there is no health care or medical care. when they bring them to you, your the only semblance of health or freedom they will see. even if it doesn't turn out like a storybook, they know that you try to help. when you have nothing that makes all the difference in the world. i think it will take some time to help to educate them while training them but i think we will have an honest and loyal partner. not only working with a groan afghans have the generations that survived the soviets, we also train and mentor a lot of the younger children. one of the things many people don't know is a lot of the units go to orphanages and spend time with children to pass out

humanitarian aid and supplies. there is a well rounded concept going into what we do and a lot more to it and i wish that message was getting out. . .

>> thank you very much for coming. [applause] coming up next, book tv presents "after words," an hourlong program where we invite guests to interview authors to read this week freelance journalist jay bahadur and his first book, the pirates of somalia. and that mr. bahadur exposes the motivation of the high seas hijackers some of whom made international news with the

capture of an american cargo ship in 2009 and later the murder of for retiree is sailing around the world. he discusses how he made his way into the pirates inner circle and what he believes can be done to stop them. he talks with clifford may, president of the foundation for defense of democracies. >> host: jay, let me start with you before we get into the book. if i understand correctly you're 27-years-old from toronto, you were doing marketing research and then you decided you know what, i want to get into journalism and the when you decided to diffuse is research the pirates. >> guest: i used to top people when i was 4-years-old i wanted to be a reporter and then i forgot and when i was finishing at the university i started to come around to that way of thinking and every journalist i spoke to said that if you want to get ahead in today's in quite

a struggling natural some market and especially if you want a job doing international journalism around the world you should just go up there and write free-lance so that was my intention. i was originally going to go to the somaliland which is another independent region of the west and in march 2009 those elections never happened but as it turned out i ended up finding a much better opportunity, one the certainly had a better chance of getting my name worked out. >> host: your interest in somalia is longstanding and goes back to college? >> guest: i found the country extremely fascinating because it's one of these -- i did study it in college and it's one of these places where you see how people -- is the closest to get to the state where you get to see how people actually react when faced with anarchy and there's no such thing as a state of anarchy because as soon as we get into somalia will start

learning a bit about it and the local statements propped up everywhere and the people don't like anarchy so the four regions have pulled together and formed indigenous governments that function to a greater or lesser extent sali in debt and one of these territories in the eve of the first election in four years and was a turnover of power so it was an interesting time and i think so malling of the way it is presented glazes over the fact there's interesting dynamics going on the country, political dynamics and not islamist dynamics there is the official transitional federal government itself which is a collection of x warlords of the international community. it's one of the most interesting countries in the world. >> host: when you were deciding to go over there did your parents and your girlfriend and others say this is a totally crazy thing to do, you have no idea what it's going to be like

to work in a place like that, do not do it? >> guest: a lot of my friends were telling my girlfriend to talk me out of it and so i had a sort of fifth column working behind my back to get to me through her but she never did. i don't know why. and my parents as well. they were sort of taciturn about it. they didn't overly encourage me but they never said anything to dissuade me or threatened to pull the purse strings from under me because i did need to bar a little money. >> host: i assume you did try to get the national post, the american papers, cbc, somebody to give you an assignment to go there so that you would know that you had somebody to write for when you got there. >> guest: i actually didn't. i went with the intention of writing the book. this was the goal that i actually thought it was realistic. it may sound arrogant and 90's but i thought i was going to go there and get a book, and in the

meantime i thought if it doesn't work out my fall back planas i will self-reliance because the major news agencies are so happy when there's a free lancer willing to take peanuts for being in a place they can't send their own people and a number of reasons major newspapers send people to somalia. and so, i wasn't worried about finding someone to take my word especially if i had good access to pirates to join in the passing. the only thing is what i am doing is for a book proposal to write a sample chapter in the end up selling that sample chapter in a condensed version to the london times so my very first piece shortly after i got back in march, 2009 was a featured in the london times which was pretty cool. >> host: when i was a young foreign correspondent for the hirsh newspapers one of the

places they send me off to was northern ireland to cover the terrorism there. the difference it seems to me between then and now is when i went north of ireland i figured and i think rightly at that point everybody would want to talk to me and no one would want to harm me they needed me to tell their story. one of the things that's changed is particularly among terrorists and others who are violent they no longer quite need you to tell the story in the same way for example of they can cut off your head and put it on videotape and posted on the internet is kind of told the story utilizing. so it's a more dangerous environment if you are going to cover people like that. this obviously occurred to you and actually i think you dealt with it rather resourcefulness. maybe talk about that and when you decided to do in terms of security. >> guest: my original plan was just to walk to get to somalia on my own and fly and ask for your actions to the coast and then try to talk my way into the good graces of the pirate group

and they would think i was so touched or just crazy or mad that they would take pity on me or either that or they would be blown away by my bravery. that wasn't the best plan but i had a vision of ale, the pirates capital of of the explosion happened. eyl. so i was looking all over the place and i noticed on the edge of town a small building labeled pipe ret check point. [laughter] so i felt okay this is easy i just have to get to this pilot checkpoint i will sit around with them and -- >> host: you knew about that -- >> guest: so this plan was a little hairbrained and it turned off there was no pipe rett checkpoint. what i ended up doing is i made

local journalists whose name was mohammed and he had run -- >> host: you may conduct by the way through e-mail or -- >> guest: the e-mail me back within five minutes. host could you were looking for journalists were resonant in any part of somalia. >> guest: yasser light just send an e-mail, got a response in five minutes and he called me the next day probably as early as he thought i might be of so he called at 7 a.m.. i wasn't up, but i spoke to him and it was clear he was very eager. >> host: why didn't she want you to come? >> guest: his father in that getting elected as the region president before got karen chin lardy, 2009. i heard his father was one of 16 candidates in the election, but he gained something like 75% of the vote so a massive favorite. when i heard this i just filed

in addition to the back of my mind and thought this is probably not going to happen. but, i ended up getting because of his father's position i ended up getting great access only to bureaucrats and politicians, but also his family was the same sub clan as a lot of the pirates. all of the original figures who started out fighting against foreign fishing in the 90's were the same sub clan. so they were happy to talk to me because i was a guest of basically the defacto head of the plan. >> host: why do you think he wanted you to come? did he have a message that he hoped he would get out about the plan about his father, was he doing real journalism would use a? >> guest: it is a pro-government website, there's no doubt about that but it's a high-quality web site and it's not by any means propaganda. it's a very high-quality for the groups of somalia with little

funding and definitely pro-government. there's no doubt about that. but yes for the mission, his father, the president, his mission was to rehabilitate the image on the international stage and she had been run into the ground by the previous administration, which controlled the government from 2005 to 2009. in 2008 that government had been so and as a tool it actually been out of money to pay the security forces which is one of the factors that led to the rising piracy of the time. so, he wanted the book to be i guess a sort of trouble log about this and a species of propaganda. it didn't turn out that way because i had to be very conscious when i was riding on the fact i was under the wing of the government and everything was being filtered through that lens. everyone who spoke to me assumed or rightly or wrongly what they were telling me was going to get back to the president or his son

and so in the book i had to be very clear, had to be very careful to write a balanced view and some of the reviews criticized what's been criticized as that some people said its too balanced. >> host: basically in this one colin subsequent phone calls you said you know what, come on over we will have somebody need you when you get here we will take care of you and provide some security and sure you can do some reporting here. that's basically how it went? >> guest: he also wanted the book. i pitched in the idea of the book and was immediately like we may be naive we thought it already happened essentially in the book was in fact i was kind of sugar in later on when i told them this news that i got the book, she acted like well yeah, don't we have a book? so that was the plan he provided to secure the guides at all time

>> host: we should probably tell a little how you got there because it isn't quite like going to the airport and it is a little bit of a difficult destination. >> guest: yeah, you have to -- the most common way to get there is to go to dubai and go to the terminal room and back to which i call it the part by the airline hub of dubai because it flies to north korea and pyongyang and then flies to somalia but then it goes through djibouti and then once they get to djibouti in 1970's soviet prop plane flown by ukrainians and on the engine with sweeping vodka from the other hand and so this kind of stories to and i compared it to somalia and soviet union and the geopolitical of ties and once

those relations collapsed icon parody's ukrainians in the book to people who had just been forgotten about and just condemned to this neglected or forever. >> host: the last plane he were on not a lot of foreigners, not a lot of people like to you. >> guest: none. was shocking because i expected to meet a lot of foreign journalists and when it exploded and after the serious start captured the oil tanker carrying 100 million crude oil that amended the headlines so i expected to find a lot of journalists and the first trip, i made two trips, the first was from six weeks and during that time i saw -- >> host: in 2009 -- >> guest: the beginning of 2009 and during that entire time i saw one group of foreigners and it was an australian camera crew flying in on my final day in the country so we were

literally passing each other in the airport, and so it's shocking. i mean, i got there and just said i kind of have this market cornered. i think i do. [laughter] >> so all right, you get there, happily you get to the tarmac and the security is provided for you, you have guests and a place to provide to you and they will hopefully start putting you in contact with pirates who are going to hopefully tell you their story. why do you talk about your first interview to the >> guest: i was taken after somebody -- i asked where are the pirates. was to you have already been there several days. >> guest: and pirates are -- was very obvious at that time who they were they were driving around in these toyota vehicles i call it the baby land cruiser is a cruiser just the proportion is shrunken and it is obvious who they were because the new

license plates had 18 for the commencing digits. so you know, if you saw a young kid driving around in a toyota serve with 18 of the license plate that is a pirate. there is no 90% of them are pirates so i asked can we go to these people and start talking to them and he immediately laughed and said no, no, we can't do that. we immediately start getting watched or might just attack you. so, like i said everything in somalia comes down to the klan and he ended up setting up a meeting with a man who becomes the central character in my book. >> host: that is his nickname? >> guest: i never found out what boya meant that every one goes by a name because the nicknames are over -- there's a lot of mohammed's and so on. so the names are so common that everyone goes by nickname. boya -- i was taken to meet boya

and then about 15 minutes outside of the capitol city immediately i didn't know my partner to well. i thought i was being ambushed or something because why are we going to meet him 15 minutes outside of the city in an abandoned field? and my partner told me that -- >> host: this is yours a moly partner? through the journalist -- >> guest: yak. explained that he was worried about tuberculosis because boya apparently had tuberculosis. i don't think that he actually had it but he was extremely and is heated and so mohammed was afraid and had this paranoia about tuberculosis it wasn't just this one incident. so i met boya at the farm and at first he was completely disdainful. first of all he was to get it. i'm about 6-foot five, and he was at least six of our six-foot eight, extremely thin, and the essentially wouldn't even look at me. he didn't even look at the when he shook my hand he said a grumbling as i interviewed him for about an hour grumbling looking at the sun and said the

day was almost over. he was quite disdainful and afterwards i realized after mohammed after we finish the interview, mohammed came up and gave him $100 for the afternoon cut of the drug i was talking about so drug money essentially to speak to me. but then i ended with him and his gang i got to know more and more of them. >> host: you are working with a translator. the folks were not english-speaking that there were plenty of people who did speak english and translate. >> host: mohammed spoke good english? >> guest: he spoke passable english. like most of the ex mex who run the country he's lived -- >> host: the people that have gone abroad and have come back. >> guest: the former. the community, the diaspora that lives abroad lives everything in the country, business because they are the only ones as mentioned no local people speak english and so they have a

certain sophistication. they have foreign languages. they can do it somewhat better and the president spent 20 years in australia. >> guest: and his son as well. so yes. and the president spoke six languages. but at the very base level, the members of the diaspora are going to speak english and arabic and they come and totally dominate the top ranks and run the entire government, have the best business opportunities so there were plenty of people. everyone i spoke to in holding position in government spoke english but for the pirates it was a universally translation and actually there is a really strong tension between the two levels, those who stay and suffer the brunt of the war and those unable to escapes and have lives outside so it's interesting. there's a sharp divide in this

society. >> host: one of the things you learn from boya which i find fascinating, maybe not surprising but fascinating, is he doesn't see himself as a pirate. the pirates don't call themselves pirates mr. lee. >> guest: they know the word and use the word. >> host: the find it slightly offensive. >> guest: it is like a racial slur if you use a slight racial slur with somebody you were not very familiar with they might react in the same way. >> host: they see themselves as the saviors for the coast guard's and they have a legitimate grievance they say they are trying to address it in other words they have a rather sophisticated relations. >> guest: i felt at times there was an offical hi ret machine at work behind the scenes issued and the press release because literally even if a guy hadn't set foot within, you know, set foot within sight of the fishing boat in his life the first words out of his mouth were we are doing this because

of fishing >> host: their claim is that the four men fishing boats came to the waters, depleted the waters, destroyed the reefs, took away their livelihood and so they were going to do something to stop this because the international community wasn't coming to their defense. >> guest: yes and that was true that as a partial explanation that was true for very few men. boya and his gang had been fishing and had suffered a lot of incursions often either from the european french and spanish, very common but then mostly it is south asian, taiwanese and so on. and if these ships would come in and when they are fishing close to shore for lobsterman become a rock lobster which is what boya and his colleagues used to fish for they would come into conflict with local fishermen and their accounts i didn't just take everything boya was saying

as god's truth, but there are third party accounts that these foreign fisher's arm themselves with anti-aircraft guns and destroy local. and i heard one story from the townspeople where to fishermen come to divers had been swept up by a trout net and drown and they also end up destroying the local lobster three schrag fishing. so one of the reasons that i found boya and his men and so compelling in their story and the threat of their story runs through my book is because they had a justification. it is easier to dehumanize them and make -- a ufo, make them sympathetic characters in the story. and that's i think partly the advantage i have is offering an inside look into their lives and portraying them more than just

the thugs with their heads wrapped in turbans. this covers a grievance that perhaps gave birth to this at one point and i will go on for a second and you can address it but what happened is starting i guess in the 1990's the solid attacking the foreign fishing boats but as they develop their skills they start to go after commercial vessels house will eventually the world food program bringing food aid and essentially almost anything that came into their path was fair game including obviously not that long ago the two american couples who were retired and distributing bibles to the far flung churches and schools and killed, murdered i guess you would see as the negotiations for the release were under way since they started by descending their territory and the ended up saying anything is fair game to us. that's -- is that reasonable? >> guest: its complex because, and i'm trying to think of a way

to summarize this very quickly, but boya and -- yes. the store to build in the early 90's with the illegal fishing ships. that being said, the current business model which is kidnapping nazi you go out and capture ships and it's true that's what is important. you bring them to the local base and demand ransom. it's no different than the taliban and afghanistan katrine someone and bringing them to a cave or taking people into the jungle and holding them hostage. it's -- you know, the common ground is they have some who are says' and inaccessible they can hold and supply themselves over the negotiations carried out. that business model wasn't invented by the fishermen and was invented by a man who was a nickname meaning bigmouth but he wasn't even a businessman he was a former sex that who lived in

central somalia and returned to the country and just figured out the ships would pay these ransoms and once he figured out that model and started equipping the mother ships boya and his men always use 85 meters of the fishing scales they would use for fishing. he started using the larger ships fishing bows the would toe the case and can range hundreds of miles into the ocean that was a key development and as he mentioned he started attacking the world food program ships which is a very much against the pyrite mantra when they are literally stealing food from their own the people. once that was -- that model was invented it spread of and on the coast and boya and his men said well looked at this the foreign fishing ships are a hassle to attack because they shoot back

at us and we are already very experienced and the navigation and the boarding operations and we know the coast line so the center we started traveling up and down the coast working with his men training the pirates. and so it was a very incestuous history, very interbred industrial history of how the virus develop, but to say that it wouldn't have happened had there been no illegal fishing is completely off base. no fishing ships had approached, tuna, remotely close to the somalia water it still would eventually happen. someone needed to figure it out and someone did. >> host: this can lead in a good context of a you have a breakdown in somalia and became a collapsed state of the wedding to make an interesting and important distinction that collapsed state isn't the same as a failed state.

a failed state suggests total anarchy and collapsed can mean what has happened here which is that you have i think as you describe it enclaves, for in particular and each controlled by a specific couple of clans and their own government in this somali land and to others. that gave rise to the ability for these pirates to begin to organize and actually you make i think a good point that it was easier for them to organize where there was less chaos because they wouldn't get caught in the crossfire and they wouldn't have people to pay off. >> guest: that's why it think that you saw him explode as the epicenter of the whole piracy crisis. in the south there has been part

i receive it in the south, but as you alluded to there's tons of competing interest in the south. islamists, warlords, the transitional government, and with the pirates are, they are just businessmen. operating in a business environment, very low barriers of entry, high turnover, great mobility of capital. it's a free market enterprise, and these businesses need to operate in an environment of security and they provided a perfectly because as i said, the government, there is a government there and it does function and it does employ security forces but the security forces are confined to barracks along one road running to the center of the region. there is no roads in the coastal areas, no way to deploy troops in any quick or effective manner. when i was there it took seven hours for the 200 kilometers. and so, they were a essentially at arm's length from the central

government. but like i said, there was those competing interests in the south who would read them off. if you are operating in an area where a warlord is -- a warlord is raining or you have islamic militants, they are going to demand protection money. they are going to demand the cut just like a mob and this was in the case and in fact i mentioned in central somalia coming up with a business model in 2005 when the court union -- this is the home grown islamist movement in this house took over the country, the south country in 2006 they took over the area his men were operating from and they went north so it relocated them in 2006 and concentrated i guess all of the piatt forces the were concentrated in eyl and in 2008 when the government went from

barely functioning to not functioning at all and ran out of money to pay the security forces there were tons of men with guns and not much to do with who provided a great recruitment. >> host: it takes financing to put together a pilot operation as you describe. do you have any sense were you able to report at all with financing was coming from outside of the country? >> guest: i think it's a difficult question, and to answer it simply i think that what you have is a seamless provided by journalists working inside. about 30 key finance years and these are the men that provide the money for the mission which might range from 20 to $50,000, not that much money. there would be local businessmen who move in and out of the country like a lot of the somalia businessmen. six months in their adopted

homeland and six months back in the country and have business connections outside and the money to finance this. the setting has been played in the media has some international crime syndicate and i've even heard ludicrous suggestions that american businessmen are financing debt as it somalia needs american businessmen to supply $50,000 from the mission which is not only is there plenty of that kind of money in the somalia it is somewhat patronizing to suggest that they couldn't be doing it themselves in the american corporate backing to get this done. the fact is it is not that much money involved and the local businessmen i think are the face of the transnational somalia crimes in the kit sometimes the media seems to portray. i see no direct evidence that there are established mullen somali foreigners financing this. there isn't one shred of evidence to suggest that.

>> host: we're going to take one quick break and among the things i want to discuss, jay, the role played by groups like al-shabaab, which is the off al qaeda of joliet and of course what solutions there may be or may not be to this problem. so we will be back right after this. >> host: we are back with jay bahadur, the author of "the pirates of somalia in cited their hidden world." a fascinating book i had the pleasure of reading this weekend. jay, the pirates are -- i wouldn't, based on your description, call them sophisticated they are well organized in the sense that you have apprenticeship programs for

the young pilots and elite pirates who attack and seize the vessel, you have the holders who stay with them and they even have their own cook they bring on board. the mother ship and then the various gifts, you have negotiators, translators, accountants. it has gotten to be fairly organized enterprise. >> guest: that's a very good way to put it, not sophisticated but organized. in the sense that there are these structures that if left to very efficiently on land provide for their negotiations. these are often the freelancers. like i was. they hire themselves out. one day i was studying held a ship called the victoria, and i go into detail in this in the book, should come on board from another gang after he finished his lead assignment. so the good negotiators ran in

demand. the of logistics officers who brought the food and organized transports and the hat to haulier land cruisers who bought the drugs, that is the toughest things and this was all done on credit when the ship was awaiting the ransom delivery. the back or might not even have enough money to provide -- to pay for the supply up front because the supply for just a couple months might run into hundreds of thousands of dollars mainly because they're chewing all the time it is extremely expensive, about $20 a kilogram which is what an addict might go through each day so you have accountants to keep track of all of the expenses. the wood front money to gang members who, say that you are in attacking member who had just come back from a successful hunt you get on shore and don't want to stay on the ship in the more you just want to start partying and you want to buy a car, the

first thing you want to get a new woman and they don't have the money so they basically take care of that for them. he's like their factor. host could secure credit bureau. >> guest: he doesn't extend the credit personally but anyone who wants -- anyone that piatt wants to deal with he wants to buy from someone that guy will come to the accountant and he will say it's on me, i've got it and he will be the backer so they will deal directly with the pirates themselves with the accountant will take care of that and the end up paying double. >> host: because they pay the hefty interest rates. >> guest: most ransoms are paid it's a risky proposition so you get i would say a ransom back, an audio you about 50 cents on the dollar, so they get -- they essentially have to pay double the price, 100% interest on the purchases so they go on shore and start spending immediately. that's one way they are sophisticated. another way is the adapted very

well to what the international bv set to run. they are clever. the attwell. once the vv scan into the gulf of aden and created a transit corridor and started escorting ships they immediately shifted to even more prevalent use of the mother ships and went over a thousand miles into the indian ocean. another tactic that has been tried is six-point where if the ship is boarded the crew barricades' themselves in the engine room where they're provided food and water into the kitchen to the house side and wait for the rescue. with the pirates learned about this there's reports of pirates bringing plastic explosives on the ships of they are well versed in the sense the mantra the internet. they even have people on the outside to tell them, other somalis living abroad, who might inform them of the trend is going on but they know everything that is going on. >> host: we should probably say a word about cot.

it's a plant not dissimilar from marijuana, a stimulant i guess or an intoxicate in its very popular not just in somalia but a lot of the red sea area around the horn of africa. basically most of the pirates and of many in somalia rejected to be convicted. they should for hours and spend a lot of their income on that. >> guest: it blew my mind. i mean, it's not even grown in the somalia. yemen, i think many are more addictive. they take their families out to two cot. the somalis would never bring their wives or their child of leased hegemony rosebud and sue malida, which is, you know, out there in the poorest country on earth obviously is spending so much of its foreign exchange to import from kenya and ethiopia, which is the of claim it's much more suited to cut the cultivations of this is one of

the reasons that mohammed, the former dictator tried to stamp out caught in the 1970's and 80's not because he was concerned about the health or well-being of his people but because so much of the money was flowing out of the country into antagonistic governments into the hands of the countries that somalia was at times at war with. and so he saw this as funding his enemies and rightfully so. so, but the cot since then since the outbreak of the civil war has exploded and this is exclusively i would say and what they spend their money on. i can see what people spend their lives hijacking ships making money and having to chew on their farms. >> guest: it has to be chewed fresh so by the time it gets and it comes in every day at flights at 6 a.m. and it's more like

station wagons to come screaming into the dough through checkpoints. the soldiers get bundles of it to allow the merchants through and then the whole city comes alive. everyone is thrown on to the marketplace. children follow the transports and steel leaves off the back. even goats go nuts for the spirit as soon as they hear the [horn honking] dave run after them and try to get their own picking's off the back of the shipments. so yes i tried a couple of times. i found it was a great interviewing aid because i wouldn't compare it to marijuana but cocoa leaf, something that deutsch to the causes mild euphoria, makes you very tense and talkative and brimming with energy. so i tasted it or deutsch today by the six or seven times. it's full fee because like i said by the time it gets there it's just wilted and very bitter

that they have to chew sugar teat to counteract the taste. so it absolutely blew my mind how any somali that could afford was chewing it in plain sight. >> host: and that's part of the other thing is they need the money for what you describe as an organized enterprise of bishops and taking hostages and getting ransoms in the millions of dollars we should point out on the back of that and in the kind of blow their money on cars, women, cot, may be able bawdyhouse but that's it. they are not putting their money into a 401k or financing their way through dental hygiene school. >> guest: nor is it going in any meaningful way into the economy itself. it is recycled immediately back into the international market so it is almost as if the ransom could be paid in towns of cot because that is ultimately what it ends up going to you could

avoid deutsch inspection fees along the way it blows my mind this money is not the and to help the local communities. the local people hate them because exactly that. not only do they not fund local economies, put money into local causes, but they drive up local prices not only for the cot for food, water and it seems jerry and islamic because they drink and chu and fornicate with someone and so it's just it's and seen how they blow their money. and to add one more thing, people who talk about the somalia piracy be in this international crime syndicates and talk about piarist money going to finance buildings in nairobi, by and property in nairobi haven't met pirates because most of them don't have a concept of what money is even or they would you putting money in the bank as, you know, having someone steals your money they would never trust a banker in a

million years and is a few money as a kind of medium to get just as something the will get me a land peace. >> host: more like gratification is not in their habit. >> guest: we are heading into the ocean to get a land cruiser. the screen to be an intermediary step we get some money people talk about a lot of it's the land reserving the khat. >> host: you actually went to romania to interfere because they are not just taking the ships they are taking the crew. some of those who have been captured have been killed and although my impression from you is they don't look to kill anybody because they want to make it clear that if you pay the ransom you will get people back to life. there have been instances of torture and i've seen some discussion of whether that is increasing. my impression again from you is that they don't necessarily -- they don't torture for pleasure of the other hand they are not to make sure their hostages are

well taken care of. they take whatever they can steal from them personally as well. that is all accurate. anything we need to add on? >> guest: yeah, i would say they are definitely getting more specific and that is partially because it's not a fisherman anymore. it's now a lot of these guys are the militiamen whose histories of gun fighting not fishing in any means just from their own personal backgrounds they have a lot more experience using the violence. second, the ransom money is going up and this is causing increasing tensions on both sides because international forces are a lot more willing to use violence themselves in order to as an option of late paying ransoms that top $10 million. >> host: was in the record 9.5

last november for the oil tanker? >> guest: yes and now there has been 13.5 p earlier this year, seven months ago. so that is an out liar. but probably not much more but 5 million still. but clearly the money is going up. there has been increased numbers of rescue attempt and some on successful and the pirates notice and they are responding by using torture as the means to pressure shipping companies and to show they are serious so they've thrown hostages in freezers and tied up their genitals, use them for human shields, beatings, ma -- mock executions and that is something that wasn't going on even 1.5, definitely not two years ago. so i think it is a product of like i said, eight mean a -- a meter class of pirated the stakes are getting higher,

simple as that. >> host: when people hear about somalia -- i at least not to touch on this -- they may focus on particularly al-shabaab, which is a terrorist group, jihadists group that is officially affiliated with al qaeda. and i guess to cut through the chase, you argue that there is no evidence whatsoever of strategic alliances between the pirates and al-shabaab and what there may be i guess is alliances of convenience. you also report on all chabot telling the pirates, you might want to explain what this means, take care of the somali people. you must watch out for their interest. and also for the al-shabaab militia leading the pirates of the ransom and perhaps weapons so it's an odd relationship we are seeing here and maybe you can bring some light to bear on that. >> guest: a very complex issue i will try to summarize as

quickly as possible. but in 2008 and especially early 2009, a lot of these accusations started coming out that al-shabaab and pirates were the scene and frankly, i think that there is so many agendas at work on the war on tariffs and so on and a lot of people stood to benefit from somalia becoming a new hot spot for the war on terror as it has become. and so i took everything with a grain of salt. one of the earlier reports had also bought training pilots and shooting in exchange for marine navigation so it is a >> caller: image of instructing pirates and then being taken out to sale and it was so comical because you don't need to be anything of a marksman to become a high ridge. your job is not to storm a ship like a commando and within use

among the pirates is very rare and opposed to the crew member. so being trained as a marksman is not a qualification for the pirates. every somali knows how to use a gun in the first place to an adequate degree that you could become a pirate. and al-shabaab is not -- has not shown itself to have any naval presence whatsoever. and so, that was one -- that is one claim that there was no actual evidence to support that. it was something that really stretches credibility. but another event that sparked speculation was when they were captured, the ship carrying the tanks destined for southern sudan was captured it was immediately taken to the area that was controlled partially by al-shabaab, and what happened is

you had u.s. forces surrounding the ship, the pirates on the ship, the courts on the land and then al-shabaab waiting to get what they could on only from the ransom they wanted the weapons. now there is no way to off load tanks outside of mogadishu so there is no way that the facilities would be capable of loading the tanks. it is immediately this idea that they were after the tanks as if they could even be of use in somalia. the t-72 tanks from decades ago are not much help to the group fighting the insurgency. this is not how the modern war is thought that there is this idea that the pirates would meet with al-shabaab and try to get them the tanks. so, i think those are two events that stock in their minds and were used as fodder for why the policy needed to be treated like terrorism.

other than that there is little evidence to suggest there is any link between the two groups. not recently that does look like -- and i mentioned very briefly on the lookout that may be changing it for very good reason because al-shabaab actually pushed north into the areas of the pirates operate under. so then we can start thinking that maybe the pirates might have to pay protection money. it's logical. >> host: it's going to get money from somewhere. but they could earn the money. >> guest: sure. the declared piracy to be more forbidden religious but it isn't an issue as someone put it to me anything -- nothing is iran if it supports the insurgency. so you see in recent times that al-shabaab was pushed into one of the sovereign bases of the operations. >> host: south. >> guest: yes, this is south. what you saw is the pirates

simply left. >> host: they didn't want to deal with al-shabaab. >> guest: there's no reason they need to be in that specific area you can relocate very easily and find another safe harbor and you're gonna. there is a part of restricted, these are not towns where they have some fancy supply chains the required infrastructure of the town, they can move simply. the only evidence i have seen a shabaab getting paid off is now a list from the informants inside of the country that have suggested there has been a total of about 1 million paid to shabaab and the amounts varying between five to 10% of the ransom, and this is compared to what the pirates learned, this is absolutely nothing, and like i say in the bucket is not a systematic relationship at all. >> host: let's discuss responses and solutions and i know your catalog of a number of policy recommendations before we

get to those. i'd like to just raise some things i think will occur to most people when we hear about pirates and fighting pirates and one is you talk about the form of fishermen, and because arms on their ship and they were -- they could be pretty violent themselves and be difficult targets. so it takes is to have weapons on board the ship held by the crew a lot of people are going to think if we are a tanker or a cargo ship, have some guards were crew members with weapons and get the same thing as the fishing can do and just resist and fight back and they won't be able to succeed and wouldn't that solves the problem? >> no. i think that is one response i get frequently is why can't we just arm the merchant. and the simple answer to that is you would have to pay them twice as much. i mean, the cost would double,

you would have to train and pay for them to be trained. and the essentially what the big worry is the lead to a massive loss of life or you mentioned the tanker or the loss of a tanker cargo and the combined total of the ransom paid to date >> host: you should at the pirates and they use something like that and hit a hole in the tanker so it is going down. >> guest: you can't really blow a hole in a double tanker with them or pg. but recently what happened is that the pirates pursued i believe it was an oil tanker he did with the rbg switch to cause a fire on deck that could be damaged in the engine room and it is not inconceivable that the cargo could go on. it's unlikely but it is not

conceivable. but more to the point, if you end up a multiple crew member and give up losing their lives, you're going to end up paying more to their families through the club's coach of the productions shipowners you to self insure coverage would end up paying as much or more to the members of those families not to mention a terrible nightmare on your hands and say why are you putting your see fares out they are not soldiers why are they fighting men with superior weapons and rpg and rocket grenades? another thing is the mariners' [inaudible] >> host: even though the members are being held hostage under terrible situations a danger. >> guest: there's only -- i say only -- there have been seven instances that pyres of executive hostages and four of them were the americans you mentioned earlier. which was really a terrible

accident. there was an escalation of the incident and that's why they ended up buying so it is escalation of incidents people want to avoid. what i spoke to -- and speak to the marine insurers in london and what they told me is that there is a very good chance that if you put a security team, forget even arming the crew to be less trained and even the poorest trained security force that might raise the premium because they don't know so many private security firms are popping up about the gulf. the backgrounds are not known. it is not known what effect will have on the ship security. the chance of escalating are not known that well because it hasn't happened yet. difficult to calculate all the variables that they are very wary about this and what one of them said is that could easily raise the premium so training the crew to come back to training the crew will also have the same sort of repercussions

that an insurer might look at this and say you're probably just risking the chance that some could open up or plastic hole in your whole or try to and we have to end up paying insurance damages on that and so we are going to double your health insurance and so there's a lot of different reasons why this is. >> host: here's the other thing that seems reasonable but may not be. when a ship is taken and seized it has to be held either at anchor or fairly close to the shore so they can resupply of. while that means it is not that hard to know every ship that has been hijacked where the pirates have it once you know that you would think that there would be some way to say okay we located these ships and we are going to take them back by sending commandos. we are not going to let just

because there are holders on board with weapons we are not going to let them have the ship, we are taking them back. >> guest: they could do that at sea. >> host: when it's under attack unless you are very close you can do that but once it is sitting there at the shore for three weeks or months you have plenty of time to plan. >> guest: i see what you're saying is you can plan of a mission. a couple problems with that. there's been a relatively few incidences of factual commando missions and most of those have occurred -- i mentioned earlier safe zones the sometimes barricade themselves in the engine room. many have occurred after the line of fire. the french tried to take back the french yacht and ended up killing the captain out of the family on board and one out of four died in that case.

you had another commando mission which was the south korean forces carried out a successful rescue of the ship that was a massive oil tankers of this was something that had high stakes involved. the captain ended up getting shot critically but did not die which is considered he was extremely lucky. he was shot multiple times, three or four times. then you have the american jot we're all four captives died because to pirates panicked and unilaterally decided to execute the hostages and so was a complete disaster and that was due to the pirates panic because they saw u.s. forces loading into attack boats. i don't think it is a stretch to say commando missions would result in death not because it -- a logical person and say okay they called the bluff. they are coming. let's surrender and go to a

prison somewhere. but that's not the way they think. they are often jacked up on khat, a jittery, and it isn't a stretch to say there be a massive loss of life in the standard commando mission to read the second point is you start launching the commando missions you know if the pirates are going to do, they will take them on board and start scuttling the ships, not on board, on the ships that's another option they have in letting the crew go and surrender in or murdering them and it's okay we will take them to a cave in afghanistan and destroy the $25 million ship. that is a very undesirable outcomes and one more quick point i will add a very briefly is who are these commandos will probably be french or american forces, british forces may be who can play no coherent rescue operation to write? south koreans. they don't care about -- they are not in to carry out for