Somali Pirates

Six commercial ships have been successfully hijacked off the coast of Somalia in the past week. The most recent was the Maersk Alabama (undated pic above), a U.S. flagged ship with a crew of 20 U.S. nationals according to the shipping company.

This could be a thorny issue for the U.S. and President Obama. The U.S. and other nations have had their navies patroling the area for many months now to disrupt pirate operations. But the ocean is a huge place and full control is really not possible. Now that U.S. nationals appear to be held captive there is going to be more pressure to deal with the pirates. In this case specifically instead of allowing the crew to be held for months and also more generally which means dealing with the lawlessness that is called Somalia.