每日新闻(11.23)-索马里海盗当好莱坞电影变成现实-每日英语课堂.doc

BOOSAASO, Somalia —This may be one of the most dangerous towns in Somalia, a place where you can get kidnapped faster than you can wipe the sweat off your brow. But it is also one of the most prosperous.

Money changers walk around with thick wads of hundred-dollar bills. Palatial new houses are rising up next to tin-roofed shanties. Men in jail reminisce, with a twinkle in their eyes, about their days living like kings.

This is the story of Somalia’s booming, not-so-underground pirate economy. The country is in chaos, countless children are starving and people are killing one another in the streets of Mogadishu, the capital, for a handful of grain.

But one particular line of work —piracy —seems to be benefiting quite openly from all this lawlessness and desperation. This year, Somali officials say, pirate profits are on track to reach a record $50 million, all of it tax free.

“These guys are making a killing,”said Mohamud Muse Hirsi, the top Somali official in Boosaaso, who himself is widely

suspected of working with the pirates, though he vigorously denies it.

More than 75 vessels have been attacked this year, far more than any other year in recent memory. About a dozen have been set upon in the past month alone, including a Ukrainian freighter packed with tanks, antiaircraft guns and other heavy weaponry, which was brazenly seized in September.

The pirates use fast-moving skiffs to pull alongside their prey and scamper on board with ladders or sometimes even rusty grappling hooks. Once on deck, they hold the crew at gunpoint until a ransom is paid, usually $1 million to $2 million. Negotiations for the Ukrainian freighter are still going on, and it is likely that because of all the publicity, the price for the ship could top $5 million.

In Somalia, it seems, crime does pay. Actually, it is one of the few industries that does.

“All you need is three guys and a little boat, and the next day you’re millionaires,”said Abdullahi Omar Qawden, a former captain in Somalia’s long-defunct navy.

People in Garoowe, a town south of Boosaaso, describe a certain high-rolling pirate swagger. Flush with cash, the pirates drive

the biggest cars, run many of the town’s businesses —like hotels —and throw the best parties, residents say. Fatuma Abdul Kadir said she went to a pirate wedding in July that lasted two days, with nonstop dancing and goat meat, and a band flown in from neighboring Djibouti.

“It was wonderful,”said Ms. Fatuma, 21. “I’m now dating a pirate.”

This is too much for many Somali men to resist, and criminals from all across this bullet-pocked land are now flocking to Boosaaso and other notorious pirate dens along the craggy Somali shore. They have turned these waters into the most dangerous shipping lanes in the world.

With the situation clearly out of control, warships from the United States, Russia, NATO, the European Union and India are steaming into Somalia’s waters as part of a reinvigorated, worldwide effort to crush the pirates.

But it will not be easy. The pirates are sea savvy. They are fearless. They are rich and getting richer, with the latest high-tech gadgetry like handheld GPS units. And they are united. The immutable clan lines that have pitted Somalis against one another for