Special Operations: Somali Pirate Revival
Ezoic
January 23, 2025: The Somali pirates are back in action. It’s been eleven years since the last outbreak of piracy in the Red Sea. Violence against commercial shipping in the Red Sea region began in 2010 when it had reached levels of activity not seen in over a century. But over the next three years that all changed. By 2013 attacks on ships by Somali pirates had declined 95 percent from the 2010 peak. The rapid collapse of the Somali pirates since 2010 began back in 2009 when 80 seafaring nations formed the Contact Group on Piracy off the Coast of Somalia. The most visible aspect of this was an anti-piracy patrol off the Somali coast. Over two dozen warships and several dozen manned and unmanned aircraft were involved. This force was backed by space satellite surveillance and foreign intelligence agencies.
Back in 2010 the Somalis accounted for nearly all the hijackings. There are still pirates out there, but they are more into robbery than kidnapping.
Piracy hit a trough from the late nineteenth century into the late twentieth. That was because the industrialized nations waged a worldwide campaign against pirates. With no place to hide, pirates disappeared.
https://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htsf/articles/2025012303718.aspx#gsc.tab=0
