Lauren Benton reminds us that to write about piracy as historians (and anthropologists) is to engage in projects of “myth-making and myth-busting.” As she notes, pirates are either imagined as “colorful rogues…inherently anti-authoritarian actors who possessed a penchant for experimenting with alternative forms of political solidarity,” or they are depicted in a less renegade fashion, one that shows “their integration in established, if fluid, networks of patronage and power.” Instead of colorful outlaws, Benton (2014) argues that pirates are more akin to lawyers engaged in “legal posturing,” converting “booty into property.” As political actors, their politics are often far from revolutionary. Benton’s scholarship has been at the forefront of this latter school of myth-busting, and her work has been inspirational in rethinking the relationship between piracy, politics, and maritime space in order to tell a different kind of sea yarn. As she wrote in her 2005 CSSH essay, “[i]n my sea yarn, the oceans have a quality of lumpiness about them, pirates strain not to break the law, and international norms take shape not at Westphalia but at the edges of the Indian Ocean” (Benton Reference Benton2005: 701–2).
As an anthropologist who writes on oceans, piracy, and legal and economic regimes, I have found Benton’s writings crucial in moving beyond dichotomies of land and sea, center and periphery, inside and outside. Her Thrupp lecture similarly offers an important corrective to popular ways of thinking about the links between maritime violence and political power. Inspired by her reflections, I want to offer a sea yarn that is located in a different time and distinct maritime space—namely, the contemporary world of maritime piracy in the Western Indian Ocean—but echoes Benton’s concern with maritime raiders as hyperpolitical players. My interlocutors oscillated between embracing the label of pirate and refusing it outright. I want to think through this pattern of refusal and disavowal not as a counterpoint to Benton’s story but rather as a general mode of thinking about the politics of protection and, indeed, about politics as protection. Situating piracy in this more comparative frame allows it to resonate across space and time.
From 2007 to 2012, an unprecedented upsurge in incidents of maritime piracy off the coast of Somalia captivated global attention. Over three hundred merchant vessels and over three thousand seafarers were held hostage in the Western Indian Ocean as attacks spread from Somali coastal waters to the west coast of India, ranging as far south as the Mozambique Channel. Unlike piracy in other waters, Somali piracy operated purely on a kidnap-and-ransom model in which value emerged from often long and protracted negotiations. Unlike theft or seizure, ransom requires forms of collaboration and legal and material infrastructures that make payment possible (Dua Reference Dua2019a). These networks are not entirely dissimilar to the system of prize courts that Benton describes in her article, though here it was diya groups (Somali kin-based associations who share fiscal and legal responsibility for payments related to crimes committed by and against their members, and risk-pooling more generally), insurance companies, and their networks of negotiators and experts working on behalf of major shippers that made possible this transformation of “booty into property.” Key to this transformation from capture to payment were forms of refusal and disavowal that occurred both in coastal villages in Somalia and within maritime insurance offices in London.
Protection Against Politics
After a few months of research in Somalia, I had met a handful of pirates but had never come across the elusive pirate boss. Every attempt, I was either firmly rebuffed or quoted exorbitant figures for an interview. One afternoon, when I returned from a day of interviews, the guesthouse owner in a town in Puntland told me, “Absaame has agreed to meet you. We are going to a mafresh.” Absaame was a pirate boss who had previously demanded $10,000 for a meeting, so I was stunned by this unexpected opportunity. I got myself ready quickly and headed with the guesthouse owner to the market to purchase some qaad.
Arriving at the mafresh with some Meru Miraa (Kenyan qaad) in the twilight hours, the call to Isha prayers sounding in the background, I encountered a fairly mellow scene of seven or eight young men sitting around a table littered with bundles of qaad and bottles of 7 Up. I wasn’t sure which one was Absaame, so I added my bundle to the table and quietly sat down at one corner. Fifteen minutes later, a middle-aged man in an Egyptian-style gallabeeya stepped in and introduced himself, in Cairene-inflected Arabic, as Absaame.
“Ana birate [I am a pirate],” he said playfully, though it was clear he wielded the status of his position. Absaame liked being called a pirate, not buraad (bandit in Somali) or even the more sympathetic badhinta bahar (saviors of the sea), a term popularized in recent Somali and Western journalistic accounts that recast Somali piracy as a local response to problems of overfishing and global exploitation. “Call me an abaan [protector] or just use the English word ‘pirate,’” he told me. “Those are words that indicate prestige [sumcad]. I became a big man through this business. It’s important to me.” Absaame clearly saw value in his status as a pirate/protector, a status he performed by hosting these daily gatherings.
Absaame remained animated throughout the chew, holding forth in a voice that ranged from playful to stern to bombastic, especially once the mirqaan (the stimulant effect) set in. A Bollywood movie played continuously in one corner of the room, and the smell of apple-flavored tobacco hung thickly in the air. Absaame told me that his father had worked in the Gulf and later moved to Cairo. Absaame grew up there. Throughout our conversation, the word business was repeated in multiple languages (English, Arabic, Somali, and Swahili) as Absaame described his various endeavors, including his current position as “pirate boss.” When Absaame finished speaking, Bole—a soft-spoken young man from the Ogaden region in Ethiopia who had waited many years to cross the Red Sea in order to migrate (an act known as tahriib) but ended up giving up on his dream and becoming a pirate—turned to Absaame and offered him a vibrant green stem of qaad. “This is the boqorka lanta.” The stem of the boqor (ruler) is customarily given to the elder within a group, emphasizing the importance of qaad chews as places where hierarchy is performed. As Absaame chewed the stem with obvious relish, he said, “This is what piracy has given me.”
I have written elsewhere (Dua Reference Dua2019b) how for Absaame and others like him, piracy was a spectacular act, one that he relished. Unlike many involved in piracy, he was known in Somalia as one of the few pirate bosses who went out to sea with his crew. In the mafresh he would constantly tell of the adventure and bravado central to hijacking a ship. “You cannot imagine how big some of these ships are when you are in a boat ready to capture them. We had been chewing all night to become brave. Those who chew at night are said to be possessed with isqarxis [death wish].” Absaame masterfully set the scene for his tale. “The sea was wild, with the wind howling. At dawn we saw this giant ship and got our ladder and hooked ourselves to the ship to climb aboard and bring it back to Somalia.” Absaame’s storytelling follows the style and structure of a rich poetic tradition in Somalia that exalts the raider as a heroic figure. The mafresh brings into view the performativity of inspiration, desire, and other non-numerical modes of valuation that are central to becoming a pirate. Outside the mafresh, a “pirate style” was clearly visible on occasion—a flash of a golden Rolex here and a pink limousine there.
So much for evading the pirate as a colorful rogue, or a social bandit. But to stop there would be to miss the point. In the same spaces, something else was going on. Over time, I learned that claiming to be a pirate was simultaneously a claim not to be something else: namely, “Al-Shabaab.” Coming to prominence in the aftermath of the Ethiopian invasion of Somalia in 2006, Al-Shabaab belongs to a long history of Islamist movements in Somalia. The backlash to Siyad Barre’s promulgation of Scientific Socialism in the 1980s led to the emergence of Islamist groups that fought against what was perceived as the “secularization” of Somali society. Al-Ittihaad al-Islamiya (AIAI) became the most powerful of these groups in Somalia in the 1980s and 1990s. During the Somali civil war, from 1991 onward, AIAI was a key protagonist and controlled several cities, including the ports of Merca and Bosaso. By 1997, however, it had splintered into several factions, including a number of key Islamic courts throughout south and central Somalia. The latter eventually transformed into Il-ittihad al-mahākim al-islāmiyya (ICU), which controlled vast swathes of Somalia from 2000 until its dissolution following the Ethiopian invasion of Somalia. Al-Shabaab emerged as a splinter group during this period, a time that also saw the scaling up of maritime raiding. For men like Absaame, Al-Shabaab and piracy provided two possible modes of “violent labor” (Hoffman Reference Hoffman2011); as options, they occupied sometimes intersecting, overlapping social geographies in the Horn of Africa. Yet as piracy gained prominence and ransom amounts increased and became more regularized, I heard repeatedly, from those involved in maritime raiding, that piracy was not Al-Shabaab. Pirates had no politics, they said. It was simply a business.
Why this disavowal? Here, we must switch geographical gears and head to the United Kingdom, to the ambiguous terrain on which ransom negotiation and payment operated. The twentieth century was marked by attempts to codify the international law of the seas, a push that entailed the codification of piracy as an international crime. Early efforts included the Harvard Draft Convention on Piracy (1932), which sought clarity on definitions and jurisdiction but never became binding law. The post-WWII era of expanding maritime trade prompted broader multilateral negotiations, culminating in the 1958 Geneva Conventions on the Law of the Sea (with a dedicated convention on the high seas that defined piracy and outlined jurisdiction); however, these agreements did not achieve full global consensus or resolve enforcement ambiguities. The landmark United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) of 1982 provided the first widely ratified and comprehensive framework: it defined piracy in Articles 100–107, tasked all states with suppressing piracy, and clarified legal powers on the high seas. This was followed by the 1988 SUA (Suppression of Unlawful Acts) Convention and various IMO (International Maritime Organization) guidelines that further defined and clarified the scope of acts considered under the rubric of piracy. None of these attempts at codification explicitly addressed ransom payments, even as various jurisdictions at international and domestic levels embarked on the criminalization of payments made to armed groups, under the aegis of anti-terrorism law and global sanction regimes (Mulder Reference Mulder2022).
As a component of “economic warfare,” the application of sanctions was heavily determined by the idea of “politics.” Terrorists and rogue states were understood as operating in accordance with a political vision; therefore, any material or other support for these political projects meant falling afoul of a global sanctions and anti-terrorism regime that targeted countries and corporations. The distinction between public and private ends (with piracy as an “illegal act of violence, detention, or depredation committed for private ends”) has meant that most jurisdictions tend to think of piracy as merely an economic crime, even as the hostis humani generis becomes a “model for other universal enemies” (Li Reference Li2019). Ironically, then, “real” pirates, the ones we can negotiate with and pay ransoms to, are transformed into economic actors and contracting parties. Ransom payments to Somali pirates thus are not only possible; they have become part of a lucrative multi-billion-dollar ransom industry (Shortland Reference Shortland2019).
Reflecting its imperial legacy, London emerged as a key hub for piracy negotiations from 2006 onward. The major insurance companies and maritime courts that shape the regulatory architecture of global shipping and maritime finance are located there. Two legal cases in particular—Royal Boskalis Westminster N.V v. Trevor Rex Mountain and others (1997) and Masefield AC v. Amlin Corporate Member Ltd (2011)—have provided the juridical architecture for a burgeoning industry of experts and payment systems. These cases defined not only the legality of ransom economies in London but also how the practitioners of maritime raiding disavow politics. This is not to deny that many who participated in ransom cases were in fact pursuing apolitical profit, but that their disavowals and performances were part of a shared script. Piracy, the courts affirmed in both cases, had no politics and therefore was not terrorism, which meant that ransom payments were merely losses that could be recovered under the general average and the “sue and labour clause” of the Marine Insurance Act of 1906. In London, the constant refrain was “piracy is just a business.” Which brings us back to Absaame and his claim: “We have no politics. We are businessmen.”
Becoming a pirate, and claiming to have no politics, can thus be understood as a form of protection from the sanctions regime and, for pirates in Somalia, from the drones that constantly targeted Al-Shabaab militants. In both Somalia and London, dealing with “pirates” was a way of transforming booty into property. If this hyperpolitical disavowal of politics was oriented toward imperial centers, other forms of disavowal were equally prevalent in Somalia, especially amongst those who sustained the pirate economy.
Protection Against Sin
As Somali piracy expanded from the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean, and from fishing vessels to large cargo ships, it ironically became more tied to land. Extended periods of time spent in negotiating for ransoms meant that hostages had to be fed, security crews and negotiators hired, and a whole host of other logistical operations performed. Additionally, the time required for ransoms was deeply uncertain. It depended on factors ranging from insurance cover to flag state, cargo type, and crew nationality. Navigating uncertainty meant relying on a variety of people and institutions—a process I refer to elsewhere as a mode of “anchoring piracy” within the social worlds of coastal Somalia (Dua Reference Dua2019b). This process involved the collateralization of kinship, which flexibly converted the risk of piracy into the protection of obligation. Here, I also want to emphasize how “anchoring” was a form of disavowal—a mode of protection against sin. If maritime raiders claimed the label “pirate” as a form of legal posturing, their various local financiers disavowed “piracy” in a politics oriented toward other universals at play in this world (a refrain echoed by Judith Scheele’s interlocutors in the Sahara).
Aisha, a merchant who dreamed of monopolizing the Puntland qaad market, regularly sold qaad to pirates while also being a vocal critic of piracy. She began her career selling camel milk at highway rest stops, but she now owned a private plane that regularly flew in qaad from Ethiopia. One afternoon, as Aisha’s driver sped us north to the airstrip at the edge of town, she took phone calls in the backseat. “Business,” she said to me in English as she hung up. Upon arriving at the airport, I walked out onto the runway to watch her supervise the unloading. As soon as the plane landed, Aisha called out to several armed men who had been milling about, their AK-47s casually slung on their shoulders. “Askari halkan [guards come here]! The plane is landing. Time to work.” Aisha was in the middle of inspecting the cargo and yelling out instructions when a phone call interrupted her. The ringtone, a discordant nashid (Muslim devotional song), punctuated the quiet efficiency of the unloading and loading. Aisha stepped away to answer the phone. When she returned to the area next to the hold where I was standing, she remarked, “You have brought me luck today. A ship has been captured and the pirates called to secure some qaad. They have ten guards on board, and I just made a deal with them to supply fresh qaad every day. Depending on how long the negotiations take, I’ll be a rich woman!” As we headed back from the airport, I watched one of the pickup trucks speed north toward the coast, where I imagined a group of qaad-craving pirates eagerly awaited its arrival.
The next day, arriving at the market right before the arrival of the qaad trucks, I sat with notebook in hand waiting for Aisha to appear. As she emerged from her Land Cruiser, I walked over to her, and we watched as she sold out her daily shipment. Once the frenzy had calmed, the buyers retreated home with their bundles, or to the mafresh for a long evening of chewing. I asked Aisha about the pirates she had supplied qaad to the day before. “They were very happy to get the qaad,” she said. “I sent them a falad [3/4 kilo], and since they were at sea for two weeks, I am sure last night they were really feeling the effects.” Aisha continued: “Every day for the next month or so I’ll send them a kilo or so while they are waiting for the ransom.” At this point, I asked my usual question: “How do you trust pirates? What happens if they don’t pay?” Aisha brushed off my concerns. “What do you mean by ‘they will not pay’? Of course, they have to pay. The person who called yesterday, the dilaal [broker], is part of my mag [diya] group. I extend him credit and of course he needs to pay his debts! I have a claim on him if he does not pay me back.” Turning to her notebook, Aisha showed me a page where she had scribbled in the debts owed to her, with amounts ranging from a few to many thousands of dollars. “Some of these people are businessmen, others are poets and politicians, and, of course, some of the biggest debts are those owed to me by pirates.” (Dua Reference Dua2019b: 85–86)
I was struck by this account book and Aisha’s easy equivalence between pirate, poet, and merchant. In addition to putting everyone literally on the same page, the account book also listed, next to each name, a brief genealogy or the name of a sub-clan. Far from the hostis humani generis (the enemy of all mankind—a figure removed from the realm of enmity and friendship), the pirate and piracy are anchored within this world of kinship, obligation, and debt. It is this entanglement that makes it possible for Aisha not only to be confident that the pirates will pay their dues but to disavow piracy altogether.
As Aisha (and other merchants) would repeatedly remind me, they were not profiteering from piracy. That would be haram (unlawful). In fact, I was assured that even the profiteering frame was not the relevant one. “What matters,” Aisha explained during one of our last meetings in Puntland, “is your obligation toward the diya group…that is all I am doing and asking others to do—be responsible to the diya group.” For Aisha, there was no piracy financing but simply obligations that were part of being in a shared social world. This did not mean there were no pirates; she was adamant in critiquing the young men who engaged in “drunkenness” and “illegal sex.” She was also critical of attempts to track money in general that failed to distinguish properly between “business” and “theft” and between halal (lawful) and haram (unlawful). When I mentioned that a Sheikh [religious leader] in Puntland had recently issued a fatwa declaring “helping” pirates through providing them supplies to be haram, she responded: “The Americans I’m not surprised, but if a Sheikh doesn’t know the difference between haram and halal…” Letting the statement linger in its incompleteness, she continued, “If you track money like this, we are all pirates. I am a pirate.” “So are you a pirate?” I asked, to which she just laughed. (Dua Reference Dua2019b: 88).
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