Once an unsolvable security threat, Somali piracy has almost stopped. Here’s why

In 2011, pirates carried out 212 attacks in a vast area spanning Somali waters, the Indian Ocean, the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, actions that the World Bank said cost the world economy $18 billion a year.

Armed pirates hijacked ships as far away as 1,000 nautical miles from the Somali coast. They held the ships and crews for ransom. The World Bank estimates that Somali pirates received more than $400 million in ransom payments between 2005 and 2012.

The piracy problem appeared unsolvable. Anti-piracy naval missions undertaken by the world’s most formidable navies, and self-protection measures adopted by the shipping industry, didn’t seem to work. It was, therefore, generally held that the solution lay ashore: major state-building in Somalia to remove the root causes of piracy.

The only problem was that no one was willing to undertake such a mission in the wake of America’s failures in Afghanistan and Iraq.

And then there was an astonishing turnaround. The number of attacks fell to 10 in 2012 and only two ships were hijacked between 2013 and 2023.

For three decades, I have conducted research on international diplomacy, military strategy, use of force and peacebuilding. Together with a colleague specialising in military strategy, I analysed the Somali piracy case. Academics and practitioners agree that four factors interacted to stop...

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