
The Pirates of Somalia
Inside Their Hidden World
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Narrated by:
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Sunil Malhotra
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By:
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Jay Bahadur
Somalia, on the tip of the Horn of Africa, has been inhabited as far back as 9,000 B.C. Its history is as rich as the country is old. Caught up in a decades-long civil war, Somalia, along with Iraq and Afghanistan, has become one of the most dangerous countries in the world. Getting there from North America is a 45-hour, five-flight voyage through Frankfurt, Dubai, Djibouti, Bosaso (on the Gulf of Aden), and, finally, Galkayo. Somalia is a place where a government has been built out of anarchy.
For centuries, stories of pirates have captured imaginations around the world. The recent bands of daring, ragtag pirates off the coast of Somalia, hijacking multimillion-dollar tankers owned by international shipping conglomerates, have brought the scourge of piracy into the modern era.
The capture of the American-crewed cargo ship Maersk Alabama in April 2009, the first United States ship to be hijacked in almost two centuries, catapulted the Somali pirates onto prime-time news. Then, with the horrific killing by Somali pirates of four Americans, two of whom had built their dream yacht and were sailing around the world (“And now on to: Angkor Wat! And Burma!” they had written to friends), the United States Navy, Special Operation Forces, FBI, Justice Department, and the world’s military forces were put on notice: the Somali seas were now the most perilous in the world.
Jay Bahadur, a journalist who dared to make his way into the remote pirate havens of Africa’s easternmost country and spend months infiltrating their lives, gives us the first close-up look at the hidden world of the pirates of war-ravaged Somalia.
Bahadur’s riveting narrative exposé - the first ever - looks at who these men are, how they live, the forces that created piracy in Somalia, how the pirates spend the ransom money, how they deal with their hostages. Bahadur makes sense of the complex and fraught regional politics, the history of Somalia and the self-governing region of Puntland (an autonomous region in Northeast Somalia), and the various catastrophic occurrences that have shaped their pirate destinies. The audiobook looks at how the unrecognized mini-state of Puntland is dealing with the rise - and increasing sophistication - of piracy and how, through legal and military action, other nations, international shippers, the United Nations, and various international bodies are attempting to cope with the present danger and growing pirate crisis.
A revelation of a world at the epicenter of political and natural disaster.
©2011 Jay Bahadur (P)2011 Random HouseListeners also enjoyed...




















Critic reviews
Bahadur teaches listeners a good bit about life in Somalia, quite a lot about the every day struggles of people who turn to pirating, the challenges of regulating this minor global menace, and, perhaps unknowingly, the general hazards of state collapse. Collapsed states tend to generate a multitude of externalities, including terrorism, drug markets, human trafficking, desertification, extremist militias, conflicts crossing state borders, and, to add to the list, pirates.
Personally, I bought this book to learn just a little more about Somalia, but I was surprised to hear the author’s intelligent and grounded recommendations in the last ten minutes. If there was a problem with the book, it just went on a little too long. So, feel free to skip forward to the last ten minutes, which are not to be missed.
~ Theo Horesh, author of The Holocausts We All Deny
Romantic Adventure Grounded By Good Reporting
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Solid Work
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from fisherman to felons
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What made the experience of listening to The Pirates of Somalia the most enjoyable?
My husband is a real Somalia Pirate Hunter, no I am not kidding. We bought the book in print and on Audible, it is SO true what is really going on. The sadness, the danger, the politics, the mystery and the hardships. If you have watched the movie. Captn Phillips and read this book you will know what our guys are doing to protect all these tankers!!What was the most compelling aspect of this narrative?
It is a true story, and I am LIVING it!!What does Sunil Malhotra bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?
Great perfomanceIf you could give The Pirates of Somalia a new subtitle, what would it be?
No, the title is just right!Any additional comments?
Worth a credit and I would recommend for history teaching as well.This is so close to the truth
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The story behind the headlines
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What did you love best about The Pirates of Somalia?
A complex view of Somali pirates was presented utilizing a combination of a news reports, statistics, interviews, and other research.Enjoyed Pirates of Somalia
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good story good journal
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Disappointing
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A Report, Not a Story, But Landlocked
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