Somali pirates are back, intensifying the global shipping crisis

Mogadishu:

As a speedboat carrying more than a dozen Somali pirates overran their location in the western Indian Ocean, the crew of a Bangladeshi-owned bulk carrier sent out a distress signal and called an emergency hotline.

No one reached them in time. The pirates boarded the Abdullah, firing warning shots and taking the captain and second officer hostage, Captain Atiq Ullah Khan said in an audio message to the ship’s owners.

“By the grace of Allah no one has been injured so far,” Khan said in the message, which was recorded before the pirates took the crew’s phones. The company shared the recording with Reuters.

A week later, the Abdullah is anchored off the coast of Somalia, the latest victim of a resurgence of piracy that international navies thought they had brought under control.

A member of the Puntland Maritime Police (PMPF) stands guard off the coast of Bosaso, in the semi-autonomous region of Puntland, Somalia, January 30, 2024. PHOTO: REUTERS

The raids pile up risks and costs for shipping companies that also face repeated drone and missile attacks by Yemen’s Houthi militia in the Red Sea and other nearby waters.

More than 20 hijacking attempts since November have driven up prices for armed security guards and insurance coverage and increased the range of possible ransom payments, according to five industry representatives.

Two Somali gang members said Reuters they were taking advantage of the distraction provided by Houthi strikes several hundred nautical miles to the north to return to piracy after being inactive for nearly a decade.

“They took this opportunity because the international naval forces operating off Somalia have reduced their activities,” said a pirate financier who goes by the pseudonym Ismail Isse and said he helped finance the hijacking of another bulk carrier in December.

Read also: Pirates hijack a Bangladesh-flagged cargo ship in the Indian Ocean

Talk to you Reuters by phone from Hul Anod, a coastal area in Somalia’s semi-autonomous northeastern Puntland region where the Ruen ship has been held for weeks.

Although the threat is not as severe as it was in 2008-2014, regional officials and industry sources are concerned that the problem could escalate.

“If we don’t stop it while it’s still in its infancy, it can become the way it was,” said Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud. Reuters last month at his highly fortified Art Deco palace, Villa Somalia.

Over the weekend, the Indian Navy intercepted and freed the Maltese-flagged Ruen after it ventured out to sea again. The European Union’s anti-piracy mission, EUNAVFOR Atalanta, said the pirates may have used the ship as a launch pad to attack the Abdullah.

Porters unload bags of grain from a cargo ship at the port of Bosaso, in the semi-autonomous region of Puntland, Somalia, January 28, 2024. PHOTO: REUTERS

The Indian Navy said all 35 pirates on board surrendered and the 17 hostages were rescued unharmed.

Cyrus Mody, deputy director of the International Chamber of Commerce’s anti-crime division, said the intervention by the Indian navy, which has deployed at least a dozen warships east of the Red Sea, could have a significant deterrent effect.

“This intervention shows that the risk/reward is very much against pirates and hopefully this will make them think twice,” he said.

However, a Bangladeshi foreign ministry official said Reuters the government was “not in favor of any kind of military action” to free Abdullah. The official, who asked not to be named to discuss a sensitive matter, cited the pirates’ advantages when operating near Somalia’s coast.

Rising costs

The waterways off Somalia include some of the busiest shipping lanes in the world. Each year, an estimated 20,000 ships, carrying everything from furniture and clothing to grain and fuel, pass through the Gulf of Aden on their way to and from the Red Sea and the Suez Canal, the shortest sea route between Europe and Asia.

At their peak in 2011, Somali pirates launched 237 attacks and took hundreds of hostages, the International Maritime Bureau said. That year, the monitoring group Oceans Beyond Piracy estimated that their activities cost the global economy about $7 billion, including hundreds of millions of dollars in ransoms.

The current rate of attacks is significantly lower, with pirates mainly targeting smaller ships in less patrolled waters, marine risk managers and insurers said. Since November, at least two cargo ships and 12 fishing vessels have been successfully seized, according to EUNAVFOR figures.

But the mission – which by February had identified up to five so-called piracy groups operating in the eastern Gulf of Aden and the Somali Basin – warned that the end of the monsoon season this month could drive them further south and east.

Their raids have expanded the area in which insurers charge additional war risk premiums on ships. Those premiums become more expensive for trips through the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea, adding hundreds of thousands of dollars to the price of a typical seven-day trip, insurance industry officials said.

Read: Shipping companies slammed for ‘overcharging’

The growing demand for private armed guards is also driving up prices. The cost of hiring a team for three days jumped about 50 percent in February on a monthly basis, to between $4,000 and $15,000, maritime security sources said.

Although of limited use against Houthi missiles and armed drones, the guards have proven an effective deterrent against pirate hijackers.

No ransom payments have been reported, but the pirate financier, Isse, and another source familiar with the matter said negotiations had taken place for a million-dollar payment to free Ruen.

A spokesman for NAVIBULGAR, the Bulgarian company that manages the ship, said he could not comment on the ransom negotiations but was grateful to the Indian Navy for freeing its sailors.

A spokesman for Abdullah’s owner, SR Shipping, said the pirates had been contacted through a third party, but the company had not received a ransom demand.

Resource tagging

Security experts say there is no evidence of direct links between the Houthis and Somali pirates, although Isse said the pirates had been inspired by militia attacks.

In response to the raids a decade ago, shipping companies have beefed up on-board security measures and international navies have participated in operations led by NATO, the European Union and the United States.

Up to 20 warships from 14 different countries would patrol the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean shipping lanes – an area the size of the Mediterranean and the Red Sea combined – at any one time.

The measures effectively eliminated piracy attacks. But as the threat receded, participating countries reduced the number of warships, said John Steed, former head of the counter-piracy unit at the UN Political Office for Somalia.

“Country ships go in and out of the various missions and go back to the national administration,” he said.

Porters unload bags of grain from a cargo ship at the port of Bosaso, in the semi-autonomous region of Puntland, Somalia, January 28, 2024. PHOTO: REUTERS

EUNAVFOR, the US State Department and the British navy said they were committed to helping Somalia tackle piracy. They did not respond to questions about whether the patrols were too thin or if additional resources would be committed.

Steed said another issue was the lifting in 2022 of a UN resolution that allowed foreign vessels to patrol Somali waters.

President Mohamed said the key to curbing the threat is strengthening Somalia’s law enforcement capacity at sea and on land, “not sending in a lot of international ships.”

According to Somali government figures, the coast guard has 720 trained personnel, but only one of its four vessels is operational. The capital, Mogadishu, Puntland and the breakaway region of Somaliland also have under-resourced naval police forces.