Abstract
Security consultants are spreading scare stories about sea-borne terrorists. But reports of an imminent maritime 9/11 don't hold water.
On March 26, 2003, 10 pirates from a speedboat boarded the chemical tanker Dewi Madrim off the coast of Sumatra. Armed with machetes and machine guns, they disabled the ship's radio, took the helm, and steered the vessel at varying speeds for about an hour. And then, according to initial reports, they stole money and kidnapped the captain and first officer. Aegis Defence Services, a British defense and security consultancy, issued a report six months later warning that “something altogether more sinister” than a pirate attack took place. “The temporary hijacking of the Dewi Madrim was by terrorists learning to drive a ship, and the kidnapping (without any attempt to ransom the officers) was aimed at acquiring expertise to help the terrorists mount a maritime attack. In other words, attacks like that on the Dewi Madrim are the equivalent of the Al Qaeda hijackers who perpetrated the September 11, 2001 attacks going to flying school in Florida.” The report also darkly alluded to terrorists engaging in piracy to finance their operations and raised the possibility that they might “plan to capture tugboats and tow … [a tanker] into a busy international port, such as Singapore, and detonate the ship's contents.”
As a reminder that the oceans are a dangerous place, the tale of the Dewi Madrim fits right in with the current penchant of analysts to expend more effort scaring their readers than enlightening them. As a statement of fact linking piracy to terrorism, however, this parable falls woefully short. The Dewi Madrim case was, unfortunately, no different from dozens of other pirate raids in Indonesian waters. Yet upon each retelling, the story's basis in reality seems to weaken, while the ominous implication that a maritime 9/11 is imminent seems to strengthen. Even highly regarded news outlets such as the Economist, the Daily Yomiuri, and CNN have taken the story at face value.
Here's what we know happened: The Dewi Madrim was boarded; the crew was incapacitated; and the pirates spent some time maneuvering the ship to avoid other ships or to avoid running aground while they were busy stealing money and equipment. The captain and first mate were not taken hostage (with or without ransom demands) and were not used to provide forced instruction on ship-handling to apprentice terrorists. Both the ship and its cargo were returned to the crew's custody. Indeed, it's increasingly rare for cargo to be stolen and sold (only about two to four cases per year). Hijackers are failing to find a market for stolen goods, partly as a result of the significant success of such organizations as the International Maritime Bureau (IMB) in generating cooperation in searching for stolen ships–thus denying hijackers peace and quiet in which to process their spoils. Terrorists seeking to finance transnational operations through piracy would likely be disappointed in their efforts.
“But, it could happen,” the security consultants who provide their services to shipping companies, governments, and insurance associations would no doubt still declare. “What better way than stealing a ship and its crew for terrorists to gain needed expertise?” And what harm is there in overstating a case when most will admit that maritime security is one of the key challenges facing the United States and the international community? Some attention is surely better than none. To that end, linking pirates to terrorists certainly accomplishes multiple goals for security consultants–not least a powerful sales pitch. But it also distracts us from goals that might be more important.
It's true that piratical acts have long been used to provide income, particularly in conflict zones. The most notorious examples have been off the Somali coast, where warlords–acting as local governments in the absence of an effective central authority–have seized cargo and money as a form of “local taxation.” But, to date, no credible assessment links terrorists to the commission of piratical acts. In fact, the Islamic fundamentalist forces that took control of Mogadishu and its environs in June, and which are accused of harboring terrorist sympathizers, have been the only Somali force effective at curbing the warlords' piracy.
And, while a terrorist could use a large ship to attack another vessel or to devastate waterside infrastructure, is it really sound to speculate so far afield? Every assessment of the maritime terrorist threat acknowledges that the most likely attack is one patterned on those that have already succeeded, such as when dinghies laden with explosives were rammed into the U.S.S. Cole and the French tanker Limburg. And there are many better ways–and, frankly, few worse–of planning and practicing such attacks than stealing a ship with which to do it.
Unfortunately for the purveyors of complex adventure stories, gaining access to a vessel for whatever nefarious purpose one might have in mind is easy, not least by buying or chartering it. This approach has the advantage of gaining access over time to the ship from which an attack is to be launched, rather than having to later hijack a nearly identical vessel for the actual attack. It also allows for loading explosives in the right quantity and into the correct position, which is essential if an attack is to succeed in the final phase. I have already alluded to the IMB's significant success in getting coastal states to keep an eye out for stolen ships. Are we so contemptuous of terrorist planners that we believe they cannot devise a plan that avoids being on the run from maritime repo men?
Do not take my denigration of the Dewi Madrim fable as assurance that we do not face maritime threats. Threats, both from piracy and terrorism, are real. But protective services provided by or brokered through commercial security consultancies, hired by clients frightened by scare stories, cannot stem the most common maritime threat, which is still piracy. Most maritime crime, commonly lumped in with piracy, occurs in ports where the protective services provided by consultants are not even empowered to act. Attempts by anyone to conflate piracy and terrorism sell something the maritime community cannot use, under the guise of being something it cannot afford to be without. Even worse, it lulls us into a false sense of security by appearing to take action against a threat that is not very credible to begin with.
Piracy is a maritime problem that ebbs and flows from international consciousness, but one that rarely engages the international law enforcement community for long. Local governments are often powerless to control vast, remote coastlines even when they are willing. Navies do not like anti-piracy as a mission, which is too often viewed impermissibly as one of law enforcement. But piracy is, and long has been, an internationally recognized crime, subject to suppression by all nations.
This suppression needs no artificial tie to terrorism and requires no delicate or ever-shifting coalitions. Dispatching navies to someplace like the Horn of Africa under the rubric of “fighting terrorism” might also, in the short term, secure shipping against piracy. But, in the long run their influence can be no deeper than their scattered presence along a vast coastline and of no greater duration than their limited deployments and their home governments' willingness to continue footing the bill in the absence of an active terrorist presence.
Surely the world's most capable navies do not need a consultant's sales pitch on terrorism to commit to common action in defense of every mariner's rights and each country's access to unhindered lawful trade. They do need a commitment to recognize piracy suppression in its own right and to come out from behind the false flag of antiterrorism. At the very least, suppressing piracy as a routine mission will do more to eliminate the potential for terrorists to get involved in piracy than will tracking terrorists just to wait for them to make an overt piratical move.