The high cost of Piracy in Somalia
Written by Hans Tino Hansen, Karsten von Hoesslin
With one of Africa’s longest coastlines stretching for 3300 kilometres, Somalia enjoys a strategic location in the Horn of Africa. Vital world trade flows around this failed state, torn from within by belligerent clans, warlords and Islamist jihadists. Despite this strategic location, Somalia is a fast changing entity whose unfolding events upset the international community. Getting reliable intelligence is difficult, but it is a crucial component to understanding Somalia’s security issues.
Following developments in Somalia is not an easy task. The internationally recognized Transitional Federal Government (TFG) has control of certain central areas and, as the Ethiopian forces started withdrawing in late 2008, the opposition fought to fill the vacuum, turning the country into a patchwork of conflicting interests. To date, it appears that while piracy syndicates freely roam the central east coast of Somalia, the Al Shabaab group has gained important footholds, but are being challenged by a reinvigorated TFG in a newly formed coalition with parts of the former Islamic Courts in the southern areas of Somalia. At the same time the de facto state of Somaliland enjoys relative peace and stability, while the semi-autonomous Puntland lingers in between.
This centrifugal chaos underscores the need for effective intelligence gathering within Somalia for those who are affected or would want to interact with the country from the outside. It is commonly said that truth is the first victim in war, but after almost 20 years of civil strife, this is a reality in the country. Consequently, the bulk of open source intelligence (OSINT) coming out of Somalia is compromised by misinformation and biased views pending on clan affiliation; therefore, the need to access the grey area intelligence as well as human intelligence (HUMINT) becomes all the more vital.
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