A pirate boss speaks to The Guardian

We give pri­or­ity to ships from Europe because we get big­ger ran­soms. To get their atten­tion we shoot near the ship. If it does not stop we use a rope lad­der to get on board. We count the crew and find out their nation­al­i­ties. After check­ing the cargo we ask the cap­tain to phone the owner and say that have seized the ship and will keep it until the ran­som is paid.

We make friends with the hostages, telling them that we only want money, not to kill them. Some­times we even eat rice, fish, pasta with them. When the money is deliv­ered to our ship we count the dol­lars and let the hostages go.

[…] We split the money. For exam­ple, if we get $1.8m, we would send $380,000 to the invest­ment man who gives us cash to fund the mis­sions, and then divide the rest between us.

Our com­mu­nity thinks we are pirates get­ting ille­gal money. But we con­sider our­selves heroes run­ning away from poverty. We don’t see the hijack­ing as a crim­i­nal act but as a road tax because we have no cen­tral gov­ern­ment to con­trol our sea.

[…] We will not stop until we have a cen­tral gov­ern­ment that can con­trol our sea.

So is the solu­tion to give smaller ran­soms, to go after the pirate financiers, or to help them get a con­trol­ling, cen­tral government?

via Chris Blattman