Peril on the sea

Oct 2nd 2003
From The Economist print edition

Are terrorists now aiming to block shipping lanes and disrupt the flow of oil and other goods ?

ON MARCH 26th, the Dewi Madrim, a chemical tanker off the coast of Sumatra, was boarded by ten pirates from a speedboat. They were armed with machine guns and machetes and carried VHF radios. They disabled the ship's radio, took the helm and steered the vessel, altering speed, for about an hour. Then they left, with some cash and the captain and first officer, who are still missing.

So what? South-East Asia is the home of piracy. There was an alarming 37% increase in incidents during the first half of this year. Raiders board ships, steal cash and kidnap crew members, then hold them for ransom. Some criminals even steal a ship and sell its cargo—then repaint it, equip it with false documents and put it to work. The region, with its lax security and poor maritime supervision, is famous for such “ghost ships”.

But according to a new study* by Aegis Defence Services, a London defence and security consultancy, these attacks represent something altogether more sinister. 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 11th attacks going to flying school in Florida.

Coupled with this, there is evidence that terrorists are learning about diving, with a view to attacking ships from below. The Abu Sayyaf group in the Philippines kidnapped a maintenance engineer in a Sabah holiday resort in 2000. On his release in June this year, the engineer said his kidnappers knew he was a diving instructor; they wanted instruction. The owner of a diving school near Kuala Lumpur has recently reported a number of ethnic Malays wanting to learn about diving, but being strangely uninterested in learning about decompression.

Aegis's intelligence has turned up links between big criminal gangs in the area and terrorists, driven by the need for the latter to finance their operations. There have been ten cases of pirates stealing tugs for no apparent reason; the worry is that they are for use to tow a hijacked tanker into a busy international port, such as Singapore.

On September 16th 2001, America closed the port of Boston, fearing that terrorists would attack the gas terminal in the port. To this day, gas tankers bound for Boston have to be escorted by coastguards from 200 miles away from the port.

An incident on October 18th 2001 increased anxieties about terrorists using shipping, especially container ships, to smuggle people and explosives around the world. Authorities in the southern Italian port of Gioia Tauro found a stowaway in a well-appointed container, fitted out with a bed, toilet, heater and water. He also had a laptop computer, mobile and satellite phones, and airport security passes and a mechanic's certificate for JFK, Newark, Los Angeles International and Chicago O'Hare airports. Fears grew further after a torpedo attack by terrorists on a French tanker, the MV Limburg, in Yemen in October 2002.

The likeliest terrorist target is a tanker carrying liquefied petroleum gas (easier to explode than natural gas), reckons Aegis's Tim Spicer, formerly a British soldier and head of Sandline, a “private military company” (a euphemism for a supplier of mercenaries) that achieved notoriety for its work for the British government in Sierra Leone. He fears that hijacked gas and oil tankers could be used to block the Malacca Strait, or the Panama or Suez Canals. That could wreak economic havoc. The UN estimates that ships carry 80% of the world's traded cargo—5.8 billion tonnes in 2001.

Not shipshape

An OECD report† on maritime security, published this summer, points out that the shipping industry is having to invest $1.3 billion this year on improved security and will face running costs of $730m a year to maintain better security systems. There are 46,000 merchant ships and 4,000 ports around the world and, as Aegis points out, it will take some considerable time to bring them up to scratch.

Other reforms are also proceeding too slowly. On October 1st, America's Bureau of Customs and Border Protection was supposed to introduce new rules requiring shipping lines to advise the agency by computer or by fax about the contents of incoming cargo vessels. It now says it has delayed publishing its requirements until later this month—although it is not entirely clear why. The idea behind the new rules is to improve the quality of screening—but the sheer volume makes comprehensive screening impossible. With 232m container movements through the world's ports each year, it is now practical to look inside only about 2% of them.

America, at least, has made more progress in requiring foreign ports to allow American officials to check cargo before it sets sail for America. The world's biggest ports quickly co-operated, because they feared that, if they did not, they might have been frozen out of trade with America.

Then there is the thorny problem of screening crew members. Half of the world's merchant fleet, with 1.2m seafarers on board, sails under a flag of convenience. Paperwork and background checks are often minimal. After the September 11th attacks, the International Labour Organisation introduced identity cards for seafarers—but nobody has much faith that this has solved the problem.