For hundreds of years the harbour village of Hobyo was famous for one thing: the sharks caught in the azure waters of the Indian Ocean, which would be dried and shipped to Kenya.
Generations of children followed their fathers to sea and a lucrative career in fishing. They still want to go to sea. Only now they dream of being pirates. “I want be a pirate, they have cool cars and lots of money,” said a boy, 13, staring out to sea.
At night the inky darkness glows with the lights of an international naval flotilla, sent to tackle the scourge of piracy. The village’s natural harbour was once filled with small boats that put to sea in search of lobster, fish and sharks.
With no central government since 1991 and nothing but anarchy on land, there was no coastguard or navy to protect Somali waters from foreign trawlers that arrived in search of rich pickings. Fleets from countries such as South Korea took advantage of the chaos, poaching tuna with impunity.
Piracy has brought the boom back to Hobyo in the past couple of years. The pirates have even set up a form of social security with their illicit earnings.
“They have allocated $100,000 [£68,000] to help those who are outside their business and not working,” said the town’s car dealer, who criss-crosses Somalia to drive 4x4s to the tiny village. He can sell as many as 50 top-of-the-range cars when a big ransom comes ashore.
Last year Somali pirates mounted 111 attacks and captured 42 ships, according to the International Maritime Bureau. Ransom demands have ranged from $1 million to $8 million, earning the modern-day brigands an estimated $30 million in ransom payments in 2008. They made $3.2 million for MV Faina, which was laden with tanks and armaments, on her way to the Kenyan port of Mombasa. A similar amount was paid for the release of the Sirius Star, a super-tanker, held at anchor just off Hobyo.
That is a lot of money in a drought-ridden land where almost half the population is hungry. The new money is visible everywhere among the wind-swept, sandy roads and tumbledown stone buildings in Hobyo. Every day two pickup trucks arrive laden with leafy qat stems – chewed for their mildly narcotic effect across East Africa. Their cargo sells for $40,000 every day.
The finest sarongs now fetch up to $50, rather than the $10 or so that they used to cost. Local telecoms companies have even arrived to cash in, putting up a mobile phone mast.
“Satellite phones used to be the only means of communications but now Somali telecoms have arrived to fill the gaps,” said a grizzled pirate sipping spiced tea in a dingy roadside shack. “Without the pirates’ money no one would be able to afford them.”
The pirates are now investing some of their booty in new, faster speed-boats. “We were fishermen before and since we can’t fish any more because of illegal fishing trawlers taking all the fish we have nothing else,” he added.
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