Somalia’s Pirates Are Back in Business

Three more murky maritime incidents off the coast of Somalia’s Galmudug state, where suspected illegal fishing vessels paid “fines” that may in fact have been ransoms, suggest that piracy has rebounded on a scale even larger than previously reported.“Now it’s in the original home of piracy, in an area they thought they cleaned up,” said John Steed, a senior maritime expert at the U.N. Office of Drugs and Crime. “It’s very disappointing.”The spike in banditry on the high seas off the Horn is a blow to the decades-long battle to stem piracy there, and bad news for the international shipping industry, which transports $700 billion worth of cargo through the dangerous corridor each year. It’s also a stark reminder that one of the main drivers of piracy, rampant illegal fishing that depletes local fish stocks and drives some fishermen to take up arms, remains as big a problem as ever.On Saturday, pirates reportedly boarded a Tuvalu-flagged vessel known as the OS35, which was apparently traveling through the Gulf of Aden.

The hijacking came on the heels of two similar attacks last Monday, the first led by a kingpin known as Bakeyle, or “Rabbit,” whose men commandeered a cargo ship roughly 130 miles off the Somali coast and charted a course toward the coastal town of Hobyo, a notorious former pirate stronghold in the Galmudug state, according to Ben Lawellin, the Horn of Africa project manager for Oceans Beyond Piracy. The second attack, reported by Britain’s Maritime Trade Operation earlier the same day, involved suspected pirates attempting to board another ship north of Somalia near the entrance to the Red Sea, but backing off after armed guards aboard the vessel made a show of force.

Those incidents followed an April 2 attack on an Indian-flagged cargo vessel near the Yemeni island of Socotra, which is more than 125 miles from the Somali coast. The hijackers, led by another Galmudug pirate leader called Afweyne Dhibic, or “Big Mouth,” also headed toward Hobyo with their quarry, according to Oceans Beyond Piracy. The Galmudug pirates have demanded ransom in both cases.

Earlier in March, pirates hit two ships in Somalia’s semiautonomous Puntland region, which is north of Galmudug. Pirates under kingpin Jacfar Saciid Cabdulaahi captured the Aris 13 oil tanker, the first large merchant vessel allegedly hijacked in Somali waters since 2012. The other ship, a fishing vessel, was reportedly hijacked for use as a “mothership” to launch further attacks. It was brought to the Puntland town of Eyl, made famous for its pirates by the Hollywood film Captain Phillips. Both ships and crew were eventually released.