How America tightened its grip on them…them…) 

Somalia: A Malta-flagged ship was hijacked by pirates near the coast of Somalia in the Arabian Sea. A naval warship INS Chennai is present in that ( them…)  area. Indian warship reached the hijacked ship. This is not the first time that a ship has been hijacked near the Somalia coast. Such news has been coming before also. Somalia’s pirates used to have a lot of terror in the Indian Ocean. Although they do not steal any goods from ships, their aim is to hijack merchant ships and extort huge sums of money from the companies in exchange for their release.
Somalia’s government fell in the 90s, after which civil war started there. During this time, the situation became such that the Navy there became unable to protect its areas. Foreign fishermen took advantage of this and started fishing in that area. But due to this, the local fishermen, whose situation was already bad, started facing problems. In response, some groups in Somalia started taking foreign fishermen hostage in small boats and motor boats. After this, they used to release these fishermen with a sum of money, then they started targeting merchant ships. These pirates hijacked merchant ships and started collecting huge amounts of money from their companies.

…when America tightened its grip
Pirates did hijack merchant ships, but did not cause any harm to their crew members. But after some terrorist incidents in America, especially the 9/11 terrorist attacks, America increased patrolling in this area of the Arabian Sea, Red Sea and Indian Ocean in 2001. Because this route is the biggest trade route of the world. Only 2.70 crore barrels of oil goes to other countries through this route. After America increased security, by 2017, incidents of ship hijacking in this area became negligible. Not only this, the tag of high risk area was also removed from this area in January 2023.