Why is piracy picking up off Somalia’s coast again?

The Federal Government of Somalia announced on August 29 that the Turkish navy, working with Somali forces, had freed the cargo ship MV Lutuf after a 10-day pursuit, killing 14 pirates and destroying four of their boats.

The vessel had been seized on August 17 off Jifle, on the coast of Puntland, Somalia’s semi-autonomous northeastern region. Mogadishu’s Defence Ministry credited its release to a 2024 defence pact between Somalia and Turkiye.

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Puntland has disputed that account. Its Ministry of Security said no military rescue had taken place and accused federal officials of securing the vessel’s release through a ransom payment to the pirates.

The conflicting accounts have not been independently verified. But the seizure and the military response around it mark the most dramatic episode yet in a series of pirate attacks off Somalia this year, raising fresh questions about how far a resurgence that began in the spring could go.

How serious is the return of Somali piracy?

Piracy incidents in Somali waters and the Gulf of Aden have risen sharply since the spring, after several years in which the crime had all but disappeared from the region.

An AFP analysis of International Maritime Organization data found at least 15 attacks since the start of the year, including eight in the Gulf of Aden since May.

One tanker seized off Yemen in May was later directed towards Somalia by pirates demanding $10m. Another vessel, the MV Honour 25, has been held for more than two months.

In May, a separate pirate group abandoned a hijacked Emirati dhow after running short of supplies while using it as a mother ship to attack other ships, Puntland security officials told AFP.

The Joint Maritime Information Center, which monitors threats to shipping in the region, raised its piracy threat assessment to “severe” in response to the surge in attacks during April and May.

The increase is significant, but still far below the scale of the crisis in the early 2010s, when the International Maritime Organization, the United Nations agency responsible for shipping safety and security, recorded around 200 attacks a year.

Afyare Elmi, a Somali academic at City University in Mogadishu, told Al Jazeera there had “been an uptick, but compared with the levels seen in the early 2010s, the number of attacks is not that high”.

Mostafa Elbanna of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime said piracy remains well below its historic peak. Speaking at a security meeting in Nairobi last week, he said countries in the region are better equipped to respond than they were last time.

Between 2005 and 2012, pirates carried out more than 1,000 attacks off Somalia, according to a World Bank study. They successfully hijacked 218 vessels and collected an estimated $315m to $385m in ransom payments.

At the peak in 2011, Somalia accounted for well over half of all piracy attacks recorded worldwide.

One Earth Future’s Oceans Beyond Piracy programme, a maritime security initiative set up during the Somali piracy crisis, estimated that piracy off Somalia’s coast cost the global economy between $6.6bn and $6.9bn in 2011, largely through security measures, higher fuel use, insurance and naval operations.

The crisis was eventually brought under control by a vast international security effort. NATO’s Operation Ocean Shield, the European Union’s Operation Atalanta and the US-led Combined Task Force 151 increased naval patrols, while shipping companies hardened vessels and changed procedures.

Between 2013 and 2023, barely a handful of hijackings succeeded off Somalia.

NATO ended its counter-piracy mission in 2016.

But the long period of relative calm did not mean the conditions that sustained piracy had disappeared. International patrols and better-protected ships made hijackings far harder and more expensive, while weak coastal governance, illegal fishing and criminal networks persisted onshore.

As early as 2013, a report by the UN secretary-general said the persistence of pirate networks reflected “the onshore rule of law and governance vacuum in which they operate”, and cautioned that attacks could rise again if naval patrols were reduced or commercial vessels relaxed their defences.

The resurgence is now testing how durable that earlier success was.

Why is piracy rising again now?

No single factor explains the resurgence, Abdullahi Mohamed Kulmiye, a former ports and maritime transport minister in Galmudug, a state neighbouring Puntland, told Al Jazeera. Several conditions, he said, appear to have aligned at once.

One is a shift in naval attention elsewhere in the region. The United States and Israel have been at war with Iran since late February, and Iran has at times controlled passage through the Strait of Hormuz.

Naval forces that might otherwise patrol waters closer to Somalia have been drawn towards that crisis.

Abdurrahim Muhammad Ali of the Djibouti Maritime Authority told a regional security meeting in Nairobi this week that pirates were exploiting the diversion of naval forces elsewhere.

“They use this opportunity and the distraction of maritime forces globally to carry out more attacks in this area, because they know everyone is busy [looking in another direction],” he said.

Economic pressure onshore has intensified at the same time. Inflation in Somalia reached 9.2 percent in March, its highest level in years, as fuel and food prices surged.

The International Monetary Fund ranks Somalia among a handful of countries, including Sudan, Yemen and Afghanistan, with almost no financial buffer against such shocks.

Cuts to aid from the US and United Kingdom, two of Somalia’s most important humanitarian funding sources, have further deepened the country’s economic pressures.

Seasonal conditions may also play a part. According to analysis from the Institute for Security Studies, a Johannesburg-based think tank, attacks typically fall during the winter monsoon, when rough seas keep small boats close to shore, before rising again as the waters calm in spring.

What role does illegal fishing play?

Somalia has the longest coastline in mainland Africa, while its exclusive economic zone covers an area larger than its landmass.

The country is still rebuilding after decades of civil war, with law enforcement stretched thin on land and no effective coastguard to patrol its waters.

The African Development Bank estimates Somalia loses about $300m a year to fishing fleets operating illegally in its waters.

Coastal communities have long accused foreign trawlers of depleting stocks on which local fishermen depend.

That grievance helped shape the first major wave of piracy attacks in the 2000s, when some fishermen took up arms to defend the waters that nobody else was protecting.

But piracy has since developed far beyond that origin story. Andrew Mwangura, a maritime security consultant who spent three decades at sea and later helped negotiate hostage releases during the earlier crisis, told Al Jazeera that the motive had changed.

“Before, the people were vigilantes mainly driven to sea because of illegal fishing in Somali waters and the dumping of toxic chemicals. Now it is more about seizing ships for ransom,” he said.

Recent attacks suggest both dynamics may still be present. According to the French navy’s Maritime Information Cooperation and Awareness Center (MICA Center), pirate groups operating far offshore typically use dhows disguised as fishing boats as floating bases.

From them, crews launch fast skiffs capable of striking vessels as far as 600 nautical miles (1,111km) from the Somali coast.

Mwangura believes at least some of those involved are trained seamen, pointing to their use of GPS navigation and long-range vessel-tracking systems.

Closer to shore, the MICA Center has identified a different pattern, with attacks launched directly from the coast and aimed at foreign fishing boats accused of stealing Somali fish rather than commercial vessels.

Who is financing the pirates?

Recent piracy operations also appear more organised than the image of impoverished fishermen taking opportunistically to sea might suggest, according to experts and Somali officials tracking the resurgence.

A former pirate speaking anonymously to Al Jazeera said that today’s operations are financed by investors, often businesspeople in Yemen and Somalia, who supply crews with satellite phones, navigation equipment, weapons and provisions to head to sea.

A joint study by Interpol, the United Nations and the World Bank found that during the earlier piracy crisis, financiers behind attacks typically took 30 to 50 percent of ransom payments. The men who actually boarded ships generally received a much smaller fee.

The study found that small groups in communities near pirate anchorages also supplied crews with food, repairs and khat, a stimulant leaf widely chewed in the region.

Abdifatah Mohamed Abdinur, a state minister in Puntland’s government, said the pirates were also linked to criminal networks operating across Somalia and Yemen, allowing some groups to operate closer to the Yemeni coast and with a greater hijacking success rate.

“There is definitely a connection,” Abdinur told Al Jazeera, “but we have to put the pieces together to make the big picture clearer.”

Can another major piracy wave be prevented?

The security landscape around Somalia has changed considerably since the last crisis.

The international response to piracy helped turn nearby Djibouti, which sits on the narrow Bab al-Mandeb Strait between the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, into a hub for foreign military forces. The area is now one of the world’s most crowded strategic arenas.

There are signs that another response is beginning to take shape, though its scope and prospects for success remain uncertain.

The European Union’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, signed a new basing agreement with Djibouti in July, preserving access for Operation Atalanta and a second EU mission patrolling the Red Sea.

Saudi Arabia has assembled a maritime task force for the Red Sea that a growing number of countries, including Somalia, have joined.

In early August, Puntland’s president also signed an agreement with a visiting US military delegation to deepen maritime security cooperation around Bosaso, its main port.

Officials from Somalia, Djibouti, Ethiopia and Yemen met in Nairobi this week under a UN-backed programme aimed at strengthening intelligence-sharing on piracy and other maritime crime.

These measures could make hijackings more difficult. But the conditions that allowed piracy to survive the last international crackdown have not disappeared.

Elmi, the Somali academic, argues that naval patrols alone cannot prevent piracy from repeatedly resurfacing. “Onshore-based solutions are more sustainable when it comes to dealing with piracy in the Somali coast,” he told Al Jazeera.