USS Sterett (DDG-104) is a Flight IIA Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer of the United States Navy. She is the fourth ship named for Andrew Sterett.
Operation Enduring Freedom – Horn of Africa (OEF-HOA) is a component of Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF). The Combined Joint Task Force – Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA) is the primary military component assigned to accomplish the objectives of the mission. The naval components are the multinational Combined Task Force 150 (CTF-150) and Combined Task Force 151 (CTF-151) which operates under the direction of the United States Fifth Fleet. Both of these organizations have been historically part of United States Central Command. In February 2007, United States President George W. Bush announced the establishment of the United States Africa Command which took over all of the area of operations of CJTF-HOA in October 2008.
Piracy off the coast of Somalia occurs in the Gulf of Aden, Guardafui Channel, and Somali Sea, in Somali territorial waters and other surrounding places and has a long troubled history with different perspectives from different communities. It was initially a threat to international fishing vessels during the early 2000s, only to rapidly escalate and expand to international shipping during the War in Somalia (2006–2009).
There were 49 ships reported pirate attacks in the first three months of 2008, up from 41 in that period of 2007. According to the ICC International Maritime Bureau, in those attacks: "Seven crew members were taken hostage, six kidnapped, three killed and one missing – presumed dead." Up until mid-November 2008, more than 90 vessels had been attacked by pirates in the year. At the same time, with a more than 75 per cent increase since the previous year, pirates were holding 13 ships captive in the Somali ports of Eyl and Hobyo.
On September 2, 2008, the French yacht Carré d'As IV and its two crew were captured in the Gulf of Aden by seven armed Somali pirates, who demanded the release of six pirates captured in the April MY Le Ponant raid and over one million dollars in ransom. On September 16, 2008, on the orders of President Nicolas Sarkozy, French special forces raided and recovered the yacht, rescued the two hostages, killed one pirate, and captured the other six. The pirates were flown to France to stand trial for piracy and related offenses; ultimately, five of them were convicted and sentenced to four to eight years in prison, while a sixth was acquitted. The incident marked the second French counter-piracy commando operation of 2008, as well as the first French trial of Somali pirates.
MV Tygra is a container ship currently operated by the Waterman Steamship Corporation and owned by Element Shipmanagement SA of Piraeus, Greece. She was previously owned by the A.P. Moller-Maersk Group and operated by Maersk Line and Maersk Line Limited.
The Maersk Alabamahijacking began on 8 April 2009, when four pirates in the Somali Basin seized the Danish/U.S. cargo ship Maersk Alabama at a distance of 240 nautical miles southeast of Eyl, Somalia. The siege ended after a rescue effort by the United States Navy on April 12th.
Abduwali Abdulkadir Museعبدالولي موسى is a Somali convicted pirate. He is the sole survivor of four pirates who hijacked the MV Maersk Alabama in April 2009 and then held Captain Richard Phillips for ransom. On 16 February 2011, Muse was sentenced to 33 years and 9 months in U.S. federal prison.
Richard Phillips is an American merchant mariner and author who served as captain of the MV Maersk Alabama during its hijacking by Somali pirates in April 2009.
"Fatbeard" is the seventh episode of the thirteenth season of the American animated television series South Park. The 188th overall episode of the series, it originally aired on Comedy Central in the United States on April 22, 2009. It was the mid-season finale, marking the final South Park episode for six months. In the episode, Cartman misinterprets news reports about piracy in the Indian Ocean on the coast of Somalia to mean the return of the classic era of swashbuckling pirates, and misleads a handful of South Park boys to voyage to Mogadishu to start a pirate crew.
MV Qana or Gna was a Yemeni tanker, built in Japan in 1978. On 26 April 2009 it was hijacked of the coast of Yemen by Somali pirates but recovered by the Yemeni coastguard the following day. The captured Somalis were later found guilty of piracy. The ship was broken up in 2021.
Operation Dawn of Gulf of Aden was a naval operation by the Republic of Korea Navy against Somali pirates in the Arabian Sea. The operation was spurred by the pirates' seizure of the South Korean chemical tanker Samho Jewelry. In response, the South Korean government sent a destroyer and 30 naval commandos to retake the ship and rescue its crew. After trailing the tanker for several days and fighting a preliminary engagement that neutralized four of the pirates, the South Korean forces retook the ship by force on January 21, 2011, in a successful boarding action that resulted in the deaths of eight and the capture of five out of thirteen pirates.
The MV Iceberg 1 is a Panama-flagged roll-on/roll-off cargo ship that was hijacked by Somali pirates on March 29, 2010. It was the longest-held hijacked ship until the Puntland Maritime forces released it and 22 crew members on 23 December 2012.
Operation Ocean Shield was NATO's contribution to Operation Enduring Freedom – Horn of Africa (OEF-HOA), an anti-piracy initiative in the Indian Ocean, Guardafui Channel, Gulf of Aden and Arabian Sea. It follows the earlier Operation Allied Protector. Naval operations began on 17 August 2009 after being approved by the North Atlantic Council, the program was terminated on 15 December 2016 by NATO. Operation Ocean Shield focused on protecting the ships of Operation Allied Provider, which transported relief supplies as part of the World Food Programme's mission in the region. The initiative also helped strengthen the navies and coast guards of regional states to assist in countering pirate attacks. Additionally, China, Japan and South Korea sent warships to participate in these activities.
The following lists events that happened in 2009 in Somalia.
Piracy in Somalia has been a threat to international shipping since the beginning of the country's civil war in the early 1990s. Since 2005, many international organizations have expressed concern over the rise in acts of piracy. Piracy impeded the delivery of shipments and increased shipping expenses, costing an estimated $6.6 to $6.9 billion a year in global trade in 2011 according to Oceans Beyond Piracy (OBP).
Operation Dawn 8: Gulf of Aden was a naval operation carried out by the Royal Malaysian Navy against pirates in the Indian Ocean on 20 January 2011. In response to the hijacking of MV Bunga Laurel, the Malaysian Shipborne Protection Team deployed an attack helicopter and 14 members of the naval counter-terrorism group PASKAL in two rigid-hulled inflatable boats to retake the vessel and rescue the crew. After one night of trailing the tanker, the Malaysian forces successfully retook the ship by force on 20 January 2011, resulting in the wounding of three and the capture of four out of 18 pirates, and all 23 vessel crewmembers rescued.
Piracy kidnappings occur during piracy, when people are kidnapped by pirates or taken hostage. Article 1 of the United Nations International Convention against the Taking of Hostages defines a hostage-taker as "any person who seizes or detains and threatens to kill, to injure, or to continue to detain another person in order to compel a third party namely, a State, an international intergovernmental organization, a natural or Juridical person, or a group of people, to do or abstain from doing any act as an explicit or implicit condition tor the release of the hostage commits the offense of taking of hostages ("hostage-taking") within the meaning of this convention." Kidnappers often try to obtain the largest financial reward possible in exchange for hostages, but piracy kidnappings can also be politically motivated.
10. "Hunter Killer". Novel by Lt-Col McCurley and Kevin Maurer
United States 
