Abstract
Maritime piracy has been on the rise for many years. Although public data on piracy attacks and piracy networks is limited, we have attempted to apply some new methodological tools to determine as far as possible the properties of these complex systems. In particular, by employing extremal statistics and following the work of Clauset and Gleditsch on land-based terrorist organizations, we attempt to characterize the relationship between the severity and frequency of maritime piracy attacks. In addition, utilizing social network analysis, we have aimed at accurately visualizing and representing key characteristics of maritime piracy as well as discerning non-obvious or emergent patterns of behavior and organizational structure specific to piracy networks as defined by their geographic location in Appendix I (i.e., West Africa, East Africa, and The Straits of Malacca and Lombok). In Appendix II, we plot the distribution of attacks by region, showing how counter-intuitive the patterns are and how profoundly they differ from the land-based patterns uncovered by Clauset et al. Finally, in Appendix III, Britten Schear reviews the unique historical factors which characterize Somali piracy.
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Notes
- 1.
The International Maritime Bureau’s Piracy Reporting Center (IMB-PRC), a private organization that monitors piracy incidents all over the world, defines “piracy” as “an act of boarding or attempting to board any ship with the intent to commit theft or any other crime and with the intent or capability to use force in the furtherance of that act” [2].
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Appendices
Appendix I: Geographic Charts (Figs. 10.8, 10.9, 10.10, and 10.11)
Malacca Straits
Indonesia
Nigeria
Somalia
Appendix II: Seasonality of Attacks by Region (Figs. 10.12, 10.13, 10.14)
Malacca Straits
Indonesia
Nigeria
Appendix III: Understanding the Somali Threat
By Britten Schear, American Public University System, School of Global and Security Studies.
Once you have a ship, it’s a win–win situation. We attack many ships every day, but only a few are ever profitable. No one will come to the rescue of a third-world ship with an Indian or African crew, so we release them immediately. But if the ship is from Western country or with valuable cargo like oil, weapons or … then it’s like winning a lottery jackpot. We begin asking a high price and then go down until we agree on a price.
-Somali pirate, interviewed July 28, 2009
(Shachtman, Wired Magazine)
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Fellman, P.V., Frutos, D., Thanakijsombat, T.“., Teekasap, P., Schear, B. (2015). The Landscape of Maritime Piracy and the Limits of Statistical Prediction. In: Fellman, P., Bar-Yam, Y., Minai, A. (eds) Conflict and Complexity. Understanding Complex Systems. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-1705-1_10
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