I helped defeat the Somali pirates. Here’s how to do it again

Last week, a massive commercial vessel was hijacked 620 nautical miles off the coast of Somalia. Formally flagged to Malta, the Hellas Aphrodite is a Greek-owned tanker that was carrying gasoline from India to South Africa — a transit through dangerous waters off Africa’s eastern coast.

Fortunately, a European Union mission focused on counter-piracy, Operation Atalanta, was able to dispatch a Spanish frigate that sent special forces aboard and freed the crew of 24. The pirates escaped and are likely to strike again, given the poverty and chaos ashore in war-torn Somalia.

This was not an isolated incident. Pirates successfully seized another ship last spring, 400 miles off the coast of Mogadishu, Somalia’s capital. Over the course of 2024, seven pirate attacks were reported. There have al