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Piracy in Somalia: Violence and Development in the Horn of Africa. By Awet Tewelde Weldemichael. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. Pp. xix + 238. $29.99, paperback (ISBN: 9781108739283); $89.99, hardcover (ISBN: 9781108496964); $24.00, e-book (ISBN: 9781108759069).
In Piracy in Somalia: Violence and Development in the Horn of Africa, Awet Tewelde Weldemichael revisits the menace of piracy off the coast of Somalia and the adjoining waters. Maritime banditry, along with terrorism, has earned the Horn of Africa the unenviable reputation as one of the most notorious regions in the continent. The critical question is how this dysfunctional state of affairs came about. Contrary to widespread assumptions, Weldemichael argues that piracy was not a product of the absence of the Somali state. Instead, it was a response to the stimulus of predatory assault on the country's land and waters by foreign profiteers. Those actors smuggled poisonous wastes inland while undermining Somalia's economic mainstay through illegal offshore fishing. By amplifying the role of external actors in the networks of transnational corruption that produced piracy on the East African coast, the author rejects the idea that Somalis are lawless people who practice criminality as a culture.
The book is written in a compelling and flowing style, and successfully deflects the range of stereotypes espoused in previous studies by contextualizing piracy in a global context. The approach is reminiscent of Reginald Coupland's East Africa and...