While many are celebrating the decline of piracy, its root causes must be understood and addressed if progress is to be lasting.
Since its explosion in 2007, piracy has become one more reason for the negative news coverage Somalia has been receiving the past two decades. However this year has been a turning point in the fight against piracy and many are celebrating the decline in the number of attacks as the end of the phenomenon.
But while the militarised responses of international navies and private security solutions have been praised, piracy’s root causes and broader consequences are largely lost to powerful policy makers and the mainstream media.
Yet without understanding important, wider dynamics and the decisive role of domestic initiatives, maintaining this slowed rate of attacks and reinforcing these gains will be difficult.
Root causes and defensive piracy
The root cause of Somali piracy lies in the threat that illegal fishing posed to the livelihoods of subsistence and commercial fishermen along the coastline. During the early 1990s, Somali subsistence fishing and the fishing industry coexisted with illegally-placed foreign fishermen in the vast Somali waters.
The former used traditional, less advanced fishing methods while the latter tended to fish on an industrial scale. Some of the illegally acquired catch of the industrial fishers was packaged in the Middle East and sold overseas for large profits, none of which were seen by Somalis.
As the overall decline in Indian Ocean fish stocks set in around this time, however, increasing numbers of Somali fishermen started to sail further offshore while foreign trawlers came deeper into the inshore waters. This set the scene for the violent clashes that ensued.
Local vigilantes started to chase away illegal foreign fishing vessels, and what was initially condemned began to be condoned and encouraged by many towards the late-1990s.
Not long afterwards, illegal trawlers came heavily armed with weapons and militias provided by other Somalis. In fierce battles at sea, superior firepower and semi-professional protection detachments gave the trawlers an upper hand. After a brief hiatus between 2000 and 2005, Somali attacks took a different form and began to go after any vulnerable vessel (fishing or not) that moved in Somali waters.