How to Sink the Pirates Plaguing West Africa

How to Sink the Pirates Plaguing West Africa
08/07/2019

Remember those Somali pirates? Earlier this decade, they brazenly hijacked giant oil tankers, demanded ransoms in the millions of dollars, and gave Tom Hanks yet another chance to play the everyman overcoming a life-defining crisis. Now, thanks to a multinational naval crackdown and tighter security measures by shippers, they’ve been forced back to dry land.

But as often happens with crime waves, the problem wasn’t really eliminated; it just popped up in a more vulnerable location. And for pirates, the treasure hunt now takes place in the Gulf of Guinea, which stretches off West Africa from Senegal to Angola, nearly 4,000 miles of shoreline.

Last year, 40 percent the world’s reported incidents of seaborne attacks occurred there, including every ship hijacking and 78 of the 83 crew members taken for ransom. In reality, things are probably much worse: The International Maritime Bureau, which tallies these statistics, also estimates that half of incidents go unreported. The waters off Somalia, meanwhile, had two attacks total reported.

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