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Somali pirates have hijacked a tanker in the Gulf of Aden off the coast of Yemen.
Some shit you should know before you dig in: If you’re unaware, Somali piracy was a massive problem from roughly 2008 to 2018, with attacks peaking at 212 in 2011 and pirates targeting ships hundreds of miles off the Somali coast. An international naval coalition eventually shut that shit down, and only a handful of incidents happen per year now. The pirates’ playbook has stayed fairly consistent: armed men (typically equipped with AK-47s and RPGs) hijack a smaller boat to use as a “mothership,” then launch fast boats from it to chase down and board commercial vessels far from shore. Once a ship is taken, the pirates force it to anchor along the Somali coast, hold the crew hostage, and start negotiating with the ship’s owner or insurance company. Ransoms are almost always paid in physical US dollars, often dropped from a plane in floating waterproof containers near the ship or handed off via boat. Demands and payouts have ranged from a couple million to $9.5 million for the South Korean supertanker Samho Dream in 2010.
What’s going on now: First reported by the UK’s maritime agency UKMTO, the tanker Asana was boarded Friday roughly 65 nautical miles south of Yemen’s Al Mukalla port while transiting east through the Gulf of Aden, with the agency saying the vessel was taken by “unauthorized personnel.” The Yemeni Coast Guard put the seizure about 26 nautical miles off Hadramawt province and said Somali pirates carried it out.
Puntland security officials told the BBC that seven gunmen took the ship after launching from a stretch of coastline near the port town of Garacad. The vessel sent out a distress signal at roughly 0620 GMT and had no armed security team aboard when it was attacked, according to maritime security group Ambrey.
Initial reports described one man visible near the bridge, with the tanker moving southeast in the direction of Somalia, which tracks with its listed destination of the Somali port of Bosaso. A Yemeni Coast Guard patrol boat and several international naval units are pursuing the vessel while surveillance aircraft monitor from above, and an official with the EU’s Aspides naval mission said a South Korean warship was in the area.
This comes amid an uptick in Somali piracy over the past several months. Since April, there have been at least 18 piracy incidents and hijackings, with at least three other vessels still being held for ransom. Analysts point to a few drivers: naval forces stretched thin by the conflicts in the Red Sea and Strait of Hormuz, shipping traffic pushed closer to Somali waters as vessels reroute, and instability inside Somalia itself.
