the logic of pirates in civil war

It looks like my friends the somali pirates are back in full effect, having just hijacked another UN food program ship (although this time after it had already unloaded its cargo).

What's interesting is that this is in fact the first such "piracy incident" in the last 6 months or so- during the brief time that the Union of Islamic Courts was in power, no attacks were reported at all, which is noteworthy because throughout 2005 and early 2006 attacks on commercial shipments, food relief boats, and even cruise liners in the waters off of the Horn of Africa had become commonplace. If this isn't just an isolated incident, and attacks actually pick up again, it will definitely seem that the UIC had been somehow effective in preventing piracy, much as they were reported to have created considerable security in the streets of Mogadishu. At any rate, the way that piracy fluctuates with the patterns of control in the coming months should be an interesting marker of how effective the various parties are at shutting out rival specialists in violence.

The Logic of Violence in Interstate War

So if you're not an active student of ORDER! CONFLICT! VIOLENCE! (written like that, it seems like some perverse twist on LIGHTS! CAMERA! ACTION!), you may have skipped over the stellar article on the political side-effects of violence in Lebanon at Salon. Its an excellent illustration of the point that Kalyvas makes in his recent book, The Logic of Violence in Civil War that indiscriminate violence against noncombatants can be extremely politically costly. As the author argues:

"Politically, the bombing has backfired, as the people most likely to support an international campaign to pressure Hezbollah into disarming -- Lebanon's Christian, Sunni and Druze populations -- find themselves under fire from their southern neighbor, and, they say, abandoned by the Western powers they have long tried to emulate. Political analysts in Beirut declare that Hezbollah is positioned to capitalize on the mood shift and entrench itself in Lebanese society."

If this continues to happen-and I think it will without a drastic shift in policy by the Israeli Military-it is possible that Israel may end up propping up and in fact strengthening the organization it is trying to destroy. Whether that is a good or bad thing, I'm not going to try to touch right now. However, I'm getting copies of TLOVICW in the mail to Ehud Olmert and Amir Peretz stat.