Geopolitics of Somalia's Piracy Problem: Villains or Victims?

For over two decades, Somalia was at war with itself, a legitimate government was overthrown in 1991, plunging the nation into a deadly civil war. Amid the power vacuum warlords tore apart the Horn of Africa nation, and Somalia’s waters became free-for-all as unlicensed foreign fishing fleets went on an illegal fishing frenzy.

Foreign trawlers have been illegally taking millions of tonnes of Somalia’s fish denying the country millions of dollars in revenue and stirring deep-seated frustrations in local Somalis and eventually morphed into one of the world’s most dangerous maritime security threats that made Somalia's coastline one of the most dangerous in the world.

There is little doubt amongst Somalis that conflicts like these provided the original impetus for what became the piracy phenomenon. In the local setting, illegal fishing, and the economic damage it inflicted, left traditional fishing communities so angered and impoverished that they began attacking the illegal fishing vessels, acting as a sort of militia coast guard.

However, criminal gangs subsequently saw the profit potential and started hijacking more valuable commercial ships unconnected to illegal fishing. Thus the scourge of Somali piracy in the Gulf of Aden was born.