Doubtlessly you’ve heard that there are pirates who capture boats off the coast of Somalia who hold the crew of those ships ransom. Perhaps you’ve even cracked a few pirate-related jokes in disbelief that piracy still exists in the 21st century (a recent South Park episode about Somali pirates was hilariously funny). But as the documentary The Project shows, in real life the Somali pirates are vicious and ruthless, and have held hostages in horrible conditions at sea for months and even years. With the Somali government in disarray for the entirety of its recent history, Somali’s leaders were unable to stop the pirates from doing whatever they wished.
The Project immediately puts a personal face on piracy by telling the story of two Indian hostages and the family and friends that have seen nothing done by anybody about their captured loved ones. The documentary also shows how easy it is for pirates to raid huge ships with speedboats and as little as a half-dozen pirates with AK-47s, and why war-torn Somali could do nothing about it. In fact, because of United Nations regulations, Somalia was unable to train any kind of fighting force to strike back against the pirates — that is, until Puntland President Abdirahman Mohamud Farole decided to flout the U.N.’s decree and start an organization, the Puntland Maritime Police Force, with the support of the United Arab Emirates and a few western volunteers trained in tactics of war (including American Roger Carstens, who despite serving in the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan calls Somalia “the most fucked up place on earth.”)
While we watch the PMPF grow from a group of malnourished, undisciplined Somalians to a trained fighting force, we see the behind-the-scenes squabbling with the U.N. over the group’s “right” to exist (with the U.N. mostly worried about how the force would be used by the Puntland government beyond its anti-piracy goals). In the meantime, the western leaders of the PMPF have to deal with pirate infiltrators of the organization. These factors ensure that the aims of the PMPF will not go according to plan. The documentary builds to a dramatic, real-life gun shootout between the PMPF and a pirate vessel that is caught on camera. It is also very timely — the documentary goes up to last month (March 2013) with some startling revelations.
Ultimately the documentary argues the benefits of contracted military professionals — in another word, mercenaries — to protect, serve, and oversee combat operations in war zones like Somalia when local governments are unable to do it. There is little argument against the effectiveness of the PMPF, because its presence alone has deterred piracy since nothing stood in the way of the pirates before. Though the U.N. is somewhat cast as the “bad guy” in the documentary for trying to undermine the PMPF, directors Shawn Efran and Adam Ciralsky show that the organization’s concerns are valid in the wake of the history of soldiers for hire in Somalia (much of the U.N.’s concerns are spoken for by the organization’s then-arms embargo monitor Matt Bryden). But if nothing else, The Project is the story of truly altruistic individuals fighting against bureaucracy that doesn’t trust them and a region in which lawlessness is the only way of life.
I didn’t know what to expect from The Project when I entered the theater, and I was fully engrossed in what I saw. My only issue is that based on the events of the last six months the story of the PMPF is far from over and I imagine that Efran and Ciralsky might decide to do more work on it before a wide release. In a few years it’s entirely possible that the world will look at the PMPF and other groups like it as a new solution to solving problems in war-torn countries that the country cannot solve on its own. On the other hand, a group like the PMPF led by the wrong individual could be no different that the enemies it is trying to depose.
I recommend The Project to anyone who has an interest in military operations or world events, especially anyone who insists that the only solution to all the world’s problems is the United Nations (are there people who still think that?). Some of the gruesome images might be too much for viewers, but keep in mind that this is what many of the Somali people see on an everyday basis.
RATING: A harrowing look at one of the most lawless regions of the world and the men who are trying to solve its problems (8.5/10).
Tribeca Film Festival Screening Times
April 28 6:30 School of Visual Arts
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