The SomCan-run Coast Guard, which at its height employed about 400 militiamen, scored some victories. Piracy, while a problem, wasn’t nearly the epidemic it is now, so the force spent much of its time trying to stop illegal foreign fishing, and the dumping of toxic waste along the Somali coast. The Taars’ most notable success might have been a weeks-long game of cat and mouse with the Dutch-owned MV Cormo Express in the fall of 2003. Dubbed the “Sheep of Fools” by the world’s media, the Cormo spent months wandering the oceans off Africa after its cargo of 52,000 Australian sheep were rejected as diseased by Saudi authorities. The crew’s attempts to put their “scabby mouth” infected herds ashore in Puntland were repeatedly foiled.

But the Taars’ success—material and otherwise—was not sitting well with the local populace. “Basically there were a lot of complaints from fishermen saying they were taking too much in fees, were too inefficient, and there were rumours of corruption,” says Hansen. (Somali forums on the Internet are filled with gossip about the “mansions” the family owns in Toronto. For the record, Abdiweli says he still has an apartment in Etobicoke.) The fact that the Taars’ coast guard operated out of the port of Bosasso, home to a rival clan, didn’t help matters.

When their patron Yusuf was elected president of the national (read notional) Transitional Federal Government (TFG) in late 2004, things started to go rapidly downhill. The Taars didn’t get along with his replacement as Puntland president, Gen. Mohamud Muse Hersi, a fellow Canadian and former officer in Barre’s army who had become an Ottawa gas station owner. Hiff’s attentions were distracted by a more pressing job, leading TFG troops in battles against Islamic rebels, as well as forces from neighbouring Somaliland, a breakaway republic. With SomCan’s militia off fighting for their boss, the fishing licence money wasn’t flowing in the way it used to—to the displeasure of Hersi—and the company was having some internal problems as well. In March 2005, three of its men hijacked the Thai fishing trawler Sirichainava 12, threatening to kill the crew unless they were paid an $800,000 ransom. The trio, who had been aboard the vessel for close to three months to guard against pirate attacks, were apparently upset at not being paid. Hiff sailed out to confront them, but it was a passing U.S. Coast Guard cutter, the Munro, that intervened. With a British Navy attack helicopter hovering overhead, nine heavily armed Americans boarded the Thai ship and took the SomCan employees prisoner. They ended up in Bangkok, where they were given 10 years each on piracy charges—a sentence that didn’t exactly endear the Taars to the men’s many relatives in Bosasso.

In response, Hersi cancelled SomCan’s five-year deal, and awarded the coast guard contract to a Saudi company, al-Hababi, which in turn appointed a member of the president’s sub-clan to run the operation. “He was a usual African president,” Abdiweli says bitterly, “just thinking about his family.” Relations between the Taars and Puntland’s leader steadily worsened, spilling over into open warfare in January 2006 when the SomCan militia got into a fierce gun battle with police and elements of the army outside Hiff’s Bosasso compound. Abdiweli claims that Hersi tried to “assassinate” his brother. Other sources suggest the firefight may have been a rather large mistake. Police, chasing a local thief, reportedly fired shots outside Hiff’s home, triggering a massive response from SomCan’s hired guns. Two police were wounded, and the fighting lasted for hours before clan elders cooled everyone down.

The Taars’ ties to Yusuf—who resigned as TFG president in December—and Hiff’s military responsibilities kept the family at the forefront of Puntland politics, however. And when Hiff died in a car accident in February 2008, Hersi even paid tribute to him as a great patriot. But the enmity, at least from the other side, appears lasting. Abdiweli’s presidential run (Taar is one of 17 candidates, at least four of whom are Canadian) seems to be mostly about settling scores. “Hersi is the real pirate,” he says. “Every cent goes into his own pocket.”

There is nothing quite like $100 million worth of stolen oil to focus people’s attention. Piracy has long been a problem off the Horn of Africa, but it wasn’t until the attacks rapidly escalated in 2008—culminating in the brazen seizure of the supertanker Sirius Star more than 700 km off the coast—that the international community seemed to take it seriously. But even the increased presence of the U.S., British, Spanish, Russian, Indian, Canadian, Malaysian and other world navies hasn’t been enough to halt the hijackings. The Gulf of Aden is one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes, and there are simply too many vessels to protect.

And for all of Taar’s bravado about taking the fight to the pirates, the roots of the crisis run awfully deep. The bandits enjoy widespread support along the coast, not just because the huge ransoms buoy the economy in a dirt-poor country, but because they are seen to be taking revenge for issues the world has long ignored. Ever since Somalia’s central government collapsed in 1991, rogue fishing fleets from Europe, Arabia, and the Far East have helped themselves to whatever they can pull out of the seas off the Horn. At one point in 2005, according to the High Seas Task Force, a body of international fisheries ministries, there were more than 800 foreign ships harvesting off the Somali coast. And their purloined catch is valued at US$450 million a year—more than the country receives in international aid. “They fish with impunity,” Mohamed Waldo, a long-time player in Somali politics and consultant for several aid organizations, says from his Nairobi office. “It is the mother of all piracies in Somalia.”

Since the December 2004 tsunami, inshore stocks have plummeted, something that the public attributes to overfishing, rather than the natural disaster. Local fishermen are afraid to put further out to sea lest they be mistaken for pirates, says Waldo. And the world’s navies are generally perceived to be in the business of protecting foreign trawlers, rather than battling the hijackers.