Somali pirates take advantage of security vacuum left by Houthis

AS A speed boat carrying more than a dozen Somali pirates bore down on their position 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 clambered aboard the Abdullah, firing warning shots and taking the captain and second officer hostage, Chief Officer Atiq Ullah Khan said in an audio message to the ship’s owners.

“By the grace of Allah no one has been harmed so far,” Khan said in the message, recorded before the pirates took the crew’s phones.

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.

The raids are piling risks and costs onto shipping companies also contending with repeated drone and missile strikes by Yemen’s Houthi militia in the Red Sea and other nearby waters.

More than 20 attempted hijackings since November have driven up prices for armed security guards and insurance coverage and raised the spectre of possible ransom payments, according to five industry representatives.

Two Somali gang members said they were taking advantage of the distraction provided by Houthi strikes several hundred nautical miles to the north to get back into piracy after lying dormant for nearly a decade.

“They took this chance because the international naval forces that operate off the coast of Somalia reduced their operations,” said a pirate financier who goes by the alias Ismail Isse and said he helped fund the hijacking of another bulk carrier in December.

He spoke to Reuters by phone from Hul Anod, a coastal area in Somalia’s semi-autonomous north-eastern region of Puntland where the ship, the Ruen, was held for weeks. While the threat is not as serious as it was in 2008-2014, regional officials and industry sources are concerned the problem could escalate.

Over the weekend, the Indian Navy intercepted and freed the Ruen, which was sailing under Malta’s flag, after it ventured back out to sea. The EU’s anti-piracy mission, EUNAVFOR Atalanta, said the pirates may have used the ship as a launchpad to attack the Abdullah. The Indian Navy said all 35 pirates aboard surrendered, and the 17 hostages were rescued without injuries.

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

A Bangladeshi foreign ministry official, however, said the government was “not in favour of any kind of military action” to free the Abdullah. The official cited the pirates’ advantages when operating close to the Somali coast.

The waterways off Somalia include some of the world’s busiest shipping lanes. Each year, an estimated 20 000 vessels, carrying everything from furniture and apparel to grains and fuel, pass through the Gulf of Aden on their way to and from the Red Sea and Suez Canal, the shortest maritime route between Europe and Asia.

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