The Rise and Fall of Somali Pirates

The music for this video, created by our in house composer Tom Fox, is available on our music channel, The Music Room! Follow the link to hear this soundtrack and many more: https://youtu.be/J23MwDKXdXs

I’ll never forget in 7th grade I did a report on these pirates in front of the class. I worked really hard on it just to have my teacher laugh and say pirates don’t exist in 2011. The rest of the class laughed at me as well. I came home and my dad was furious. He knew I didn’t work hard on much of my schoolwork so when I did he was upset to hear the teacher laughed. Rip dad I’ll never forget that

I will never forget how a Belgian film director, in collaboration with the authorities, managed to lure a Somali pirate to Belgium under the pretext of being an expert in a film about his own life. When the pirate landed in Brussels, he was promptly arrested and trialed for hijacking a Belgian ship. He is still in prison to this day.

I remember back in 2008-2010 when I was studying in uni, I was reading about Somali pirates every week. I totally forgot about them until this video. Nice to see there was a solution to the piracy problems there - stories of people being abducted was really sad during those times.

This was such a great episode man! And you're not just a great journalist, but a great story teller as well.

Hi Johnny, I’m a Somali living in Bari and I really appreciate your video about the Somali pirates. You did a great job of explaining the history and the context of piracy in Somalia, and how it affected the people and the region. I especially liked how you showed the map of Somalia and its disputed territories with Ethiopia and Kenya. You are one of the few journalists who tell the truth about Somalia and its challenges. Thank you for your work and your curiosity. I hope you will make more videos about Somalia and other African countries in the future. Keep up the good work! 👏👏👏

Appreciate the backstory on this

Okay, I have fallen in love with this channel. You prepare and put really relevant topics. Learning a lot from you, and so I'm hoping you keep this up. 👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾

Thank you for being up to date on important topics & covering up to date real time events

As a Somali guy who lived in Somalia specially in those regions during the pirate epidemic in the horn of Africa I can truly say you have done your research very well. Your are fair also you look both ways the good and the bad . The collapse of the central goverment in 1991 has made Somalia a placed abandoned by the help of GOD and MEN .for a long time it was a place that breeds violence ,war ,terrorism ,starvation ,drought and corruption. But I can truly say the Somali pirates at the beginning was a mission of patriotism and survival. You mention only Iraq and Yemen but it was more than that alot of European and Asian nations were also drawing in large scale the untouched sea food of the Somali territory in their huge ships . Hence living little if nothing at all for those communities . This was something that needed to be done for them to live since 95% Of their food was was coming from the see in a country scourged by drought and war. And it worked .we called them heroes but then the same people who destroyed the goverment joined in the war lord and started turning what was right to defend your territory against foreign ship into a multi million dollar crime org .the killing , the ransom and kidnapping that was not those communities but thugs who only care about money "My English is not good that best as I can try .thank you #johhny this topic was personal reminds me of home as the The MORMON video was for you. Thanks for covering this

I have a friend who planned to sail around the world. He went from San Fran to Panama to the Caribbean to Portugal then finally the the eastern Mediterranean. He got to Turkey and realized there was no direction ahead that didn’t involve pirates. He turned around and sailed home.

Love your insightful, researched, thought provoking content Keep up the awesome work!

Thank you for reporting on this subject. Have been following this since before 9-11... you covered all the main points and I learned new things because of your team's in-depth reporting. Thank you.

As a modern day officer, also working on cargo ships! I have to admit this route still scares my crew and many onboard. But this video truly represents the truth behind it all. Thank you for this.

I thought this was about one piece

if I had more time in my day I would’ve binged your whole YouTube channel. Damn this is good. Love the music choice and structure, as well as glorification without being misleading or cheesy.

I really appreciate your content delivery. The narration is really clear and sound. The background music is unique and engaging. This is the first video of yours I am watching.

I am Somali and i live in a coastal city called Mogadishu this depiction of the events that happened and the way you visualize it is madly accurate and hats off to u broski ❤🇸🇴🇸🇴🇸🇴

I live in Malaysia and even I don’t know about the piracy going on in the Straits of Malacca. This is really a topic that really hasn’t been brought up to the community more often…

As a nigerian, I feel bad about our situation. Corruption has really eaten into our youths, its quite sad