A report published this week suggests pirates from Somalia are once again threatening commercial shipping in the Red Sea, reportedly working with the Iran-backed Houthi insurgents of Yemen to menace a trillion-dollar flow of seaborne oil.
“Somali and Houthi-linked groups are teaming up — using skiffs and new tech to strike ships with coordination not seen in a decade — while Saudi crude rerouted from the Strait of Hormuz has created a target-rich environment for them,” RTCOM Defense CEO Ido Shalev told Fox News Digital.
“There is an opportunistic alignment, with the Houthis providing geopolitical cover and advanced GPS and surveillance, and Somali groups providing the boots on the ground or skiffs on the water,” he said.
Shalev said it was a return to the “Somali model” of piracy that grew prevalent in the 1990s after the collapse of Somalia’s central government. The Somalis had two thousand miles of coastline and a huge fleet of small fishing boats, which criminals quickly realized could be employed for swarming attacks against large commercial vessels as depicted in the 2013 film Captain Phillips.
The age of Somali piracy supposedly ended when the government in Mogadishu regained control over the coastline, but two new hijackings over the past ten days have revived the pirate menace, to the great embarrassment of the Somali government.
On April 21, Somali pirates hijacked an oil tanker called Honor 25, taking 27 crew members hostage. The crew is reportedly imprisoned to this day and running out of food and water. The pirates are demanding a ransom for the oil-laden ship and crew.
According to the Yemen Coast Guard, a group of unidentified individuals was able to board a Togo-flagged oil tanker called Eureka on Saturday, take control of the ship, and sail it through the Gulf of Aden to reach the Somali coastline.
Officials from the semi-autonomous Puntland region of Somalia said some Yemenis were involved in the Eureka hijacking and might be linked to the Houthis or other armed groups. Intelligence experts say the Houthis have been working with Somalia’s pirates for several years, providing them with training and better equipment to make them a more formidable threat.
The Houthis terrorized Red Sea shipping with missiles, drones, and some small boat attacks during the Gaza War from 2023 to 2024. Their renewed partnership with Somali pirates looks like another attempt to interfere with international trade on behalf of their patrons in Iran. The pirates see enormous ransoms dangling within their grasp as the price of oil soars, making the cargo aboard hijacked ships more valuable.
“Because international naval forces are preoccupied with missile threats, a ‘security vacuum’ has now opened in the region, so pirates can travel vast distances in skiffs to board vulnerable commercial vessels,” Shalev cautioned.
The Iranians themselves are using small-boat swarm tactics reminiscent of the Somali pirates to attack ships in the Strait of Hormuz. Such an attack was reported on Sunday, with no immediate claim of responsibility. Two weeks ago, Iran’s terrorist Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) released video of its forces using small boats to board and capture civilian ships.
Al Jazeera News noted that at the height of the Somali piracy crisis in the early 2010s, the damage to international shipping was estimated at $18 billion, with per-ship ransoms ranging as high as $413 million.