The epidemic of piracy off the coast of Somalia since 2007 included the spectacular pirating in November 2008 of the Saudi supertanker Sirius Star containing a quarter of Saudi Arabia's daily oil production; the ship was released on 10 January 2009 in exchange for a $3 million ransom. The epidemic has led to extensive media commentary, a flurry of UN Security Council resolutions, and deployment of an unusual combination of some of the world's most powerful navies to escort commercial ships through one of the world's busiest, and now most dangerous, shipping lanes. Predictably, policymakers, pundits and politicians have sought to harness the piracy story to advance their own agendas. Many have seized on it to plead for a durable political solution to the 19-year crisis of state collapse in Somalia. This is a waterborne variation on the 'securitisation' of state-building, the argument that failed states pose a host of spillover dangers, including piracy, if left unresolved.
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