Storm over the Malacca
Strait By Catherine Zara
Raymond
On August 1, the foreign ministers
of the three littoral states of Indonesia,
Malaysia and Singapore met to discuss maritime
safety and security in the Malacca Strait. They
concluded their talks with a stronger commitment
to addressing comprehensively the issue of
maritime security, including the threats of
piracy, armed robbery and terrorism. The meeting
marked the recognition by the littoral states that
much remains to be done in terms of improving the
safety and security of the Malacca Strait.
The situation became all the more urgent
following the recent decision by Lloyd's Market
Association's Joint War Committee to declare the
Malacca Strait an area that is in jeopardy of
"war, strikes, terrorism and related perils". The
decision to add the Malacca Strait to the
committee's list of high-risk areas was taken
following recommendations by the private defense
consultants, Aegis Defense Services, who are said
to have carried out risk assessments on the area.
Others on the list are
countries such as Iraq, Somalia and Lebanon.
Although the committee has a purely advisory role,
the result of this declaration could be
dramatically higher insurance costs for the many
thousands of ships that transit the strait on an
annual basis.
The Aegis report stated that
due to the fact that there had been an
intensification of the weaponry and techniques
used by the pirates in the strait, they are now
largely indistinguishable from terrorists. In
addition, it stated that the strait is a target
for terrorism. The report cited a statement by
al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in which he spoke
about hitting enemy countries through their
economies. It also highlighted terrorist
organization Jemaah Islamiyah's (JI) past interest
in the traffic passing through the strait.
The Malacca Strait: A high-risk
zone? A terrorist attack in this
economically strategic waterway would certainly
have the potential to cause large-scale economic
impact, not just regionally but on a global scale.
The waterway is transited by about 60,000 ships
each year, and about one third of the world's
trade and half of the world's oil pass through the
strait on the way to countries such as China and
Japan.
However, both the littoral states
and ship owners around the world have expressed
their concern over whether the decision by the
committee is justified. In a joint statement, the
foreign ministers of these states urged the
committee to "review its risk assessment
accordingly". The ministers expressed their regret
that the decision was taken without their
consultation and failed to take into account their
existing efforts to deal with the threats to
safety and security in the strait. The Federation
of ASEAN Shipowners' Association declared that the
decision was "misguided".
While the
reaction by the littoral states and ship owners
may to some extent be warranted given the lack of
evidence pointing to an immediate threat from
maritime terrorism, completely ruling out the
possibility of an attack taking place would be an
incorrect assessment. A terrorist attack in the
strait may have a low probability of occurring,
but the impact of such an attack could be very
high.
It is important to point out that
the threat of international terrorism still casts
its shadow over the region. Despite a series of
arrests, the JI network remains resilient and is
expected to strike again. The suicide bombing at
the Australian Embassy in Jakarta on September 9,
2004, which killed 11 people and injured more than
180, is certainly proof.
As mentioned in
the Aegis report, JI has planned attacks against
naval vessels in the region. Fears of a JI attack
were renewed after US intelligence passed on
warnings about a plot to hijack a vessel in the
region's waterways. The warnings, issued in
September 2004, stated that activists from JI had
been discussing plans to seize a vessel with the
assistance of local pirates.
Other
terrorist attacks attributed to JI include: the
Christmas Eve bombings of churches in Indonesia in
2000, which killed 19 people, the October 12, 2002
Bali suicide attack in a nightclub that killed
about 200, mostly Western tourists including 88
Australians, and the Marriott Hotel bombing in
Jakarta that killed 12 people on August 5, 2003.
The Philippines continues to be a haven
for terrorist activity, with evidence of terrorist
training camps on the Philippine island of
Mindanao and growing cooperation between JI and
the two Philippine Muslim insurgency groups - the
Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and the Abu
Sayyaf Group (ASG).
Both MILF and ASG have
carried out previous maritime terrorist attacks.
One such attack by MILF took place on a busy
seaport in Davao City, in the Philippines, in
April 2003. Seventeen people were killed in the
attack. The group also carried out attacks on
Philippine shipping, mainly placing bombs on
domestic inter-island ferries being used to
transport members of the Philippines military and
Christians to and from Mindanao. On February 27,
2004, ASG carried out a suicide bombing on the M/V
Superferry 14 shortly after it left Manila Bay,
killing more than 100. This attack resulted in the
greatest number of deaths since the Bali bombing,
It is clear from the militant groups
operating in the region that there is an interest
in attacking maritime targets. Whether or not they
have the capability to conduct a spectacular
attack on shipping in the strait remains to be
seen.
A terrorism-piracy nexus? One of the specific criticisms leveled at the
Aegis report was its failure to distinguish
clearly between piracy and terrorism. While piracy
in the Malacca Strait has been taking place on a
regular basis for the last decade, there is little
or no evidence to suggest that pirates are forming
links with international or regional terrorist
groups, such as al-Qaeda or JI, in order to carry
out a devastating attack on a maritime target. The
only suspected link between piracy and terrorism
in the Malacca Strait is the employment of pirate
tactics by the separatist group known as the Free
Aceh Movement (GAM).
Since the 1970s, GAM
has been fighting a separatist war against the
Indonesian government with the aim of creating an
independent Islamic kingdom in the northern
province of Aceh. The group is said to finance its
terrorist activities partly through sea piracy and
smuggling. These are not, strictly speaking, acts
of maritime terrorism. It has been well documented
that terrorist groups have resorted to criminal
activities in order to generate funds for their
political campaigns. However, these criminal acts
are not in themselves acts of terrorism.
Therefore, the threat of maritime piracy must not
be labeled as a terrorism risk.
Conclusion While it is
important to distinguish between the pirate
attacks taking place in the strait and acts of
terrorism, what these pirate attacks demonstrate
is that the vessels transiting the strait are
highly vulnerable to a breach in their security.
Pirates regularly hijack tankers in order to steal
the cargo or kidnap crew members. If terrorists
were able to take over a tanker carrying highly
hazardous chemical cargo, the implications could
be disastrous. The unpredictability of terrorism
makes it hard to carry out accurate risk
assessments. However, as can be seen from the
evidence presented above, the threat from maritime
terrorism is a clear possibility in the Malacca
Strait.
Catherine Zara Raymond is an
associate research fellow at the Institute of
Defense and Strategic Studies, Singapore. She is
currently involved in research on maritime
terrorism and piracy under the institute's
maritime security program. She is a co-editor and
contributing author for the volume The Best of
Times, the Worst of Times. Maritime Security in
the Asia Pacific. She was previously an analyst
at the Center for the Study of Terrorism and
Political Violence, St Andrews University,
Scotland.
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