Maritime Smuggling’s Importance

\label{sect:theory}
Maritime insurgencies are a subset of insurgencies that employ maritime tactics to further land campaigns. Though I outline three components of maritime insurgency in Section \ref{section:lit}, I argue the mechanism of maritime smuggling causes insurgencies to last longer than other insurgencies. While roads can be monitored by the state and airfields are relatively easy to locate, boats have fewer constraints. Small boats can land almost anywhere and require limited maintenance. The benefits of maritime operations are less clear for piracy and maritime terrorism than smuggling. Piracy provides resources, but also can attract significant international attention.\cite{_ctf_2010} High operational costs and limited psychological impact reduce maritime terrorism’s ability to further an insurgent cause.\cite{murphy_small_2008} Maritime smuggling provides insurgent groups access to a greater variety of arms, at a reduced cost, and with greater control than land smuggling.
All nineteen maritime insurgencies since the end of the Cold War smuggled.11Author’s research. Insurgents with vertically integrated smuggling operations procure a wider variety of arms at low cost directly from suppliers. Land-based insurgencies rely on middlemen, who extract large rents on their trade. Conversely, LTTE ships transported weapons directly from Chinese suppliers to offshore sanctuary sites in India, Myanmar, and Thailand, and then to Sri Lanka.
Naval blockade, the answer to maritime smuggling, is resource and manpower intensive, and can frequently be defeated by insurgent groups with knowledge of local terrain. Despite budget allocations averaging $650 million annually between 1993 and 1996, American patrols interdicted only 66% of known smuggling attempts from Latin and South America. In the Philippines, an American Special Forces advisor who trained Philippine police reported he never witnessed a significant smuggling or insurgent find over six months of maritime patrol operations.\cite{leslie_mark_edwards_special_2016} Because naval blockades are so difficult, maritime insurgencies can supply their forces even when under intense pressure.
With plentiful arms, maritime smuggling insurgencies increase their combat power and may achieve near parity with government forces. Stronger insurgent forces can prolong a conflict by avoiding decisive engagement and increasing their territorial control. These factors should increase insurgency duration.
(H1).
Maritime insurgent conflicts are associated with greater duration than other insurgencies.
Hypothesis 2 breaks out maritime insurgency by behavior. Because maritime smuggling provides resources, we should see evidence that smuggling is associated with increased duration. We also should not see evidence that maritime terrorism and piracy are associated with increased duration because of the high costs associated with those behaviors.
(H2).
Maritime smuggling will be associated with increased duration.
Hypothesis 3 disaggregates maritime insurgency by maritime zone. The advantages of maritime smuggling apply primarily to “green-water” insurgent groups. Even small boats can depart from a seaside village and travel to ports hundreds of kilometers away, lowering transaction costs for moving personnel or equipment long distances. LeT terrorists demonstrated this in their attack on Mumbai, when they travelled at least 500 miles in a 77’ boat. Most maritime communities have fleets of these boats used for fishing, trading, and smuggling that makes interdiction difficult.\cite{leslie_mark_edwards_special_2016}
Blue-water operations cost more because they require more experienced crew and larger vessels. These larger vessels also concentrate risk. In 2009, the Sri Lankan Navy destroyed eight LTTE ocean-going transports, neutralizing LTTE logistics supply during a major land campaign.
The most successful brown-water insurgent operations take place in the African Great Lakes region, where weak governments and brown-water borders are ideal for smuggling. Brown-water operations take place in rivers and lakes too shallow or narrow for green-water and blue-water vessels. While brown-water protects insurgents from traditional naval forces, smugglers on rivers must contend with government checkpoints similar to road networks. Based on the costs of blue and brown water operations, I expect green-water operations to be more strongly associated with increased duration of conflict than brown and blue-water operations.
(H3).
Green-water operations will be associated with increased duration
I can isolate the effect of maritime smuggling by testing if non-maritime insurgencies near the coast exhibit a similar association with insurgency duration. This hypothesis tests only insurgencies with geo-located events within ten kilometers of the coast that are not maritime insurgencies. These group would rely on a third party for arms delivery, likely increasing costs and reducing reliability. I do not expect these groups to have greater duration than maritime groups.
(H4).
Non-maritime insurgencies near the coast will not have greater duration than other insurgencies.
Maritime smuggling extends duration by providing resources, but is not sufficient in itself to overcome a regime’s access to resources, ability to organize, or technical capability. Though maritime states may not have sufficient capacity to defeat a maritime insurgency, the state’s control of ports and major waterways ensures that the state will remain better supplied than the insurgent group. However, I would expect to see both sides targeting the opponent’s maritime access points.