Forum: The New Piracy: Three Contexts

Abstract

The sharp escalation in ship hijackings by Somali pirates on one of the world's most important trade routes, highlighted by the headline-grabbing seizures of the Ukrainian MV Faina, with its cargo of tanks and heavy weapons, in September 2008 and the fully laden Saudi-owned tanker Sirius Star two months later, shows little sign of abating. In November 2009, the European Security Forum at the Centre for European Policy Studies in Brussels, co-sponsored by the IISS, addressed the question of ‘Somalia and the Pirates’. These three essays, offering a range of contexts for the new piracy, are shortened versions of three of the papers presented. A fourth, on Somali security issues more generally, appears elsewhere in this issue.