TERROR
ON THE HIGH SEAS
Part 1:Southeast Asia's modern-day pirates
By Eric Koo
The unipolarity of the United States and its near domination of the world's
oceans by its naval fleets ensure that no other nation could build a navy with
enough strength to rival the US in the near future. Washington's unchallenged
dominance is an obvious strategy in view of the strategic situation that
currently favors the US.
Since the Korean War, the US Navy has been reduced to what are in essence
support and transportation roles for US ground and air forces fighting their
conflicts on land. The recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have further
increased these protectionary maritime roles along sea routes that deliver oil
to the United States and its allies. The use of the navy in opposing other
potential enemy naval fleets is almost moot. The last major naval engagement
was a short, one-sided operation between the US fleet and Iraqi naval assets in
the 1991 Gulf War. Thereafter, the US Navy largely played a deterrent role, as
seen in the Taiwan crisis in 1996 when China fired missiles in the waters
around Taiwan. This was reaffirmed once again by US Admiral Thomas Fargo in a
message to Beijing, stating that US naval forces would be used in defense of
Taiwan should war break out over the Taiwan Strait.
Thus the world's strategic naval situation is one of uneasy balance and
inactivity. Naval forces will not likely have opportunities to pit their
firepower against each other in the future. But navies will need to remain
strong as another threat requiring the use of naval power now lurks in the
shadows.
September 11, 2001, highlighted terrorism as a new worldwide security threat,
and modern terrorist groups have already demonstrated a capacity for creative
horizontal escalation, with possible development toward terrorist operations at
sea.
Southeast Asia in particular is a region where maritime security is of foremost
importance to its seaborne trade and commerce. Geographically, Southeast Asia
is in essence a maritime region dotted with thousands of islands and islets
amid larger landmasses and peninsulas. At present, Southeast Asia is divided
politically into a number of nation-states with growing economies and
industries and an ever-widening middle class. National self-interests and
different social priorities and agendas, however, dictate that regional
partners do not usually see eye-to-eye with regard to maritime-security
policies.
The threat of piracy and maritime terrorism remains real and ever-present. Thus
it is of great interest to the 10 member countries of the Association of
Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) - in particular, Singapore - seeking to devise
a maritime policy with some permanency, one that will benefit the security of
all state players concerned.
It is not enough to limit maritime security to just brown-water (shallow)
security patrols, as is evident by the history of piracy in Southeast Asia and
modern cases of maritime terrorism, seen through the acts of the militant
Islamic group, the Abu Sayyaf, among others.
History of piracy in Southeast Asian waters
Piracy has long plagued the waters of Southeast Asia. During the 19th century
the Malacca Strait was already an important waterway for ships traveling from
India and the West to China. Today, a third of the world's trade passes through
the narrow sea channel bordering Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia. The region
and the surrounding seas of the Malay Archipelago are dotted with thousands of
islets, narrow straits and sheltered rivers, all of which make perfect
hideaways. This geographical fact, along with other factors, favored the rise
of piracy: the geography of the Malay Archipelago makes effective sea patrol a
daunting, if not impossible, task.
Pirate crews included the local Malay aborigines, or the Lanuns, a seafaring
people. They hail from surrounding coastal villages in what make up the
territories of Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines today. There were also
substantial numbers of Chinese pirates from the north, usually outcasts from
the mainstream Chinese society of the old Ching Dynasty, who found a niche for
themselves by preying on trading ships plying the South China Sea in their
seafaring junks.
Piracy then was regarded among Southeast Asian rural societies as a form of
social mobility, as it brought easy wealth to its perpetrators and also
entailed bravery, tactical and navigational skills as essential virtues. This
brought about an entire sub-class or caste in Southeast Asia's rural social
structure.
Also, the coming of European colonizers abruptly upset the old traditional
trades of Malay society, when restrictive monopoly systems of trade were
imposed, causing certain sections of society to suffer economic downgrading.
Economic necessity drove many individuals to pursue piracy as a form of living.
To a certain extent as well, piracy was a form of irregular warfare waged by
local peoples to resist European encroachment. To curb piracy, the British and
the Dutch drew an imaginary line of demarcation separating the Strait of
Malacca, with agreements to pursue and annihilate pirates within their spheres
of influence.
Incidentally, the British-Dutch demarcation line is now the modern line of
separation between Malaysia and Indonesia, and like the dividing line, the
problems of administering the Malacca Strait have persisted to contemporary
times. Ideally, it would be best to place the strait under the control of a
single political entity; this would ensure a more unified form of maritime
policing. But political realities dictate otherwise.
Still, early European efforts to curb piracy had the intended effect. Piracy
declined in the late 19th century because of three factors:
1) the increased frequency of naval patrols by colonial powers;
2) established political control of Malaya (now Malaysia and Singapore) by the
British, leading to better political stability and improved economic conditions
that caused piracy to steadily lose its appeal as a way of life;
3) naval superiority in the form of steamships against wind-powered pirate
sailing ships.
Modern piracy
Pirate and merchant ships during colonial times could carry cannons aboard a
form of defense. That was possible because weapons such as muskets, pistols and
cannons then were regarded as normal commodities for trade in the same manner
as silk or spices. In modern times, only ships belonging to state navies or
maritime authorities can be armed with heavy weapons - ie, high-caliber guns,
missile launchers, or torpedoes capable of sinking other vessels. Also, only
state authorities have a license to either commission the manufacture of such
weapons, or obtain them by purchase from foreign arms merchants. All other
ships possessing such arms do so illegally.
Modern piracy is a form of organized crime on the high seas. Pirates utilize
light arms such as assault rifles, pistols or hand-held rocket launchers. Their
vessels generally do not have guns of a large caliber capable of engaging in
naval combat. In fact, pirate ships masquerade as ships performing a variety of
other innocent roles, including cargo transport or fishing, in order to escape
suspicion from maritime authorities.
In Southeast Asia, measures for monitoring ships' seaworthiness remain
relatively inadequate. Drowning and losses of sailors at sea are fairly common,
and many incidents go unreported. This is particularly so for unregistered,
privately owned vessels, which may be used for piracy. Pirate vessels, however,
may have their shipboard engines augmented for the optimum speed achievable for
their class of ship, to enable them to pursue a target or flee from pursuers.
In the case of smaller vessels, sometimes ship stability and necessary safety
measures such as ballast are sacrificed for the acquisition of higher speeds. A
typical pirate operation would involve the pirate ship intercepting or catching
up with its designated target ship; its crew would then openly display their
light arms and threaten to open fire unless the target ship halts and allows
boarding parties.
The following acts constitute piracy, under international law:
1) kidnapping of the crew or passengers of another ship, for purposes of
ransom;
2) robbery;
3) murder;
4) unlawful seizure of cargo or other shipboard valuables;
5) hijacking, again for purposes of ransom;
6) sabotage, resulting in the ship subsequently sinking.
As in most crimes, criminals seek to wipe out evidence or traces of their
activities. In fact, the difficulty of locating evidence lost at sea accounts
for the apparent callousness involved in maritime crimes as compared with
land-based crimes. It is not uncommon if the above-mentioned acts are committed
in a consecutive fashion, with the victimized ship eventually being sunk and
the bodies of its victims thrown into the sea. Robbery, for instance, may be
followed up with murder so no witnesses are left behind to testify against the
perpetrators.
Investigations by the International Maritime Bureau show a disturbing trend of
increased frequency of violence at sea, with 50 attacks of piracy within
Indonesian territorial waters out of 182 reported worldwide for the first six
months of 2004. That is a substantial statistic that does not reflect well on
the security level of Southeast Asian waters.
Commercial shipping
The modern equivalent of merchant ships, commercial shipping vessels, perform a
variety of functions that represent international maritime trade. The most
common functions of modern shipping include the transport of cargo, passengers
or supplies to other ships. Two factors, time and cost, determine the dynamics
of commercial shipping and influence the routes from one destination to the
next.
Time especially is greatly important in directly affecting global commerce in
other industrial or commercial sectors of the economy. That is why there has
been so much concern over sweeping maritime security checks to be carried out
in compliance with the anti-terror standards set by the International Maritime
Organization (IMO). Such security measures, while helping to deal with the
piracy problem, increase transport times and costs. In particular, the delay
for security checks for oil tankers may result in further skyrocketing of the
price of petroleum. Commercial ships, therefore, spend as little time as
possible out at sea, taking the shortest and most direct routes to their
destinations.
Unlike naval shipping, where ships are deployed according to where they are
required (the proximity to flash points or areas of conflict), commercial ships
usually use pre-determined sea routes calculated to give the shortest traveling
time, with allowances for wave and weather conditions. The planning of ship
routes is based on the following factors:
1) linear routes of sail where possible; ie, ships travel in straight lines
instead of curves;
2) sailing near coasts and port locations whenever possible, for the purpose of
safeguarding against unexpected contingencies at sea; 3) utilizing narrow
straits or sea channels that cut down on traveling distance. The Suez Canal is
an example of saving on nautical distance from Europe to Asia.
Thus it is possible for resourceful pirates to make simple but sound plans for
ambushing a selected target ship, based on information about the ship's sailing
timetable. Such details may be obtained by bribery - or by direct inquiry from
various sources.
The threat of piracy, of course, is of concern to shipping companies and ship
owners. However, piracy alone does not deter merchants from continuing to send
their ships along well-established, logical trade routes instead of round-about
sea routes to avoid pirates. Such rationale has justifications. The
oceand are immense, and even in narrow sea straits, the odds of
encountering pirates is small. If encountered, evasion is still possible
because the sea, unlike land, allows vessels to maneuver in almost any
direction desired.
There is also the question of cost. Running long, round-about sea voyages to
avoid pirates is simply not cost-effective. Shipping companies, therefore, will
logically take the calculated risk of sending their ships along old trade
routes, knowing full well the possibility of being prey to pirates and maritime
terrorists.
The responsibility of protecting sea lanes, therefore, lies with state
governments.
TOMORROW - Tides of terror hit Southeast Asia
Eric Koo has a bachelor's degree in materials engineering and a master's
degree of science in strategic studies from Nanyang Technological University in
Singapore. He is currently writing commentary and analysis articles about
international events, security issues and terrorism for newspapers.
