In the heart of a Somali pirates' lair

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HOBYO, Somalia — Piracy off the coast of Somalia is booming despite a massive deployment of international warships, with an estimated combined coast of 40 million dollars a day.
NATO, the European Union, United States and other naval powers have sent warships to curb the hijacking of ships yet the number currently under the control of Somali pirates stands at 22, one of its highest ever levels.
Hundreds of suspected pirates have been captured but most had to be released immediately for lack of evidence.
On his first encounter with foreign journalists, Mohamed Garfanji, Somalia's top pirate boss, talks sparingly and has the edginess of a wanted man who never lowers his guard and is always planning his next move.
His eyes only stop scanning his surroundings when he breaks his silence, speaking with an intense gaze that is both menacing and playful.
Speaking to AFP in the town of Wisil in central Somalia, he thumbs through his mobile phone picture gallery for shots he and his boys took of foreign tuna seiners off the coast of Hobyo, their nearby base.
"See this one? Only a few months ago, 20 miles from Hobyo... And this one, a big Spanish ship," Garfanji says, raising his eyebrows expectantly.
"Now your armies have sent their soldiers so you can continue to take our fish," he says, clenched fist and gold wrist watch sticking out of the sleeve of a warm dark blue bomber jacket.
His sidekicks nod silently as they devotedly chew their daily bundle of khat, a narcotic leaf widely consumed in Somalia and whose stimulant qualities make it particularly prized by pirates.
His is a Robin Hood narrative of Somali piracy as a struggle by dispossessed fishermen against vessels from Europe and Asia violating Somalia's exclusive economic zone and poaching its abundant tuna under naval protection.
Three centuries before him, charismatic pirate Black Sam Bellamy railed against the powers "who rob the poor under the cover of the law" while "we plunder the rich under the protection of our own courage."
In Hobyo the following morning, one of his top lieutenants, Mohamed, stands on the beach, clutching his machine gun behind his neck like a balancing pole, ammunition belts snaking down from his shoulders.
The sand-charged wind blows his black-and-white checkered keffieh and cigarette smoke into his face as he squints at the imposing figure of a hijacked Korean supertanker anchored on the horizon.
"This one is bigger than Hobyo," he says proudly.
The Marshall Islands-flagged VLCC Samho Dream is a third of a kilometre long, one of three largest vessels ever hijacked by pirates, and carries an estimated 170 million dollars of Iraqi crude destined for the United States.
"Enough to buy the whole of Galkayo," Mohamed quips, in reference to the region's largest city, which straddles the border with the neighbouring semi-autonomous state of Puntland.
Fighting a losing battle against the sand that has already completely covered the old Italian port, Hobyo's scattering of rundown houses and shacks looks anything but the nerve centre of an activity threatening global shipping.
"We have no schools, no farming, no fishing. It's ground zero here," says chief local elder Abdullahi Ahmed Barre. "And our most pressing concern is the sand, the city is disappearing, we are being buried alive and can't resist."
Gathered in the gloom of the council building, the elders haven't seen a foreigner in years and the list of grievances is long.
"The nearest hospital is an eight-hour drive on a rough road", "The water is undrinkable, too salty", "When the tsunami struck, nobody helped", "This is one of the most peaceful parts of Somalia, why is there no assistance?"
Leaning discreetly against the door frame, Garfanji is listening keenly.
Hobyo pirates have collected millions of dollars in ransoms over the past two years. They even have currency checking and counting machines for the bags of air-dropped cash they receive.
Key players drive well-equipped Land Cruisers, have built new, slightly more stately houses and married more wives.
Yet Hobyo is anything but a booming town, so where does all the money go?
Residents say a significant portion of their income is lavished on post-ransom binges of khat, alcohol and prostitutes but the pirate leaders insist much of the cash is re-invested to expand.
"When we get more money, we recruit more," says Fathi Osman Kahir, a key Hobyo-based piracy "investor", who acts as a kind of pirate treasurer.
When a ship is hijacked, he pays for running costs such as increased onshore security, diesel for generators and basic supplies for captors and captives. When a ransom comes in, he takes the lion's share.
"There's up to 500 people working with us in Hobyo, that's 10 percent of the population and I'm just talking about the people on the ground... We have a hierarchy. What do you think we do? We pay wages too," he says.
A visit to Hobyo by the secretary of state for security of the fledgling local administration of Galmudug, Ismail Haji Noor, doesn't send the pirates scurrying into hiding.
"What am I going to do? Arrest them all? Even if I had the means as security minister to challenge them, it's pointless if I don't have something to offer, if nobody can provide an alternative," Noor says.
A former military man and a successful businessman who spent half of his life in Britain, Noor is lobbying donors in Nairobi for elusive development aid he hopes could make the pirates lay down their grapnels.
"There is no difference between life and death if you have nothing to eat... Of course, what we do is criminal, it's undeniable. We don't love what we are doing but there is no choice," says Kahir.
While Noor would like to see Hobyo's pirate army turned into a legitimate defence force and a coastguard protecting Somali waters from both residual piracy and illegal fishing, foreign assistance has not been forthcoming.
Now the biannual inter-monsoon season favourable to piracy is just around the corner and September may be too good to sit out even for the least committed of pirates.
On the beach of Hobyo, Mohamed Ali, a shark fisherman, says his catches are meagre, his fuel costs high and his boat inadequate.
"Being with the pirates has advantages and disadvantages," he admits. "I have not yet decided whether to join or not."