Somali pirates use the Red Sea Crisis and war in Gaza to stage their return
For weeks, an unpleasant dream haunted Md Atik Ullah Khan. In his sleep, he heard machine guns and saw himself stuck in a fierce fight between a group of pirates and navy commandos. He woke up sweating.
“I was running and running… trying to go to a safe place, but I could not,” Khan recalls of the recurring nightmare.
Khan, 39, was the chief officer of Bangladesh-flagged merchant vessel Abdullah when it was hijacked on March 12, 2024, roughly 550 nautical miles off the coast of Somalia.
The MV Abdullah was sailing from Mozambique to the United Arab Emirates with 55,000 tons of coal. Around 10 a.m. local time, an unidentified fishing boat appeared on the radar. Soon watchmen spotted six people with automatic rifles heading towards them in a speed boat. Six more followed in another vessel.
Ship crew put out a mayday call. “But nobody responded,” Khan said.
“Then I called the engine room and told them to cancel all speed limits and throttle to the maximum. But our speed was nothing compared to the pirates’ speedboat,” he added.
Minutes later, 12 pirates came onboard, fired rounds, took control of the ship and held its crew hostage.
The hostages were forced to confine themselves to the bridge, Khan said - the 160 square meters (roughly 1,700 square feet) command deck of the ship, where they also had to sleep.
They had little drinking water and hygiene levels dropped dramatically when the additional 60 pirates boarded. Khan developed a severe skin infection from sharing the bathroom, and he could only wash himself once a week.
The fungal infection spread to three of the crew members within days. Khan had to quarantine himself to save the rest from contamination.
In daylight hours, pirate watchmen worked in shifts during which they would oil, service and test-fire their guns. The most capable of them were reserved for duty during the hours of darkness. At night, they would turn all the lights on, chew stimulant khat leaves and remain prepared for military operations.
The pirates seemed keen to know if the hijacking was making any headlines. They monitored news channels and showed the hostages how their families were suffering on TV.
Meanwhile, Khan and his colleagues did not have much to do. They could only leave the bridge for short periods to conduct routine maintenance work. They mostly spent their time playing cards and board games.
But after a while, they got bored of the games too. Tensions ran high among them and some developed acute anxiety, Khan said.
They all kept thinking about their families. Since the pirates had seized their phones, those few who had managed to hide secondary phones did not dare to use them in the open.
Khan often daydreamed, he recalls, telling himself: “One day, we will have a beautiful day, and we will go home.”
A land-based problem with maritime symptoms
From 2012, the number of Somali piracy attacks declined sharply as counter-piracy measures - a greater international naval presence; legislation to prosecute suspected pirates within the region; ships carrying armed guards and best management practices - proved effective, experts say.
Since piracy was no longer as lucrative as before, the enterprise metamorphosed into “generic criminal networks that are specialized in maritime activities,” said Burchall Henningsen, of the Royal Danish Defence College.
The pirates turned their attention to the illicit trade of drugs, weapons and human trafficking, he said.
Over the years, the international response to Somali piracy has predominantly been centered on addressing offshore dynamics. “There has not been much about the onshore dynamics, that are dismantling the criminal networks,” said Omar Mahmood, senior analyst at the International Crisis Group, an NGO working towards mitigating deadly conflicts. “And also addressing local concerns and livelihoods.”
“The root causes of piracy were never addressed,” said Raj Mohabeer, officer in charge at the General Secretariat of the Indian Ocean Commission – an inter-governmental organization of the South-West Indian Ocean island states. Pirates kept the millions of dollars they gained from ransoms and illegal trades, he said, and all but Mohamed Abdi Afweyne, the kingpin who was released from prison in January 2025, remained beyond the reach of prosecution. “And you know that the piracy, its main driver is funds,” he added.
In late 2023, Houthi attacks in the Red Sea destroyed the equilibrium that was achieved by the counter-piracy measures of the previous decade and made piracy a remunerative choice again.
Since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas war, Houthi rebels have attacked navy and commercial ships transiting through the Red Sea. Between November 2023 and October 2024, they launched nearly 190 strikes. These lethal attacks using advanced weaponry prompted global powers to move their intelligence assets and warships from the Indian Ocean region to the Red Sea, Burchall Henningsen said.
Analysts believe the redistribution made the merchant ships that were detouring around the Cape of Good Hope vulnerable to piracy in the western Indian Ocean.
What's Your Reaction?
