Somalia, The Gulf Of Aden, And Piracy: An Overview, And Recent Developments

This article, which is an updated and enlarged version of

latest developments, looks at the shift in piracy at sea from

south-east Asia to the Indian Ocean and the Gulf of Aden; the

recent history of conflict within Somalia; the conditions in which

its people are currently living; humanitarian concerns and the

efforts of aid agencies; the role of the United Nations;

international naval action being taken against piracy; legal and

policy difficulties in prosecuting captured pirates; the United

Kingdom's Government's attitude towards piracy; the cost of

hijackings in financial and human terms; and the wider consequences

of piracy at sea.

Attention focuses on piracy

Two things are well known about Somalia from recent newspaper

reports, magazine articles, Internet pages, and radio and

television broadcasts. First, it is a virtually lawless country

which has been without proper government since 1991. Secondly, a

small number of its people have so disrupted merchant shipping off

its coasts that warships from twenty or more nations have been

mobilised at vast expense to try to prevent vessels in the Gulf of

Aden and the Indian Ocean from being hijacked.

In contrast, the Singapore and Malacca Straits, which were once

considered to be among the most dangerous places in the world

because of piracy, are now much safer for merchant vessels as a

result of cooperation between nations in south-east Asia. The main

sources for statistics about piracy at sea are the Singapore-based

Information Sharing Centre of the members of the Regional

Cooperation Agreement on Combating Piracy and Armed Robbery Against

Ships in Asia ("ReCAAP"), and the Piracy Reporting Centre

of the International Maritime Bureau ("IMB") in Kuala

Lumpur. Figures differ slightly between these sources, partly

because the two organisations use different definitions of piracy,

and ReCAAP's records relate only to Asia, whereas the IMB gives

global coverage. But while the number of reported piracy incidents

in Asia overall, and in south-east Asia in particular, has declined

in recent years, the number of attacks worldwide increased during

2008, largely owing to unprecedented activity by pirates in the

waters off Somalia. And while the majority of successful attacks by

pirates in south-east Asia involve the boarding of ships and the

stealing of money and various articles, the Somali pirates

consistently try to capture vessels and hold them and their crews

for ransom.

ReCAAP reported a drop in piracy incidents in Asia in successive

years from 200 actual and attempted incidents in 2004, through 148,

135, 100, and down to 96 during 2008. Meanwhile, the IMB reported a

total of 293 incidents worldwide during 2008—an increase

of more than 11 per cent from 2007, and the highest annual figure

since the Bureau started collating details in 1992. Last year,

there were 49 actual ship hijackings, with 889 crew members being

taken hostage, a large proportion being from the Philippines. Of

these hijackings, 42 were carried out in the Gulf of Aden and off

Somalia's east coast. Africa also created the second highest

group of reported incidents, with five vessels hijacked off

Nigeria, where a further 27 ships were boarded and 39 crew members

were kidnapped. And the IMB noted that the true figures for

Nigeria, including details of incidents not formally reported to

them, would have been even higher.

Attacks by heavily-armed Somali pirates create headlines, with

sensational incidents such as the capture and later release of the

Ukrainian ro-ro Faina (carrying 33 ex-Soviet battle tanks

and other weapons), and the Supertanker Sirius Star,

providing news for weeks on end. But in reports of the intrigue

surrounding the sale and the intended destination of

Faina's cargo of heavy weapons, and speculation as to

the value of the 2 million barrels of crude oil on board Sirius

Star, what has often been under-stated is the cost in human

terms of the sufferings of the crews and the effect of their

capture upon their families. And even further away from those

headlines are the appalling conditions in which most of the Somali

people themselves have been living year after year.

Conflict and instability in Somalia

In 1992, the year after the fall of the military dictatorship of

General Siad Barre, who had ruled the country since assuming power

in 1969, the United Nations Security Council by Resolution 751

(1992) established an operation in Somalia ("UNOSOM"),

and appointed a dedicated Security Council Committee. The operation

was to monitor the ceasefire then achieved between warring factions

in Mogadishu, while the Committee was to monitor the embargo placed

earlier in the year on the import of weapons and military

equipment. Later, from December 1992, coalition forces led by the

United States—a United Task Force known as

"UNITAF"—intervened under UNOSOM, in a mission

intended to create a secure environment for the delivery of

humanitarian aid to relieve starvation in Somalia. Then, from May

1993 until March 1995 UNITAF was succeeded by UNOSOM II, charged

with restoring peace, stability, and law and order. UNOSOM II was

supported by troops of a United States' Joint Task Force.

Overall, however, the missions were failures, although there were

some humanitarian achievements.

There followed years of fighting throughout much of Somalia,

with the country now effectively divided into three main regions:

since 1991 Somaliland, a self-declared republic (but not recognised

internationally) occupying part of the northern coast adjoining

Djibouti; since 1998 Puntland, a self-declared autonomous state

that has not sought independence, occupying the remaining part of

Somalia's northern coast and the northern part of the eastern

coast; with the remaining part of the country notionally under the

control of the then Transitional Federal Government

("TFG"), established in 2004. In reality, however, the

TFG was ineffective, with power largely in the hands of local

secular warlords and militant Islamic groups (as is clear from, for

example, the Report of the United Nations Security Council's

Monitoring Group on Somalia, dated 10 December 2008). At various

times, large parts of the south of the country have been controlled

by the Islamic Courts Union ("ICU") and the US-proscribed

terrorist organisation Al-Shabaab. In 2006, armed forces of

Ethiopia—Somalia's main western

neighbour—entered the country to support the TFG. There

followed clashes with the ICU, which was routed in early 2007.

Subsequently, new Islamic militant groups have formed, and have

been in armed conflict with the TFG. The Ethiopian force departed

in January 2009; it has not yet been replaced (although there are

tentative plans to bring in more troops); and the remaining, small

African Union force is insufficient to ensure stability.

The start of change

One of the early steps of the new administrations' Banadir

Regional Security Committee was to order police and military units

out of the capital Mogadishu, where unruly members of the security

forces had been robbing civilians. Meanwhile, there were numerous

reports in early February 2009 that some Ethiopian troops had

illegally re-entered Somalia and were extorting payments from

civilian vehicles in the central Hiran region. Activity such as

this provides an excuse for militant Islamists to continue

fighting.

There will need to be a massive recruitment and training

programme for the establishment, among other bodies, of adequate

Somali police and defence forces, to replace the previous

organisations, which were ineffective and largely corrupt. To this

end, a major objective for the TFG must be to help finance its

policies by taking control of the many revenue streams that have

lapsed into the control of private enterprise. One step has been to

assume authority over Mogadishu port and airport. Another step was

the signing on 18 March 2009 of an agreement with

Kenya—itself a troubled state—relating to

import and export taxes for the benefit of the TFG. Kenya has also

agreed to train Somali customs officers and, more generally, to

help the TFG to establish the institutional structures and the

civil service needed by the TFG to govern Somalia—actions

viewed by some commentators critical of the TFG's new president

as counter-productive, foreign interference.

The Somali clans

Among the factors which must be taken fully into account in any

effort to resolve the situation in Somalia are the country's

complex clan structures, and the ways in which the various clans

and sub-clans interact. Unless neighbouring clans can co-exist

peacefully, with the larger units respecting the rights of the

smaller units, there will be no return to normality. Indeed, the

danger is that "normality" for many Somalis means

struggle, insurgency, inter-clan hostilities, and a political

vacuum. Already, Somali teenagers up to eighteen years old have

known no other situation.

The four main clans of Somalia are the Hawiye (in the coastal

area running north from Mogadishu); the Darod (in Puntland and also

in the area north of the border with Kenya); the Ishaak (in

Somaliland); and the Rahanwein (west of the Hawiye, up to the

border with Ethiopia). These clans, with their numerous sub-clans,

are generally reckoned to account for between 80 and 85 per cent of

the indigenous population of Somalia. The newly elected president,

Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed (a former head of the Islamic Courts

Union, when he was regarded as a moderate chairman), is from the

Hawiye clan; and the new prime minister, Omar Abdirashid Ali

Sharmarke (who is the son of the Somali president assassinated in

1969 before General Siad Barre assumed power, and whose family

lives in the United States), is from the Darod clan.

Now, stability in the future rests on the hope that the new

president and prime minister will be able to work together and

command general support throughout Somalia. Their first major

action has been to begin the introduction of Islamic...