Journal of International Peace Operations
Volume 6, Number 6 – May-June, 2011

While, as of this writing, the fate of the revolt against Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi remains uncertain, notwithstanding the deployment by the United States military of armed Predator drones in support of NATO’s Operation Unified Protector, it is nonetheless not too soon to be looking at the likely impact of the geopolitical shifts that the uprising has already set in motion—and will continue to do, irrespective of its outcome.

Mercenaries

There have been repeated reports of “African mercenaries” fighting to defend the Qaddafi regime. Rebel forces have put bodies on display alleged to be those of slain mercenaries as well as live prisoners whom they accuse of having fought against them. Veteran correspondents have tracked down efforts to recruit fighters from groups as disparate as tribesmen in Mali and the Polisario separatists from camps in Algeria. Amid the many allegations of mercenary use, the one thing that is clear is that there is a “foreign fighter problem” in Libya and it is by no means new.

Journal of International Peace Operations
Volume 6, Number 2

In recent years, no other manifestation of thedisorder resulting from the collapse of the Somali state has received as much attention as the continued proliferation of acts of maritime piracy off the Horn of Africa. In turn, the attacks have galvanized an unprecedented international response, including the deployment of more than two dozen warships to the waters off Somalia in what are currently three multinational task forces— the United States-coordinated Combined Task Force 151 (CTF-151), NATO’s Operation Ocean Shield (originally Operation Allied Protector) and the European Union Naval Force (EUNAVFOR) “Operation Atalanta ” — supplemented by additional vessels from China, France, India, Malaysia and Russia, among others.

The military show of force has, however, produced mixed results. While the naval patrols in the Gulf of Aden have brought the number of attacks on merchant shipping down to 33 in the first six months of this year, compared to 86 during the corresponding period last year, Somalia’s pirates have shown themselves to be extraordinarily resilient. They have both adapted their tactics to respond to the increased military pressure and extended the geographical reach of their operations. Thus, attacks in the Somali Basin and the wider Indian Ocean have increased from 44 in 2009 to 51 in 2010. By shifting their operations to prey on vessels as far as 1,200 nautical miles from the Somali coast, Somali pirates managed to hijack some 27 vessels with 544 seafarers on board in this period, achieving roughly the same result as the year, before when they seized 30 vessels and 495 crew members. Earlier this year, Admiral Mark Fitzgerald, then commander of U.S. Naval Forces in Europe andAfrica, was forced to acknowledge that “the area is enormous and we just do not have enough assets to cover every place in the Indian Ocean.”