Joe Rogan - He Was Kidnapped By Somali Pirates!!

Boom and we're live. So just to give everybody a good way to start this, you have a book. The book is called The Desert in the Sea and you have one of the most disturbing and craziest stories I think I ever read. You were kidnapped by Somali pirates and you were held hostage for more than two years. What the fuck was that like and what does it feel like to be a free man now after all that? Are you kidding? It feels great. In America, wandering around the valley. The valley. Well I was born and raised by the way. Were you? Yeah, this is the first time I've been back in the valley for a couple of years now. What happened and how did it happen? Long story. So I went to Somalia in the first place to write a book, a very different book about Somali pirates. And I, so I'm a journalist, I was working in Berlin at the time and I had followed the very long trial of ten Somali pirates in Germany, in Hamburg, for about a year, all of 2011. And before that I had already thought about going to Somalia because the pirate story was interesting in all sorts of ways that I thought other writers weren't getting to. And I had met another journalist, a documentary maker named Ashwin Rahman, who also wanted to go to Somalia for his own project. And so we talked about going for a long time. And by the end of 2011, in the middle of the trial, we, all our plans came together and we wound up going in January of 2012. And we had about ten days of good research. We both got pretty good material. And we were in a part of Somalia where other journalists had gone. So we weren't doing something that was totally off the map, you know. And on the tenth day, Ashwin flew off to Mogadishu and I went with him to the airport. We saw him off and it was on the way back from the airport that a truck was waiting for our car. And the truck, which was actually a technical, so a battle wagon with a cannon in the back, stopped us, aimed the cannon through the windshield, overpowered my guard, and 12 guys with Kalashnikovs pulled me out of the car. So they put me in another car and we drove off. So from that moment on, I was a captive. Jesus Christ. And so they were obviously trying to get some hostage money. Yeah. Ran some money. No, it was about money. And I think they were hoping for both of us, by the way. Ashwin feels very lucky that he didn't get captured. So they had planned this. Yeah. And they were probably waiting for our car earlier in the morning. It was just Ashwin's good luck that we took a different route to the airport. How much money were they asking for? Well, so the first thing they asked for me was 20 million dollars, but that was after the first week. So I went for a week without having a phone call home. And in that period, seals rescued two other hostages from another part of Central Somalia, including Jessica Buchanan, an American. And I think nine Somali guards died in that raid. And they had some clan relationship to some of the guys holding me. And so the guys holding me were very upset. And I think that's why they asked for 20 million and held more importantly, held on to that demand for so long. They held on to it for almost a year. That specific number, they wouldn't budge. Yeah. And so they were in negotiations? Yeah, there were negotiations, but they were phony negotiations in some sense because the Somalis weren't weren't really negotiating. So for some background for people that are unfamiliar with the situation in Somalia, Somalia, if you correct me if I'm wrong, that area was traditionally fishermen. And yeah, that's wrong. It's wrong. So that's actually the point of the book. That's actually one level of the title of the desert in the sea. So that's a you get the idea from things that Somali pirates like to say, oh, that they're just frustrated fishermen. That's only part of the story. And so that's a that's a very important premise in the book. They they there are, you know, fishing communities on the coast and they're being hard hit definitely by illegal ships that come in to steal the fish. You know, but that's a problem up and down Africa. And because of that problem, once Somalia had no government, there was no Navy Navy to defend the coastline, local sort of clan leaders would send out militia boats with militiamen and hold fishing boats for, you know, 50,000 dollar ransoms over 24 hour periods. You know, really nothing very much. And they called it a license fee. And that's how you did business in Somalia in the 90s. We didn't hear about that. It was too small time. We started to hear about it when they graduated to capturing cargo ships. What I heard was that there was illegal dumping that wasn't just also. Yeah. And that they initially called themselves the People's Coast Guard of Somalia or the voluntary Coast Guard. Yeah, one or two pirate gangs tried to call themselves that. And, you know, they had a point. There was no one else patrolling the coast. But that wasn't really what was going on. No, no, I was captured on land, first of all. Every other hostage I met was a fisherman, a poor fisherman, captured hundreds of miles from the Somali coast. So that's not protecting the coast. So what role does this stuff called cat? K-H-A-T. This is a it's a plant that they chew and it has like a stimulant effect. Yeah, it's a little bit like coca leaf, but I think actually it's a narcotic. Yeah, it gets you high at first and then you crash and you wake up depressed and you need more. But these guys, every single pirate I met was addicted. And they wound up having to sit in front of these piles of cat every afternoon just to get high enough for their addiction. And then, like I said, they would they would crash at night and then do it again. In my case, there were there were guards 24 hours a day, which meant there was also a shift that slept during the day to cat at night and then and then crashed in the morning. Did you try any of that stuff? Yeah, I mean, they they kept offering it to me. What was it like? They I, you know, it takes like two or three stems or three or four stems. Not not much, but it changed your mood. You know, you could be depressed and you'd feel better. Or you could be a little bit sick and you just wouldn't feel it anymore. But I didn't want to get addicted to it. So I didn't I didn't keep pushing that. Is it it's that addictive? Yeah, well, I saw it. I saw how addictive it could be with the guards. You know, a little bit on an afternoon didn't make me want to keep doing it necessarily. But every every now and then I did it just for the sake of my mood. Yeah. That's always in the narrative. This cat stuff that they're somehow or another unhinged because they're on the stuff all the time. Yeah, I mean, you can get really unhinged in the sense that you're once you're wired on it, you're easily sort of upset. And these guys would have sometimes have fist fights in front of me and that kind of thing. Not all the time. But yeah, they would get they would get hopped up, they would just get jittery. And that's that's very dangerous with clash and cause lying around. So their culture somehow or another has evolved to this point where it's insanely common to kidnap people to the point where if you if you talk about Somali pirates, they're the very few countries where pirates go after their names so easily. Yeah, the they kidnapping became part of the culture. That's true. But pirate bosses, which are not so active now off the coast, also have other businesses that they get involved in. And so I've written about this in the meantime, too. They they get involved in gun smuggling and also even people smuggling on the Horn of Africa. So whatever takes that kind of equipment, you know, SUVs, Kalashnikovs, cheap food. When you say people smuggling, what do you mean? It's a good story. I found out I'm the person that proved that on the route between Somalia to Libya, some former pirate bosses were active in moving people. So in other words, Somalis who want to go to Libya will put themselves in the hands of some traffickers and some of those traffickers might be ex pirates. But go there as far as just being transported willingly? Willingly at first. And then there's always a place in Sudan where it where it shifts from being willing to being unwilling. Well, this is an issue that's been going on in Libya recently. I'm sure you saw the the most recent slave auctions that were videotaped and put on YouTube, which was the stories are awful. I've heard those firsthand. Yeah, insanely disturbing that you're watching a videotape of slave auctions in 2018. Well, it's more than disturbing. It's a revival of what was going on when slavery was legal. So in other words, okay, where the where the Somalis are involved up to the to the Libyan border is one story. And that's the story I've covered. What happens in Libya is a different story. The clans and the roots that migrants take through Libya, the clans they put themselves in the hands of are still the same as the clans and the roots that were used during the slave trade. So there's a there's almost like a, you know, there's a there's a historical memory there of what what went on. And it's the same thing happening. So so I suspect a lot of migrants don't quite know how bad it can get. The route up until Libya is probably easier than Libya itself. Libya itself sounds like a horror show for the migrants. Well, it's particularly it's one of those bizarre things we have a horrible dictator like Muammar Gaddafi. And you say, well, it's probably a good thing to get rid of that guy, right? But no, when you get rid of them, then you have this power vacuum. And apparently, it's a failed state now. And it's gotten even worse. It's, it's going in the direction of Somalia right now. And they're a couple of rival governments, I think it's a little bit more stable than Somalia was after their dictator fell. But it's, there's similar. There's a similar thing going on. I, it's true. Gaddafi was a bad guy. And but he was also a bulwark. And he knew that. And he used that to his advantage with your work against a bulwark against against migration paths. I've never heard that expression. Oh, yeah. Bulwark. Bulwark. No, what does that mean? A roadblock. Okay. When you were there, when you decided to take 10 days and you'd done all this research, what? What did you expect when you went there? And what was different? Well, so we we were talking about the security, we found a Somali elder in Berlin, who could offer the protection of his clan in Somalia. And he had done it with another journal, journalist, a German journalist. And he took us out from Galcayo, which is a town in central Somalia, out to the coast to Hobo, which is a pirate town, you might have heard of, and pirate town, natural pirate town. Yeah. So it's all pirates. Well, so he, he's a pirate. So he had a giant A pirate town. An actual pirate town, yeah. So it's all pirates? Well it's in the control of pirates. So in other words, the government that sits in Galcayo has no influence there. The pirates are the ones who can have the say so. So what is their business like? I mean when you say it's like a pirate town, so the pirates are essentially in control, but like what else is going on there if you've got pirates in control? No, normal Somali life is going on there, but let's say the police force would be pirates. Whoa. Yeah. I mean when we got there it was pretty quiet and we didn't see much normal life and we had a very organized interview and lunch one afternoon with a guy who turned out to be a real pirate. You know, that wasn't a joke. And then we left around sundown and that was it. We didn't spend a whole lot of time in Hobo. When you were there and you eventually got captured and taken hostage, what was the initial experience like? Well so when that happened with the technical, with the truck, at first my mind actually recoiled from what was going on. I mean I actually was in denial for a couple of seconds. I thought, okay, just a roadblock. So once they captured me I thought, this is going to be really hard on my family. Jesus. And they beat me with their guns, they broke my wrist, they blighted my scalp, and they broke my glasses. So that's the other thing I noticed right away was that shit, I'm going to be blind. How bad are your odds? I'm nearsighted. It's not good. And this is like initial, like right away? Yeah, oh yeah, it happened in that first skirmish. So your wrist was broken right away? Yeah, because I was trying to hold the car door closed and they pounded on it with their gun barrels. Wow. And is it hard to talk about this? No, because now I've written the book. I wouldn't have been able to do this before writing the book. But writing the book familiarized myself with my own memories. You know, it made me fluent with this material. Your physical state seems to shift when you discuss it. Oh, maybe. Your shoulders have risen. You're like, yeah. I mean, it's a question of, you know, it's not pleasant. I couldn't imagine. Yeah. I mean, it must have been just insane. So you said there was a long period of time before they contacted anybody. Who do they contact? Okay, so it was a week and they, so I had a grant, a reporting grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. I should have called them. But I had all my notes stolen, which means all my phone numbers too. And so when they finally brought me up to a bluff with a little cell phone and said, call somebody, I said, well, bring me my notes. I need to, you know, find the right phone number. I said, no, just call someone. So I called my mom. Oh, Jesus. And that's what happened. By that time, the FBI had informed her, had actually come to her door and briefed her a little on what to say on the phone. So she was ready for the phone call. You know, she'd been sitting around for days wondering when she was going to hear from me. So, but that was also true about the Pulitzer Center. It was also true about my colleagues at Spiegel Online in Berlin. It was also true about my family in Germany. And had been briefed a little bit. Now were they waiting for a specific reason? Why did they wait a whole week? No idea. It's a really good question. I kept asking for a phone call. I mean, I was sitting there kind of in a panic too, you know. And what were they saying to you during this week? I said, oh, yeah, okay. You have a broken arm, right? So you're obviously you're in pain. You can't see anymore. Yeah. I was in a, the first, first they took me to a bush camp, then they took me with a couple of other hostages to a prison house. And yeah, I had my wrist in a sling and it just was, it was painful and it was confusing. I really didn't know what was going on. And then slowly they brought a doctor in to look at the wrist and then slowly they took us out into the bush and then finally they put me on the phone. So you got medical treatment for your wrist? Sort of. Yeah. He said it. He was probably a livestock doctor, but the guy was, he was a very sympathetic older man, but he said your wrist is not broken and he put a splint on it and that was it. It was broken. Not broken in half, you know, but I felt, I felt bones moving around in there. It's been rearranged. It's been reshaped. Did you eventually get medical treatment when you get home before? Oh yeah, when I got home. But two years. Do you have to get surgery? Two years and eight months later it was okay. It's a functioning wrist. Yeah, it's set wrong, but it's a functioning wrist. Did you get an x-ray just so you could see how weird it looks? Didn't even bother. Wow. Now when you're there, once you get the initial phone call, what is the process like after that? Are they talking to you about what they want? Yeah, they said, okay, you have to demand $20 million from your mother. I think I must have smirked or something. They said, it's not funny. I said, yes, it actually is. It's not a serious demand, but that was their opening gambit. $20 million. Why specifically $20 million? That's a good question. The first two hostages I was held with, two Seychelles Waugh fishermen, the ransom for them was also $20 million, but that's $10 million each. So maybe they were just doubling it for the American. There was a time where they told you that if people showed up for you, that you were going to be killed. Oh, sure. They said that right away because by the time the phone call had happened, the raid for Jessica Buchanan and Paul Tistat had already happened too. So they even mentioned that to me. And of course I had no idea what they were talking about. I had no news. So I mentioned it to my mother on the phone. I said, they're talking about a raid and they're saying, if somebody else comes for me, I'm going to get shot dead. But those are already the terms of a kidnapping. That was not a big change. In my situation. And my mom could tell me very little on the phone about the rescue, but she had something positive in her voice. She said, oh yeah, the rescue. And I thought that doesn't sound like the pirates, of course, told me the hostages have been killed. Like that doesn't sound like it went bad. But it was still another month and a half or something before I found out the full story. Jesus. Two and a half years? Is that what you call it? Yeah, two years and eight months. God. Now, you ate with them, you got used to them. Did you almost become friends with them? Sure. I became friends with, you know, half friends with about half the pirate guard group that was with me at that point. So I was held in a number of places. They also placed me on a tuna ship. I was placed on a ship hijacked by Somali pirates for about five months. And I think I'm the only Western writer to know life on a ship like that. Five months. Yeah, for the full spring and summer of 2012. Wow. And then it was after that that I was held on land alone with the guards. And that's when I got to know the guards. You must have had this feeling like they're never going to find me. They're moving me around. They're putting me on a ship. That was a problem. Once the, especially when they put me on the ship, I felt like any progress the military had made in finding my location would have been completely reset. You know, I was terribly depressed when they first put me on the ship. And you were there for five months. Yeah, but once I was on the ship, I felt better because there were 28 other hostages, the crew of the ship, and they were great. It's always better to have company when you're a captive. Yeah. So the other people that were running the ship when they captured it, they were there as well. Yeah. And there were a crew of 28 guys from East Asia and Southeast Asia. Did they speak English? Only five of them. So five of them were from the Philippines, and we got along with them really good. Everyone else, we had to get to know somehow. And the ship, they couldn't speak to each other either because they had, it was like a tower of babble on the ship. And so they developed their own pigeon, which is what sailors have done for centuries. It was a pigeon mixture of English and Chinese and a few other words. Wow. Yeah. That was fascinating. Yeah, I could imagine. Now, as a writer, you had to be sort of like halfway torn, like, God, if I get out of here, what a fucking story. Yeah. Yeah. I knew I was living through interesting things and gathering good material. But after at least a year or so in captivity, I stopped hoping that I was going to get out alive. I mean, things were going so badly as far as the negotiation was concerned that I thought this is really, I'm really in deep shit. Now, is that standard for them to hold people for that long? Yeah. Yes and no. I think I was held longer than any Westerner. But the men on that ship didn't get out for a total of five years, just under five years. They were held. But they did get out eventually? They did get out in 2016. Wow. And I was privileged enough to go to Nairobi and see them there. I took them by surprise. Wow. So you flew out to meet them? Well, I was still living in Berlin and I was following the case very closely and I helped raise some money. The lawyers who were running it, flew me down there and that was really nice. And it was nice for the guys too because they were obviously confused. There was nothing but very well-meaning but completely anonymous people around them. And then they kind of came out of the terminal in Nairobi and they were obviously still sort of a little bit confused and I tapped one of them on the shoulder and he recognized me and it was pandemonium. Wow. It wound up on Reuters' video. I think it's available. Now how did you eventually get freed? So my mom raised a ransom. She raised it with help from family and friends and also some magazines I'd worked for and some institutions in the US and Germany. And when she talked the pirates down to 1.6 million, then I got out. For some reason at the very end, the pirates came down precipitously. At the very end, after two years. Holding on for like I think they went down to four or five million or something like that and then at the very end they came down to what was on offer. No explanation? Not really except that from my point of view, there was a labor unrest stirring among the guards. So in other words, the guards were sick of holding me. And so one day towards the very end, a few weeks before I got out, one of the guards actually said, Michael, we might go on strike. I'm like, do you need some help with that? I can go on a hunger strike. They're like, slow, slow.