Return to Somalia’s pirate coast

A year after he was kidnapped while reporting from Somalia for The Sunday Telegraph, Colin Freeman revisits the scene .

Pirates may no longer make their victims walk the plank, but Lt-Cdr Roger Wyness is well aware of what may happen if he falls into his enemies’ hands. As a Lynx helicopter pilot on board HMS Cornwall in the Gulf of Aden, his task is to scour the beaches of Somalia for pirate dens – a mission that makes him arguably the most glamorous man on board, and certainly the most at risk. The slightest mistaken manoeuvre, mechanical breakdown, or lucky burst of gunfire from a disturbed pirates’ nest could result in him dropping into their clutches and facing kidnap, execution, or worse.

“Flying along the beach is both exciting and scary at the same time,” he said, as his crew of a navigator and two snipers prepared for a sortie near Boosaaso, a ramshackle port on the coast of Puntland in northern Somalia. “We plan very carefully, but we are well aware of the implications if we get caught.” Exactly what the implications are, he declines to spell out, but a brief swish of a gloved finger across his throat gives an idea.

His crew are all trained in how to avoid capture if brought down in hostile territory, and each carries a fat roll of $100 bills so they can buy as well as shoot their way out of trouble.

However, with Somalia awash not just with pirates, but warlords and al-Qaeda-linked Islamists as well, there is no shortage of people who might put a price on his head. Given the reputation the Royal Navy has earned among the local buccaneering community, the scores could well be personal.

I should know. On this very stretch of coastline last year, I was kidnapped while reporting for The Sunday Telegraph on the pirates’ activities and spent six weeks being held in caves along with José Cendón, the photographer who was working with me.

There is no good time to be taken hostage, but our timing was particularly bad. During our spell in captivity, word reached our hosts that another British ship, HMS Cumberland, had shot two pirates who refused to drop their weapons. It was probably the first such Royal Navy kill since the 1800s – and it had to happen while we were prisoners on pirate turf.

“The clan of those pirates want to kill a British person after what your country did,” one of the gang holding us warned me. “They are interested in buying you from us, so that they can take revenge.”

Luckily, I was released before I had a chance to find out whether that threat was genuine. Now, 10 months later, I had returned to the Somali coast to report on the pirate problem again – although this time from the rather more secure vantage point of HMS Cornwall, a 5,400-tonne frigate bristling with weapons.

The ship is the lead vessel in operation “Ocean Shield”, a Nato mission that is one of three multi-national naval operations now fighting piracy in the Gulf of Aden, where the waters became so treacherous last year that merchant shipping insurance premiums soared close to wartime levels.

Joining HMS Cornwall brought back some stirring memories. After a day’s sailing along the wild and barren Puntland coastline, we finally sighted the dock cranes and minarets of Boosaaso, a place I thought I’d never see again – and in some ways didn’t want to. There, on the starboard bow, was the sprawling shanty town area where my kidnappers dragged me from my car at gunpoint. And there, rising over the desert beyond, were the craggy, ochre mountains where we were held, living off goat meat and rice and wondering if we’d ever see home again.

Yet, while the landscape was eerily familiar, some aspects of life along the pirate coast have changed since my last visit. The days when its resident bandits operated with virtual impunity seem to be over, thanks partly to the edgy, low-flying reconnaissance missions carried out by Lt-Cdr Wyness.

Surveillance pictures taken by his crew show the pirates in a variety of hideouts – some under palm trees, some in brushwood bivouacs, others in bare caves. At least 15 such hideouts have been identified along the northern Somali coast, but the makeshift nature of the abodes has sparked optimism among the commanders on HMS Cornwall’s bridge.

Previously, the pirates operated openly from local towns, where their get-rich-or-die-tryin’  lifestyle won them gangsta-rap-style celebrity status. Now, though, the tide of public opinion appears to be changing, forcing them out of town.

“There is concern now among local people that piracy is eroding their traditional values,” said Lt-Cdr Graham Bennett. “We hear reports that it is bringing other crime like prostitution and drugs. As a consequence, they have often been hoofed out of town, and have to operate from remote beaches.”

Whether celebrities or pariahs, the pirates still remain armed and dangerous. The monsoon storms that have confined them to shore for the past few months are now drawing to an end, and last month a Spanish fishing boat hijacked between Somalia and the Seychelles became the first victim of the new pirate season. Alerts about suspicious-looking skiffs are once again buzzing over shipping radios across the Gulf of Aden.

The hope now is that passing boats will prove less vulnerable to attack than they were last year, when a spate of hijackings earned the pirates an estimated $150 million in ransoms.

Crews of merchant vessels have beefed up their protection – some wrapping barbed wire around their decks, others stockpiling logs to drop on would-be invaders, like defenders of medieval castles. The foreign military fleet is also more organised, creating a protected shipping lane known as the Internationally Recommended Transit Corridor.

However, the navies have also gone actively on the offensive, disrupting pirate activity wherever they find it. Much of the morning briefings in the Cornwall’s operations room involves sightings of so-called “tripwires” – the tell-tale signs that a fishing skiff has been souped up into a man o’ war.

“If we see a skiff that’s carrying twin high-powered outboard engines and fuel barrels, that is suspicious,” said Lt-Cdr Matthew Dodds, the principal warfare officer, whose hi‑tech cold war skill set is grappling with foes who are less sophisticated, but equally wily.

If HMS Cornwall spots a suspicious craft, it can despatch the helicopter and two motorboats full of Royal Marines to the scene. If it turns out that they are just a group of fishermen, they are given a “goodwill” package containing a first-aid kit and chilled drinking water.

If HMS Cornwall gets a call from a ship facing imminent pirate attack, Lt-Cdr Wyness is on 15 minutes’ standby with his helicopter. “Once the pirates are on the ship’s bridge with their guns, they have control,” he said. “But, if we get there before that, and we see someone climbing up a ship with a weapon, he will go for a swim with a bullet in his head.”

The Lynx’s armaments are formidable: it carries snipers trained to shoot out a boat’s outboard engine, and has a 0.50-calibre machine gun, which fires rounds so powerful that they can miss a man by a couple of feet and still tear off his arm, such is the pressure vacuum they create.

However, modern rules of engagement and the difficulties of mounting prosecutions abroad mean that the days of summary justice for pirates are over. Unless they are caught in the act of attacking, the worst they can probably expect is for one of their two engines to be disabled and for their weapons to be confiscated. The theory is that is more effective to simply disrupt the pirates’ activities rather than carting them off to foreign jails, which is both time-consuming and legally complex.

Besides, just as in Iraq and Afghanistan, the key to long-term success is not really Western firepower, but building up local security forces. Hence “Operation Patch”, in which Lt-Cdr Bennett is building ties with local power-brokers on the Puntland coast.

It is a role that has seen him take the concept of gunboat diplomacy into uncharted waters, steering a tricky course between traditional naval power play and modern-day hearts-and-minds strategy.

In interviews with Boosaaso journalists, he has done his best to woo locals into co-operating in the anti-piracy efforts. But he has also had to warn bluntly that persistent pirates can expect to get killed.

Equally hard has been the task of working out which local power players to deal with. Unlike southern Somalia, where an anarchic civil war involving Islamic fundamentalists has turned it into a breeding ground for terrorists, semi-independent Puntland does have some vestiges of a functioning government. But its security forces are often either too weak to do anything about piracy or, as some warned me when I was last here, turn a blind eye in exchange for a cut of the loot.

The Boosaaso Coastguard, with which HMS Cornwall was due to hold a meeting during my visit, illustrates the challenges. Its point man for the Navy is Abdiwahid Mohamed Hersi, a British-educated fisheries official who speaks English with a Scouse accent and claims to have up to 600 paid and willing fighters available.

The problem is that it has no regular access to boats, unlike the rival Puntland Coastguard, which has several, but which is rumoured to be less than squeaky clean. Whether that is true, or simply wicked gossip sparked by a local turf war, is just one of the many complexities the officers of HMS Cornwall must unravel.

“We are still finding out who is really who, and we were wary at first of getting in with ex-pirates,” said Lt-Cdr Bennett, who dined with Mr Hersi and several local ministers in the officers’ mess recently. “But, to be fair, everybody we have dealt with so far seems determined to eradicate piracy, and we have to start somewhere.”

Certainly, what his new friends lack in maritime reach, they make up for in local knowledge. The Boosaaso Coastguard has relayed several useful tips about possible pirate dens to the Cornwall’s helicopter crew, and has conducted a number of raids itself. And, while the pirates may not be languishing in jail, living rough in caves and facing daily harassment may persuade some of them to go back to a more honest, if less lucrative, life as fishermen.

“If we can disrupt their activities, they can always re-equip and come back. But we think they will eventually begin to lose heart,” said Cdre Steve Chick, HMS Cornwall’s most senior officer, who is cautiously optimistic that the worst of the piracy crisis may be over. “But we are only addressing a symptom, not the underlying cause.” Which is, of course, the chaos and poverty in which Somalia has been mired since its government collapsed nearly 20 years ago.

And, for all that the foreign naval powers may soon restore law and order to the seas off Somalia, there is still no talk of an Iraq- or Afghanistan‑style rescue campaign on the land. Indeed, as HMS Cornwall ploughed on through the Gulf of Aden, and Boosaaso disappeared over the horizon, I was left feeling that it may be some time before I deem it safe to set foot there again.

____

Source: Telegraph