, Boyah ordered the ship into the harbour at Bossaso, Puntland’s most populous city. In case the Nori’s explosive cargo proved an insufficient deterrent, Boyah added the defensive