Anja Shortland

The Business of Piracy in Somalia

Abstract This article argues that understanding why Somali piracy has resisted control efforts requires understanding that it is a criminal business rather than a conventional international security problem. We statistically model Somali piracy and draw two conclusions: first, piracy increases with economic stability, and second, naval interdiction efforts are stabilising but not significantly reducing piracy. We argue that these conclusions are not surprising if piracy is understood as an organised crime. Our argument has four components. First, Somali piracy is a land-based problem, and naval control mechanisms are not deterring pirates. Second, improving Somalias anarchic political situation will not necessarily stop piracy: our statistical analysis demonstrates that piracy is a business which improves with a more stable operating environment. Third, piracy is organised criminal activity, and like other organised crime groups, will be difficult to control, especially if it becomes embedded in state structures. Finally, we argue that few of the relevant players have any real incentives to alter their behaviour.

Government Ownership of Banks, Institutions and Economic Growth

We put forward a modern version of the ‘developmental’ view of government-owned banks which shows that the combination of information asymmetries and weak institutions creates scope for such banks to play a growth-promoting role. We present new cross-country evidence consistent with our theoretical predictions. Specifically, we show that during 1995–2007 government ownership of banks has been robustly associated with higher long run growth rates. Moreover, we show that previous results suggesting that government ownership of banks is associated with lower long run growth rates are not robust to conditioning on more ‘fundamental’ determinants of economic growth.

Political Violence and Excess Liquidity in Egypt

In this article we estimate a time-series model of excess liquidity in the Egyptian banking sector. While financial liberalisation and financial stability are found to have reduced excess liquidity, these effects have been offset by an increase in the number of violent political incidents arising from conflict between radical Islamic groups and the Egyptian state. The link between political events and financial outcomes provides a rationale for economic policy interventions by the international community in response to increases in political instability.

‘An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth’: Political violence and counter-insurgency in Egypt

The authors analyse newly collected time-series data measuring the dimensions of violent political conflict in Egypt. Attention is focused on the interaction between politically motivated attacks by Islamists and the counter-insurgency measures used by the Egyptian government. Both insurgency and counter-insurgency are multidimensional. Insurgency includes attacks on tourists, on Egyptian civilians and on security forces. Counter-insurgency includes arrests and attacks on militants. To some extent, the dynamics of insurgency and counter-insurgency can be described by two distinct cycles of violence: one related to highly politicized activities on both sides, and another related to less explicitly political activities. However, the two cycles are inter-related, leading to complex and asymmetric dynamics in the relationships between the different dimensions of the conflict. The authors find that the combination of political repression and military counter-insurgency measures employed by the Egyptian government has the potential to exacerbate rather than reduce political violence. On the other hand, the overall level of conflict intensity in Egypt can be mitigated by food subsidies. Finally, the existence of significant spillovers from upsurges in the Israeli—Palestinian conflict shows the regional importance of reaching a Middle East peace agreement.

War and famine, peace and light? The economic dynamics of conflict in Somalia 1993-2009

The literature on war economies argues that prolonged civil wars have an economic logic: certain groups may obtain material gains from committing acts of violence and hence resist peacebuilding efforts. Objective tests of these predictions have so far been limited, as corruption and conflict prevent the collection of reliable economic data on the ground. Remote sensing and Geographic Information Science techniques enable us to overcome these problems of terrestrial data collection. Electricity consumption manifested as night-time light emissions recorded in satellite images is proposed as a proxy for changes in disposable income in Somalia’s cities. The nightlight images provide striking illustrations of economic decline and recovery and clearly show the contrast between the stable regions of Northern Somalia and the chaos and anarchy of Southern Somalia. Based on geospatial analyses of settlement patterns in Somali cities, we argue that specific metrics of light output can be used to proxy for the incomes of different social groups. We use geo-coded conflict event data to analyze the economic impact of conflict on local light output and therefore incomes. We find a significant peace dividend for poorer households located at the margins of cities, which benefit both from local stability and more peaceful conditions in the country as a whole. By contrast, the central business districts are relatively well insulated from the effects of local conflict, and violence in Mogadishu has positive effects on light output from cities where humanitarian aid agencies are located. Future peace initiatives need to confront these economic incentives for continued conflict and state failure in Somalia.

Governance, Naval Intervention and Piracy in Somalia

Abstract Might criminals in weak states benefit from better governance? We test the relationship between Somali piracy and local business conditions as well as (naval) law enforcement. Anarchy on land is not helpful to pirates, but corruptible governance is. Increasingly effective naval measures in the Gulf of Aden displaced piracy into the Indian Ocean.

The dynamics of terror during the Peruvian civil war

The international community has a declared intention to protect civilians from deliberate violence in civil conflicts. The optimal type of foreign intervention and its optimal timing are likely to depend on the combat strategies of the belligerents. Weak belligerents unable to provide economic incentives and security guarantees to civilians often follow a strategy of intimidation and terror. In this case, foreign financial support for one side could affect the strategies of both sides in several different ways, and the interaction between the two sides’ strategies could magnify the resulting impact on civilian casualties. Using a new monthly time-series dataset, we explore the factors associated with variations in the intensity of civilian abuse by participants in the guerrilla war in Peru during the 1980s and 1990s. We show that an increase in civilian abuse by one side was strongly associated with subsequent increases in abuse by the other. In this type of war, foreign intervention could substantially reduce the impact on civilians of a sudden rise in conflict intensity, by moderating the resulting ‘cycle of violence’. In practice, foreign interventions had a mixed record in Peru: financial support for the Peruvian military raised the level of violence against civilians, but counter-narcotics aid and development aid reduced it. These effects are consistent with a model in which different types of intervention have different effects on belligerents’ resource capacity and on the opportunity cost of fighting.

State-Building, Informal Governance and Organised Crime: The Case of Somali Piracy

This article argues that gangs, clans, mafias and insurgencies are, like states, forms of governance. This insight is applied to the case of Somali piracy and the article explores whether protectors of piracy were clearly distinct from pirates; and to what extent protectors coordinated their activities across the Somali coastland. It is shown that clan elders and Islamist militias facilitated piracy by protecting hijacked ships in their anchorages and resolving conflicts within and between pirate groups. Protection arrangements operated across clans, as illustrated by the free movement of hijacked ships along the coastline and the absence of re-hijacking after ransoms were paid. Piracy protection can be thought of as part of a continuum of protection arrangements that goes from mafias to legitimate states. The article concludes by highlighting the implications of the findings for the debate on state-building and organised crime.

Robin Hook: The Developmental Effects of Somali Piracy

Naval counter-piracy measures off Somalia have failed to change the incentives for pirates, raising calls for land-based approaches that may involve replacing piracy as a source of income. This paper evaluates the effects of piracy on the Somali economy to establish which (domestic) groups benefit from ransom monies. Given the paucity of economic data on Somalia, we evaluate province-level market data, nightlight emissions and high resolution satellite imagery. We show that significant amounts of ransom monies are spent within Somalia. The impacts appear to be spread widely, benefiting the working poor and pastoralists and offsetting the food price shock of 2008 in the pirate provinces. Pirates appear to invest their money principally in the main cities of Garowe and Bosasso rather than in the backward coastal communities.

Can We Stop Talking about Somali Piracy Now? A Personal Review of Somali Piracy Studies

In May 2015 we observed the 3rd anniversary of the last Somali pirate hijack of a Western merchant vessel. Naval commanders and private security providers remind us that attacks still occur and that ship-owners must remain vigilant – yet the annual attack figures are in single digits. Is it time to stop talking about Somali piracy? It certainly seems a good time to review the literature on Somali piracy. The annual NEPS conference is a particularly good forum for such an endeavor, as the piracy literature is truly interdisciplinary, spanning economics, politics and international relations, area studies, sociology, law, anthropology and security studies.1 This is not intended to be the complete and definitive review of the literature – but rather an eclectic review of what I found to be the most fascinating topics and puzzles posed by Somali piracy. There are many strands to piracy studies (also see Bueger 2014). Different questions were triggered in different “phases” of Somali piracy, and the time-line of Somali piracy (Figure 1) explains the order of topics below. In the final section I offer an explanation of the overall pattern of the intensity of Somali pirate attacks.