Between November and December 1995, Eritrea
and Yemen briefly fought over southern
Red Sea island... more Between November and December 1995, Eritrea and Yemen briefly fought over southern Red Sea islands and islets that an Arbitral Tribunal at The Hague described as “uniformly unattractive, waterless, and habitable only with great difficulty.” Nevertheless, roughly located between 14°10’N and 13°35’N and from 42°35’E to 43°E, and a mere 55 nautical miles north of Bab el-Mandeb where the Red Sea funnels into the Indian Ocean, the strategic significance of these archipelagos belies their size and inhabitability. The Eritrean- Yemeni conflict accordingly had potentially far-reaching and disastrous consequences to the international sea lanes passing through that chokepoint. Although the dispute was settled through arbitration in 1998/1999, tensions continue, including accusations of piratical acts against traditional fishermen. Coupled with the region’s fast changing political and security dynamics, on the one hand these effects may complicate international efforts to curb spiralling piracy in the waters off the greater Horn of Africa. On the other hand, the unprecedented militarisation of those waters to contain piracy is proving detrimental to the countries of the southern Red Sea and is bound to worsen an already fragile region.
IntroductionRansoming is an age-old phenomenon dating at least as far back as the mid-first centu... more IntroductionRansoming is an age-old phenomenon dating at least as far back as the mid-first century BC when pirates kidnapped Julius Caesar near the Greek island of Pharmacusa and demanded "twenty talents" for his release. According to the Greek historian Plutarch, Caesar "laughed at them for not knowing who their captive was, and of his own accord agreed to give them fifty [talents]."2 This chain of events has an eerie resemblance to the alacrity of hijacked foreign illegal fishers in Somali waters in the early 2000s, who offered their captors irresistible sums of money to secure their speedy release.When local Somali vigilantes captured illegal foreign fishing vessels, the former demanded "fines" and the latter readily paid-sometimes offering more money than they would be asked to-in order to avoid drawn-out legal altercations and embarrassment.3 With more than 20,000 vessels crisscrossing this pirate prone area, such alacrity to pay rising fines help...
Terrorist attacks have been carried out at sea and using the sea by nationalist-separatist groups... more Terrorist attacks have been carried out at sea and using the sea by nationalist-separatist groups, leftist extremists and Islamist fundamentalists. Prominent cases in the Indian Ocean region includ...
Abstract This paper identifies the root causes and general typology of the widespread phenomena o... more Abstract This paper identifies the root causes and general typology of the widespread phenomena of piracy off the coast of Somalia. It shows that piracy in this region started as a direct response to illegal fishing, with widespread claims of hazardous waste dumping offering added moral justification. It argues that the two international crimes that are the root causes of Somali piracy constitute corporate terrorism at sea. The alacrity of the earliest illegal trawlers that were captured by the fishermen to pay ransom unleashed the scourge of criminal/ransom piracy that has overshadowed – in figures and discourse – ‘defensive’ piracy. Restoring the state and combating poverty can help minimise the favourable conditions that latter-day pirates exploited to launch their trade, but will not eradicate piracy without successfully containing the corporate terrorism that triggered it in the first place. Moreover, combating poverty among fishing coastal communities require the eradication of illegal fishing.
Piracy in Somalia sheds light on an often misunderstood world, oversimplified and demonized in th... more Piracy in Somalia sheds light on an often misunderstood world, oversimplified and demonized in the media and largely decontextualized in scholarly and policy works. It examines the root causes of piracy in Somalia, its impact on coastal communities, local views about it, and the measures taken against it. Drawing on six years' worth of extensive fieldwork, Awet Tewelde Weldemichael amplifies the voices of local communities who have suffered under the heavy weight of illegal fishing, piracy and counter-piracy and makes their struggles comprehensible on their own terms. He also exposes complex webs of crimes within crimes of double-dealing pirates, fraudulent negotiators, duplicitous intermediaries, and treacherous foreign illegal fishers and their local partners. In so doing, this book will help inform regional and global counter-piracy endeavors, avoid possible reversals in the gains so far made against piracy, and identify the gains that need to be made against its root causes.
... It was humbling, to say the least, to sit on the bed of the ailing Mohammed Omar Abdellah &am... more ... It was humbling, to say the least, to sit on the bed of the ailing Mohammed Omar Abdellah "AbuTyara," or across the table ... and Yemane Mesghina, and Lahra Smith at Georgetown and Tricia Reddeker Hepner at UT-Knoxville for challenging and encouraging me even when we ...
Between November and December 1995, Eritrea
and Yemen briefly fought over southern
Red Sea island... more Between November and December 1995, Eritrea and Yemen briefly fought over southern Red Sea islands and islets that an Arbitral Tribunal at The Hague described as “uniformly unattractive, waterless, and habitable only with great difficulty.” Nevertheless, roughly located between 14°10’N and 13°35’N and from 42°35’E to 43°E, and a mere 55 nautical miles north of Bab el-Mandeb where the Red Sea funnels into the Indian Ocean, the strategic significance of these archipelagos belies their size and inhabitability. The Eritrean- Yemeni conflict accordingly had potentially far-reaching and disastrous consequences to the international sea lanes passing through that chokepoint. Although the dispute was settled through arbitration in 1998/1999, tensions continue, including accusations of piratical acts against traditional fishermen. Coupled with the region’s fast changing political and security dynamics, on the one hand these effects may complicate international efforts to curb spiralling piracy in the waters off the greater Horn of Africa. On the other hand, the unprecedented militarisation of those waters to contain piracy is proving detrimental to the countries of the southern Red Sea and is bound to worsen an already fragile region.
IntroductionRansoming is an age-old phenomenon dating at least as far back as the mid-first centu... more IntroductionRansoming is an age-old phenomenon dating at least as far back as the mid-first century BC when pirates kidnapped Julius Caesar near the Greek island of Pharmacusa and demanded "twenty talents" for his release. According to the Greek historian Plutarch, Caesar "laughed at them for not knowing who their captive was, and of his own accord agreed to give them fifty [talents]."2 This chain of events has an eerie resemblance to the alacrity of hijacked foreign illegal fishers in Somali waters in the early 2000s, who offered their captors irresistible sums of money to secure their speedy release.When local Somali vigilantes captured illegal foreign fishing vessels, the former demanded "fines" and the latter readily paid-sometimes offering more money than they would be asked to-in order to avoid drawn-out legal altercations and embarrassment.3 With more than 20,000 vessels crisscrossing this pirate prone area, such alacrity to pay rising fines help...
Terrorist attacks have been carried out at sea and using the sea by nationalist-separatist groups... more Terrorist attacks have been carried out at sea and using the sea by nationalist-separatist groups, leftist extremists and Islamist fundamentalists. Prominent cases in the Indian Ocean region includ...
Abstract This paper identifies the root causes and general typology of the widespread phenomena o... more Abstract This paper identifies the root causes and general typology of the widespread phenomena of piracy off the coast of Somalia. It shows that piracy in this region started as a direct response to illegal fishing, with widespread claims of hazardous waste dumping offering added moral justification. It argues that the two international crimes that are the root causes of Somali piracy constitute corporate terrorism at sea. The alacrity of the earliest illegal trawlers that were captured by the fishermen to pay ransom unleashed the scourge of criminal/ransom piracy that has overshadowed – in figures and discourse – ‘defensive’ piracy. Restoring the state and combating poverty can help minimise the favourable conditions that latter-day pirates exploited to launch their trade, but will not eradicate piracy without successfully containing the corporate terrorism that triggered it in the first place. Moreover, combating poverty among fishing coastal communities require the eradication of illegal fishing.
Piracy in Somalia sheds light on an often misunderstood world, oversimplified and demonized in th... more Piracy in Somalia sheds light on an often misunderstood world, oversimplified and demonized in the media and largely decontextualized in scholarly and policy works. It examines the root causes of piracy in Somalia, its impact on coastal communities, local views about it, and the measures taken against it. Drawing on six years' worth of extensive fieldwork, Awet Tewelde Weldemichael amplifies the voices of local communities who have suffered under the heavy weight of illegal fishing, piracy and counter-piracy and makes their struggles comprehensible on their own terms. He also exposes complex webs of crimes within crimes of double-dealing pirates, fraudulent negotiators, duplicitous intermediaries, and treacherous foreign illegal fishers and their local partners. In so doing, this book will help inform regional and global counter-piracy endeavors, avoid possible reversals in the gains so far made against piracy, and identify the gains that need to be made against its root causes.
... It was humbling, to say the least, to sit on the bed of the ailing Mohammed Omar Abdellah &am... more ... It was humbling, to say the least, to sit on the bed of the ailing Mohammed Omar Abdellah "AbuTyara," or across the table ... and Yemane Mesghina, and Lahra Smith at Georgetown and Tricia Reddeker Hepner at UT-Knoxville for challenging and encouraging me even when we ...
This collection of essays by new and seasoned scholars presents cutting-edge research on the hist... more This collection of essays by new and seasoned scholars presents cutting-edge research on the history of Africa and the African Diasporas. The chapters ask new questions, query old assumptions, and open new fields of inquiry. While the essays are broad-ranging, three major themes found throughout the volume bind the chapters together.
With a newfound focus on biographies, the volume explores Africans in the Diaspora, problematizes mobility and population displacement, and nuances resistance as a ubiquitous aspect of African history. Throughout the volume Africans are seen moving voluntarily, by necessity, or by force both within the continent and beyond it. Wherever they are, Africans are also resisting—struggling to improve their circumstances and, in the process, preserve their agency in defiance of coercive authority. In their respective ways, the chapters move beyond generalizations and abstractions to render subaltern groups and individual lives visible and comprehensible on their own terms.
In compiling this volume, the editors were fully cognizant of the fact that some of these themes can be brought into focus, while the full import of the others remains just over the horizon. Hence, Changing Horizons invites further studies and asks more questions than it answers, raising new questions about the history of Africa and the African Diasporas.
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Papers by Awet Weldemichael
and Yemen briefly fought over southern
Red Sea islands and islets that an Arbitral Tribunal
at The Hague described as “uniformly
unattractive, waterless, and habitable only
with great difficulty.” Nevertheless, roughly
located between 14°10’N and 13°35’N and
from 42°35’E to 43°E, and a mere 55 nautical
miles north of Bab el-Mandeb where the Red
Sea funnels into the Indian Ocean, the strategic
significance of these archipelagos belies
their size and inhabitability. The Eritrean-
Yemeni conflict accordingly had potentially
far-reaching and disastrous consequences to
the international sea lanes passing through
that chokepoint.
Although the dispute was settled through
arbitration in 1998/1999, tensions continue,
including accusations of piratical acts
against traditional fishermen. Coupled with
the region’s fast changing political and security
dynamics, on the one hand these effects
may complicate international efforts to curb
spiralling piracy in the waters off the greater
Horn of Africa. On the other hand, the unprecedented
militarisation of those waters
to contain piracy is proving detrimental to
the countries of the southern Red Sea and is
bound to worsen an already fragile region.
and Yemen briefly fought over southern
Red Sea islands and islets that an Arbitral Tribunal
at The Hague described as “uniformly
unattractive, waterless, and habitable only
with great difficulty.” Nevertheless, roughly
located between 14°10’N and 13°35’N and
from 42°35’E to 43°E, and a mere 55 nautical
miles north of Bab el-Mandeb where the Red
Sea funnels into the Indian Ocean, the strategic
significance of these archipelagos belies
their size and inhabitability. The Eritrean-
Yemeni conflict accordingly had potentially
far-reaching and disastrous consequences to
the international sea lanes passing through
that chokepoint.
Although the dispute was settled through
arbitration in 1998/1999, tensions continue,
including accusations of piratical acts
against traditional fishermen. Coupled with
the region’s fast changing political and security
dynamics, on the one hand these effects
may complicate international efforts to curb
spiralling piracy in the waters off the greater
Horn of Africa. On the other hand, the unprecedented
militarisation of those waters
to contain piracy is proving detrimental to
the countries of the southern Red Sea and is
bound to worsen an already fragile region.
With a newfound focus on biographies, the volume explores Africans in the Diaspora, problematizes mobility and population displacement, and nuances resistance as a ubiquitous aspect of African history. Throughout the volume Africans are seen moving voluntarily, by necessity, or by force both within the continent and beyond it. Wherever they are, Africans are also resisting—struggling to improve their circumstances and, in the process, preserve their agency in defiance of coercive authority. In their respective ways, the chapters move beyond generalizations and abstractions to render subaltern groups and individual lives visible and comprehensible on their own terms.
In compiling this volume, the editors were fully cognizant of the fact that some of these themes can be brought into focus, while the full import of the others remains just over the horizon. Hence, Changing Horizons invites further studies and asks more questions than it answers, raising new questions about the history of Africa and the African Diasporas.