Murphy Martin. Small Boats, Weak States, Dirty Money. Piracy & Maritime Terrorism in the Modern World
Подождите немного. Документ загружается.
117
contemporary piracy: tho who, the why and the where
ning at around 800,000 barrels per day owing to militant attacks and pipe-
line leaks.
431
Other reports suggest that theft alone accounted for 100,000
barrels daily.
432
Some estimates put the annual value of the oil lost at $1.5
billion.
433
Different sources suggest that the country’s crude oil production
has been cut by 25 or 30 per cent.
434
Small-scale thieves steal an unknown
quantity: it is not uncommon to see small boats loaded with jerry cans
plying local waters. e major groups, however, tap into pipelines and si-
phon oil off into barges.
435
In some cases, where pipelines bridge streams or
creeks, an oil barge is apparently positioned below the pipe, which is then
punctured.
436
One barge was reportedly recovered with 250,000 tonnes on
board; although as this is the amount “lifted” by a VLCC, the report must
be regarded as somewhat of an exaggeration.
437
Much of the stolen oil is
transported in barges to ships, known as “depot ships”, waiting offshore
and then sold to illegal oil traders (who in turn sell it in other parts of West
Africa and on the international oil market).
438
e Nigerian navy claimed,
in September 2007, to have arrested 236 such ships over a three-year pe-
riod and in May 2008 was ordered by the Nigerian Federal government to
attack any ship caught in Nigerian territorial waters trying to lift oil from
the Niger delta illegally.
439
Among the goods bought with the proceeds
are arms, which are also brought in by sea.
440
Dokubo-Asari, the leader
431 ‘Attack shuts down Shell Nigerian output’, Lloyd’s List, 10 Oct. 2006.
432 ‘Nigeria: Report says Nigerian waters the most deadly’, IRIN, 27 July 2004.
433 ONI, WWTTS Report, 21 June 2006.
434 ‘e elephant in the room’; Daly, ‘Nigeria continues to slide towards instabil-
ity’.
435 Alex Last, ‘Tempting riches of Nigeria oil crime’, BBC News, 30 Aug. 2006.
Nigeria’s naval secretary, Commander Olasaad Ibrahim, made the estimate of
the daily loss: see ‘South Africa, Nigeria take lead against piracy’, Fairplay, 22
Sept. 2005.
436 helmoed-Römer heitman, ‘Forgotten ‘wars’’, Jane’s DW, vol. 41, no. 38, 22
Sept. 2005, p. 27.
437 ‘Navy seizes 250,000 tons of fuel barges’, BNW News Blog, 11 Jan. 2006.
438 Tony Carnie, ‘Oil piracy and gas dragons’, Alexander’s Gas & Oil Connections,
27 May 2005; ‘Nigerian oil fuels Delta conflict’, BBC News, 25 Jan. 2006.
439 Kingsley Omonobi, ‘Navy arrest 236 ships for illegal bunkering, other vices in
three yrs’, Vanguard, 18 Sept. 2007; Segun James. ‘FG orders attack on illegal
vessels in Nigerian waters’, is Day, 5 May 2008.
440 henry Okah, who trained as a marine engineer and was employed by Nigeria’s
national shipping line for many years, was apparently engaged in buying a ves-
sel when he was detained in Angola. Mbachu. ‘Niger Delta: ‘Robin hood’ has
a face’.
118
small boats, weak states, dirty money
of the Niger Delta people’s Volunteer Force, admitted his organisation
had stolen from oil pipelines and used the revenue to buy arms. he was
reported as saying: “We are very close to the international waters and it’s
very easy to get weapons.”
441
Oil deals are often paid for in arms.
442
Oil
thefts also provide the funds to bribe police and security officials.
443
Oil
thefts, moreover, might not be the only source of funds for arms; reports
suggest that drugs from South America have been routed through the delta
and that the presence of drugs has meant, inevitably, that some criminal
groups have developed drug habits of ther own that they need to pay for.
444
Although the Nigerian Navy does mount patrols and make arrests, it is
fair to say that, given the level of corruption in the armed forces and the
lack of resources at their disposal, Nigerian territorial waters are effectively
ungoverned space.
445
It cannot be said for certain that the region’s politico-criminal groups
are involved in piracy specifically, but the general level of militant activity
has undoubtedly generated instability in an area where water has been and
remains the principal medium of transport and communication: an insta-
bility that has in turn led to an increase in attacks on ships at sea, river-craft,
oil platforms and the boats that service them. e region’s “waterborne
crimes”, as Menefee has written, “resist easy interpretation. is is more
than a question of government claim and tribal counterclaim: the number
of ’players’ in the region makes assigning responsibility for any particular
action tricky… Additionally, the sources available cannot exactly be called
impartial.”
446
Within these limitations Menefee has provided an account of
maritime crime in the delta region from 1997 through to 2006.
447
he de-
scribes an increasing tempo of lawlessness as gangs of young men attempt
441 ‘Nigeria: Report says Nigerian waters the most deadly’.
442 Marquardt, ‘Mujahid Dokubo-Asari: e Niger Delta’s Ijaw Leader’, p. 3.
443 ‘e elephant in the room’.
444 Dulue Mbachu. ‘e West Africa-South America drug route’, ISN Security
Watch, 28 Feb. 2008
445 Sean Kane. ‘reat to safety rises on Nigeria piracy inaction’, Lloyd’s List, 2 April
2008. For a broader review of the West African littoral as an unogoverned space
see Kevin A. O’Brien; and eodore W. Karasik, ‘Case Study: West Africa’ in
Angel M. Rabasa. Ungoverned Territories: Understanding and Reducing Terrorism
Risks. Santa Monica: RAND, 2007, pp. 173-205
446 Samuel pyeatt Menefee, ‘Delta blues: maritime and riverine crime in the Ni-
gerian delta’, paper delivered to the International Symposium on Coastal Zone
piracy, World Maritime university, Malmö, Sweden, 14 Nov. 2006, p. 11.
447 Ibid., pp. 11-30.
119
contemporary piracy: tho who, the why and the where
to coerce oil companies into paying ransoms and “compensation” for oil
pollution—the worst incidents of which, the oil companies claim, have
been perpetrated by the gangs themselves.
448
Oil industry vessels of all sizes,
including tankers, support craft, barges and oil rigs, have been hijacked
or attacked, their cargoes stolen and their crews kidnapped. In 2000 Ijaw
“militants” stormed two Royal Dutch Shell oil rigs located in the delta’s
mangrove swamps, taking 165 employees hostage before releasing them in
exchange for talks.
449
MEND is unquestionably involved in the abduction
of oil workers and bomb attacks on oil installations.
450
Rumours circulating
early in 2007 suggested that ransoms of around $800,000 were being paid
for each victim.
451
For his part, Dokubo-Asari has, since his release from
custody, publicly condemned the rise of criminality and branded kidnap-
ping in particular as “evil. It has brought easy wealth, laziness, criminality
in our midst. It has destroyed the moral fabric of the Ijaw man.”
452
Nonetheless kidnapping is almost endemic in Nigeria, a hazard that
comes with doing business in the country. Criminals entered the game
along with the militias and started to move up the scale from violent
armed robbery to the theft of whole ships, either for their cargo or to
be used to transport stolen oil.
453
Vessels have also been sabotaged: in
January 2008, for example, two remotely-controlled explosive devices
were detonated on board the Golden Lucy shortly after it had discharged
7,500 tonnes of fuel at port harcourt. Although MEND claimed it was
448 Ibid., p. 12; Robertson. ‘Nigeria’s deadly days’.
449 NGA ASAM 2000-158, 31 July 2000 .
450 Last, ‘Tempting riches of Nigeria oil crime’; e Elephant in the room’; Okon-
ta, ‘MEND: Anatomy of a people’s militia’; ‘Resentment is mounting in oil-rich
Niger Delta’, Alexander’s Gas & Oil Connections, 6 April ‘piracy report says
Nigerian waters most deadly’, IRINnews.org, 23 Sept. 2005; ‘unrest hits oil
facilities in Niger Delta’, New York Times, 23 Sept. 2005; Dino Mahtani, ‘At-
tacks feared on Nigerian oil facilities’, Financial Times, 23 Sept. 2005; ‘Worse
Nigerian violence seen’, Fairplay, 24 Aug. 2006; ‘Militants set to target Niger
Delta oil firms’, Lloyd’s List, 6 Nov. 2006; pflanz, ‘Nigerian rebels threaten new
wave of kidnaps’. e massive explosion in 2006 that left 200 dead tragically
illustrated the risks involved in siphoning off oil: ‘Gasoline pipeline blast kills
up to 200 in Nigeria’, CNN.com, 13 May 2006. e first publicised kidnap-and-
ransom episode occurred in 2003 involving the Maersk Shipper, although it was
almost certainly not the first to have taken place. NGA ASAM 2003-141, 15
April 2003.
451 pflanz, ‘Nigerian rebels threaten new wave of kidnaps’.
452 Marquardt, ‘Mujahid Dokubo-Asari: e Niger Delta’s Ijaw leader’, p. 4.
453 ‘e elephant in the room’.
120
small boats, weak states, dirty money
an act of militancy, the tanker was boarded as it drifted upriver after the
explosion during which time the remains of its cargo were stolen, it was
stripped of equipment and set alight again. Even after the owners paid
a ransom, another militant group attacked the ship when it was under
tow. en, when the ship was finally salved, the local Nigerian authori-
ties demanded several thousand dollars ‘compensation’ for reasons rang-
ing from port dues to fire fighting assistance.
454
Non-oil vessels have also
been attacked: in 1999, for example, the Vega, a 3,000 ton reefer, was
strafed with heavy-calibre machine gun fire in the Escravos River by the
occupants of a speedboat who were dressed in military uniforms; in 2008
the attack on the Spar Gemini, a bulk carrier, raised further concerns.
455
Even though attacks have forced some river craft to travel in convoy un-
der naval or police escort,
456
it is likely that members of the armed forces
have perpetrated some of the attacks themselves.
457
e Nigerian navy
admitted that some of their officers, including a rear admiral, had been
involved in at least one oil-bunkering cartel.
458
In a development that echoes Somali piracy, it is possible that MEND
fighters and criminal groups have struck further out to sea with raids oc-
curring on ships and fixed installations around 100km (62 miles) from
the coast.
459
In June 2008 MEND attacked Shell’s Bonga field, Africa’s
largest, located 120km (75 miles) offshore. Although the raiding party
failed to reach their stated objective, the control room where the flow is
coordinated, Shell was nevertheless forced to halt production amounting
to ten per cent of its total Nigerian output. MEND subsequently is-
sued a statement saying the attack was mounted to demonstrate that the
offshore oil platforms that had been developed after 2005 to reduce the
security risks faced by multinational oil companies when working in the
Delta, and which were considered beyond the group’s range, were now
454 NGA ASAM 2008-14, 11 Jan. 2008. Austin Ekeinde. ‘’Rebels bomb tanker in
Nigeria, exports spared’, Reuters, 11 Jan. 2008; Kelvin Ebiri. ‘Explosion rocks
ship in port harcourt’, e Guardian (Lagos), 12 Jan. 2008; ‘Blast tanker finally
leaves Bonny River’, Lloyd’s List, 13 March 2008.
455 NGA ARAM 1999-65, 11 July 1999; David Osler. ‘Nigerian pirate attack on
bulker fuels new fears’. Lloyd’s List, 17 July 2008.
456 heitman, ‘Forgotten ‘wars’’, p. 27.
457 Menefee, ‘Delta blues’, p. 15.
458 ‘Nigerian navy ousts 10 officers for smuggling oil’, Reuters Africa, 27 July
2007.
459 e elephant in the room’, ibid.
121
contemporary piracy: tho who, the why and the where
vulnerable and that further attacks would be mounted in the future.
460
If
MEND’s claims are true then this attack represents a substantial escala-
tion in the conflict and one that the Nigerian Navy, given its limited
resources, may find difficult to counter.
461
e suggestion has also been made that Delta militants and criminals
might strike outside Nigerian’s borders. In 2002, the International Court
of Justice transferred sovereignty over the Bakassi peninsula from Nigeria
to the Cameroons. e peninsula had been the subject of a border dis-
pute between the two countries. Local residents, however, rejected the
Court’s decision and threatened to declare independence.
462
Shortly be-
fore Nigerian troops withdrew in August 2006, two local militant groups
together with MEND announced the area would secede. In late 2007,
men in Nigerian military uniforms, attacked a Cameroonian army out-
post killing around 20 Cameroonian soldiers.
463
In June 2008 a group of
men described as “pirates” fired on a Cameroonian patrol; three members
of the patrol managed to escape but six were captured and later found
dead.
464
Although it is suspected that the attack in 2007 was a multi-
million dollar arms deal that went wrong, MEND appears to have been
involved and, it has been suggested, they or other groups are prepared
to mount attacks on targets in other nearby states and even planned to
invade Equatorial Guinea and overthrow its government.
465
Oil extraction and the official corruption it has engendered have dis-
rupted the region’s traditional economic activities of hunting, farming and
fishing. pirates in particular have, in the words of the Nigerian Trawler
460 Russell hotten. Nigerian militant’s step up attack against Shell’s oilfields’. Daily
Telegraph, 19 June 2008; ‘Nigerian attack closes oilfield’. BBC News, 20 June
2008; Dulue Mbachu. ‘Niger Delta: Nowhere to hide’. ISN Security Watch, 27
June 2008.
461 John C.K. Daly. ‘Nigeria’s Navy Struggles with Attacks on Offshore Oil Fa-
cilities’. e Jamestown Foundation Terrorism Monitor, Vol. 6, No. 14, 10 July
2008, pp. 7-8
462 Dulue Mbachu. ‘Nigeria: Tensions over Bakassi peninsula’. ISN Security Watch,
21 July 2008.
463 ’20 Cameroun soldiers die in Bakassi’, Daily Trust (Abuja), 14 Nov. 2007;
Edem Edem. ‘pirates kill 21 Camerounian soldiers’, Leadership (Abuja), 14
Nov. 2007.
464 Tansa Musa. ‘Cameroon says “pirates” seize six in Bakassi attack’. Reuters Alert-
Net, 11 June 2008; ‘Abducted Cameroonians found dead’. BBC News, 14 June
2008.
465 Mbachu. ‘Niger Delta: ‘Robin hood’ has a face’; ‘Delta militants deny Bakassi
raid’. BBC News, 15 November 2007.
122
small boats, weak states, dirty money
Owners Association (NITOA), been “ravaging Nigeria”, such that “most
of the boats were tied down at jetties” as a consequence.
466
In 2008 fish-
ermen’s leaders stated that the problem had extended from its point of
origin in the Niger delta as far up the coast as Lagos.
467
e piracy that
has been practiced in the delta’s rivers and coastal waters is unrelated to
the piracy that was practiced previously and is related instead to the cur-
rent politico-criminal struggle over the region’s oil revenues, which gives
militants, and criminals and militants acting as criminals, and corrupt
officials, all they cover they need to carry out their activities.
468
For different reasons, the piracy on the west and east coasts of Africa
demonstrates one constant in pirate activity: that the line between the
political and the criminal is hard to draw. In fact it is virtually indistin-
guishable, particularly in those states where political power is criminal
power and where to be a successful politician it is often useful to be a
successful criminal first.
Global phenomenon, local problem, diffuse challenge
piracy is not a global problem. In almost every case it is a local problem. Con-
temporary pirates cross local borders—from Indonesia to Singapore, from
Malaysia (Sabah) to the philippines (Sulu and Mindanao), from Bangladesh
to Burma—but only rarely do they travel further and exploit opportunities
regionally. A number of factors limit their willingness to move away from
home waters: the information edge about ship movements, police patrol pat-
terns and weather all decline with distance, while the protection provided
by corrupt local officials or police is lost. Admittedly, the availability of new
technology—particularly the steadily falling cost of more powerful and more
reliable boat engines—by reducing the time it takes pirates to reach their tar-
gets, has almost certainly extended their operational areas, and the falling cost
of newer technologies such as GpS and satellite phones might expand these
466 ONI. WWTTS, 14 July 2006. Also ‘Fish trawlers decry pirate activities’, e
Vanguard, 5 May 2006 and Ifeyinwa Obi, ‘Fish on the run: how pirates attacks
on fishing trawlers hike price of fish’, e Vanguard, 2 March 2008.
467 Bukola Olatunji. ‘Operators withdraw trawlers over pirates’ attacks’, is Day
(Lagos), 4 Feb. 2008; ‘pirates paralyse economic activities in Ibeno’, e Van-
guard, 13 Feb. 2008; Sarah Simpson, ‘A rise in pirate attacks off Nigeria’s coast’,
Christian Science Monitor, 20 March 2008. Omoh Gabriel, et al. ‘Renewed pi-
racy attacks: fish scarcity looms, Nigeria may loose $600m export earnings’.
Vanguard, 2 June 2008.
Also Amaechi. ‘Fundamental causes of maritime inse-
curity’.
468 Menefee, ‘Delta blues’, p. 30.
123
contemporary piracy: tho who, the why and the where
still further. pressing beyond these boundaries, however, requires craft with
greater range and sea-going qualities than they generally possess and an or-
ganisation that can provide intelligence and fulfil logistical requirements at a
distance. When long range piracy has occurred these requirements have been
fulfilled in three ways: first by “rogue” naval or coast guard forces, of which
perhaps the most audacious has been the Chinese units that operated as far
south as southern Vietnam in the early 1990s; secondly by gangs capable of
hijacking large ships and navigating them to distant harbours to dispose of
the cargo; and thirdly by the use of mother ships capable of deploying smaller
attack craft, a tactic that has been employed off Somalia. What needs to be
determined are the factors that encourage pirates to take these risks and the
support structures that need to be in place to reduce the risks to an accept-
able level.
e re-emergence of piracy in the 1980s caught many observers by sur-
prise. is is puzzling because by the early 1980s a decade or more had passed
since the colonial empires had been replaced by young states with less secu-
rity capacity, different political agendas, and new economic priorities. e
issue of economic dislocation was raised earlier in relation to the proposition
that poverty is a cause of piracy and it was argued that while poverty (or
unemployment) was quite possibly a contributory factor it was not the pri-
mary cause given the particular demands of maritime operations. Economic
dislocation, however, has other effects of which the creation of new markets,
or the opening of old ones to new sources of supply, are amongst the most
important. In some cases the cost of satisfying this new demand legally might
be high enough to create an opportunity for criminal entrepreneurs.
philip Gosse in one of the most famous books written about piracy,
e History of Piracy, described a pirate cycle: “First a few individuals from
amongst the inhabitants of the poorer coastal lands would band together in
isolated groups…and attack only the weakest merchantmen. Next would
come the period of organisation, when the big pirates either swallowed up
the little pirates or drove them out of business.” When these organisations
reached the size of independent states what “had been piracy then for a
time became war” until one side defeated the other, reducing the defeated
once again to the status of outlaws.
469
is book has chosen to focus on modern piracy, but it is arguable that
the main factors that encourage pirate gangs to form have remained largely
constant over time. e exigencies of maritime operation mean that pi-
469 Gosse, e History of Piracy, pp. 1-2.
124
small boats, weak states, dirty money
racy is always an organised crime and peter Lupsha’s developmental model
based on American experience suggests three stages that approximate to
Gosse’s cycles: the “predatory” stage epitomised by street gangs which en-
gage in extortionate violence, using its proceeds largely for their own con-
sumption; the “parasitical” stage, in which gangs become more organised
and create a network capable of providing a range of illicit products and
services on a scale large enough to justify (and necessitate) the corruption
of officials and the influencing of elections; and, finally, the “symbiotic”
stage where syndicates exist alongside legitimate businesses and state actors
in a mutually beneficial relationship.
470
In an Asian setting, the Royal hong
Kong police described a very similar structure of professional “criminal
gangs”, whose members may or may not be Triad; “multicrime syndicates”
involved in diverse and overlapping criminal activities, locally and inter-
nationally, in complex organisational structures involving both legitimate
and illegitimate activities; and “criminal enterprises”, which differed from
the multicrime syndicates only insofar as their members had distanced
themselves from their Triad allegiances and from any day-to-day criminal
involvement.
471
In past ages maritime predation could be the source of great wealth.
Given the wealth that can be earned from the criminal trades in drugs
and migrants, fraud and counterfeit goods, the opportunities in piracy are
relatively less appealing then they once were. Nonetheless, for gangs with
specialist skills the rewards remain attractive and for other criminal organi-
sations opportunities for piracy can emerge out of their use of the sea for
other purposes including the smuggling of drugs, arms and people. Con-
sequently, whereas in Gosse’s model piracy was the source of the wealth
that enabled pirate gangs to expand to the point where they reached the
political or symbiotic stage, now it is more likely that the source of wealth
lies elsewhere and gangs who have access to it look on piracy as a subsidiary
or opportunistic investment. One exception to this appears to be Somalia
where piracy has been an important source of income for some warlords.
e other is piracy undertaken by naval, police and customs units which
has taken place most noticeably in China, Indonesia, Iran and Nigeria
470 p. Lupsha, ‘Organized crime’ in William G. Bailey (ed.), e Encyclopaedia of
Police Science, (2
nd
edn.), New York: Garland publishing, 1995, pp. 494-5.
471 James J. McKenna, Jr., ‘Organized crime in the former royal colony of hong
Kong’ in Ryan and Rush (eds)., Understanding Organized Crime in Global Per-
spective: A Reader, pp. 207-8.
125
contemporary piracy: tho who, the why and the where
e uN advanced a straightforward definition of organised crime in
1993 as “…a form of economic commerce by illegal means, involving
the threat and use of physical force, extortion, corruption, blackmail and
other methods, and the use of illicit goods and services”.
472
is explana-
tion which is broadly economic is not, however, without its challengers,
and two other theories have been put forward: the political interpretation
advances the idea of illegal states within states similar to the Mafia; the
sociological interpretation lays stress on the idea of weak, particularly im-
migrant, groups, excluded economically from the host society, combin-
ing for protection and to exploit illegal markets which are the only ones
open to them. however, it is the economic interpretation that is favoured
generally. It views organised crime as akin to business in that it exists to
exploit clandestine markets, employs many of the disciplines of business,
and often has connections with legal enterprises such that the boundaries
between the two can be blurred. ese explanations are not mutually
exclusive.
473
In fact, each one probably reflects part of the truth. What is
unquestionable is that if large criminal organisations are to survive they
require large incomes and the flexibility to respond to the emergence of
new and profitable opportunities.
In our own era we have become familiar with more flexible organisa-
tional structures such as “flat” management and networks. In their legal
and illegal forms they have been able to exploit the speed and security of
modern travel, communications and money transfers to quickly move an
organisation’s assets to where they can generate the greatest returns. In
their illegal forms, particularly, they have proved adept at exploiting loyal-
ties that exist within ethnic groups (such as the Tamils and Chinese) that
have left their homelands and settled abroad. In some cases the “windows
of opportunity” that such criminal organisations wish to exploit might last
for only a few years before the pressures that reduce profitability in all
markets, such as decline in demand and the availability of substitutes, and
the special factors that affect illegal markets, such as the costs imposed by
police and law enforcement activity, make them less attractive. e ex-
472 uN General Assembly, ‘Ninth united Nations congress on the prevention of
crime and the treatment of offenders. Discussion guide’, Vienna: uN, A/Conf.
169/pM.1, 27 July 1993, p. 8.
473 Alex p. Schmid, ‘e links between transnational organized crime and terrorist
crime’, Transnational Organized Crime, vol. 2, no. 4, Winter 1996, pp. 42 &
44; Roy Godson and William J. Olson, ‘International organized crime’, Society,
vol. 32, 1995, pp. 20-2.
126
small boats, weak states, dirty money
ploitation of such transient markets requires not merely liquid capital and
adaptive organisational forms but access to a flexible pool of labour that
possesses the relevant skills.
Organised pirate activity does not start spontaneously. Gosse’s “organ-
ised” pirates, perhaps best epitomised by Morgan in the Caribbean, the
Barbary pirates in the Mediterranean and the pirate fleets, commanded first
by Ching Yih and after his death by his wife Ching Yih Saou, that terror-
ised shipping off the south China coast at the beginning of the nineteenth
century,
474
emerged out of or absorbed simpler organisational structures.
Similarly, the period since 1983 has witnessed two quite distinct episodes
of organised piracy characterised by a high level of organisational skill and
international reach: first there was the wave of hijacking and “phantom
ship” frauds starting in Southeast Asia around 1992, and second, the ship-
and-crew hijackings focused on the town of Xarardheere on the central
eastern coast of Somalia that emerged seemingly out of nowhere in mid-
2005, retreated in the face of ICu suppression in mid-2006, but quickly
resumed early in 2007 once the ICu had been defeated. Neither episode
would have been possible unless there were already existing groups of com-
mon pirates available for employment as “foot soldiers”.
475
Little concrete information is available about how the Xarardheere-based
pirates have operated. In Southeast Asia, however, organised criminals have
used intermediaries to hire individual pirates and, latterly, whole gangs to
execute their operations.
476
In 2003 a pirate leader named husni told Lati-
tudes magazine that his business was picking up because:
474 On Morgan see Gosse, History of Piracy, pp. 154-61; on the Chinese pirates see
Dian h. Murray. Pirates of the South China Coast, palo Alto: Stanford up, 1987;
harry Miller, Pirates of the Far East. London: Robert, hale & Co, 1970, pp.
120-3.
475 is is not say that if the opportunities exist and the entry-costs are low enough,
the traffic could flow the other way and common pirates might seek to emulate
more organised gangs. is appears to have taken place off Somalia where the
highjacking of the French yacht the Le Ponant and the Spanish trawler the Playa
de Bakio in the 2008 were perpetrated by seemingly less well-organised groups.
In both cases the ransom was delivered to the hijacked vessels in cash, a perilous
arrangement but one that was used by the ‘Somali Marines’ in their formation
phase. e crew of the Playa de Bakio told reporters that they watched the
pirates collect the $1.2 million ransom in plastic bags and divide it up in front
of them on the deck of their ship. ‘Somali pirates “received ransom onboard
Spanish boat”’. Agence France-Presse, 29 April 2008.
476 Eklöf, Pirates in Paradise, p. 82. pottengal Mukunden, interview with author,
2004.