‘If you don’t stop, they’ll kill all of us’: Somali pirates are back with a vengeance

By David Goldman, Ivan Watson, Sophia Saifi

Second engineer Syed Hussain Yousuf at his home in Karachi after being released. Javed Iqbal/CNN

A knock at second engineer Syed Hussain Yousuf’s cabin door.

Three minutes later, a dozen pirates were aboard the Honour 25. They showed their guns to the diesel tanker’s crew. Everyone to the bridge.

It was the afternoon of April 21. For five months, most of the 17 crew would remain confined to that space, no more than 50 feet long, seated, leaving only when escorted to the bathroom.

America’s Navy is focused elsewhere, away from the Somali coast toward a war in the Persian Gulf. Houthi attacks in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden have rerouted oil tanker traffic close to Somalia. Surging fuel prices have made their cargo lucrative targets.

And Somalis have become desperate. Surging fuel and food costs and a reliance on disrupted exports from Gulf nations have derailed Somalia’s fragile economic recovery this year.

All of that came to a head aboard the dilapidated Honour 25, where a monthslong standoff came to a violent end last month.

Five crew members didn’t make it out alive.

Diesel costs have nearly doubled during the war. Attacks on vessels in and around the Red Sea and Persian Gulf have sent insurance costs surging.

That has forced oil and shipping companies into difficult but pragmatic choices. Deep-pocketed companies are rerouting traffic around Africa’s Cape of Good Hope, adding weeks and millions of dollars in fuel costs to their routes to avoid Houthis and Somali pirates, who are terrorizing ships transiting through the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. But smaller outfits with tighter budgets or sketchy safety records are cutting corners to save money. Some are risking the perilous trip through the Bab-al-Mandeb strait. A few are sailing closer to Somalia to avoid Houthis off the coast of Yemen.

The Honour 25 was on its way from Shinas Port in Oman to supply Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, with 2,700 tons of diesel.