Somali pirates have carried out eight hijackings of commercial vessels since late April, returning piracy off the Horn of Africa to levels not seen in a decade, according to reporting by The Guardian. Analysts cited by the paper attribute the resurgence to the US-Israeli war against Iran and Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping, which have diverted international naval resources from anti-piracy patrols and rerouted maritime traffic closer to Somalia’s coastline.

Two of the eight incidents occurred within a fortnight in August. One targeted an oil tanker with ties to Iran. The other—the Cameroon-flagged Lutuf, carrying military equipment for Turkey—was seized about three nautical miles from the fishing town of Maraya. The Lutuf was approached by a previously hijacked cement carrier, the MV Sward, that had been repurposed as a pirate mothership; eight gunmen from the Sward boarded the vessel and overpowered the ship’s armed guards, according to local officials cited by The Guardian.

The Lutuf was released about two weeks after its capture following a joint Turkish-Somali operation that destroyed four pirate vessels. Local officials including Mohamed Mubarak, head of Puntland’s security coordination office, said a $2.5 million ransom was also paid, a development that has prompted warnings that ransoms risk encouraging further hijackings. Nine armed men were killed by a missile fired from a Turkish drone as they prepared boats to join the gunmen onboard the Lutuf.

Matthew Reisener, national security adviser at the Center for Maritime Security, warned in July that the wars involving Iran and its Houthi proxies are allowing regional piracy “to once again thrive.” He wrote that “the global navies that once combatted piracy off the Horn of Africa diverted their resources to counter the threats against ships in these critical waterways,” and that “these conflicts have also drawn maritime traffic closer to Somalia’s coastline, creating openings for opportunistic pirates to target commercial ships.”

According to Reisener, about 70% of the maritime traffic that previously transited the Red Sea is now being rerouted around the Cape of Good Hope. A May report by the International Institute for Strategic Studies reached a similar conclusion, attributing the deterioration of maritime security to the redeployment of international anti-piracy fleets and the relaxation of commercial risk-management practices, alongside the distraction posed by Houthi attacks in the Red Sea.

Analysts also note that rising oil prices driven by the war have made oil cargoes more valuable targets. Somalia has mainland Africa’s longest coastline, but the country has lacked a strong central government since the fall of Mohamed Siad Barre’s government in 1991, and authorities have struggled to obtain sufficient patrol vessels or to regularly pay salaries to coastal patrol personnel.

Pirate networks have grown more technologically sophisticated, using SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet service to track potential targets and coordinate high-speed communications between pirate cells, according to local officials. Lloyd’s List described the resulting threat as “more capable and adaptive,” saying it is already exposing vulnerabilities in carriers’ existing anti-piracy measures.

Piracy has historically thrived in Somalia during periods of increasing instability and political, factional, and regional competition, observers told The Guardian. The current rise in incidents has been exacerbated by international focus on arms smuggling to Yemen by networks acting on behalf of Iran, with some of those networks reportedly becoming more closely associated with al-Shabaab. The Islamist group is expanding its territorial control in central and southern Somalia and seeking to build ties with the Houthis in Yemen, analysts said.

The economic effects of recent ransoms are visible in Galkayo, a commercial hub in the north-central Mudug region. Residents told The Guardian that money has begun circulating through the local economy at a much greater degree than before, with reported increases in khat consumption and more expensive SUVs appearing on local roads. During the previous piracy boom, increased flows of money through coastal communities produced broader societal impacts, including expansion of alcohol and drug use and prostitution.

Writing in The Conversation in May, academics Anja Shortland and Federico Varese, who studied Somalia’s piracy problem in 2014, said the outcome of the current hijackings will determine whether piracy expands or contracts. “Pirates rely on ransoms for reinvestment and to attract young men into their no-win-no-fee contracts,” they wrote. “Fast and generous payments … may free the captive ships. But they will lead to escalating risks for everyone else.”

Shortland and Varese said they were uncertain about the international appetite for a renewed anti-piracy campaign. “No state or alliance currently has the will or capacity to run a naval mission on the scale seen in 2011 and 2012, when navies worldwide spent more than US$1bn annually on counter-piracy operations off Somalia,” they wrote. Between 2005 and 2012, more than 1,000 attacks on vessels in the waters off Somalia netted $400 million in ransom payments.

“Although piracy manifests as a sea-based problem, it can only be solved on land,” Shortland and Varese concluded.