State Failure and Maritime Insecurity: an Analysis of Somali Piracy, 1991 - 2012

Abstract

This thesis set to unravel Somali piracy, a recent phenomenon of maritime trade’s centuries-old disruptive transgression. This thesis seeks to interrogate the sources, anatomy, and implications of a systemic Somali piracy. The thesis highlights the historical, geographical, and societal transcendental generalizations of a subject largely clothed in systematic local undertones. The thesis argues that Somali piracy was circumscribed by a historically embedded heritage and physical realities that found resonance and fomentation in the society’s new and changing sociopolitical and economic dynamics. The thesis establishes that the piracy was a consequence of an unsteady Somali state whose peoples’ expropriatory and survivalist designs fitted into complementary regional and international appendages. All Somali piracy players and transactions fed into the political economy of a new episode of an old practice off the Somalia coast. The investigation denotes unlikely facts that are different from available data on the piracy and from piracy of the past centuries.