He has ventured where few others have gone - be they foreigners or even Somalis - to craft one of the most incisive looks at modern-day piracy yet seen. "I think something like 6 percent of ships attacked are involved in fishing in any way.Bahadur, a young Canadian journalist, has spent the last few years digging into the nefarious world of the pirates who have made Somalia so infamous. They were known to contract security from local warlords and shoot locals and run over their fishing gear.īut "what's happened now is that it's gone so far beyond fishing," Bahadur says. "Foreign fishing ships came in and through drag fishing destroyed lobster habitats," he says, and in many cases, they were armed with anti-aircraft guns. "Early on, especially Boyah and his men were legitimately aggrieved by foreign fishing," he says.īahadur found third-party evidence to support their claims. They prefer badaadinta badah, or "saviors of the sea." It's a good PR angle for the pirates, says Bahadur, and there's a small element of truth to it. The Somali pirates don't call themselves pirates. government decided they needed to clamp down on Somali piracy, he was the first one to be made an example of." His mouth got him into trouble - Boyah's now serving a life sentence in Puntland's only prison. Like much of the information coming out of the mouths of pirates, he says, "it's a bit exaggerated," though Boyah certainly hijacked some number of ships. "He was always great for a good quote, and he was always very willing to talk to media."īoyah liked to claim to be responsible for the hijacking of 25 to 60 ships, "which I think is an absolutely ridiculous number," says Bahadur. "Boyah was the self-appointed pirate spokesman," Bahadur tells NPR's Neal Conan. Before he left, though, Boyah described how he went from fisherman to pirate, after the reefs where he used to hunt lobster were destroyed by foreign trawlers.īut Boyah's known for hyperbolic speech. But his first interview in Somalia ended early, when one of the country's most notorious pirates, Boyah, left to pursue a fix of khat, the leafy stimulant that's the drug of choice for pirates. He spent three months in Puntland, the semi-autonomous region in Somalia that's home to the modern buccaneers.
He spent weeks meeting with pirates and government officials.īahadur tells their stories, debunks myths and examines the rise of piracy off the Somali coast in his new book, The Pirates of Somalia.
Jay Bahadur wanted to know firsthand how modern pirates live and operate, so he traveled to Somalia.
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