Jolly Roger flies again: Piracy and terrorism in the Strait of Malacca

By Tad Trueblood

Johnny Depp was dashing and cute in the recent hit movie “Pirates of the Carribbean”, with his tri-cornered hat, gold tooth and mischevious grin. Real pirates, however, weren’t ever very dashing, and their counterparts today aren’t cute. The jaunty hats went out of style generations ago, but murder, rape and brutality are still in. What’s new is the merging threats of piracy and big-league terrorism.

The Strait of Malacca in Southeast Asia runs for 620 miles between the landmasses of the Malay peninsula and the island of Sumatra. Just a mile and a half wide at the narrowest point, hundreds of vessels pass through this vital chokepiont every day--over 50,000 a year. A huge chunk of the world’s cargo capacity moves through Malacca, including half the world’s oil and two thirds of the liquified natural gas (LNG) shipments.

Naturally enough, the strait is also one of the primary hunting grounds for modern-day pirates, who typically use small power craft to forcibly board large commercial freighters or tankers. Half of the world’s pirate attacks happen in or near the Strait of Malacca. The loot isn’t golden doubloons, but cash and valuables from the crew, high-value cargo, and readily marketable fuels--which the pirates pump into their own tanks to sell later. Violence often accompanies the boardings, in the form of beatings, rapes, kidnapping and killings. Incidents of piracy were up worldwide in 2003, driving up international shipping costs and insurance rates which in turn hurts businesses and consumers everywhere.

Now there’s a new dimension to the problem. According to several maritime trade associations and international security organizations, Islamic terrorists in the region could be contracting or teaming up with Southeast Asian pirates to attempt a large-scale attack, either on a ship or port. There are several militant Islamic groups, allied or associated with al-Qaida, that operate nearby in Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Phillipines. These groups often have ties to, or connections with the pirates and recent incidents lead shipping experts to suspect that a maritime attack plan is in the works.

Several merchant vessels in the area have been hijacked temporarily--possibly as some kind of training exercise. A chemical tanker was boarded recently off the Indonesian island of Sumatra and the hijackers piloted it for over an hour before leaving. In the Phillipines, the Abu Sayyaf Islamic radicals kidnapped a professional maritime engineer and forced him to teach them diving techniques. Captured al-Qaida videotapes from Afghanistan have shown surveillance of Malaysian police patrol boats. There are also tugboats that have gone missing, prompting fears of some kind of suicide run in one of area’s crowded ports.

For several years, al-Qaida terrorists have been investing time and energy in building up their expertise in maritime operations--and have carried some out successfully. In 2000 bombing of the USS Cole killed 17 U.S. sailors while their ship was at anchor in Yemen. In October of 2002, the French oil tanker Limburg was bombed in the Gulf of Aden, splitting the vessel’s hull. Also in 2002, a daring al-Qaida plan to attack U.S. and NATO warships in the Strait of Gibraltar was fortunately uncovered and disrupted. al-Qaida’s chief of naval operations and mastermind of the Cole attack, Mohammed Abda Al-Nasheri, is now in custody but plans he began may still be in motion. Even with the so-called “Prince of the Sea” behind bars, there is concern of another devastating attack on a hub of world trade--not from the air, but from the sea.

An official with the International Tanker Operators Association says if terrorists managed to crash a tanker full of liquified natural gas into the docks in Singapore, the results would be "more devastating than any bomb. . . too horrible to think about."

T.T.

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