How to Sink the Pirates Plaguing West Africa
After a crackdown near Somalia, the crime wave just shifted to the Gulf of Guinea. Local nations and their allies can end it.
Pirate hunters.
Photographer: Sia Kambou/AFP, via Getty Images
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.