The scourge of modern piracy
Todays buccaneers menace shipping in relative obscurity,but alQaida is an emerging threat on the high seas
By Sean Holstege STAFF WRITER
Picture a pirate and the mind conjures an image of a scalawag with a hook for a hand and a patch in place of an eyeball somebody who guzzles rum by the gallon and never quenches his thirst for gold doubloons.
This villainous but dashing caricature has been immortalized as a Hollywood hero and
Disney theme rides for a public comforted in thinking reallife buccaneers vanished two centuries ago.
Reality is more sinister. On Feb. 13, pirates shot dead four crew members from an oil tanker after the ships owner refused to pay a $50,000 ransom to an Islamic separatist group in Indonesia. It was just the latest example of a growing intersection between piracy, violence and terrorist links, particularly in Southeast Asia.
Last year, modernday pirates seized 311 ships and took 359 merchant mariners hostage. They killed 21 seafarers and 71 more are still unaccounted for. Attacks, most of them on the high seas, rose 20 percent last year and 37 percent in 2002. The International Maritime Bureaus Piracy Reporting Center in Malaysia and the U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence keep track.
Pirates attack with pistols, machine guns, machetes, long knives and, recently, rocket launchers. Raids are so common in the South China sea and the worlds busiest shipping channel, the Malacca Strait, that trade ministers in the region describe piracy and terrorism as equal scourges. The area is home to thousands of junglecarpeted islands and Muslim separatists. Its an ideal place to hide a pirate lair or a terrorist camp. AlQaida is known to have deep roots throughout the region.
A bigger concern Terrorism camouflaged as piracy thats a bigger concern for us than just simple piracy, Singapore Home Affairs Minister Wong Kan Seng told Agence France Presse recently.
Many of the vessels that steam through those waters are bound for the Port of Oakland.
About 11 percent of Oaklands import cargo comes from Southeast Asia, a figure thats on the rise, port spokeswoman Marylin Sandifur said. Three of Oaklands top five importers China, Thailand and Taiwan ply those waters. More than 250,000 tons, or 7 percent of Oaklands imports, came from India, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines, all hotbeds of piracy and terrorism.
On the seat of my pants, I would say that about a dozen ships that had Oakland as a port of call have been attacked, said Bob Middelton, chaplain at the Seafarers Club, a hospitality service for the worlds merchant mariners.
Its not an outlandish claim. The IMB estimates that on average one ship in 170 has reported a runin with pirates, and authorities figure that anywhere from half to 90 percent of attacks go unreported, for fear of delays or inflated insurance costs. About 1,800 ships a year steam in and out of Oakland.
Among the rankandfile seafarers, piracy is a palpable, daily concern, said Middleton, noting that just about every other week a sailor will tell of his brush with pirates. In a seafarers career of 20 years, to experience an attempt or even a boarding by these hostile bandits once or twice would be common.
Pirates have been known to kill off the entire crew. Its been going on for years without a heck of a lot of attention from national authorities.
In the 85 attacks reported worldwide between September and December, pirates seized loot 47 times, but local police or coast guards were contacted just nine times. And authorities almost never respond. An Oct. 26 incident in which the Indonesian Maritime Police shot and killed a paramilitary rebel aboard a fishing vessel and arrested another marks the only time since August that a piracy arrest was made.
Only Israeli and Russian mariners tend to arm themselves, and the shipping industry recommends that the best defense is a highvoltage electric fence around ships hulls to stun wouldbe attackers.
Typically, bandits in highpowered speedboats rush a cargo vessel and clamber aboard under the cover of night.
They rob crew members of their valuables and steal the ships cash box and sometimes empty the storeroom. A typical heist will net $20,000, according to an unclassified British military intelligence report.
But British and U.S. naval intelligence officers, Southeast Asian antiterror officials and the shipping industry all have reported disturbing signs of growing alQaida involvement including plans to use tankers as floating bombs.
Last year, one pirated ship in five was an oil or chemical tanker. In the last three months of 2003, 26 of the 85 attacks targeted tankers.
Nearly half of the worlds crude oil and twothirds of the worlds liquid natural gas as well as onethird of all cargo is shipped through the 500 milelong Malacca Strait, the gateway between the Indian and Pacific oceans.
Ominous signs
Last March, pirates commandeered the Indonesian chemical tanker Dewi Madrim, steered it for half an hour through the strait, which narrows to 30 miles in some places, and left with equipment and technical documents.
Three days after the Sept. 11, 2001, airborne attacks in the United States, pirates boarded a cargo ship near Indonesia. After fatally shooting one of the crew, masked gunmen seized antitank missiles, night vision goggles and satellite communications gear. They blew up their speedboat, repainted the cargo vessel to disguise its identity and disappeared in the busy strait.
Last August three crew members taken hostage from an oil tanker in the Malacca Strait were released in return for $100,000. The Malaysian government said the money went to Indonesian Islamic separatists in the Free Aceh Movement, which has decreed that merchant vessels cannot sail through those waters without the groups permission.
Aceh rebels, who executed the four hostage sailors last month, are responsible for more frequent and violent pirate attacks in the area, said Capt. Pottengal Mukundam at the International Maritime Bureau. He said they are after ransom money to pay for their rebellion.
And theyre not the only insurgent or terrorist group to see potential from piracy.
At an antiterrorism confer ence in Singapore last September, delegates discussed numerous published reports of the socalled alQaida navy, comprised of anywhere from 15 to 24 merchant vessels. They were told of human torpedo systems captured from an alQaida cell, and how the Abu Sayyaf group in the Philippines kidnapped a diving instructor. After his release he told investigators that his ethnic Malay captors wanted to learn about diving but were uninterested in lifesaving decompression.
The biggest terrorist threat to shipping is to scuttle a cargo vessel in a busy shipping channel or explode a tanker in a heavily populated port.
Dockside devastation is nothing new. In 1917 a Norwegian vessel collided with a French munitions ship in the harbor at Halifax, Nova Scotia, starting a fire. The resulting explosion flattened 1,600 homes, devastated 300 city acres and killed 1,951 people.
The threat to the Port of Oakland and the Bay Area is real, but remote. No pirate attack has been reported off the West Coast since the Office of Naval Intellegence starting keeping records in 1985.
Youd have to be a pretty formidable pirate to attack an inbound ship to the Bay Area, Middleton said. Oakland would not be high on the list of ports vulnerable to piracy. Its a phenomenon of narrow waters.
Nonetheless, a pirate ramming a tanker into a Bay Area bridge or dock is likely enough for us to put a lot of effort into planning for it, said Rear Adm. Kevin Eldridge, who commands the Coast Guards Eleventh District, which patrols the Pacific Ocean.
The threat of piracy in the traditional sense in U.S. waters is remote, Eldridge said, The Coast Guards efforts to increase homeland security against the threat of terrorism will certainly address any threat of piracy that may arise in the future.
A linchpin in that effort and the last line of defense is the Sea Marshal program, which was begun at Alamedas Coast Guard Island soon after Sept. 11, 2001. The Sea Marshals track inbound cargo vessels and board those whose crews, origins or cargoes raise red flags.
The Sea Marshals fit handinglove with a tracking system established by the Department of Homeland Security and its Customs and Border Protection division.
Vessels bound for U.S. ports must submit an invoice 24 hours before embarking on their voyage. They also volunteer to meet U.S. security standards and to radio in to U.S. customs officials 96 hours before they arrive in U.S. waters.
Pushing back the borders Any shipment with anomalous paperwork, previous portsof call in terroristinfested areas or lessthanstringent security standards is likely to get extra scrutiny from customs inspectors and Sea Marshals. Its all part of the system of pushing back the borders, as Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Robert Bonner describes it, and securing the supply chain of goods from origin to destination.
But how effective is that security if a band of pirates can commandeer a ship and keep sailing to ports like Oakland?
Its pretty far afield for Customs and Border Protection to prevent terrorism on the high seas, Bonner said in a recent interview. What matters is: What do I need to do to protect America. If pirates are stealing goods, is that a terrorist threat to the United States?
Bonner says the threat of a concealed radiation, chemical or biological weapon is a more plausible and chilling prospect than the threat of a pirated ship, although he acknowledges piracy can be a source of financing for terrorist groups.
The Department of Homeland Security deferred all questions to the Coast Guard. Lt. Brendan Kettner is in charge of the Sea Marshals for the Bay Area. He said the planning and procedures are in place to stop a hijacked vessel.
The Coast Guard can call on the California Air National Guard for air support, and jets have scrambled to patrol the Golden Gate Bridge after reports of suspicious behavior.
Measuring the response
Asked if there are standing orders to sink an uncooperative vessel, Kettner said he cant discuss classified methods, but added, We have taken into consideration what would happen if a noncompliant ship comes on our radar.
Were verifying the legitimacy of every vessel before it gets here, Kettner said. Any vessel thats not cleared will not be allowed into port. Period. Kettner said his teams have held ships at sea, denying them entry into San Francisco Bay, but its becoming less common as shippers get more familiar with the requirements.
The same Sea Marshals who sift through manifests and classified military and law enforcement reports also board vessels.
I have a better idea whats out there, Kettner says, noting the Coast Guard also established on Yerba Buena Island the first vessel tracking station in the country, which is like an air traffic control center for ships. The Bay Area has more precautions than almost anywhere in the United States, said Gerald Swanson, the Coast Guards captain of the port.
It typically takes a cargo ship three weeks to traverse the Pacific Ocean, and almost all modern vessels are equipped with global positioning systems, which pinpoint the exact location of a ship. By international law, ships must have two types of navigation systems and Sea Marshal team leader Chief Petty Officer Mark Rea has never boarded a vessel that didnt have global positioning.
Modern ships are in daily communication with their home offices, sending uptotheminute reports on location, speed and fuel consumption.
Theres no way an `Oakland-bound` ship pirated in Southeast Asia would get across the ocean unnoticed.
Today, if a ship gets hijacked on the way from Shanghai, it would be instant world news, Swanson said.
Thats not one of my worries, a pirate ship coming into the Port of Oakland. It is something I can sleep without worrying about.
Ill move it to TBP
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