The Hunt at the Horn of Africa. On the Political Economy of a Pirate Conflict and Its Geopolitical Significance

For years, the international community has neglected the fact that the coastal inhabitants of civil-war torn Somalia have been deprived of their livelihood through over-fishing and the dumping of toxic waste, for which economic actors in the rich industrialized countries are responsible. The international community took action only after a local economy emerged based on maritime piracy and the extortion of ransom money -- tied in, in a variety of ways, to global flows of goods, information and money -- in a number of Somali fishing villages in reaction to the loss of prospects experienced by young men on the coast. In contrast to earlier threats, of comparable size, to international shipping by pirates -- for example, in the Strait of Malacca -- NATO and the EU have reacted with military force since 2008, despite the fact that this is definitely a non-military problem, whose social and economic causes are indisputable. The large-scale military deployment has given rise to considerable doubts. This applies both to the effectiveness of the deployment and the legitimacy of the NATO and EU operations. Also disconcerting is the fact that the warships in the Gulf of Aden are tasked with a policing mission and that the division of powers between different security services and police forces is becoming increasingly blurred. Links between the mostly young Somali pirates and Islamic terrorist networks, not to mention any involvement in international organized crime, have so far not been proved. Nevertheless, the talk is of a threat to global security. It is difficult to avoid the suspicion that the multidimensional military operation at the Horn of Africa has more far-reaching aims than the UN mandated protection of World Food Program ships and international merchant shipping. On the one hand, the deployment of the largest anti-pirate armada of recent times provides an opportunity for a test run of NATO's latest strategies, and on the other hand, for the EU it is a matter of establishing its own autonomous military force in order to demonstrate its ability to act effectively on the world stage, as envisaged in the Lisbon Treaty. Thirdly, however, within the framework of the new geopolitical discourse, the Horn of Africa plays an important role with regard to who will dominate the region of the Greater Indian Ocean in the future, and thus be in a position to weaken economic rivals (and potential enemies). That is why the military presence of Western and Asian naval