Counter-Piracy and Counterterrorism
Expansion in the waters surrounding the Arabian Peninsula has profound strategic considerations and implications. Port acquisition, logistics integration, and increased shipping lines are ultimately preconditioned on the security of maritime trade routes. The policing of these maritime routes and combating of piracy have pronounced imperial precedents. During the colonial era, Britain used its navy to impose its empire’s political hegemony in the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf under the banner of protecting free trade and in pursuit of the abolition of slavery.26 Contemporary geopolitics today are, of course, markedly different from those of nineteenth-century British imperialism.
However, legally fluid maritime spaces remain sites of imperial contestation and cooperation. This is not to suggest any insincerity on the behalf of the Emirates and other Gulf states in their counterterrorism and anti-piracy rhetoric. But neither have other imperialist powers always been insincere in their justifications. It is simply a quality of imperial logic that political and commercial goals abroad converge.
Following the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000 near Aden, and the increase in piracy off the coast of Somalia later in the first decade of the new millennium, international efforts at countering terrorism and piracy were ratcheted up dramatically. In 2003, the mass protests in cities around the U.S. against an executive order that would block millions of people from entering the United States established Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti as the headquarters of the Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa, as part of the global war on terror. In 2008, a series of UN Security Council resolutions permitted the use of military force within sovereign Somali waters and inland territory. EU and NATO naval operations sprawled the region, and by 2009, the Combined Task Force 151 (CTF-151) was established as a multinational naval group to stop piracy attacks in the Red Sea. Even private military contractors thrived in this increasingly militarized environment; mercenaries were happy to meet the increasing demand for their services.27
Moreover, the lines separating commercial and military obligations became so blurred that it became difficult to distinguish one from the other. For example, in April 2009, Rear Admiral William Baumgartner of the U.S. Coast Guard described “the unimpeded flow of maritime commerce” as “the lifeblood of the global economy;” the International Chamber of Shipping, on the other hand, argued that, “pirates in Somalia threaten the lives of seafarers and the security of world trade.”28 The frenzy surrounding maritime trade routes permeated multiple areas of responsibilities and interests, with commercial and security officials sounding increasingly like one another. In effect, the dual mandates of counter-piracy and counterterrorism served to unite a diverse set of actors such as transnational corporations, nation-states, supranational governing bodies, and private military contractors, all in defense of supply-chain security.
The Emirates was by no means leading these efforts, but this militarized context provided the backdrop for the proliferation of Emirati military and commercial developments. Prior to 2015, when the war began in Yemen, the Emirates invested significant resources in antipiracy operations in the Red Sea. In fact, of the thirty states participating in the Combined Task Force (CTF), four were from the GCC: Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the Emirates.
According to a report from the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies, “although not all GCC states are members of the CTF, their navies participated in, or contributed to, the military activities of the three CTF divisions—CTF-150, CTF-151 and CTF-152.”29 On a more local level, the Emirates also created partnerships with governments and paramilitaries in the Horn of Africa. In the early 2010s, the Emirates offered support for counter-piracy operations, which ultimately transformed into counterterrorism efforts aimed at defeating al-Shabaab in Somalia.
In 2014, the Emirates signed a memorandum of understanding with the federal government of Somalia, training personnel and building infrastructure for the Somali army, marine police, and police forces throughout the country.30 It also developed specialized brigades of the Somali army and donated armored vehicles to Somalia’s Jubaland state.31 Moreover, the Emirates even trained and paid the salaries of the Puntland Marine Police Force, allegedly to eradicate piracy, terrorism, and illegal fishing off the coast of Somalia. According to the 2018 report from the International Crisis Group, one Emirati official estimated that as many as 10,000 Somalis had been trained and continued to receive salaries from the Emirates.32 So important were these maritime routes that the Emirates viewed the Horn of Africa as “primarily part of [its] security hinterland.”33
Concomitantly, DP World played a leading role in Emirati efforts to counter piracy in the Red Sea. From 2011 to 2014, the company hosted annual, high-level counter-piracy conferences in partnership with the Emirates’ Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Bringing together government and nongovernment stakeholders involved in counter-piracy operations in the Horn of Africa, bin Sulayem, the DP World CEO, stressed “the need for joint action both on land and at sea,” further adding that “political, economic, legal and military measures must go hand in hand to help mitigate the impact of piracy.”34 Echoing the dual nature of commercial and military obligations, the Emirati minister of foreign affairs, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, stated at the opening of the 2011 Counter-Piracy Conference that piracy “threatens our region’s sea lanes and indeed its livelihood as a center of commerce and trade.”35
Following the first conference in 2011, participants acknowledged the need for more than $5 million to aid the “Trust Fund to Support the Initiatives of States to Counter Piracy off the Coast of Somalia,” recognizing this commitment as a “transformative moment in ensuring a fully resourced, comprehensive public-private counterpiracy approach.”36 The conference concluded that the international community must pursue a comprehensive strategy of support to Somalia, not only assisting the Federal Authority, but also “the regional authorities of Galmudug, Puntland, and Somaliland.”37
This conclusion would prove important. Gulf financial support for Somalia (and especially its federal states) created path dependency and opened up a new space for Gulf rivalries to play out. Only half a decade after the first Counter-Piracy Conference, DP World’s contracts with these same regional authorities listed above would become a major sticking point between the Emirates and Somalia. By 2018, the federal government in Somalia had entirely banned DP World from operating in the country—a ban that has been impossible to enforce since so many of Somalia’s states govern themselves autonomously.
These conferences, which predate the war in Yemen and the current tensions between Abu Dhabi and Mogadishu, demonstrate the convergence of interests between the state and capital in the Emirates. While it would be inaccurate to ascribe the Emirates’ actions in Somalia solely to DP World’s commercial interests, the extent of the firm’s partnership with its home country’s government—as embodied by these high-level conferences—indicates the ways in which Emirati imperial strategy hinges on tight-knit collaboration with private actors.
Yet trying to ascertain the precise nature of state-corporate relations in the Emirates is certainly a futile endeavor. As a country lacking necessary channels for political transparency and public accountability, it is often hypersensitive to those who seek to research such topics or criticize the government.38 But it is in the periphery, and through the logic of empire, that we are better positioned to examine the confluence of state and capital in remaking the geographies of war, trade, and state sovereignty. In this regard, the recent proliferation of infrastructural projects across the Horn of Africa serves as a key case for examining the changing politics of the Red Sea.
[su_button url=”https://saxafimedia.com/constructing-commercial-empire-uae-red-sea-horn/5/” style=”soft” size=”12″ wide=”yes” center=”yes” text_shadow=”0px 0px 0px #FFFFFF” rel=”lightbox”]CONTINUE READING ON THE NEXT PAGE >[/su_button]
