A surge in piracy near Somalia has increased threats to shipping already under pressure from maritime blockades and conflict due to the US war with Iran. Two cargo vessels were seized in the Gulf of Aden within four days last week, rising to at least 13 the number of ships attacked since the start of the year and triggering unprecedented drone strikes against the pirates.
It is the biggest escalation in hijackings in more than a decade, renewing concern about security in this region vital to international trade.
“Piracy is always a crime of opportunity,” says Omar Mahmood, a senior Somalia analyst for the International Crisis Group (ICG), “and right now the pirates see an opportunity.”
That opportunity comes from the impact of the war on regional waterways further north.
Iran and the US continue to battle over control of the strategic Strait of Hormuz.
And Tehran’s Houthi allies in Yemen have imposed a targeted blockade in the Bab al-Mandab Strait, which controls access to the Red Sea. This is focused on a dispute with Saudi Arabia but heightens insecurity for international shipping.
“I guess the pirates believe that with those two external events in Hormuz and Bab al-Mandab, they believe that the international forces will be dedicated to those crises instead of looking for pirates,” says Vice-Admiral Ignacio Villanueva Serrano, operation commander for the European Union’s naval force that protects shipping off Somalia’s coast.
Among the latest vessels hijacked by the pirates was a Cameroon-flagged ship, the MV Lutuf, which was attacked off the coast of Somalia’s semi-autonomous Puntland region on 17 August. A few days later pirates boarded an oil products tanker, the Eritrean-flagged MT Sibu 1, in waters near Yemen, on the other side of the Gulf.
The capture of the Lutuf has triggered unexpected consequences.
Thirteen men allegedly belonging to a network that supplies the pirates on the ship have been killed in two drone strikes since 18 August. No one has said they are behind the attacks, but local officials blamed them on Turkey, saying the vessel was carrying Turkish weapons.
The Lutuf is now among six vessels being held for demands of millions of dollars in ransom, four of which are anchored near the fishing town of Bander Beyla known as a hotbed for piracy, the BBC has learned.
That is nowhere near the peak levels of hijackings 15 years ago that cost the global economy billions of dollars. In 2011 Somali pirates carried out more than 200 attacks and held hundreds of crew members hostage.
A co-ordinated international naval response together with private security on commercial ships successfully drove down the scourge and contained a flare-up in 2023 and 2024.
But experts stress that while the pirate networks were suppressed, they remained intact, given the failure to address the poor economic and security conditions in Somalia that feed them.
Currently the resurgence is fuelled locally by anger over foreign trawlers which overfish in Somali waters, damaging the fishing industry that sustains communities in Puntland.
And there are more targets available now with a potentially bigger payload.
The regional maritime insecurity has driven some ships closer to the Somali coast as they divert south to avoid the conflict further north. Given the high price of oil, hijacking a tanker is more lucrative.
“You have that combined effect of less naval patrolling but more commercial shipping in these waters,” according to the analyst Mahmood, “and that signals an opportunity.
“And once you’ve had a successful attack, I think that spurs other units to do copycat type incidents as well.”
He and other researchers suspect there may be collaboration between the Somali pirates and Yemenis after several vessels were seized near Yemen’s coast.
But Mahmood says these would more likely be criminal elements than Iran’s Houthi allies, especially as one of the ships seized last week, the MT Sibu 1, allegedly belonged to an Iranian “shadow fleet” used to transport petroleum products trying to dodge US sanctions.
“I don’t see something specifically Iran-directed,” he says.
Turkey, however, reportedly has a stake in the latest hijackings.
Puntland security sources and a Somali government official have told the BBC that the Lutuf was carrying weapons bound for a Turkish military training facility in the Somali capital, Mogadishu. Ankara has an agreement with Somalia to strengthen its maritime security, as part of a wider defence and economic partnership.
The security sources say six international warships are now in the seas close to the Lutuf – two from Turkey and one each from Spain, Denmark, the US and India, something the BBC has not been able to independently verify.
“There is military equipment on the [hijacked] ship meant for Turkey’s operations in Somalia,” the Somali government official said, speaking on condition of anonymity, adding that the cargo included satellite equipment for a space station that Ankara is building north of the capital.
He alleged that Turkey had carried out the second drone strike that killed nine armed men on Sunday.
“The men who were killed were criminals and I don’t have sympathy for them,” he said, “but taking it to that level is escalating the situation even more.”
Turkey’s defence ministry has stated that its forces are providing “necessary support” to Somali authorities regarding the incident involving a hijacked vessel in Somali territorial waters, within the framework of their security agreement. But it stopped short of addressing the accusations that Turkey had carried out deadly drone strikes.
Publicly the government in Mogadishu has said only that it is aware of the operations against pirate groups and will take measures to address them.
Puntland authorities have been more outspoken.
Speaking to the BBC’s Somali Service, Deputy Minister of Security Abdirahman Yusuf said his administration had evidence that Turkey was responsible for the attacks, citing information about Turkish activity around the vessel and along the Puntland coast.
The BBC has not independently verified his allegations.
The security ministry also issued a statement expressing opposition to “bombings by international warships targeting civilians” that “undermined co-operation… in combatting piracy”, and demanded an immediate explanation for why they were carried out.
Puntland is wary of Turkey’s close military relationship with the Somali government, and the incidents risk further complicating a long-standing political dispute between the semi-autonomous region and Mogadishu that hinders a co-ordinated effort to fight piracy, analysts say.
There is not yet a full-blown resurgence. But without an end to the US-Iran war, or increased international efforts at deterrence, Somali piracy stands to continue raising the threat level in a crucial maritime space that is already dangerously squeezed.
By BBC News
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