Rise in Houthi attacks distracts naval patrols from the threat of hijackers off the Horn of Africa.
As he grew up, Abdikarim Yusuf watched his father’s catch off the Somali coast grow smaller year after year.
Seeing his father struggle, and coming to suspect, like many in his town of Garacad, that overfishing by foreign trawlers was to blame for his predicament, the hot-headed young man vowed action.
Unable to feed their families by fishing, and left unprotected by a weak and often corrupt state, they would have to earn a living another way. One day in 2008, aged only 17 at the time, he made the decision to swap his nets for a Kalashnikov and joined a group of older men heading out to sea not as fishermen, but as pirates.
“Naturally, I was scared at first, but what took the fear away was the belief that what I was doing was justified,” he told The Telegraph.
For the next three years, he joined a ragtag force which became a scourge of maritime traffic in the Indian Ocean, estimated to cost billions of pounds to international trade.
Hundreds of millions were spent in ransoms. But some hapless seafarers were sometimes held captive in terrible conditions for years after being abandoned by their employers.
“Many young men went out at sea with their guns, only to end up dying or being captured and languishing in prisons in foreign lands. This included some of my friends,’ Abdikarim says.
His buccaneering days are now long over, though he declines to use his real name in case his past catches up with him.
Yet after a lull of several years, Somali piracy is now back on the rise, and both residents and analysts say that overfishing is one of the driving factors.
So too is the rise of Houthi attacks on shipping in the Red Sea, which has caused naval patrols to become distracted from anti-piracy duties off the Horn of Africa, leaving a security void to be exploited by Somali pirates.
After several years without any piracy incidents, attacks have started to slowly rise again since 2023. Three vessels have been captured in 2025 alone, according to the European Union naval taskforce patrolling the area.
In the most high-profile incident so far, last year the 23-strong crew of the Bangladesh-flagged vessel MV Abdullah were held hostage after the vessel was seized while shipping coal from Mozambique to the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
The crew was released after a ransom of $5 million (£3.7 million) was reportedly paid.
Locals along the coast say unrestrained fishing by vessels from Iran, Yemen, Pakistan, India, and even Thailand and China still blights their livelihoods.
“Illegal fishing is quieter and less visible and has done significant damage over time. For years, foreign boats have stripped Somalia’s coastline with little consequence. Local fishers know this,” says Jethro Norman, a senior researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS).
“The coastal economy is fragile. Fishing livelihoods remain under pressure from foreign fleets. There’s minimal state presence in many littoral zones [parts of the sea that are close to the shore]. Put that together; grievance, opportunity and the means to act, and piracy starts to make sense again.”
Senior regional officials from the semi-autonomous state of Puntland, whose 990 miles of coastline have seen three recent hijackings, admit illegal fishing is badly hitting residents in Somalia.
“Illegal fishing is not a problem just in Puntland but is an issue plaguing all of Somalia,” says Abdirizak Abdullahi Hagaa, Puntland’s minister of fisheries and marine resources.
“The depletion of maritime resources has not only angered local communities but made their livelihoods more difficult.”
However, local anger at illegal fishing has not translated into unqualified support for the pirates. At the height of the pirate menace, while there may have been some sympathy, they were also seen as mercenary, hedonistic and impious. Several communities turned on them and drove them out.
The rise of Houthi attacks against shipping further north in the Red Sea has now added another dimension.
“The rise in hijackings over the past year isn’t surprising,” said Mr Norman.
“As Western navies pivoted to the Houthi threat, a familiar opportunity reappeared: long stretches of sea with no patrols and plenty of slow-moving ships. Somali pirate groups know this terrain, and the tools are already in place. Motherships, local informants, safe coastal hideouts. These aren’t new innovations. It’s just muscle memory returning.”
Mr Yusuf now lives in the city of Garowe and says he has little sympathy for today’s opportunist pirates.
“When I did it [piracy], it was a cause we believed in because we saw ourselves as victims. But the ones doing the recent attacks are opportunists and the tension in the Gulf of Aden isn’t making things better.
“These men risk more foreign intervention and militarisation of Somalia with these recent attacks out at sea. The whole world is watching.”
