Terrorism and piracy: A legal view

Abstract

Terrorist attacks on persons or property on the high seas or in the newly designated “exclusive economic zones” bear analogy closer to the traditional international law of “piracy” than most observers suspect. In traditional practice “private ends” in the usual sense was not an essential element of the offense; the label and its legal results were attached to unrecognized belligerents too. The latest codifications of the international law relating to piracy, principally those deriving from the 1958 Geneva Convention on the High Seas, are patently defective. A new formulation is proposed, with a commentary that, among other things, points out how international criminal law and universal jurisdiction can be coordinated with the generally accepted international law of armed conflict to clarify what is currently a chaotic legal situation.     

The Forgotten Pirates: Iraqi and Iranian Pirates in the Arabian Gulf Who Have Never Been Reported to the International Maritime Bureau

If piracy attacks are unreported, a misleading impression is given of piracy situations in regions where there could be serious consequences for ships traveling in waterways on the assumption that they are piracy-free waters. However, sometimes not reporting piracy attacks could help to contain piracy before it expands, because reporting can lead to the media over-focusing on piratical incidents, and armed guards being deployed on ships, which causes pirates to use heavier arms and escalates the level of conflict. Piracy that took place during 2003–2012 in the north and the center of the Arabian Gulf has never been reported to the International Maritime Bureau. The present article examines this case of unreporting, and discusses its causes and consequences.     

Commentary: The Logistics of Actionable Intelligence Leading to 9/11

Uncertainty is a hallmark of conflict behavior, and other forms of violence that accompany civil and international war—such as low-intensity warfare, guerrilla, insurgency, and asymmetric conflict—are no exception. This study applied the theory of political uncertainty and complexity theory to the analysis of conflict events during the first three years of the second Iraq war, 2003–2006, limited to the Diyala province. Findings show that neither the time between attacks T or the severity of attacks S (fatalities) have the “normal” (bell-shaped) or lognormal distribution that is characteristic of equilibrium systems. Instead, both variables showed heavy tails, symptomatic of non-equilibrium dynamics, in some cases approximating a power law with critical or near critical exponent value of 2. The empirical hazard force analysis in both cases showed that the intensity was high for the first epoch in both variables (March 2003 to June 2004) but even higher in the latter period from July 2004 to March 2006. Selected policy implications are discussed, including the possibility that real-time or near real-time analysis of the data analyzed through the uncertainty-complexity computational methods would have revealed the gathering momentum of adversarial attacks perhaps in time to have prevented the insurgency.     

The Pirates' Curse: Economic Impacts of the Maritime Piracy

During the last decades, the activities of pirates have increased exponentially in Eastern Africa, with their attacks becoming considerably more violent. In addition to the intrastate and interstate conflicts, the lack of state capacity and the presence of terrorist groups, maritime piracy represents a serious and sustained threat to economic security. Indeed, from an economic point of view, pirates affect international trade through an increasing insecurity related to the prompt delivery of the goods transported. The aim of this work is to explore the main works on maritime piracy analyzed in quantitative economics.     

A welfare analysis of the EC‐ACP sugar protocol

The Sugar Protocol, laid down in the Convention of Lome, has been an established instrument of commodity policy for nearly 20 years. Its basic rule is that the EC imports at guaranteed prices specified quantities of sugar from ACP countries. It is the objective of the article to provide an economic evaluation of the Sugar Protocol. Impacts on prices, trade, export earnings and economic welfare are elaborated. The Sugar Protocol's impacts on the level and instabilty of sugar export earnings are jointly evaluated by computing transfer and risk benefits along the lines of Newbery/Stiglitz. A major conclusion is that the policy has to be evaluated differently from the donor's and the recipient's point of view. The Sugar Protocol induces international income transfers that are untargeted in terms of per capita income. It causes, however, rather strong risk benefits compared with other instruments of international commodity policy and sizeable welfare gains for individual recipient countries.     

Draining the Swamp: Democracy Promotion,State Failure,and Terrorism in 19 Middle Eastern Countries

This study empirically evaluates the question of whether or not the promotion of democracy in the Middle East will reduce terrorism, both in terms of terrorist attacks sustained by Middle Eastern countries and in terms of attacks perpetrated by terrorist groups based in Middle Eastern countries. Using a series of pooled, time-series negative binomial statistical regression models on 19 countries from 1972 to 2003 the analysis demonstrates that the more politically liberal Middle Eastern states—measured both in terms of democratic processes and in terms of civil liberties protections—are actually more prone to terrorist activity than are Middle Eastern dictatorships. The study demonstrates, furthermore, that an even more significant predictor of Middle Eastern terrorist attacks is the intensity of state failures, or episodes of severe political instability that limit central government projection of domestic authority, suffered by states in the region. States that are unable to respond to fundamental challenges to political stability posed by internal political strife, ethnic conflict or the phenomenon of “stateless areas,” geographic or political spaces within states that eschew central government authority, are significantly more likely to host or sustain attacks from terrorist groups. The findings have implications for current United States antiterrorism policy toward the Middle East and provide a statistical/empirical foundation to previous studies on the relationship between terrorism and state failure.     

Hedonists and husbands: piracy narratives,gender demands,and local political economic realities in Somalia

The grand narrative of piracy has been instrumental in shaping how piracy off the coast of Somalia is understood and responded to. Self-proclaimed pirates, suspected pirates, and convicted piracy prisoners continue to tell the story of taking up arms against foreign illegal fishers to protect their personal livelihoods as well as Somalia’s natural resources. Although the grand narrative remains the most popular piracy narrative, this paper introduces and examines two newly emergent narratives of Somali piracy – the Somali women’s narrative and the piracy prisoner self-narrative. I explore how these narratives reveal a central paradox surrounding piracy and social reproduction in Somalia that, until now, has been absent from discussions about piracy narratives and the issue of Somali piracy. Whereas the grand narrative of piracy fails to address gender demands and local political economic realities in Somalia, the new narratives present piracy as a gendered experienced that is situated within the broader, evolving context of courtship and marriage in Somalia. I argue the new narratives can help push beyond over-simplistic understandings of piracy off the coast of Somalia as a ‘man’s crime’ that should be addressed by men.     

A note on the functioning of international commodity price stabilisation agreements in periods of fluctuating monetary exchange rates

A belief held by many government officials and development economists is that sizeable and irregular commodity price fluctuations have important detrimental effects on both exporting and importing countries. Given the nature of these adverse effects attempts have been made to negotiate international price stabilisation agreements under which some central authority would make market interventions to offset the random price fluctuations. However, this study argues that the utility of such agreements should be re‐examined due to the effects of floating exchange rates. Empirical evidence is also presented which shows that recent exchange rate variability has had at least as much of a destabilising influence on commodity export earnings as fluctuating prices, and that the effects are borne unevenly by exporters of the same commodity due to their association with different currency blocks. When examined from the viewpoint of commodity importers the price and exchange rate effects are also found to be very different for individual countries.     

Mass Casualty Potential of Qassam Rockets

In spite of the bombardment of southern Israel by thousands of Qassam rockets fired from the Gaza Strip, comparatively few people have been injured or killed. This has led some observers to dismiss Qassams as more of a symbolic than lethal threat. However, southern Israeli towns feature robust civil defense systems that include safe rooms, bomb shelters, early detection alarms, and missile defense. How many casualties would occur were such systems not in place? This article applies shrapnel-casualty and spatial allocation models to the population of the southern Israeli town of Sderot to estimate casualties per randomly aimed rocket fired into the unprepared town; that is, in the absence of civil defense (technical details appear in the Appendix). Assuming an injury radius of only 5 meters from impact, the modeled expected casualties per rocket are between three (best-case) and nine (worst-case) times higher than Sderot's observed casualties-to-rocket ratio, suggesting that Qassam-like terror attacks on unprotected urban locations could prove much more serious than what one would expect based solely on the observed number of casualties in Sderot.     

A simple model of primary commodity price determination: 1900–80

This article specifies and estimates a model of the determination of the real price of primary commodities over the period 1900 to 1980. The empirical evidence reported in the article suggests that the long‐run behaviour of real commodity prices is significantly influenced by both demand and supply side forces, as represented by the level of world production and a distributed lag of previous real prices respectively.     

Documents on terrorism

Over the last two years, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has attempted to resolve the Liberian civil conflict peacefully.’ This effort has drawn valuable lessons from previous civil conflicts in the other African states. Importantly, the ECOWAS‐sponsored cease‐fire was observed by the various warring factions for two years; however, the ceasefire was shattered on October 15, 1992, when the National Patriotic Front of Liberia, the principal rebel organization, launched an armed attack on Monrovia, the capital city. In turn, this has recommenced the civil war and has drawn ECOMOG, the ECOWAS peacekeeping force, into the conflict.

Against this background, the purpose of the paper is to examine both the domestic and external factors that have impeded the peaceful resolution of the Liberian civil conflict.     

Democratisation and the prospects for participatory regionalism in Southeast Asia

This article explores the impact of democratic transitions in Southeast Asia on regional co-operation, and the relationship between this process and the development of a non-official regionalism. Until now, regionalism in Southeast Asia has been essentially elite-centred and politically illiberal. The emergence of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations was founded upon the common desire of its members, which had by then retreated significantly from their postcolonial experiments in liberal democracy, to ensure regime survival. This orientation was further institutionalised by asean 's doctrine of non-interference, which helped to shield its members from outside pressures towards democratisation. But with democratisation in the Philippines, Thailand and more recently Indonesia, the asean model of elite-centric regional socialisation has been challenged. The civil society in the region demands greater openness in Southeast Asian regionalism. The article proposes a conceptual framework for analysing the relationship between democratisation and regionalism, with the key argument being that the displacement of traditional patterns of regional elite socialisation has been offset by potential gains such as advances in regional conflict management, transparency and rule-based interactions. But the realisation of a more 'participatory regionalism' in Southeast Asia faces a number of barriers, including obstacles to further democratisation, the continued salience of the non-interference doctrine and the diminished space for civil society in the wake of the 11 September terrorist attacks.     

Conflict Transformation and Civil Society: The Case of Nagorno-Karabakh

If Armenian and Azerbaijani negotiators ever agree on the future status of Nagorno-Karabakh, it will not necessarily resolve the long-running conflict, because any peace treaty would require the consent of the Karabakh Armenians, whose political representatives are currently excluded from peace negotiations. It is difficult to imagine the Karabakh Armenians consenting to such a treaty without a change in their perception of the Azerbaijanis. According to the theory of conflict transformation/peacebuilding, Nagorno-Karabakh’s civil society should be able to make a contribution to this change. Using the example of four Nagorno-Karabakh civil society organisations, this study shows how they positively or negatively influence conflict transformation.     

Nagorny Karabakh conflict: prospects for conflict transformation

The article explores the current stalemate in the Nagorny Karabakh conflict, and perspectives for conflict transformation. As the conflict has remained dormant for more than 20 years, the political systems of the countries engaged in the conflict have adjusted to the conflict situation. The conflict is often used by the political elites in order to legitimize their power, consolidate support, marginalize opponents, and neutralize democratizing pressures. Since the status quo serves the interests of the authorities, the ruling regimes do not have strong incentives to seek conflict resolution. In these conditions, conflict transformation approaches are considered a necessary means to deal with the conflict. Given that political elites have little incentive to implement such transformation, civil society actors come increasingly to the fore. Only through multitrack initiatives supported by civil society actors, we argue, can conflict transformation practices advance and subsequently bring peace to the region.     

Awareness Campaigns as a Response to Piracy off the Coast of Somalia

In 2012 the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) began implementing an awareness campaign to influence public opinion in Somalia against piracy. The campaign aimed to deter individuals from joining piracy by highlighting the dangers and problems associated with piracy. Despite the hype surrounding its commencement, the UNODC campaign was met with various challenges that resulted in minimal implementation and left a trail of angry donors, staff members and Somali government officials. This article examines awareness campaigns as a response to piracy. It provides a first-hand account of the actors and politics involved in shaping the design and implementation of the UNODC anti-piracy awareness campaign. It explores the implied and developed knowledges embedded within campaign messages and analyses how objects of intervention were produced and reproduced throughout the campaign.     

Terrorism,Civil Liberties,and Political Rights: A Cross-National Analysis

This article examines the effect terrorism has on civil liberties and political rights across a wide range of democracies and regions. This study includes an analysis of the influence domestic and international terrorist attacks have on civil liberties and political rights in 48 democratic states from 1971–2007. The results from a time series cross-national analysis reveal that terrorism weakens civil liberties and political rights. However, certain types of democracies are more affected by terrorism than others. These findings have important implications for democracy and counterterrorism strategies in democratic states.     

Practice,Pirates and Coast Guards: the grand narrative of Somali piracy

In this article I develop a practice–theoretical account to provide the first systematic investigation of the justification of Somali piracy. Arguing for an understanding of piracy as a ‘community of practice’, I show how this community is organised by a ‘grand narrative’ that projects piracy as a quasi-state practice of the protection of sovereignty against foreign intruders. Paying attention to narrative provides an explanation for the persistence of piracy and assists us in understanding the phenomenon. Relying on publicly available interviews with pirates, I deconstruct this grand narrative and detail the different functions of the narrative in the light of situations in which it is told. The article develops an alternative perspective on piracy based on the study of practice, narrative and situation that provides new avenues for the study of clandestine, illicit or violent practices.     

U.S. Military Interventions and the Risk of Civil Conflict

The historical record of the majority of inter- and intra-state conflicts indicates frequent third-party interventions in these conflicts. In the decades following World War II, the United States has been one of the most frequent interveners in third world internal wars. This study focuses on the repercussions of U.S. military interventions on the intensity of civil conflict and political violence in the targeted nations. A comprehensive empirical analysis suggests that in addition to low per capita income, large populations, high religious fractionalization, and weak governance, the direct and indirect involvement of the U.S. military may also lead to increased civil strife and political violence in the targeted nations. U.S. military involvement increases the probability of political instability and unrest and hence could be one of the many conditions that favor insurgency.     

From Conflict to Autonomy: The Making of the South Ossetian Autonomous Region 1918–1922

The article investigates the reasons that led the Bolsheviks to grant autonomous status to South Ossetia in 1922. The conflict between Ossetians and Georgians during the civil war started as a social dispute but rapidly turned into an ethnic confrontation. The Ossetians turned to the Bolsheviks for support, but by 1920 they were defeated and largely expelled from their territory. After the Sovietisation of the region in 1921 the Bolsheviks needed to solve the conflict: the solution adopted was to grant autonomous status. This was not—as is often believed—the result of a divide et impera policy but an attempt at conflict resolution that in the long run satisfied neither side.     

Settling on Violence: Expansion of Israeli Outposts in the West Bank in Response to Terrorism

How does terrorism affect land control in intrastate conflicts? This article explores this question in the case of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict during the Second Intifada (2000–2005), and shows that Palestinian attacks led to an expansion of Israeli outposts in the disputed territories of the West Bank. Following suicide attacks, there is an increase in outposts in home districts of the perpetrators. The number of outposts also increases following deadly attacks against Israelis in West Bank districts where these attacks take place. These results suggest that Israeli settlers use outpost expansion as retaliation against Palestinian communities they perceive to be involved in violence, and this shifts territorial control against Palestinians.