JOHNNIE AYCOCK:
Every breakthrough, every innovation, every bold idea shaping our future begins with curiosity and the people willing to follow it.
LISA JONES:
From research labs to manufacturing, from discarded materials to the next generation of design, this is BrightPath...
JOHNNIE AYCOCK:
Where science meets creativity, and ideas come to life.
LISA JONES:
Today, we're talking about something that sounds almost unreal in the modern world: Somali pirates.
JOHNNIE AYCOCK:
But this affects international shipping, global trade, world politics, and even national security.
LISA JONES:
Hey, everybody! I'm Lisa Jones.
JOHNNIE AYCOCK:
And I'm Johnnie Aycock. And this is BrightPath.
LISA JONES: In the BrightPath Studio with us today is Dr. Brittany VandeBerg from the University of Alabama. Dr. VandeBerg studies international conflict, maritime security, and the global response to Somali piracy. Dr. VandeBerg, welcome to the BrightPath Studio.
DR. BRITTANY VANDEBERG:
Thank you for the invitation. I appreciate being here.
LISA JONES:
Brittany, when people hear Somali pirates, they may think of movies or, you know, something from another era. Who are these pirate groups typically made up of, and why does it still even matter today?
DR. BRITTANY VANDEBERG: That's a great question. So, when we think about piracy, we tend to think about what we call the Golden Age of Piracy, right? The Johnny Depps, the long dreadlocks, the swords, everything exciting and glamorized in Hollywood.
But Somali pirates are usually just poor individuals ranging anywhere from 13 to 30 years old who really don't have any other means of survival in Somalia.
LISA JONES:
Why is that, Brittany?
DR. BRITTANY VANDEBERG: Well, the Somali economy post-civil war—which we're kind of still in that period, where there's a lot of conflict in Somalia—just doesn't have any type of national economy. So, most people in Somalia are really living day by day, just on whatever subsistence means they can find, whether that's selling goods, growing whatever small crops they can, trading, or dealing.
So, this is one of those opportunities that a lot of these young, poor men see as something that could set them and their families up for a lifetime.
JOHNNIE AYCOCK:
Yeah, and we romanticize the pirates, but in the real world today, as we're learning, this has a major effect on economics because you've got to keep these shipping routes safe. So, how is this affecting shipping routes, and how does it affect even the world economy, I guess?
DR. BRITTANY VANDEBERG:
So, the reason Somali piracy really hit the worldwide news when it did is because it is located around one of the world's largest shipping routes for commercial vessels.
We do see piracy in other parts of the world, but they are not along large trade routes. So, it's not affecting those big corporations and governments in the same way.
What we see happen is that these shipping routes really don't have another option but to go past the Somali coastline. The alternative is to reroute all the way down the west coast of Africa, along the southern tip of South Africa, and then back up over to Asia.
JOHNNIE AYCOCK:
Oh, that's a long route.
DR. BRITTANY VANDEBERG:
And the cost of doing that is just too expensive for these companies that are trying to make a profit off their goods.
JOHNNIE AYCOCK:
They're also trying to deliver things on time, and this slows down the entire process.
DR. BRITTANY VANDEBERG:
Absolutely. So, this ended up costing these shipping companies millions and millions of dollars. They really pressured the international community to do something about this, and to do something quickly.
LISA JONES:
So, weren't a lot of these pirates former fishermen?
DR. BRITTANY VANDEBERG:
Yeah. So, initially, when piracy off the coast of Somalia started, it was fishermen who were attacking illegal fishing vessels. It really didn't have anything to do with commercial shipping or taking hostages like we see today.
They were trying to go out there and stop these illegal fishermen, generally from East Asia or even some European countries, from coming in and taking all their fish. Because, again, this is what these men rely on to survive...
LISA JONES:
Exactly.
DR. BRITTANY VANDEBERG:
To feed their families. So, it started off as just attacking these illegal fishermen, but then they quickly had the idea that they could go for bigger and better ships.
LISA JONES:
Yeah, that's true.
JOHNNIE AYCOCK:
How did you even get into this area of study, number one? And what has surprised you as you've become somewhat of an expert on it? What surprises you about it?
DR. BRITTANY VANDEBERG: Yeah, well, initially, I got into it because I was already in East Africa conducting research for my doctorate program. But the program that I was working with was kind of defunded on a moment's notice.
So, I just happened to socialize with the right group of men who said they were looking for someone to help in their office. I showed up on Monday and found out I was working on Somali piracy.
So, it was unexpected, and I didn't know anything about piracy at the moment. But I think what happened is that once I started traveling to Somalia and actually seeing the context that these men are operating in, it completely changed my perspective on what was driving this.
It actually gave me a little bit of empathy for these individuals...
LISA JONES:
Because their livelihood was taken from them by these illegal fishermen from other countries...
DR. BRITTANY VANDEBERG:
Yeah, they recruit a lot of young men in Somalia, and, of course, the recruiting techniques are pretty fraudulent, right? They're telling them, "Oh, well, come work with us, and you'll have millions of dollars, or you can afford to go to England and get an education."
Usually, that's not what happens, but it's the only little bit of hope these men have. So, they say, "Okay, you know, I'll do this."
And, you know, I've told people before that we haven't met one pirate who actually knows how to swim. So, this is a huge risk for them to stick around on the water...
LISA JONES:
Because they're climbing on top of these large vessels, throwing ladders, rope ladders, and things like that. It's very rudimentary, or it was, yes, to begin with, right?
DR. BRITTANY VANDEBERG:
So, it started out pretty piecemeal, just going with the flow and winging it, trial and error for a lot of these pirate groups. But I would say within a year or two, they really finessed their operations and started working across clans and learning what was working.
So now, if you were going to arrest one of them today, you'd probably find a GPS system on board.
You'll find lots of high-tech weapons. You'll see big metal ladders they use to climb and board those ships. So, it's a lot more high-tech now.
But that also has to do with the fact that they've had more investment from international sources.
LISA JONES:
That's where I was going with that. I wanted you to tell our listeners about these other investment agencies, so to speak.
DR. BRITTANY VANDEBERG:
So, initially, when it was just kind of in that fisherman era, most fishermen have guns on their fishing vessels just because they don't want people to steal their fish or things like that.
So, yeah, I mean, there's guns all over Somalia, so that's not unusual at all.
But once they started capturing some of these more profitable commercial ships, they started to get investors from the Somali diaspora, which is Somalis who have left Somalia and are living overseas. Usually, that's anywhere from Toronto to Minneapolis to London to Seattle.
At one point in time, the United Nations office I worked for was trying to trace those money trails, which turned out to be a very dangerous and poor decision. I had a couple of colleagues who were assassinated for trying to research this.
LISA JONES:
Oh, my Gosh! They do say, "Follow the money."
DR. BRITTANY VANDEBERG:
Yeah, that's exactly right. It's an old saying for a reason.
We learned that most of the investment came from members of the Somali diaspora. They send money back home into these—not really banking institutions—but it's called dahabshil.
LISA JONES:
And what was that word again?
DR. BRITTANY VANDEBERG: Dahabshil.
LISA JONES:
Interesting.
DR. BRITTANY VANDEBERG:
And so, they'll have people come into these stores and just sign their name. Whatever money was waiting for them, they'll give it to them. So, you can't trace it very well.
JOHNNIE AYCOCK:
Yeah.
DR. BRITTANY VANDEBERG:
So, they do most of the funding and investing that way. We also know that there were a handful of Somali government officials involved in this.
But once all that money poured in, that's when things started getting much more advanced and high-tech for these operations.
JOHNNIE AYCOCK:
Have there been efforts to slow it down? And I know the height of it actually was a few years ago. How have the United Nations, the world, and even their neighboring countries come together to try and slow this down? And, number two, has it slowed down?
DR. BRITTANY VANDEBERG:
So, it has slowed down. Initially, like I said, when this was all at the height of the piracy crisis, the UN did open up an office, which was the first of its kind, focusing just on piracy. That was the office I worked in. But since there was nothing like it before, we were all just kind of doing trial and error on everything. So, it's hard to say what specifically in our office worked.
We set up a criminal justice system throughout East Africa. We had a couple of states: Kenya, the Seychelles, and then later on Mauritius joined.
Essentially, what they agreed to do was let us help them train their judges and rewrite their piracy laws to allow for the prosecution of these individuals.
The former piracy laws, written by the British during their colonization period, only allowed you to prosecute someone from your own country for piracy. So, what happens is, if there's a Somali pirate who's caught for piracy, Kenya technically couldn't prosecute them because they're Somali.
JOHNNIE AYCOCK:
Okay.
DR. BRITTANY VANDEBERG:
So, we got all that cleaned up, and then we redid the prisons and started prosecuting piracy in the area, and that worked.
But the thing is, most pirates who would get arrested for this had no concept of what these justice systems were. They didn't know what it was like to be held in prison. So, it wasn't the deterrent we thought it was because it just wasn't understood. We also ran some advocacy programs warning about the dangers of piracy. We got religious leaders in Somalia on board with that.
But I think, of all the things that probably helped the most, it was finally when the United Nations allowed armed guards on these ships.
LISA JONES:
That was where I was going to go with my next question because you made a point of saying the pirates have guns, but at one time these British ships, for example, were not allowed to have guns on board. Right, Brittany?
DR. BRITTANY VANDEBERG:
Right. So, international maritime law really is just a complicated beast.
JLISA JONES:
It's not just Britain, so you're saying international law?
DR. BRITTANY VANDEBERG:
Yes. So, when you're out on the high seas, there's no jurisdiction there for any state. That's international waters. So, you kind of have to abide by the international laws of the sea, or you're supposed to, anyway. But there's no one out there policing it, right?
LISA JONES:
Who's in charge of that?
DR. BRITTANY VANDEBERG:
Nobody's in charge of it. And so, when there is a crime that takes place out there, you usually have multiple jurisdictions.
What they had agreed to was that it wasn't legal for these commercial vessels to have armed guards because there's nothing overseeing that. We don't want a whole bunch of these ships out there with armed guards and no guidelines. You can't shoot people for fun, or you can't shoot at something that doesn't shoot at you. There weren't any rules like that.
So, they had to first kind of agree on those rules before they could actually get armed guards on the ships to protect these commercial vessels.
JOHNNIE AYCOCK:
Yeah. Brittany, you've been on the ground firsthand. You've worked with and inside the United Nations. What have you learned in terms of how countries come together to try and solve a problem? The collaboration of countries sounds like it'd be very, very challenging because the cultures are so different, to say the least. What have you observed? What have you learned from that kind of research?
DR. BRITTANY VANDEBERG:
You know, I think that was probably the most surprising thing for me. When we're working on the ground in Somalia, our thought was always, "Wow, the United Nations is this big, powerful entity," or the U.S. government, or the British government. But when it comes down to trying to get anyone to agree on anything, it's the local governments on the ground that hold all of the power.
So, for example, we'd be trying to bring together different leaders in Somalia to agree on just something for Somalia. I remember there was this one president of one region who said, "Well, I'm not going to agree to that unless you buy me two new SUVs."
That, for him, was the deal breaker. He wanted two new Land Rovers, and then he would say yes. And then you have another region that says, "Well, we won't agree to it unless you grant us independence." So, you have all these leaders at the local level who realize this is their chance to finally get something, not only for themselves but also for their communities.
So, it's something you didn't think of when you wrote the plan.
LISA JONES:
But what's to keep them from, once they get their Land Rovers, going back on their word?
DR. BRITTANY VANDEBERG:
So, we had that as well. We built a prison in Garraway, Somalia, which was the largest prison project ever undertaken by the United Nations globally. It was this beautiful, high-tech facility that just stood out amongst this vast, dry wasteland. We got it all done, and we were set to transfer the pirates there from the Seychelles. We found out that the Somali government had already filled it with their own prisoners, and there was no space for pirates. They said, "Well, I guess you'll have to build us another prison."
LISA JONES:
Okay, well, then there's that.
JOHNNIE AYCOCK:
So, it's true. All politics truly is local... no matter where you are.
DR. BRITTANY VANDEBERG:
It really is, and that's... There'd be days where we'd be working there, and we would say something that would upset a government official. We'd get a call from our interpreter, and he'd say, "You really angered the president, and he wants you to leave the country immediately."
There were only flights out every Tuesday and Sunday, so we'd have to kind of hide out until Sunday and get on a flight.
But then we'd get back to Nairobi, where our headquarters was, and we'd say, "Well, what did we do?"
They'd say, "Oh, well, it wasn't you. This different UN agency made him mad, so he wanted all of the UN workers gone."
You learned to pivot and just really kind of be humble.
LISA JONES:
How terrifying is it to have to hide out under those circumstances, though?
DR. BRITTANY VANDEBERG:
It was very terrifying.
LISA JONES:
Because they're the ones who are local. They're the ones with the connections and the power.
DR. BRITTANY VANDEBERG:
You know, in hindsight, it was a very—I mean, I was younger, right, and more adventurous in those days. But, yeah, no, it was dangerous. We had people getting kidnapped or shot.
It all depended on how good of an interpreter you had. We had three just really professional, wonderful interpreters who took our safety as a priority. So, we usually had a heads-up if they were hearing something through the grapevine. We knew it was coming.
JOHNNIE AYCOCK:
Yeah. Brittany, we've talked with you before, so we know a little bit about what has gone on. Our audience is probably sitting there saying, "Well, how does it affect me?"
You know, okay, they've got pirates in Somalia. In the neighboring countries, they may be trying to work together, but how does that affect me? How does it affect nations like the U.S.?
We talked briefly about the shipping trade, but there's more impact than we realize.
DR. BRITTANY VANDEBERG:
Right. So, I would say, just kind of trying to speak to a United States audience, there are three prongs to how it affects the U.S. The first one, which we kind of talked about already, is the cost of shipping. If any U.S. company, or even any of our trade partners, has an increase in shipping costs, the cost of our goods is going to go up tremendously.
LISA JONES:
Exactly, right.
DR. BRITTANY VANDEBERG:
Because we get—I don't know the statistics anymore, but I want to say it was something like 70% of our goods travel by sea.
JOHNNIE AYCOCK:
We're seeing that today.
DR. BRITTANY VANDEBERG:
Yes, exactly. So, that's the first thing that consumers will feel. The second thing is that before we did regional prosecutions, for every pirate the United States would apprehend at sea, they would have to divert their warship back to Europe, transfer that pirate by plane back to the United States, and prosecute them through our U.S. system.
That cost the taxpayer tons of money. They were doing most of those prosecutions in Norfolk, Virginia. Then they realized how expensive that was. And we also have to incarcerate them for the rest of their lives. So, it costs the taxpayer money there.
And then I think, finally, maybe this is seen more as a benefit, but just the cost of having our U.S. warships in that area is unfathomable.
I had a lot of military friends in the area, and they were telling me that just to start up a helicopter on a ship—because you have to start them up every two or three days to keep things maintained—it would cost something like $200,000 just to start it up to make sure it was still working.
LISA JONES:
Oh, my.
DR. BRITTANY VANDEBERG:
So, the cost of having those warships and those troops deployed out there is tremendous for citizens.
JOHNNIE AYCOCK:
Yeah, I just don't think anyone realizes that. Because you mentioned this is not the only area where pirates are still operating, and there are so many different trade routes.
Most of us don't think about that. You know, as long as there's something in the grocery store and it showed up in that manufacturer's inventory, we're okay. But it's a lot more complicated.
DR. BRITTANY VANDEBERG:
It is. It's interesting to think that even though most of the world's trade occurs on the oceans, the laws there still don't really do much to protect that.
JOHNNIE AYCOCK:
Yeah, and that affects just about every good, if you think about it, especially oil, because those oil tankers are being attacked.
DR. BRITTANY VANDEBERG:
Yes. So, that's what we see with West Africa right now because a lot of the oil coming off the African continent is coming from West Africa. So, we still see piracy there.
But they have a little bit better handle on it, and traditionally have, because they have armed ships in a smaller area protecting those waters.
LISA JONES:
Yeah, that's what I was going to ask you. Do they still have the Navy protecting some of these?
DR. BRITTANY VANDEBERG:
Well, and that's the other thing, too. It gets tricky because you can't technically have government military vessels protecting a commercial business, right? That's not how we... I mean, traditionally, our taxpayer dollars shouldn't work that way.
LISA JONES:
Maybe they travel in groups, or that was part of the answer.
DR. BRITTANY VANDEBERG:
Yeah. So, what they can do is patrol, but not specifically protect.
LISA JONES:
I got you. Right, there's nuance there, sure.
DR. BRITTANY VANDEBERG:
Because we don't want our government prioritizing certain companies, and that turns into a whole lobbying and conflict in itself.
JOHNNIE AYCOCK:
And Brittany, they're using new tactics. The way I understand it now, if they attack a vessel, let's take a tanker or someone carrying a particular commodity, they're taking it and holding it for hostage. It seems to be a lot more money now involved when the pirates attack.
LISA JONES:
It's gotten way more sophisticated.
JOHNNIE AYCOCK:
Those companies are going to have to pay that ransom normally.
DR. BRITTANY VANDEBERG:
Exactly. And that's what's so unique about Somalia because Somalia has the longest coastline in Africa. Just the country itself makes kind of the shape of a seven, and it's not patrolled or policed because there aren't roads out to the coast. At the time, there was no coast guard in Somalia, so no one's watching that entire long coastline.
What these pirates would do is go and apprehend a ship, bring it back to the shore of Somalia, and just anchor it.
At any given time, they would send a drone over the Somali coastline, and you would see hundreds of ships just docked along the coastline. It was really eerie, right? It looked like abandoned ships.
LISA JONES:
Wow.
DR. BRITTANY VANDEBERG:
West Africa is a little different because they don't have that unguarded coastline. They have cities and police along the coast. So, instead, what they do is take the ship, take the people, and, if they can, the cargo off. Then they'll move them inland along the rivers and hide them out on land throughout Nigeria or Ghana, or whatever area there is.
But Somalia, they could just sit there. They could sit there for a year, two years, three years, and no one's going to go out there and try to apprehend the pirates when you have all these pirate clans that are outgunned.
JOHNNIE AYCOCK:
All the police.
DR. BRITTANY VANDEBERG:
Yeah, the police don't have nearly as many guns as these pirates did. So, no one was going to go out there and try to take them on.
JOHNNIE AYCOCK:
And the neighboring countries don't do anything?
DR. BRITTANY VANDEBERG:
No. So, Kenya did get involved a little bit because there was a point when some pirates went down and kidnapped some British tourists who were staying at a Kenyan resort. One of them ended up dying just because she didn't have the medication she needed, but her husband survived. That was the point when Kenya said, "Okay, we're on board. How do we get involved in helping stop this?"
So, that's why they were the first country to allow prosecutions. That's how they contributed. But as far as sending the Kenyan Navy up to Somalia, no, no, no. They're not going to cross over into those territorial waters. There's too much tension and delicate politics there with neighboring countries.
JOHNNIE AYCOCK:
Yeah, you can see a big conflict break out quickly. This is just amazing that this is going on in our world today. But to your point earlier, those trade routes—we're finding out more and more just how delicate they are.
LISA JONES:
That's true.
JOHNNIE AYCOCK:
We're seeing that, of course, with the war going on right now with the Strait of Hormuz and how difficult these are. And it does affect—I mean, what are you paying at the gas station? It affects—
LISA JONES:
Sure does.
DR. BRITTANY VANDEBERG:
It does. And it's interesting you brought that up because I was just thinking about that this morning when I was thinking about coming on here today.
The Strait of Hormuz is a perfect example. Just one little—it's what they call, like I said, a maritime choke point. You have no other option besides going through that, and whoever controls that basically controls everything around it, whether it's the crime or the passage, et cetera. So, you really have to be favorable to those countries that police those areas.
LISA JONES:
So, at the very beginning of the conversation, you made a comment about somehow having empathy for the pirates, and their beginning is kind of a have-to, right, from the very beginning.
And one thing we didn't mention was that certain neighboring nations, on top of everything else, overfished their waters, but they also dropped hazardous waste in them.
I don't even know if they could possibly reseed it, so to speak, and that ship has sailed, so to speak. I'm sure, anyway, because pirating is more lucrative.
But speaking of having empathy for that side, how difficult is that when you think about what they've done to some of the victims? How do you balance that in your own mind, having empathy for the victims and the pirates?
DR. BRITTANY VANDEBERG:
It's tough. I mean, I see that even with the work that I do here locally. Just to give an example, there's a lot of people with domestic violence charges, and it turns out they were actually victims of domestic violence for many decades before they fought back, so to speak. So, they're both a victim and an offender, and it's hard. I mean, at the end of the day, laws are in place for a reason, right?
Somalia is a particularly interesting case just because their laws are actually more local. Each clan kind of has laws and agreements with each other. They don't have this big federal legal system like we have. So, they take care of things amongst each clan. For example, they have something called a blood tax in Somalia. Each member of a clan will pay money to their clan as kind of like a tax.
So, let's say there's Clan A. If someone from Clan A murders someone from Clan B, instead of starting an all-out war between the clans, Clan B will say, "Okay, well, if it was a man, we'll pay you five camels. Women only get paid maybe one."
We're only worth one camel. Sorry, Lisa. But it's this quick trade and exchange to keep things peaceful between clans.
LISA JONES:
That doesn't surprise me.
DR. BRITTANY VANDEBERG:
Yeah, right. And so, early on, I remember when I was speaking to some of these Somali leaders, they were saying, "We don't need the United Nations to help us. We don't need to prosecute them in the region. Just bring them back to us, and we will deal with it clan to clan."
At that point, the pirate skiffs that were getting arrested belonged to very distinct clans. So, they were saying, "Well, if this clan was arrested, send them back to that clan, and they'll handle it."
JOHNNIE AYCOCK:
Again, politics is local.
LISA JONES:
That's right, and it's just a more effective way to deal with it, because they understand each other's language.
DR. BRITTANY VANDEBERG:
But millions and millions of dollars and new prisons later, I guess we don't.
JOHNNIE AYCOCK:
And again, for our audience, we don't think about these kinds of things often, but they are affecting our way of life in so many different ways. One is through economic challenges that are created because of these kinds of issues. Even though they're international and somewhere across the ocean in West Africa or Somalia, we don't think about that.
DR. BRITTANY VANDEBERG:
No. And, I mean, they put out travel warnings during this period, you know, not to travel to Kenya, which is sad because that's their biggest part of their economy: tourism.
I lived in Kenya at that point in time, and it was perfectly safe except for a small corner in the northeast where Somalia is. It was sad because the whole East African region was kind of painted as dangerous, like, "Don't go there," and it was hurting people living in that area.
JOHNNIE AYCOCK:
Brittany, this is fascinating work, and thankfully there are folks like you who are doing the research and trying to find the solutions.
LISA JONES:
Isn't it amazing how the University of Alabama seems to get involved with not just things statewide, but worldwide?
JOHNNIE AYCOCK:
Worldwide. I mean, that's what we want people to be proud of. We've got a university involved in the world.
LISA JONES:
That's right. And just like we say on the noon show, Roll Tide and Roll Research!
Okay, guys. And on that note, Brittany, thank you so much for joining us today in the studio.
DR. BRITTANY VANDEBERG:
Thank you so much for having me.
LISA JONES:
For Johnnie Aycock— I'm Lisa Jones, and this has been BrightPath.
JOHNNIE AYCOCK:
BrightPath is made possible in part by our partners at Alabama Public Radio and by the music of Matt Jones, whose song "This Place" sets the tone for our journey.
Thank you.
