Political Geographies of Piracy

In order to understand how piracy was reframed as a security and development issue, one must first understand Somalia’s complex history of colonial rule and its post-independence attempts at state-building. Similar to other African states, Somalia has been labeled a “failed state” and continues to struggle with high levels of insecurity and underdevelopment. These challenges have been decades in the making, and piracy seems to be just another item to add to the list of issues plaguing Somalia. However, I argue that it is not that simple. Rather, Somalia has a long history with international intervention justified under the banner of helping to restore governance, safety, and hope to its people. These interventions have come in all shapes and sizes, but rely upon the same basic underpinning—depicting Somalia as an insecure and underdeveloped state that needs assistance. Instead of adding piracy to the list of challenges facing Somalia, it should be added to the list of issues that draw upon Somalia’s label as a failed state to justify outside intervention. More specifically, counter piracy actors sought to root piracy in Somalia’s existing and imagined security and development issues in order to rework when, where, and how piracy can be combated. This chapter provides an overview of Somalia’s political history couched in the broader contexts of failed states and African state building. It then explores current understandings of security and development in Somalia with an emphasis on the post-Barre period. It concludes by demonstrating how these understandings of security and development helped reframe piracy and the responses to it.

Much of what the public knows about counter piracy efforts comes from news reports and television broadcasts, documentaries, and the occasional public policy speech. What is rarely known is what goes on behind the office doors where these counter piracy policies and practices take form. This chapter explores the inner workings of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime Counter Piracy Programme (UNODC CPP) office as well as the partners and politics involved in designing the anti-piracy messaging campaign. The chapter begins by providing a glimpse into the workings of the UNODC CPP office in Nairobi, Kenya. It introduces the geographies of the office as well as the wider United Nations employee ranking system that determines staff members’ access to different contract lengths, pay scales, and benefit packages. These factors demonstrate that an employee’s physical location within the UNODC CPP office, as well as the greater United Nations system, is directly tied to the ability to impact particular programming practices and policies. During the nascent period of the UNODC CPP, the majority of its employees were short-term, contractual hires. As these employees came and went, so did many of the practices, skills, and professional relationships tied to the individuals.

The high risks associated with working on the ground in Somalia means that many foreign governments rely upon private contractors or international organizations to carry out development and security projects. As a result, donor governments are unable to closely monitor projects, resulting in a disconnect between those providing the funding and those implementing the projects. This can be seen as both an asset and a downfall. As an asset, it provides the implementing agencies with the space needed to manage challenges as they arise. Somalia’s constantly changing political environment and security situation, coupled with the United Nations’ slow procurement and hiring process, can often lead to unexpected choke points and tensions throughout the development process. The inability of donor governments to micromanage projects in Somalia means that the implementing agencies are granted a little more time and flexibility to defuse and rectify any issues that may arise. However, donor governments view it as a downfall. Their inability to closely monitor the projects they are funding, forces them to rely upon agency reports to keep them abreast of the progress of particular projects. These reports generally tend to minimize challenges and play up successes in order to ensure the continuation of project funding. Unfortunately, marginalized groups tend to suffer greatest from disconnect between donors, United Nations’ goals, and the materialization of programming on the ground.

On March 28, 2012 nine Somali piracy prisoners sat handcuffed in a private plane as it idled on a runway of the Seychelles International Airport. The pilot and prison officers escorting the piracy prisoners stood by waiting for confirmation from the UNODC CPP that all necessary paper work was in order and that the officials at Hargeisa International Airport were ready to receive the prisoners. After receiving the go-ahead from UNODC CPP, the plane took off on a direct route to Somalia. This day was the culmination of months of tireless work by UNODC CPP, donor governments, Somali officials, and Seychelles officials. Travel papers were prepared, planes were reserved, flight paths were charted, funds were allocated, and endless phone calls were made. These pirates were the first half of a group of 17 Somali piracy prisoners, tried and convicted in the Seychelles, and being repatriated to Somalia to serve out the remainder of their sentences in the Hargeisa Prison. Their sentences varied from 10 to 25 years. The piracy prisoners were looking forward to returning to a country with which they share a language, religion, and dietary customs, and the UNODC CPP was looking forward to achieving the milestone of repatriating the first group, of what was to be many, piracy prisoners under the newly established Piracy Prisoner Transfer Programme (PPTP). What they did not know was that it would be over a year later that the next group of piracy prisoners would be repatriated.

This book situates the strategic shift in counter piracy strategies within a context of broader socio-historical forces shaping relations between security and development. Simultaneously, it situates this shift within a larger transition from a post-crime to a pre-crime, security society. It began with an overarching question: If the number of successful piracy attacks off the coast of Somalia has steadily decreased since 2008–2009, why were counter piracy actors insisting on increasing interventions and expanding the counter piracy framework to encompass a more “holistic” approach to combating piracy? In an effort to address this question, it became evident that combating piracy off the coast of Somalia was a far more complex issue than crime and punishment. Early research illustrated that (re)framing piracy as a security-development issue not only entailed drawing upon a set of existing understandings of security and development in Somalia, but also reproducing and promoting a discourse of casual linkage between the two. This drew a parallel between underdevelopment and insecurity in Somalia as both the cause of and solution to Somali piracy. The research thus involved locating and examining discourses and practices that normalized and promoted these assumptions, and how these assumptions shaped and were shaped by the gendered/racialized practices associated with the UNODC CPP messaging campaign.