Waziristan and South Waziristan among other things where he met with senior al-qaeda leaders he met with Sally l somali who is the head of external operations Rashid Ralph and then somebody who had spent a fair amount oftime in Florida odd not I'll sugar Juma
has been put the difficulty and the problem that we we we should remain very very careful about is that a western mind has a lot of difficulties understanding the reality of how people live in Somaliland what they expect what they want what they do not want they don't share always our values so it's tough It's very tough because if you're a Stella or if you're uh if you're Chanel I don't want it it's not to point do any finger pointing if everybody is in the same position
But I'd just like to take you up to the end of that story, where after a famine; after the Kenyan military invaded Somalia; after the breakdown of law and order in the camp; after police operations in the camp, beating people up. Guled running for his life from the police again-- in Kenya this time, not from al-Shabaab in Somalia.
It's always been a fascination of mine to go there, to go to Iran. Somalia-- you can go to Somaliland, which is still very much a culturally, ethnically authentic part of Somalia, but it's also autonomous politically,
instead of weezer in our prius you know and going about our lives in 2009 Somalia actually had a great influence negative negatively and somewhat positively believe it or not on modern-day la you may not know this but la used to be
Is that incidental to what's happening? about Somali as like some kind of cancer on the American body politic. uh which
And he posed himself as sort of a guy who was at war with European interests somehow, with the people who dump poison waste off of Somali beaches, which the Italian mafia certainly does, and with companies that come down and take Somali fish, which French and Portuguese fishing ships have certainly been known to do, and also some Asian companies.
were actually holding. And so how do we give ourselves not just permission, but also build accountability with peers to do some of that investigation? to Somali pirates and then King Tone, and you begin to see some of the similarities that are animating these very different types of personality.
example if you're a five-star hotel every year some mystery guest comes by have some wine gets a filet chats with the Somali a or the two master sommeliers if you're us and that is the triple a five-star five-diamond auditor that person potential Lee gives you five stars again or
heading that way possibly. To Somalia now, it's been grappling with decades of instability and the ongoing violent insurgency by the militant al-Shabaab group, as well as prolonged droughts and severe flooding. On top of that, it's now facing cuts to its aid
And he persuaded himself that he could see, if you had a candle, you could see phlogiston or elemental fire being released by the candle. And Somalia is a country torn apart by civil war.
al-Qaeda actually was used to defend the regime when the Arab Spring was happening. In Somalia, I went to Mogadishu, which at the time was in summer of 2011. There was incredibly fierce fighting in Mogadishu.
well. Now, if you can grow these plants along coastlines of the world -- like the Somalis , if they ever stop shooting each other, but places like Somalia with baking sun coming down like crazy. There's no vegetation in a lot of these coastlines. It's desert areas.
And all of London turned out for it. We had Somali women.
So when we started to plan a trip to Somalia, we didn't do it lightly. We found a Somali elder in Berlin who had taken another journalist from Germany to the same region before safely. And I took time and earned a grant for some of my expenses from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.
We stayed in Galkayo, which is a town you may not have heard of. It's a central Somali town where lots of pirates happen to live. But it's nowhere near the coastline.
They knew exactly where they were. They killed nine Somali guards and rescued the two hostages safely. The two hostages were Jessica Buchanan and Poul Thisted, an American and a Dane, and they were working for a demining NGO.
In other words, until then, he had believed that some portion of my ransom was going to be paid by the US government. And when some Somali negotiators probably told him that it wasn't going to happen and he had to sort of reduce his expectations for a ransom, he was really angry.
He flew me to Mogadishu. And one Somali told me afterwards that it was a kind of a shame that I had been held for so long, but the expense of holding me
were actually holding. And so how do we give ourselves not just permission, but also build accountability with peers to do some of that investigation? So within Somali piracy, for example, it's not that women are becoming pirates, but they're actually supplying a lot of the narcotic
And they were working with the CIA and US military intelligence to hunt down and target the leadership of al-Shabaab. And one Somali agent described to me how the Americans would line up the Somali operatives that they were working with in training and pay them $200 a month in cash to serve as this kind of hit force within the country.
is a diversion from America's own economic problems. A tanker traveling off the coast of Yemen has been seized and diverted to Somalia. It coincides with Iran's threats to get its Houthy allies to block shipping in the Red Sea. And Iran's Revolutionary Guards say the country will deploy more destructive
the United Nations Children's Fund, UNICEF, is warning that nearly 1.9 million children are expected to suffer from malnutrition in Somalia this year. Nearly half a million of those will have severe acute malnutrition, the deadliest form of malnutrition. and Soy spoke to
Now, a few days after my capture, the US launched a rescue to get two other hostages who were there in Somalia. They had been captured completely separately and it was probably a different gang that was holding them, but maybe some clan relationships
between that gang and my gang. They'd been in Somalia for a few months. And for some reason, four days after my capture, SEALs went in and got them.
In fact, all my guards prayed five times a day, which is a bit of a surprise to me because I thought-- I knew Somalia was a Sufi nation, but-- predominantly Sufi-- but I didn't expect to see my pirates praying quite so often, and they were extremely devout about it.
The war in Somalia has effectively been going on since the early 1990s.
It's halfway to Somalia.
And he persuaded himself that he could see, if you had a candle, you could see phlogiston or elemental fire being released by the candle. I've mentioned Somalia and Mo Farah.
Think of Somalia, South Sudan.
Was that near Somalia, Somalian refugees in Kenya?
Those words Somalian refugees in Kenya, just over the border from Somalia.
cooperate in various locations so that would include groups like lashkar-e-taiba tehreek-e-taliban pakistan al-shabaab in Somalia which is actually somewhere in between an affiliate and an allied group and then you get in addition as you keep going in to the additional ring here you get
failed States Somalia Yemen there is no end uh to the number of places that uh that really do need this kind of Mega
Houthi rebels in Yemen are coordinating with the pirates to disrupt shipping. We can't say that for sure of course but there has been a resurgence in Somali piracy and it's coming at a time when uh there are a lot of stresses and pressures on shipping because uh of the US naval blockade on the straight of Hormuz and because uh the Iranians have
there has been a resurgence of Somali piracy over the past couple of months, since about March or April, a number of
I was born in Kenya to Somali parents.
I think he was born in a Somali refugee camp.
But with pirates, you have to untangle their legitimate complaints with their main motivation, which is greed. And I would argue that when Somali pirates started capturing big cargo ships instead of fishing ships off the coast, and especially when they started capturing people on land, that it was no longer about defending their coastline from illegal fishing.
And those were my circumstances after that for the next 2 and 1/2 years. We found a camp in the Somali Bush where some other pirates were staying, and a couple of hostages too, but I was too confused to understand what was going on.
We rescued Captain Richard Phillips from Somali pirates, and then we were picked to do the bin Laden raid.
expert I met experts perfumers Somali the animal tract these are not people
Something like that. He set a deadline. You need Google Translate for Somali .
and they're trading the Somali Shilling, which is the currency again that survived for 20 years without a central bank.
And then there were some small hangars for aircraft. And when I met up with my Somali contact, who was going to take us around Mogadishu for a couple of weeks and hopefully keep us alive, I said, what's that building?
who are coming in from Somalia because of the drought in the Horn of Africa, but also here at home in our very own backyard.
the more you go in depth in poor countries the more difficult it gets you know being sustainable in in France for lavender or in uh uh Mint or our Virginia Cedar in in Texas is not so difficult when you start talking about Haiti Somaliland Madagascar it's another story so a lot has been done let's visit a lot has been done schools digging Wells dispensaries uh a lot a lot of money has been put the difficulty and the problem that we we we should remain very very careful about is that a western mind has a lot of difficulties understanding the reality of how people live in
heard plenty of times because it's talked about sometimes when Somali pirates come up. This was a group of 10 young Somalis armed with AK-47s and rocket launchers that boarded a cargo ship and only were kept from hijacking it when the Dutch Navy came in and overpowered them with gunfire and arrested them on the deck and sent them to Germany.
We planned the trip for months. Then finally we flew to Somalia in early 2012, planning to stay for about two weeks. We stayed in Galkayo, which is a town you may not have heard of.
And they were just cleaning their fish at night and the pirates came up and took their boat and overpowered them with guns and said, you have to sail back to Somalia now. It took them a week.