This item is available on the Militant Islam Monitor website, at http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/3155
September 7, 2007
The first of a three-part series on maritime counter-terrorism. It looks at what India needs to do to protect its eastern and western seaboards.
URL for this article:
http://www.rediff.com///news/2007/sep/06raman.htm
The attack, stated to be by Al Qaeda, on the US naval ship USS Cole at Aden in October 2000, and the subsequent investigation into that incident gave birth to concerns that international terrorists might expand their acts of terrorism from the land to the sea.
Terrorist groups in West Asia and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam had indulged in acts of maritime terrorism even before October 2000, and the LTTE, through its fleet of ships, ostensibly used for legitimate commercial purposes, had been using the sea for the clandestine transport of arms and ammunition and other material required for its acts of terrorism on the land.
However, such uses had limited tactical objectives and did not think in terms of mass casualties or mass damage to be inflicted on the global economy as a whole.
The 9/11 terrorist strikes in the US and the precision and the evil ingenuity with which they were planned and executed created a wave of alarm about the likelihood of similar strikes at coastal and maritime targets. Since 9/11, there is hardly any discussion, governmental or non-governmental, on threats to national security and to international peace and security in which possible threats from maritime terrorism do not figure prominently.
Post-9/11, scenario-building exercises have invariably included scenarios involving possible catastrophic acts of maritime terrorism. Four of these possible scenarios are or should be of major concern to national security managers:
American maritime counter-terrorism experts have been projecting the Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean region as highly vulnerable, if not the most vulnerable, to such catastrophic acts of maritime terrorism. Amongst factors influencing their perceptions are:
While there are thus growing concerns over the likelihood of catastrophic acts of maritime terrorism, it needs to be underlined that there is no unanimity among counter-terrorism analysts about the magnitude of the threat.
Sceptics feel that while the possibility of catastrophic acts of maritime terrorism has to be taken seriously, one has to keep in mind that there has been a certain over-projection and over-dramatisation of the threat by embedded analysts of the US in order to serve its own strategic objectives in the region.
There is similar skepticism in certain circles regarding the correctness of the statistics relating to piracy attacks. It is alleged that often trivial incidents and instances of misappropriation or theft of goods by the crew of ships are reported as piracy attacks.
Despite such misgivings among sections of the policy-makers, senior intelligence officials of the countries of the South-East Asian region take seriously the possibility of a major act of maritime terrorism in the region. According to them, terrorist organisations active in the region had contemplated such acts in the past, though they might not have carried them out. In August 2004, the Jakarta Post quoted Hendropriyono, of Indonesia's State Intelligence Agency, as saying: 'Senior Jemaah Islamiyah terrorists now in detention have admitted that attacks on Malacca shipping traffic had been contemplated in the recent past.'
The growing concern over the likelihood of a catastrophic act of maritime terrorism has led to measures for increasing physical security. Amongst such measures, one could cite the coordinated patrolling by the navies of the region, the strict enforcement of the International Ship and Port Facility Security Code adopted in December 2002, which went into effect globally in July 2004, and attempts towards a similar strict enforcement of the Container Security Initiative.
The concern is also reflected in the frequent joint exercises by the navies of the region with maritime counter-terrorism as an important objective of the exercises and the large number of conferences and seminars held on the subject in the countries of the region during the last two years. The role of non-governmental experts in creating a better awareness of the threat and in proposing measures for meeting it has also been increasingly recognised.
At the same time, the still lingering misgivings that the threat is being magnified by the US to serve its strategic objectives in the region have come in the way of regional countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia agreeing to a greater participation by the US in the regional initiatives such as joint or coordinated patrolling of the Malacca StraitS. Their contention is that any such US participation or assistance should be at their instance when they feel the need for it and not at the instance of the US. These have also created doubts about the real purpose of other US ideas such as the Regional Maritime Security Initiative.
Amongst the countries of the region, the policy-making circles of India, Singapore, Malaysia, Japan and Australia have shown the greatest awareness of the threat of maritime terrorism and of the need to develop the required maritime counter-terrorism capabilities, individually as well as through mutual assistance. The policy-making circles of Indonesia too have shown a considerable awareness of the threat, but their capability to translate this awareness into the required action is still weak.
In the case of maritime terrorism too, as in the case of land-based terrorism, Bangladesh continues to be in a denial mode -- showing neither awareness nor a willingness to co-operate with others.
This item is available on the Militant Islam Monitor website, at http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/3155