Somalia is a war-torn country on the eastern "horn" of Africa. The northern shore of Somalia is only one to two hundred miles from Yemen on the Arabian Peninsula, separated by the Gulf of Aden. Torn by a civil war and ruled by warlords in the 1990s and 2000s, the southern part of the country has come to be dominated by militant fundamentalist Islamists, and is a haven for pirates off the coast of Africa, who prey on cargo and private boat traffic passing through the Red Sea.