Caught Between the Whirlpool of the Failed State of Somalia and Piracy: The Security Challenge Facing the Horn of Africa

Abstract

One of the threatening and devastating security dilemma, which truncates and disturbs global peace and security, is the transnational criminal acts of sea piracy. Thus, the international water ways have seen the flow of business, persons, ships for both commercial and mobility reasons, perturbed by attacks from sea pirates. This has manifested mostly in the Horn of Africa’s Somalia sea coast off the Gulf of Aden, indian ocean leading to kidnappings, hijackings, arms trade and proliferation etc. The study adopts the content analysis as its methodology. Data were retrieved from mainly secondary sources (textbooks, journal publications, magazines etc). While the failed state and securitization Theory were explored to buttress the work. Based on the findings, the study discovered that the magnitude and high incidence of piracy in the Horn of Africa, emanates from the collapse of Somalia State during the regime of President Siad Barre:a regime that reign based on ethnic sentiment, high-handedness, victimization of oppositions.This bred up a society of dissentment and challenge to legitimacy as the state could not ensure it's existence , and it's failure to provide social amenities,and and finally fell prey to militias.this paved the way for the emergence of various criminal groups, warlords, militias, religious fundamentals etc struggling the state with the central government. The study recommends among other things: prioritizing the concept of human security, effective governance, establishing and maintaining effective security in both land, waters and air, the emergence of a formidable regional security bloc to counter terrorism, state piracy and other criminality in the region.