Badaadinta Badah

A Somali term meaning “saviors of the sea” – the preferred title of some pirates.

“Boyah is a pirate,” Jay Bahadur wrote in The Times of London: “One of the original ‘Old Boys,’ he quietly pursued his trade in the waters of his coastal home town of Eyl, years before it galvanized the world’s imagination asSomalia’s infamous ‘pirate haven.’”

Asking my first question through my interpreter, I hesitate to use the word “pirate.” Somali pirates are aware enough of themselves in the international media that the word has become part of their vernacular but its closest Somali translation is burcad badeed, which means “ocean robber,” a political statement I am anxious to avoid.

Boyah likes to refer to him and his comrades as badaadinta badah, “saviors of the sea,” a term that is most often translated in the English-speaking media as “coastguard.” Boyah jokes that he is the “Chief of the Coastguard,” a title he evokes with pride. To him, his actions have been about protecting his sea; his hijackings, a legitimate form of taxation levied in abstentia on behalf of a defunct government that he represents in spirit, if not in law.

However, despite fashioning themselves as saviors, pirates in Eyl are beginning to realize that they can no-longer count on local support, as Bahadur explained:

That support, according to Boyah, took a plunge last summer when a delegation of clan and religious leaders visited Eyl and declared that dealing with pirates is haram – religiously forbidden.