How Violent Non-State Actors Use the Maritime Domain: New Data and Analysis on Terrorism and Other Tactics at Sea
Across the globe, violent non-state actors are exploiting poor maritime governance to finance and facilitate their campaigns of political violence. In Latin America, drug and gold smuggling funds Andean paramilitaries. Islamist organizations operating in the southern Philippines earn ransoms for kidnapping seafarers. Soft maritime targets like oil tankers are hit by the Houthis operating in coastal Yemen. Central Asian terrorist cells earn revenue by trafficking opiates across the Western Indian Ocean. Shipments of wildlife products and illicit lumber leave African seaports and enrich central Africa's deadliest rebel groups.
Despite the centrality of these maritime activities to insurgent and terrorist operations, counter-terror and counter-insurgency strategies still tend to be "sea-blind." In this lecture, Dr. Curtis Bell will introduce a new Maritime Terrorism Atlas which measures and maps the maritime activities of nearly 50 foreign violent non-state actors around the world. This tool can be used by researchers to better understand how maritime crime can fund onshore violence and by policy-makers to better address the maritime governance gaps that support insurgent and terrorist campaigns.
About this Lecture
Lectures of Opportunity offer U.S. Naval War College (NWC) students, faculty, and staff an opportunity to learn more about national and international socio-political subjects that may be of relevance to the NWC community.