scholarly journals War on Piracy: The conflation of Somali piracy with terrorism in discourse, tactic, and law

2016 ◽  
Vol 47 (5) ◽  
pp. 440-458 ◽  
Author(s):  
Currun Singh ◽  
Arjun Singh Bedi
Keyword(s):  
Law Enforcement ◽  
War On Terror ◽  
Local Institutions ◽  
Horn Of Africa ◽  
Risk Area ◽  
Maritime Piracy ◽  
Counter Terrorism ◽  
Security Discourse ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
Developmental Responses

This article argues that since 2005, the global security discourse has confused maritime piracy off the Horn of Africa with terrorism. US and European policymakers and financiers have tapped a vulnerable public imaginary to exaggerate Somali pirates as ‘maritime terrorists’ linked to Al-Shabaab and Al-Qaeda, driving the militarization and legal obfuscation of counter-piracy operations. And while Somali piracy has all but disappeared since 2013, international naval coalitions remain deployed in the Indian Ocean, which is still declared a war risk area. The discursive conflation of piracy and terrorism has thereby launched a tactical War on Piracy that mirrors the War on Terror. While pirates were active, this approach pushed them to become more daring and dangerous in response. Drawing on interviews with piracy stakeholders in Kenya, the article concludes that the tactical extension from counter-terrorism to counter-piracy is unresponsive to the origins, motives, and realities of Somali pirates. The article proposes a shift from military to developmental responses to countering and preventing piracy, with an emphasis on respecting local institutions of law enforcement and governance in Somalia.

Maritime Piracy in the Horn of Africa and its Security Implications on the Arab Region

2018 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 318-331
Author(s):  
Yasser A. Hassan
Keyword(s):  
Horn Of Africa ◽  
Maritime Piracy ◽  
Arab Region

لقد ظَهرت القرصنة البحرية في منطقة القرن الإفريقي لتداعياتٍ إقليميةٍ ودوليةٍ ارتبطت بالظروف التي أملتها التغيرات التي حدثت في بعض دول المنطقة مثل: الصومال؛ وذلك يتطلّب ضرورة تعزيز فُرص مكافحة نشاطات القراصنة وتجفيف منابع مواردها المالية، بالإضافة إلى معاقبة القراصنة وتقديمهم إلى المحاكم من أجل القضاء على الظاهرة وتحقيق الأمن البحري وانسياب التجارة العالمية بكل سهولةٍ ويسرٍ.

Deterrence and Democracy

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard A. Falkenrath
Keyword(s):  
War On Terror ◽  
Terrorist Attacks ◽  
Global War On Terror ◽  
Counter Terrorism ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
The Us ◽  
Democratic Societies ◽  
Global War ◽  
Taking Action ◽  
The Given

This chapter examines strategy and deterrence and traces the shift from deterrence by ‘punishment’ to deterrence by ‘denial’ in Washington’s conduct of the Global War on Terror. The former rested on an assumption that the consequences of an action would serve as deterrents. The latter may carry messages of possible consequences, but these are delivered by taking action that removes the capabilities available to opponents – in the given context, the Islamist terrorists challenging the US. Both approaches rest on credibility, but are more complex in the realm of counter-terrorism, where the US authorities have no obvious ‘return to sender’ address and threats to punish have questionable credibility. In this context, denial offers a more realistic way of preventing terrorist attacks. Yet, the advanced means available to the US are deeply ethically problematic in liberal democratic societies. However, there would likely be even bigger questions if governments failed to act.

The Decline of Green-Glazed Jars after the Early Abbasid Period

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-43
Author(s):  
Elon Harvey
Keyword(s):  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Near East ◽  
Coastal Areas ◽  
Horn Of Africa ◽  
Date Syrup ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
China And Japan ◽  
Early Islamic ◽  
Southern Iraq

Abstract Green-glazed jars were manufactured in southern Iraq during the Parthian, Sasanian, and early Islamic periods. In the latter period, they were distributed in great numbers in the Near East and in coastal areas along the Indian Ocean from the Horn of Africa to China and Japan. The jars are thought to have been used chiefly for storing “date-syrup.” Around the 4th/10th century their production was significantly reduced and their prevalence greatly declined, a phenomenon that has puzzled archeologists. In this study, I identify these jars with “the green jars” (al-jarr al-akhḍar or ḥantam) mentioned in some classical Islamic texts. According to numerous Ḥadīth, the Prophet prohibited nabīdh (date-wine) in “green jars.” While many Muslim jurists held that the Prophet withdrew this prohibition and that these jars were lawful, many found the use of these jars reprehensible or even forbidden. I suggest that the Ḥadīth in which the Prophet prohibited green jars may have contributed to the decline of green-glazed jars.

scholarly journals Bell, Colleen. 2011. The Security of Freedom: Governing Canada in the Age of Counter-Terrorism and Svendsen, Adam. 2010. Intelligence Cooperation and the War on Terror

2012 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Walby ◽  
Alex Luscombe
Keyword(s):  
War On Terror ◽  
Counter Terrorism

Bell, Colleen. 2011. The Security of Freedom: Governing Canada in the Age of Counter-Terrorism and Svendsen, Adam. 2010. Intelligence Cooperation and the War on Terror

scholarly journals Enter 9/11: Latin America and the Global War on Terror

2020 ◽  
Vol 52 (3) ◽  
pp. 545-573
Author(s):  
Markus-Michael Müller
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Local Knowledge ◽  
War On Terror ◽  
Discursive Construction ◽  
Global War On Terror ◽  
Security Governance ◽  
Counter Terrorism ◽  
Global War

AbstractThis article offers an analysis of the transnational discursive construction processes informing Latin American security governance in the aftermath of 9/11. It demonstrates that the Global War on Terror provided an opportunity for external and aligned local knowledge producers in the security establishments throughout the Americas to reframe Latin America's security problems through the promotion of a militarised security epistemology, and derived policies, centred on the region's ‘convergent threats’. In tracing the discursive repercussions of this epistemic reframing, the article shows that, by tapping into these discourses, military bureaucracies throughout the Americas were able to overcome their previous institutional marginalisation vis-à-vis civilian agencies. This development contributed to the renaissance of counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism discourses and policies in the region, allowing countries such as Colombia and Brazil to reposition themselves globally by exporting their military expertise for confronting post-9/11 threats beyond the region.

scholarly journals Conscription by Capture in the Wa State of Myanmar: Acquaintances, Anonymity, Patronage, and the Rejection of Mutuality

2019 ◽  
Vol 61 (3) ◽  
pp. 508-534 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans Steinmüller
Keyword(s):  
Law Enforcement ◽  
State Building ◽  
Personal Networks ◽  
Local Institutions ◽  
Ordinary People ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Personal Politics ◽  
Functional Equivalent ◽  
People First ◽  
The Military

AbstractCapturing people, sometimes by taking relatives hostage, is a common practice for purposes of conscription and law enforcement in the Wa State of Myanmar. Given the unreliability of the local census, as well as the relative weakness of civil government, and registration in a de facto state governed by an insurgent army, the personal politics of capture provides a functional equivalent to state legibility. This personal politics operates based on the reorganization of personal networks between representatives of the military state and ordinary people: first, circles of acquaintances within the military state that provide access to local knowledge, and second, relationships of patronage formed on the basis of those new acquaintanceships, as well as connections of kinship and co-residence. Conscription by capture, however, also requires anonymity; that is, the passive non-recognition of mutuality with strangers and the active refusal of mutuality with acquaintances. This article describes the historical emergence of networks of acquaintances and relationships of patronage as a combination of Maoist state-building and local institutions of war capture and adoption. It demonstrates how conscription by capture relies on relationships of acquaintances and non-recognition, as well as on patronage and the refusal of mutuality. The politics of conscription by capture are contrasted with conscription in imperial states and contemporary nation-states.

scholarly journals Managing ‘dangerous populations’: How colonial emergency laws shape citizenship

2020 ◽  
Vol 51 (6) ◽  
pp. 557-578 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yael Berda
Keyword(s):  
War On Terror ◽  
Population Control ◽  
Vantage Point ◽  
New Democracies ◽  
Security Risk ◽  
Global War On Terror ◽  
Counter Terrorism ◽  
The Matrix ◽  
Population Classification ◽  
Global War

This article traces the historical foundations of current security legislation as the matrix of citizenship. Examining Israel’s new Counter-Terrorism Law against the backdrop of security legislation in India, its main proposition is that these laws and their effects are rooted in colonial emergency regulations and the bureaucratic mechanisms for population control developed therein, rather than in the ‘global war on terror’. The article offers an organizational vantage point from which to understand the development of population-classification practices in terms of an ‘axis of suspicion’ that conflates ‘political risk’ with ‘security risk’. Through an account of the formalization of emergency laws, it explains the effects of colonial bureaucracies of security upon independent regimes seeking legitimacy as new democracies by tracing decisions regarding the use of an inherited arsenal of colonial and settler-colonial practices of security laws for population management, particularly mobility restrictions, surveillance and political control. One of the most important of these effects is the shaping of the citizenship of targeted populations by security laws.

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