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01/13/2005
Pirates...and terrorism
I was watching one of the network news anchors report from the
scene of the tsunami in South Asia last week and, having seen
each of his reports, he missed a really good opportunity to
educate his audience on an ongoing threat in the region, that
being piracy.
Specifically, I’m talking about the Strait of Malacca, that narrow
band of water separating Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore
where a majority of the world’s oil and gas passes through.
In fact, as noted by Gal Luft and Anne Korin in the November /
December 2004 issue of Foreign Affairs, overall the number of
pirate attacks on ships has tripled in the past decade, yet these are
not your pirates that led to the Barbary wars two centuries ago.
Instead, as the authors write, “today’s pirates are often trained
fighters aboard speedboats equipped with satellite phones and
global positioning systems and armed with automatic weapons,
antitank missiles and grenades.”
Even more worrisome, many of today’s pirates are terrorists
with an ideological bent and political agenda.
While many shipping companies these days don’t report
incidents of piracy for fear of raising insurance premiums, in
2003 ship owners admitted to 445 attacks, in which 92 seafarers
were killed or reported missing and 359 assaulted and taken
hostage. Singapore’s Deputy Prime Minister Tony Tan recently
warned, “piracy is entering a new phase; recent attacks have been
conducted with almost military precision. The perpetrators are
well-trained, have well laid out plans.”
Many pirates, particularly in east Asia, belong to organized crime
syndicates that include corrupt officials and port workers. But
now terrorist groups have taken an interest in piracy for financial
reasons as they have seen their onshore accounts frozen.
In light of the tsunami and the damage in Indonesia, it should be
noted that the Free Aceh Movement had been hijacking vessels
and taking their crews hostage at an increasing rate. There’s no
reason not to believe that won’t continue, even with the
devastation and hopes for a reconciliation between the Aceh
separatists and the Jakarta government.
The most spectacular recent acts of piracy (using the term
broadly to include any form of maritime attack) included the
suicide bombing of the USS Cole in October 2000 that killed 17
sailors. In October 2002, an explosives-laden boat hit the French
oil tanker Limburg off the coast of Yemen. In February 2004,
Philippines-based Abu Sayyaf was responsible for an explosion
of a large ferry that claimed at least 100 lives. All this while FBI
Director Robert Mueller says “any number of attacks on ships
have been thwarted,” including an al Qaeda plot to raid British
and U.S. tankers passing through the Strait of Gibraltar in June
2002.
All of the leading terrorist groups, including Hezbollah, have
sought a maritime capability. “Security experts have long
warned that terrorists might try to ram a ship loaded with
explosive cargo, perhaps even a weapon of mass destruction, into
a major port or terminal. Such an attack could bring
international trade to a halt, inflicting multi-billion-dollar
damage on the world economy.” [Luft and Korin]
Following the attack on the Limburg, Osama bin Laden released
an audio tape warning of attacks on economic targets in the
West:
“By God, the youths of God are preparing for you things that
would fill your hearts with terror and target your economic
lifeline until you stop your oppression and aggression.”
Oil is the most obvious target. With Sri Lanka and the Tamil
Tiger separatists in the news the past two weeks in conjunction
with the tsunami, it’s important to remember that in October
2001, Tamil rebels carried out a coordinated suicide attack by
five boats on an oil tanker off northern Sri Lanka. Oil facilities
in Nigeria are under constant attack, as well as in Colombia,
where leftist rebels there have blown so many holes in one key
480-mile pipeline that it has become known as “the flute.” And
of course in Iraq, attacks on that country’s 4,000-mile pipeline
system are almost a daily occurrence.
As for Saudi Arabia, al Qaeda has long targeted the world’s
largest offshore oil-loading facility, Ras Tanura, through which
up to a third of Saudi oil flows. And just last May 2004, gunmen
opened fire on foreign workers at a Saudi petrochemical complex
on the Red Sea, killing five.
But while land targets are well protected, the “energy umbilical
cord that extends by sea to connect the West and the Asian
economies with the Middle East is more vulnerable than ever.
Sixty percent of the world’s oil is shipped by approximately
4,000 slow and cumbersome tankers. These vessels have little
protection, and when attacked, they have nowhere to hide.
(Except on Russian and Israeli ships, the only weapons
crewmembers have today to ward off attackers are high-powered
fire hoses and spotlights.)” [Luft and Korin]
[It’s easy to see why you have to be so careful in arming crew
members. For economic reasons, primarily, crews have
traditionally been filled with developing-world types hired at
various ports of call. It’s so easy these days to plant “insiders.”]
When I was out in the Strait of Malacca last spring as part of a
trip to Singapore, I wrote of the consequences of scuttling a
single tanker in one of the chokepoints. The impact on the global
oil market, and thus the world economy, could be severe. And as
authors Luft and Korin add, “Worse yet would be several such
attacks happening simultaneously in multiple locations
worldwide.”
For example, the Strait of Hormuz, connecting the Persian Gulf
and the Arabian Sea, is only 1.5 miles wide at its narrowest
point. 15 million barrels of oil are shipped through it daily.
But the most dangerous remains the Strait of Malacca, where a
quarter of world trade, including half of all sea shipments of oil
bound for eastern Asia and two-thirds of global shipments of
liquefied natural gas, passes through. Other potential hazards in
the Strait include Japanese nuclear waste to raw materials bound
for China. In March 2003, an Indonesian chemical tanker was
hijacked off Indonesia. The ten armed men steered the vessel
around for an hour in the Strait and then left the ship, with the
obvious intent of further learning how to operate ships of this
kind but with little interest in learning how to dock them.
So what’s to be done? The U.S. and Singapore are cooperating
extensively on securing the Strait of Malacca, though both
Indonesia and Malaysia have balked at granting their own
security in this regard. But others should be contributing to the
effort, including those who receive virtually all their oil from the
Middle East via pirate-infested waters. I’m referring to China,
Japan, South Korea and India.
Finally, aside from developing alternative sources of energy to
help reduce the threat of piracy over time, authors Luft and Korin
bring up a very important point. “Major energy consumers and
producers should expand strategic petroleum reserves so that
they are sufficient to replace many weeks of lost imports” in the
event of a major disruption of oil traffic.
Just don’t do it all at once, I’d add, or you’d take the price of
crude up to $80.
Hott Spotts returns Jan. 20.
Brian Trumbore
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