I started to work on a feature-length script about pirates in Somalia, but I knew that there was something I was missing, which was that I didn't know what day-to-day life looked like and felt like in East Africa. So I decided I had to go.
I think the guys who are sort of infantry in Somali piracy are not unlike low-level drug dealers in urban areas in America, who see it as, you know, not having many other options. I think it comes down to money and needing to survive.
I couldn't be happier teaming up to make the feature with a company as innovative as VICE. There is so much the world doesn't know about piracy in Somalia and the people involved, and I'm excited to be telling a story of piracy in Somalia from a different perspective.
My first assignment was 12 weeks in Afghanistan. After that, I covered the Indian election for two months. Then I got a phone call saying, 'Hey, we want you in Brazil,' and the same happened for Somalia.
What we have seen with Islamist extremism, whether it is in Mali or Somalia or Afghanistan, is that the disease is not necessarily the individual country. The disease is the Islamist extremism, and that's what we have to fight; that's the narrative that we have to beat.
When I was commander of Central Command, obviously we were very concerned about the developments in Yemen, the developments in Somalia and elsewhere, in Africa and so forth. But the al Qaeda senior leadership is under unprecedented pressure.
British intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan swelled the grievances home-grown fanatics fed off, while al Qaeda morphed and re-grouped in lawless sanctuaries from Somalia to Yemen.
My stepmom's from Somalia, my baby sister is African American, my dad was always English, I'm a white man... You may have noticed.
African history is filled with experiences of people shooting their way to power and then splintering into factions, like in Somalia and Liberia.
I want to go see Somalia because I've never been there, and I feel like I'm missing out. I want to learn that heritage; I want to learn about my culture.
