FAILED STATES IN AFRICA are now the breeding grounds for agents of destabilisation and instability at national and regional levels. They are like contagions in their destructive effects on other countries nearby and sometimes remotely and far flung. Not only have they been ridden in crises, they have contributed in no small measure to crises within and across national borders. Eastern Africa has had a fair share of these in the past two decades, the impacts of which have been pitifully devastating. The unwarranted instances of armed banditry have dampened economies, raised the spectre of food insecurity, compounded environmental challenges and claimed thousands of lives. A case in point is Somalia, an East African country with a 2021 estimated population of 16.36 million people. Following the fall of the dictatorial leader Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991 and the ensuing power vacuum, Somalia has been embroiled in decades of civil war and political fragmentation. These have plunged the country into a socio-economic and environmental conundrum that has turned Somalia into one of the poorest countries in sub-Saharan Africa.
By all major indices, Somalia is now a failed state. Despite all the spatial and contemporary advantages, Somalia has sunk into a quagmire of self-reinforcing crises that seem difficult to resolve internally and externally by factors, interventions and forces from within and outside the country. Terrorism has chocked the country, further compounding the seemingly intractable problem of climate change that has diminished the prospects of food security and sustainable livelihoods within the country. A country that once enjoyed the benefits of those advantages naturally conferred on it by its natural location, and which had what it takes to be a global maritime hub, Somalia has the longest coastline in Africa and basked in a wealth of marine resources. What ought to be a lasting source of national wealth has become a curse of some sorts, made more so by governance failures, lack of infrastructure as well as illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing by foreign countries and local operators. Under these circumstances, Somalia has been incapacitated in efforts to take full advantage of the economic potentials of these resources.
Over-exploitation of marine resources, especially through overfishing caused by huge fishing vessels, has all but depleted the stock of domestic catch. Local fishermen have therefore been forced into deadlier alternative of piracy, aptly described as marine or sea terrorism. Piracy has undoubtedly boosted terrestrial terrorism in spite of the differences of motivations between the two groups. Despite the different motivations of these two groups, profits from piracy have reportedly been used to fund terrestrial terrorist activities and, subsequently, the two groups have become intertwined. The attraction for piracy masks the accompanying risks as those involved are making huge money from the exercise despite the high inherent risks.
The global economy has suffered enormous setbacks as a result of the nuisance posed by the pirates. Since modern international piracy became such a lucrative – albeit criminal – adventure, pirates off the coast of Somalia have reportedly received around $360 million in ransom, while the world has lost around $18 billion to the menace that started in the past few decades.
Unsurprisingly, due to state failure, Somali’s official efforts to fight off the marine terrorists didn’t seem effective enough until some ships began to arm themselves in response to challenges piracy posed to maritime security, especially off the coast of Somalia in the Gulf of Aden, Guardafui Channel and Somali Sea, in Somali territorial waters and other surrounding areas. Globally, sea terrorism has taken advantage of the vulnerabilities on the major critical maritime corridors to forcefully extort money from seafarers. The Straits of Malacca, the Caribbean, and the Nigerian coast experienced the most incidents of maritime piracy before the new millennium. But an upsurge came later when over one-third – or 111 out of the total 293 – of pirate attacks worldwide were attributed to those occurring off the coast of Somalia alone. Piracy is legendary at the Horn of Africa, spanning over thousands of years on the maritime trade route connecting the Mediterranean sea to the Red Sea, through the Bab el Mandeb, into the Indian Ocean and beyond. So, the current incidents of piracy off the Horn of Africa are simply a continuation of a long tradition, but carried out in areas delineated by modern sovereign national borders, and territorial waters.
It can be validly argued that Somalia has posed an international maritime problem for not doing much to control or confront the pirates on their territorial shores. Of the many different pirate attacks, the one of November 15, 2008, the Saudi owned Sirius Star, was spectacular. The besieged 330-metre tanker carrying over $100 million of oil was attacked 833 kilometres off the coast of Kenya by pirates under the guise of a fishing trawler. This local incident had global repercussions, causing an upward spiral in the price of oil on the global market within a day or two after the hijacking. That also sparked fears of an oil spill in the volume of two million barrels, with possible damage to the Indian Ocean ecosystems and the communities that depend upon them. The world was thus thrown into a crisis as a result of one country’s unwillingness to fully police its territory. The impact on Egypt was predictable as the event was expected to hurt its economy that heavily depends on maritime traffic through the Suez, in particular when Europe’s largest shipping company indicated plans to reroute some ships to the Cape of Good Hope. Subsequently, a meeting was convened later that year by the United Nations, European Union, African Union, and the Arab League on what to do next.
Consensus was reached on freedom of the sea and opposition to the violation of state sovereignty, but not on the issues of negotiating with the pirates and paying of ransom, prosecution of pirates, and whether to arm merchant ships. Kenneth J. Menkhaus, a scholar, referred to Somalia now as “by far the longest-running instance of state collapse in the post-colonial era.” The increase in piracy has been imitated by Al Shabaab terrorist activities. Decades of civil war and political fragmentation have made Somalia one of the poorest countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, with nearly seven of 10 Somalis living in poverty. Vital statistics on Somalia are depressing and uninspiring as seventy per cent of the population is under the age of 30 and the life expectancy is as low as 55 per cent. There is a positive correlation between poverty among the poor in Somalia and increased terror attacks that are threatening the government and limiting its capacity to implement effective development policies, going by the disclosures of the World Bank. Al-Shabaab terrorist group has linked to attacks in Somalia for well over a decade, which have decreased the consumption of households exposed to terrorist incidents by 33 per cent, mainly on food items, according to the World Bank. “The decline in consumption seems to be explained by a smaller share of household members working and earning income after an attack,” noted the statement.
The perennial drought has devastated the economy by its sizable effect on poverty, consumption, and hunger in rural areas, where agricultural households are prevalent. This has potentiated the impact made by terrorists on the populace, a situation borne out of sentiments other than those mostly implicated elsewhere for similar crisis. Although there is some validity to the idea that conflicts and state difficulties are products of differences of religion and language, it is not always correct as almost everyone in Somalia speaks some version of Somali – a Cushitic language related to Afar and Oromo. In addition, an overwhelming majority of the country’s inhabitants are Sunni Muslims. Al-Shabab, an insurgent group capable of carrying out deadly attacks across East Africa and formed in the early 2000s, wanted to establish an Islamic state in Somalia. Al-Shabab, or “the Youth,” is an Islamist insurgent group, once held sway over the capital of Mogadishu and large swathes of the Somali countryside, before it was pushed it back from major population. Its precursor was a militant group that peaked in the 1990s, after the fall of Said Barre’s regime and the outbreak of civil war. Over time, a remote link was established with a band of Middle East–educated Somali extremists that was partly funded and armed by Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda’s leader.
Unfortunately, Al-Shabaab later became an ally of al-Qaeda, and brought its effects to bear in neighbouring countries of East Africa. The social, political and economic crises in the EAC today can be traced in some ways to the destabilisation caused by Al-Shabaab. Leaders all across the continent need to therefore rise in support of countries most at risk, to save the continent.
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