Numerous recent pirate attacks, especially the hijacking of three merchant vessels off the Horn of Africa, are a stark reminder that the conditions for resurgence can return quickly.
It took years of sustained, coordinated effort by multinational naval coalitions, the shipping industry, and international organizations to get rid of pirates in the Western Indian Ocean and the Gulf of Aden. Since 2016, many observers have viewed Somali piracy as yesterday’s problem. Shipping companies increasingly treated the threat as manageable, and Western navies no longer prioritized it. However, piracy did not disappear, it simply went dormant. Somali piracy is now re-emerging amid a changed geopolitical environment and Somalia’s deepening humanitarian crisis.
The threat is back, but the 2011 counter-piracy model cannot be rebuilt because NATO has refocused on territorial defense, the United States has pivoted to the Indo-Pacific and is consumed by the Iran war fallout, and European navies cannot spare assets. Therefore, the response should shift to a regionally anchored architecture enabled by external partners, rather than led by them.
Recent attacks show how pirate tactics and intent remain unchanged from 15 years ago, but a simple return to past counter-piracy methods, led by large, multinational coalitions, is unlikely given today’s security environment. To beat back the reemergence of piracy, a more regionally anchored security architecture is needed, consisting of renewed investment in intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance; better information sharing; stricter industry compliance with best management practices and protective measures; and support to local authorities and people to address the roots of piracy.
Pirates Are Back
Somali piracy follows a familiar playbook from an earlier era: seizing dhows as motherships, using skiffs to strike vulnerable merchant vessels, and holding vessels for multimillion-dollar ransoms.
Recent hijackings show that pirate networks retain both the capability and the intent to target commercial shipping in the Western Indian Ocean. According to the French Navy’s Maritime Information Cooperation and Awareness Center, since April 21 of this year, reporting channels have recorded seven suspicious activities, five attacks, and four attempted boardings. For the first time in a decade, Somali pirates have hijacked three merchant vessels: the tanker Honour 25, the cargo vessel Sward, and the tanker Eureka. Pirates are currently holding these vessels off the coast of Puntland, Somalia, and are demanding hefty sums for their release.
Pirate tactics closely mirror those seen in 2011, at the height of the problem. A small pirate action group — consisting of several armed men in a skiff, typically carrying ladders and basic boarding equipment — departs the Somali coast, seizes a dhow to use as a mothership, and then pushes out toward major shipping routes in search of a poorly protected, high-value merchant vessel. After boarding, the pirates take control and bring the ship back toward Somalia — most often Puntland — where they hold it at anchor while ransom negotiations unfold.
As the monsoon continues in the Indian Ocean through September, incidents will likely concentrate in the Gulf of Aden in the coming months.
The Security Environment Has Changed
A changed security environment since 2011 complicates any future counterpiracy operation. While the European Union’s Operation Atalanta and the United Kingdom’s Combined Maritime Forces’ Combined Task Force 151 are still functional, political will and available assets have diminished.
Shifting geopolitical trade winds are a leading factor. Since Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, NATO has refocused on its core mission of territorial defense. NATO’s Operation Ocean Shield ended years ago, and a restart is highly unlikely. Meanwhile, Europe is prioritizing the defense of its own maritime approaches and allocating scarce naval assets to higher priorities and missions — meaning Operation Atalanta could struggle to compete for ships and aircraft.
Regarding the United States, the long-running “pivot to Asia” has already pushed multinational counterpiracy toward a more partner-led model, with Washington providing key enablers rather than large numbers of warships and maritime patrol aircraft. With U.S. planners consumed by crises in the Gulf, especially heightened tensions around the Strait of Hormuz, Iran, Israel, and the wider region, sustained U.S. intelligence, naval, and air contributions to counterpiracy in the Western Indian Ocean are far less likely than in 2011.
Historically, extra-regional naval coalitions and independent deployers have led the fight against Somali piracy, with Somalia and nearby littoral states playing a more limited role due to gaps in maritime domain awareness, offshore patrol capacity, and legal and enforcement systems. Many states in the Western Indian Ocean struggle with sustaining surveillance across their exclusive economic zones, interdicting pirate motherships and skiffs far from shore, securing vulnerable anchorages, detaining and prosecuting suspects, and mounting complex hostage-rescue operations.
How Combined Action Suppressed Piracy
By 2011, Somali piracy had become a full-blown crisis, with hijackings frequent enough to disrupt one of the world’s busiest maritime corridors. Over the following five years, it receded, as a sustained multinational effort disrupted the pirates’ operating environment until piracy became too risky and too uncertain to pay.
When I arrived in 2010 to take up a post as a duty intelligence officer at the operations center at NATO’s Allied Maritime Command in Northwood, just outside London, piracy alerts arrived with alarming regularity — often daily. Each morning, I briefed the commander on the latest incidents: another one or two merchant vessels seized by Somali pirates. Within a year, pirates were simultaneously holding 32 vessels and 736 hostages and cashing in million-dollar ransoms. Suppressing piracy off the Horn of Africa took years of concerted effort from multinational naval coalitions, international organizations, and the shipping industry.
Warships and maritime patrol aircraft from NATO’s Operation Ocean Shield, the European Union’s Operation Atalanta, and the United Kingdom’s Combined Maritime Forces’ Combined Task Force 151 patrolled the high-risk area, exchanged liaison officers, and coordinated through weekly video teleconferences and executive briefings. I spent two months in Bahrain as NATO’s liaison to Task Force 151 and later attended these briefs as an intelligence analyst with Ocean Shield. Vessels and aircraft from India, Russia, and China periodically reinforced the coalitions, and in an unusually cooperative arrangement, even rival navies shared intelligence and de-conflicted operations through Mercury, the European Union Naval Forces’ web‑based, encrypted information‑exchange network. Open-source estimates put the annual cost of these coalition operations at roughly $1–2 billion at the campaign’s height.
The shipping industry adapted, too, combining passive and active defenses. Passive measures centered on best management practices compliance: better risk assessments, use of the internationally recommended transit corridor, routine reporting to the European Union’s Maritime Security Centre – Horn of Africa and the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations Centre, and physical hardening (e.g., barbed wire and citadels). Active measures included widespread use of privately contracted armed security personnel. By 2013, private armed guards were on board an estimated 35 to 40 percent of the approximately of the estimated 65,922 merchant vessels transiting across the high-risk area. Armed protection worked, but it added expense on top of rerouting, higher fuel burn, and steeper insurance premiums. At the peak, estimates put piracy’s total cost to the industry at roughly $6–7 billion a year.
Navies, international organizations like the International Criminal Police Organization or the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, and the shipping industry met through the Shared Awareness and De-confliction forum in Bahrain, stood up to improve information sharing, align patrols, and avoid duplication among the forces operating in the Western Indian Ocean. The forum later expanded to wider maritime security issues and held its 53rd meeting in October 2025.
The campaign worked. Somali piracy fell from 237 incidents in 2011 to almost none by 2016. But the pirates did not abandon trade due to a lack of interest, and the waters off the Horn of Africa did not become inherently safer. Criminal networks stopped investing because piracy had become too difficult, too risky, and too uncertain to stay reliably profitable — a money pit instead of a gold mine. Naval coalition operations intercepted and captured pirate action groups with rising frequency, while robust passive defense and onboard armed teams made merchant ships harder to board. By 2016, smuggling arms, drugs, and migrants promised an easier, less speculative, and more profitable return, and Somali networks shifted accordingly.
The Conditions for Piracy Still Persist
These combined efforts suppressed piracy at sea but left its onshore drivers intact: weak governance, limited enforcement capacity, chronic poverty, and a persistent humanitarian crisis.
From 1991 to 2012, international organizations and political leaders described Somalia as a failed state. Since then, it has established a recognized federal government, strengthened some institutions, and expanded international partnerships. However, the country still faces severe governance, security, and economic challenges and remains a high-risk environment, with the most acute threats concentrated in the central and southern regions.
Despite Somalia’s formal sovereignty over both territories, the regions of Puntland and Somaliland function in many respects as de facto independent states, maintaining their own governance structures and security forces, though they differ in their political goals and international recognition status. Al-Shabaab, clan militias, and political instability continue to undermine Somalia’s stability. The country’s economy remains among the world’s most fragile, with more than 81 percent of Somalis working in the informal sector. Somalia also ranks as the most corrupt country in the world. According to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, Somalia is facing a worsening humanitarian crisis, with more than two million people in Puntland and Somaliland struggling to survive amid extreme drought, collapsing health systems, and severe food and water shortages.
It is therefore unsurprising that some Somali people are drawn to piracy, as it can pay millions. The MV Abdullah case is but one example: In April 2024, the payment of a reported $5 million ransom freed the ship and its 23 crew members after 32 days in captivity. At its peak in 2011, piracy had become a lucrative industry in Somalia, with investors financing pirate attack groups, guards holding seized ships, support networks feeding kidnapped crews, and negotiators extracting ransoms from shipping companies.
Many actors who profited from piracy a decade ago — including clan leaders and local officials — may now be tempted to exploit renewed opportunities. The Arabian Sea, Gulf of Aden, and approaches to the Strait of Hormuz have long served as routes for arms, narcotics, and migrant smuggling. If Iran war-related disruption has reduced those flows, some Somali criminal networks may be looking again to piracy as an alternative revenue stream.
This risk strengthens the case for renewed, credible counter-piracy naval presence and coordination, alongside industry self-protection measures and longer-term capacity-building ashore.
Moving Beyond the Old Model
A future counter-piracy response should proceed from the assumption that the 2011 model is unlikely to regenerate. A smaller and less predictable extra-regional naval footprint means prevention must rest on a more resilient, regionally anchored architecture, enabled — rather than substituted — by external partners.
First, the effort should be regionally anchored, with the federal state of Somalia and Puntland supported by capable maritime actors such as India, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Kenya, Seychelles, and Djibouti. Priorities should include persistent surveillance of key approaches and anchorages, early disruption of motherships, and intelligence-led interdiction tied to workable arrest, detention, and prosecution arrangements. This will require targeted maritime awareness capacity-building: trained personnel, reliable coastal sensors and communications, patrol vessels, and, where feasible, maritime patrol aircraft or unmanned systems, as well as interoperable information-sharing platforms such as the Indo-Pacific Regional Information Sharing platform to improve coordination among regional forces.
The response will also require credible legal arrangements. In past operations, naval forces sometimes had to release suspected pirates after interdiction as no state was willing or legally able to take custody, accept evidence, prosecute the case, or detain convicted offenders. Without a legal back end, interdiction becomes temporary rather than enduring. Delivering these improvements will depend on sustained international support, including through programs such as the European Union’s Safe Seas Africa initiative. In May of this year, an Indian Navy helicopter forced a pirate skiff to jettison its weapons and boarding ladder at sea, demonstrating that regional assets can step in where the large multinational counter‑piracy coalition of 2011 no longer operates.
Second, international naval coalitions and major navies operating in the region should support local forces and structures — such as the Djibouti Code of Conduct’s Information Sharing Network — by concentrating scarce high-end assets on enabling functions. European Naval Force Atalanta; the Combined Maritime Forces; and capable independent deployers should prioritize intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance; information fusion; specialist boarding support; and crisis response. This means providing maritime patrol aircraft, helicopters and unmanned systems, satellite imagery, highly trained boarding teams, and above all, timely, actionable intelligence to help regional forces detect, track, and disrupt pirate action groups before they strike. These efforts should preserve de-confliction mechanisms and shared reporting procedures to reduce duplication and close operational gaps.
Third, in parallel, the shipping industry should treat compliance with best management practices not as discretionary but as baseline risk management, including disciplined routing and reporting, physical hardening, and — where the threat environment and flag-state guidance warrant — armed protection.
Taken together, these measures may not recreate the 2011 response but could deny pirate groups the conditions under which ransom-taking becomes a scalable business.
Maritime measures can suppress piracy, but only reforms ashore can prevent its return. A strategy that lacks credible governance and livelihood components ultimately manages risk at sea, rather than dismantles the system that sustains it. That requires active participation from both the Somali government and Puntland’s leadership — not merely rhetorical support, but visible law-enforcement and political action by denying pirates safe anchorages, disrupting logistics and protection networks, investigating financiers and facilitators, prosecuting suspects, and expanding licit livelihoods and basic services in vulnerable coastal communities. Without that buy-in, any counter-piracy campaign would treat symptoms offshore while leaving the onshore infrastructure of piracy largely intact.
International partners like the United Nations, the European Union, and the International Criminal Police Organization should therefore pair maritime security assistance with targeted support on land: strengthening local governance and rule-of-law capacity and investing in climate adaptation, drought resilience, and humanitarian relief in the hardest-hit regions. These measures will not deliver quick wins, but they are the only path to reducing the economic desperation and political permissiveness that make piracy a repeatable business model.
Benoit Lefevre is a French Navy intelligence officer with 23 years of experience, specializing in maritime security. He has completed 10 years of operational sea duty aboard warships and has worked on counter-piracy operations and regional maritime security architectures in the Indian Ocean and the Gulf of Guinea. He holds a degree in information management from the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers in Paris and is currently based in London.
The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and are provided in a personal capacity. They do not reflect the official position of the author’s current employer or any previous employer, nor should they be construed as an official assessment or statement by any organization.
Image: Indian Navy via Wikimedia Commons
