Djibouti

Why Every Country Has Military Bases in Djibouti
RealLifeLore

I've been reading Djibouti by Elmore Leonard. It's a novel about a middle aged woman filming a documentary about pirates around the Horn of Africa. I've been working on it for a while, it's not a page turner, but the story is interesting enough that I keep plugging away. I'll probably finish it in the next couple of days.

It seems like there has been a problem with pirates in that area for a long time. Since 2008 pirates have attacked over 200 ships. Now we have the Houthis attacking cargo ships in the Red Sea just north of Djibouti, so I'm a little curious about what's going on over there. We've got Navy ships over there and it seems like squashing the Houthis would be the an easy task for the most powerful Navy in the world, but the attacks seem to just keep getting worse instead of going away. Of course, we have Ukraine occupying our commander-in-chief's attention and everyone knows that keeping those gas pipeline tariff kickbacks coming is more important than any silly commercial shipping business, right?

It took five years for the shipping companies to get their ducks in a row and get enough security personnel to bring the piracy problem under control, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised that the Houthis haven't been squashed yet.