The Return of Sophisticated Maritime Piracy to Southeast Asia

What explains the recent (perhaps temporary) resurgence of sophisticated maritime pirate attacks in Southeast Asia in the face of strong regional counter-piracy efforts? Given Southeast Asian countries’ relatively well-functioning institutions, political, economic, and conflict-related explanations for the return of piracy are incomplete. As an innovative extension to structural arguments on piracy incidence, we take an approach that focuses on adaptation by the pirates themselves, using incident-level data derived from the International Maritime Organization to track how sophisticated pirate organizations have changed what, where, and how they attack. In response to counter-piracy efforts that are designed to deny pirates the political space, time, and access to economic infrastructure they need to bring their operations to a profitable conclusion, pirates have adapted their attacks to minimize dependence on those factors. Within Southeast Asia, this adaptation varies by the type of pirate attack: ship and cargo seizures have moved to attacks which move quickly, ignore the ship, and strip only cargo that can be sold profitably, while kidnappings involve taking hostages off ships to land bases in the small areas dominated by insurgent groups. The result is a concentration of ship and cargo seizures in western archipelagic Southeast Asia, and a concentration of kidnappings in areas near Abu Sayyaf Group strongholds.

东南亚更成熟的海盗活动回归

关键词： 东南亚；海上；恐怖主义；海盗活动；国家虚弱；创新。

面对强大的地区性的反海盗举措，东南亚最近（也许是暂时性的）却复现了更为成熟的海盗袭击，这如何解释？鉴于东南亚国家相对运行良好的制度，无论是从政治、经济还是冲突的方面对海盗活动回归的现象都无法完全加以解释。我们的方法是聚焦于海盗自身采取的适应性措施，对海盗事件的结构性解释进行了创新性延展，利用从国际海洋组织获取的案件层次的数据来追踪这些更为成熟的海盗组织在袭击什么、在哪里袭击以及如何袭击等方面是怎样进行改变的。针对反海盗措施对海盗最终能得以从海盗活动中盈利所需要的政治空间、时间以及利用经济基础设施的渠道的打击，海盗已经将他们的袭击活动对这些因素的依赖降到最低。 在东南亚地区，这种调整根据海盗攻击的类型而变化：劫取船只和货物现在变成快速行动的袭击，放过船只，只对能售出获利的的货物进行洗劫；而绑架活动则涉及将人质从船只带往由叛乱组织占据的小块地区的陆上基地。这种做法的结果是，劫持船只和货物集中发生在东南亚群岛的西部地区，而绑架则集中发生在接近于阿布沙耶夫集团领地的地区。

Translated from English by Li Guo