Ever met a pirate with remorse? Muhammed Muqtar, 27, consulted with his conscience and decided to quit his pirate life. “Now I know there is a decent way to earn a living and help stop the plundering of our national marine resources.”
By Abdurrahman Warsameh
Pirates are still wreaking havoc on international shipping in one of the world’s most important waterways along Somalia’s coast, despite the presence of naval forces in the Gulf of Aden. Muqtar says it was his nagging conscience that forced him to give up his plundering day job after two years.
Foot soldier
The former pirate says that although he was a junior ‘foot soldier’ in a gang that operated in the central Somalia’s pirate hub of Harardhere, he saw firsthand how the illicit activity was organised.
Pirate gangs who operate in the coastal provinces are well organised ad hoc groups who join forces for a specific one-off assault. After the job is done, they share the revenues, break up and join other gangs.
Funding ‘the mission’, as Muqtar calls it, is the most important part of the operation. Financiers, who are often moneyed former pirates, bankroll the organization. They arm, equip and supply the teams and are rewarded with the largest share.
Plundering concerns
But Muqtar started getting second thoughts and left the pirate gang last year to start his own small business in Mogadishu. “The men did more harm than good by taking innocent ships and demanding money from them rather than attacking the illegal fishing trawlers that are plundering our resources,” Muqtar told Radio Netherland Worldwide.
He says he was given a ransom share of over $200,000 following the release of a Saudi super oil tanker, which was dubbed at the time as the biggest jackpot ever seized by Somali pirates. Muqtar says he was ‘advised’ to give out the illegal money to the poor following his decision to quit and start from scratch with clean money loaned from friends.
Excuses
“It is un-Islamic to take other people’s money without their consent. We justified our actions by claiming that the ships we attacked were dumping toxic waste and chasing us away from fishing in our seas. In reality, we never targeted the real perpetrators. Instead, we mostly assailed innocent commercial ships and cargo vessels bringing aid to the displaced,” Muqtar confesses.
Root causes ignored
Muqtar says the international naval forces deployed along the Somali coast are not doing enough to deal with the root causes of piracy, but only treat the symptoms.
“What worries me most is that other countries who say they want to stop piracy in the Gulf of Aden do not say or do anything about the damage done to our seas, natural resources and the effects on fishing communities along the coasts,” the former Somali pirate concluded.
Source: Radio Netherlans Worldwide
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