How Somali Piracy Created An Industry Of Fake Pirates
by Ivan Farkas
Pirate marauding off the Horn of Africa began around 1990 due to a combination of consequences. First, the government relocated people from the barren interior to the fishing industries along the coast; then the instability of a Somali civil war created chaos for most of the populace, but opportunity for the warlord minority of said populace. Also around this time, other countries swept in to steal Somalia's sea life, often using destructive methods that devastated the coastal region and its creatures.
Research showed that fish stock recovered in areas where piracy drove away illegal foreign fishing fleets. This may paint an optimistic image: Are pirates eco-crusading Robin Hoods defending a defenseless ecosystem? Probably not; they're still pirates. And illegality begets illegality.
So in the fight between these literal pirates and environment-obliterating fishing fleets that slaughter intelligent dolphins and friendly singing crustaceans, it's easy to choose a side: neither. Screw them all.
Somali pirating still exists, and goes through ups and (mostly) downs. There was a promising respite between late-2020 and late-2021, during which no piratey activities were reported; mostly due to the efforts to combat these attacks, and possibly because the investigators mysteriously woke up to new BMWs parked in their driveways, with cards that read: "Enjoy! Sincerely, Somali Corsair Coalition." Either way, the situation isn't widely reported anymore.
Yet — in 2011, the golden age of Somali piracy, during which 237 attacks were recorded, a few other groups also profited, like movie-makers, who created everything from coming-of-age-tales, to pirate-based teen-dramas, to Beethoven 9: Revenge of Beethoven. But one industry popped up that wasn't expected: fake pirates who trick journalists for money.
Jamal Osman is an Africa Correspondent and Somali-born journalist for the UK's public broadcasting Channel 4. In the past, Osman has risked his life to document terrorist groups, war zones, and expose shady operations that get other reporters kidnapped. And in 2013, he went to the Eastleigh slums in Nairobi and met with some of the fake pirates, who are organized and dispatched by a “fixer;” sort of like the exotic escort liaison rich people use, except for Western reporters and pirates, apparently.
One of his interviewees, Adan, has a day job in a restaurant, but charges $200 for his acting performance. And another who goes by the name "Bashir," said he's surprised that anyone has bought his masquerade as anything other than drama. He argues that "[Real pirates] don't have time to tell their stories to white guys for money." Which, yeah, that makes sense; pirates are busy attacking shipping vessels, getting picked off by Navy snipers, and acting as unwitting guinea pigs for secret, untested UN weapon systems.
Still, Bashir was featured in a Danish documentary and a Time article, wherein he was described as a man who "bared his black, rotted teeth every time he smiled," and was hired by the pirates because he was a fisherman who "knew how to swim, a valuable skill he could teach other recruits," which totally wasn't true.
Several years later, Dutch photographer Jan Hoek was interested in these supposedly swashbuckling buccaneers. So he found a fixer and, presumably, a lot of other weird stuff, and invited the fake pirates to create their own personas, one which poked fun at Westerners' ideas of what these pirates were. Bashir showed up, saying he's been featured so heavily as a pirate that he's believed as such by the police. So he dressed extra ridiculously to clear his name.
Also, the ridiculousness of this all inspires a sneaking, tickling sentiment in the back of one's skull: Were these guys fake pirates or fake fake pirates? Only the universe knows, and universal knowledge can't be probed without deep intoxication. Regardless, it does seem to support that old sci-fi was right, and that pirates will exist long into the future. One in which they'll kidnap robot maidens and perform their scoundrelly deeds from flying sloops above an industrialized, fume-spewing landscape. Probably.
