Global Responses to Maritime Violence: Cooperation and Collective Action

1

Introduction

Paul Shemella

WITH THIS BOOK WE OFFER CONTEXT-BASED ANALYSIS OF maritime security imperatives, as well as practical approaches to facing some of the world’s most challenging threats. The authors use the collective noun maritime violence, reviving the title of a Jane’s Special Report on the subject published almost twenty years ago.¹ That rubric did not stick in the literature but, having explored combinations of violence in the maritime domain for years, we think it should have.² We understand maritime violence to be a set of threats short of war, occurring in or at the edge of the maritime domain, that includes terrorism, insurgency, piracy, armed robbery at sea, and maritime smuggling, along with other crimes such as oil bunkering and illegal fishing.³ Given that all these threats are closely related, scholars need an umbrella term that links them together. We offer a typology in Figure 1.1 that describes what we think of as an ecosystem of related threats. As in biological ecosystems, the activities listed—as well as the remedies—are interconnected. The sea itself has always been a violent place, and man’s activities on the sea have taken a similar turn. If political and business leaders, acting together, wish to create a climate of security within which all citizens can thrive, they will have to tame the outlaw sea that laps at their shores.⁴

There is no shortage of evidence regarding the rise of global maritime violence. At the terrorism end of the spectrum, it was reported during the writing of this book that al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) is preparing a maritime suicide unit to carry out attacks against shipping in and around the Mediterranean Sea.⁵ At the opposite end of our continuum, the navy of the Ivory Coast seized two Chinese fishing vessels, operating illegally in the country’s waters during November 2014. The ships were impounded until the Chinese government paid a fine of US $200K.⁶ While Ivory Coast managed to send a message to governments that would steal from its rich fisheries (and collect revenue in the process), Sierra Leone’s lack of port security has allowed the Ebola virus to return from offshore to rekindle that nation’s deadly outbreak.⁷ We will show how governments—even those with limited resources—can impose positive changes that can spread through the maritime violence ecosystem. They do this by creating the broadest possible climate of security in the maritime domain.

FIGURE 1.1   The maritime violence ecosystem

NOTE: Industrial accidents and natural disasters require many of the same institutional responses as maritime terrorism.

Maritime security begins behind the beach. Governments are challenged to provide security on the land areas they control (or, too often, do not really control). Ashore is where governments develop maritime laws and build maritime security institutions. Ashore is where criminal activity originates, and from where criminals extend their networks. The maritime domain is significantly more challenging for governments to control; it is a transition zone fraught with ambiguity. Institutional jurisdictions overlap inside territorial seas, but in exclusive economic zones (EEZs) it is governments that overlap. On the high seas, the lines disappear altogether. Securing the broadest maritime domain requires a large number of governments and an enormous amount of resources. Maritime spaces—internal, coastal, regional, and global—too often remain without formal governance, leaving room for terrorists, pirates, and other criminals to operate with near impunity. Maritime security requires governments to leave familiar, perhaps comfortable surroundings and seek out those who perpetrate, or benefit from, maritime violence.

To begin Part I, Peter Chalk explains in Chapter 2 that maritime terrorism, though rare to date, appears to be evolving into a greater threat (especially with Mumbai-style events now falling under the maritime rubric). Even though strategic and formal linkages with pirates and other criminals are unproven, the general lawlessness of the maritime domain creates opportunities for terrorism. Paul Shemella discusses in Chapter 3 how maritime terrorists might decide which targets to attack. Using a variation of the US Special Forces target-analysis model, applied to a fictitious maritime country, he provides a useful methodology for thinking like a terrorist, whereby planners can anticipate which targets are most likely to be attacked. In Chapter 4, Peter Chalk examines piracy and sea robbery, introducing the umbrella term armed maritime crime (as opposed to other maritime crimes, more ubiquitous but less spectacular). He concludes by evaluating the advantages and disadvantages of using private armed security guards for preventing acts of piracy. Other maritime crimes, as well as industrial accidents and natural disasters, did not warrant separate chapters, but all these activities are discussed in the relevant chapters of Part II. A detailed example of illegal maritime trafficking activities can be found in the Yemen case study in Part III.

Part II begins with maritime strategy, the art of creating the best possible outcomes with a perennially scarce resource base. In Chapter 5, Paul Shemella examines the process of creating holistic maritime strategies that incorporate all sectors of government. Integrated strategies can lead to the integrated actions leaders must be prepared to execute. The suggested methodology organizes strategic thought at two levels: political and operational. Shemella characterizes strategy as a forcing function that fuses together a wide range of resources, explaining how the maritime sector of government fits into a broader institutional mix. In Chapter 6, he focuses on how governments can assess their own maritime governance, a wide-ranging set of activities that creates preconditions for effective maritime security. While describing the functions and subfunctions of maritime governance, Shemella avers that, given the political will (not always a given), there are two sides to the maritime security coin: governance and capacity. Strategy is the act of governing; the assessment of governance is a measure of capacity.

In one manifestation of capacity, maritime security is a key component of border security. If borders are the skin of a nation, ports are cuts that can become infected. Charles Reinhardt examines in Chapter 7 what we call global port security, an image meant to evoke the interconnectivity of the world’s ports. His command of the commercial details comes from a career inside the maritime industry. Reinhardt discusses the balance between commerce and security, covering everything from international treaties to the potential for cyberattacks. Comprehensive port security is much more than maintaining healthy national skin; it requires close and persistent cooperation among institutions and nations. In Chapter 8, Timothy Doorey discusses maritime intelligence as both a product and a source of what the United States calls maritime domain awareness. No government can succeed in the maritime domain while suffering from what we sometimes call sea blindness. Whether it is illegal fishing vessels, Ebola-infected citizens, pirates, or terrorists, national sovereignty rests on a government’s ability to know what is going on out there.

In Chapter 9, Robert Schoultz writes in more personal terms about leadership. He argues that institutions are more important than individuals, and that individuals must work hard to improve institutions while they have the chance. Imposing change on institutions is a difficult process, especially in the maritime sector, but the chapter examines how good leaders can do it. Good leadership is so basic it is often assumed; Schoultz takes us all back to school on how to lead institutions generally—and maritime security institutions in particular. In Chapter 10, Aubrey Bogle, an operator as well as a lawyer, discusses the legal regime that underpins all government activities in the global maritime domain. Going further, Bogle imagines what a legal framework might actually look like for a typical maritime government. This chapter underscores the complexity of legal issues that dominate the maritime domain and reminds all of us that managing maritime law requires maritime lawyers.

James Petroni, a former firefighter and emergency manager, introduces a system for managing maritime catastrophes in Chapter 11. His maritime adaptation of the US Incident Command System (ICS) provides a practical example of Schoultz’s reminder that leaders must figure out how to delegate management functions so they can concentrate on leading. Conceptually as well as operationally, ICS connects maritime threats from human actors to random industrial accidents and natural disasters. Institutions with the capacity to respond to maritime terrorism can also serve governments and populations inevitably affected by circumstance.

In Part III, we introduce a series of case studies, selected to illustrate some of the major themes of the book. In Chapter 12, Rohan Gunaratna examines Sri Lanka’s campaign against the Sea Tigers of the LTTE insurgency. Finally developing a strategy right out of Clausewitz, the Sri Lankan Navy identified and targeted the enemy’s center of gravity—the maritime logistics network that supported the ground force. The inclusion of this case illustrates the diversity of maritime threats, demonstrating how governments and their maritime security institutions must adapt to changing circumstances. The campaign against the Sea Tigers also illustrates the value of international cooperation, and especially intelligence sharing. This case, almost more than any other, reminds maritime governments just how bad things can get. In Chapter 13, Lawrence Cline discusses regional measures to suppress piracy in the Strait of Malacca. This case study is instructive for its successes, but also for its failures. The Strait of Malacca is geostrategically fated to suffer from some degree of armed maritime crime, and it must be overseen by governments, cooperating wherever they can. Thomas Mockaitis examines the under-studied maritime insurgencies (with an admixture of terrorism) in the Sulu Sea region in Chapter 14, highlighting the difficulty of getting regions and national governments to rise above history and religion. Mockaitis makes the observation that violence on the coastal fringes of the maritime domain, exposed to the open ocean, can sometimes be more serious than on the sea itself. The Sulu Sea, with its national and international dimensions, has much to teach students of maritime violence.

Peter Chalk analyzes the Gulf of Guinea’s variations on maritime crime in Chapter 15. This region has claimed the title of highest piracy threat in the world, but Chalk explains that the largest share of the problem is actually sea robbery and fuel theft (armed and unarmed forms of maritime crime). Given the disparity between challenges and resources (added to the fact that regional and national maritime security strategies have been developed), the Gulf of Guinea may be emerging as the poster child for international maritime security cooperation. Without it, these nations will not be able to exploit their own marine resources to generate the national wealth they so desperately need. In Chapter 16, Aubrey Bogle explains the rationale for (and roles of) Yemen’s Coast Guard that he helped to develop. The chapter provides a comprehensive account of multiple maritime threats facing an under-resourced maritime security institution. This case illustrates the need for governments to be amenable to creating new maritime security institutions—even at the expense of old ones—while at the same time providing a steady stream of resources. Whether or not Yemen remains a unitary state, the need for a coast guard (or two) will endure.

Chapter 17 aims to integrate the foregoing ideas into a holistic approach to the problem of managing maritime violence, prescribing a set of precepts we think will lead most governments to the outcomes they seek. Throughout this book we evoke the image of a government riding out a storm at sea. But this is a storm that never recedes completely. Maritime violence can only be managed by governments doing the best they can with what they have, and then acting together. The following chapters give the reader a glimpse of how governments can do just that.

Notes

1. Samuel Pyeatt Menefee, Trends in Maritime Violence, Jane’s Intelligence Review Special Report, 1996.

2. This term fits very well with David Kilcullen’s argument that the world’s population has become—and will continue to be—more urban, more connected, and more coastal. See David Kilcullen, Out of the Mountains: The Coming Age of the Urban Guerrilla (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013).

3. Terrorism and insurgency are not the same thing. Insurgents use terror from time to time, but terror is not the defining characteristic of an insurgency. If insurgents are not successful, they often devolve into terrorist organizations, dependent on the use of terror to accomplish any of their goals.

4. William Langewiesche coined the term outlaw sea in his thought-provoking 2004 book by the same name. See William Langewiesche, The Outlaw Sea: A World of Freedom, Chaos, and Crime (New York: North Point Press, 2004).

5. Al Qaeda Planning Kamikaze Attacks on Ships in Mediterranean, Cables Claim, The Guardian, February 25, 2015, http://www.theguardian.com/2015/feb/25/.

6. Ivory Coast Seizes Two Chinese Trawlers in Fishing Dispute, Africa Markets Today, November 28, 2014 (Reuters).

7. Nearly Halted in Sierra Leone, Ebola Makes a Comeback by Sea, New York Times, February 28, 2015.

I

EXAMINING MARITIME VIOLENCE

2

Maritime Terrorism

An Evolving Threat

Peter Chalk

THE MARITIME REALM REMAINS PARTICULARLY CONDUCIVE TO the type of irregular or unconventional threat contingencies that have come to characterize transnational security in the contemporary era. A vast area covering 139,768,200 square miles,¹ most of this environment takes the form of high seas that lie beyond the strict control of any single state—meaning they are, by definition, devoid of any form of sovereign jurisdiction. These over-the-horizon oceans are fringed and linked by a complex lattice of territorial waters, estuaries, and riverine systems that, due to a lack of resources or will (and in some cases both), frequently lack an effective regime of coastal surveillance. Compounding matters is the largely unregulated nature of the international trading system—a trait that is designed to minimize cost and maximize turnover but that also inevitably exposes maritime commerce to nefarious criminal designs.² Combined, these attributes and practices have served to infuse the planet’s aquatic expanse with the same type of unpredictable and lawless qualities that Thomas Hobbes once famously wrote ensured life as nasty, brutish, and short.

One particular threat that academics, intelligence analysts, law enforcement officials, and politicians have begun to take increasingly serious note of is the exploitation of the maritime realm to facilitate terrorist logistical and operational designs. Indeed, commentators in various countries now appear to believe that the next major strike against Western interests is as likely to emanate from a maritime theater as from a land-based one. Exacerbating concerns is the fear that militant extremists will be able to significantly enhance their operational capacity to impede shipping in key strategic sea-lanes of communication (SLOCs) by establishing mutually beneficial alliances with pirates.

This chapter examines the scope and dimensions of maritime terrorism³ in the modern age. It discusses the reasons why militant extremists have traditionally shunned non-land-based theaters and the factors that appear to have caused a shift in this operational calculus. Specific terrorist scenarios are examined, including the use of the maritime environment to execute mass casualty attacks, cause economic disruption, and facilitate the movement of weapons and personnel. Finally, the chapter considers the potential nexus between maritime terrorism and piracy in the Gulf of Aden (GoA)—one of the world’s most important trading routes and the region where the fear of such a convergence has been greatest.

Track Record of Maritime Terrorism

Historically, the world’s oceans have not been a major locus of terrorist activity. Indeed, according to RAND’s Chronology of International Terrorism, less than 2 percent of all global attacks conducted since 1968 have taken place at sea or been directed at maritime platforms. To be sure, part of the reason for this empirical paucity stems from the fact that many organizations have neither been located near coastal regions nor had the necessary means to extend their physical reach beyond purely local theaters. Additionally, several fundamental requirements for conducting effective maritime strikes have not traditionally been available to terrorist groups due to limited resources. Notably, these include possession of mariner skills, access to appropriate assault and transport vehicles, and expertise in certain specialist capabilities (e.g., surface and underwater demolition techniques).⁴

The inherently conservative nature of terrorists in terms of their chosen attack modalities is a further factor accounting for the lack of sea-borne strikes. Precisely because groups are constrained by ceilings in operational finance and skill sets, most have deliberately adhered to tried-and-tested methods that are known to work, which offer a reasonably high chance of success and whose consequences can be relatively easily predicted.⁵ More specifically, in a world of finite human and material assets, the costs and unpredictability associated with expanding to the maritime realm have typically trumped any potential benefits that might be garnered from initiating such a change in operational direction.

One final consideration that has relevance to the relative lack of terrorist incidents at sea is the nature of potential maritime targets themselves. Because these platforms for the most part remain out of sight, they are generally not at the forefront of public interest, something that is particularly true of commercial vessels. Hence, attacking a ship is unlikely to attract widespread attention, as—unlike land-based venues—they do not often abut major centers of population and are not immediately media accessible. This opaqueness is important, since terrorism, at its root, is a tactic that can only be effective if it is able to demonstrate and communicate its relevance through visible acts of violence.⁶

A Change in the Terrorist Operational Calculus?

In spite of these considerations, a modest yet highly discernible spike has taken place in high-profile terrorist incidents at sea over the past fourteen years. Equally, a number of significant maritime terrorist plots have been aborted or prevented prior to execution. The more notable of these incidents are set out in Table 2.1. This heightened level of activity has galvanized fears in the West that terrorists, especially militants motivated by transnational jihadist designs, are developing the capability and intent to conduct highly damaging attacks at sea. If this is in fact the case, why might terrorists be seeking to expand their operational agenda to the maritime environment?

Three possible rationales would seem to have relevance. First, attacks at sea constitute a viable means for inflicting mass coercive punishment on enemy audiences. Second, maritime strikes offer terrorists an additional means for causing economic destabilization. Third, in several respects the expansive global container complex provides extremists and militants a useful logistical channel for facilitating the covert movement of weapons and personnel. Each of these potential motivational drivers is discussed in more detail below.

Maritime Terrorism as a Means of Causing Mass Casualties

Ever since the attacks of 9/11, the presumed wisdom that terrorists wanted a lot of people watching rather than a lot of people dead has been turned on its head.⁷ The 2001 suicide strikes on the Pentagon and World Trade Center, which collectively killed nearly 3,000 people, were clearly aimed at maximizing collateral civilian damage. Militant strikes around the world during the subsequent fourteen years have been similarly motivated and, while not as destructive, have certainly been animated by the same apparent desire to inflict as much damage and misery as possible. The specter of mass casualty terrorism has accordingly emerged with increased alacrity and although most security concerns in this regard have focused on land-based targets (notably surface transportation, sports stadiums, shopping malls, and airports), certain maritime assets could also be vulnerable to such contingencies. This is particularly true of passenger ships.

TABLE 2.1   Selected high-profile maritime attacks and plots, 2000–2010

Cruise liners are often singled out as ideal venues for orchestrating attacks intended to maximize civilian casualties. These vessels typically transport thousands of people, with some of the larger carriers having passenger manifests upwards of 4,000.⁸ Moreover, because companies such as Royal Caribbean, Carnival, and Holland America largely cater to affluent American and European tourists, they provide a high-prestige target that would likely resonate with the type of absolute extremist Islamist intent that currently lies at the forefront of international terrorism concerns. That said, actually destroying a cruise liner would be an extremely difficult undertaking, as these vessels are constructed with safety as the foremost priority. Hulls are double lined and, in most cases, interiors are compartmentalized with largely (though not fully)⁹ watertight systems in place. Overcoming these safeguards would require, at a minimum, several highly powerful bombs as well as a sophisticated understanding of the structural integrity of the intended target—particularly in terms of being able to identify locations where simultaneous explosions could be expected to cause the most damage. As a result, most commentators agree that attempting to sink a cruise ship would be an extremely difficult proposition and is probably well beyond the existing capabilities of known terrorist groups.¹⁰

Passenger ferries constitute a different threat altogether. Although not as symbolic as cruise liners, these vessels represent a highly soft target in terms of potential mass-casualty terrorism. Many of the commercial ships currently in operation move tens of hundreds, if not thousands, of people in a single crossing. This is especially true in the developing world, where ferries notoriously sail at or well over designated capacity limits. As such, they exhibit the same body-rich environment that cruise ships do. What sets ferries apart from their tourist cousins, however, is that they are far more susceptible to cataclysmic attack. Several factors account for this inherent vulnerability.

First, extant security measures at passenger terminals vary greatly and, even in developed littoral states such as the Netherlands, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States, are not nearly as extensive as those employed for cruise liners (much less aircraft). The very need to accommodate high volumes of embarking traffic in as efficient a manner as possible necessarily precludes the latitude for carrying out concerted checks on baggage, cars, trucks, and people.¹¹ Indeed, instituting even minimal precautionary measures can have the effect of generating huge delays and backlogs. The Port of Dover on the English south coast provides a case in point. In the immediate aftermath of the July 2005 London underground bombings, all motorists leaving the terminal for Calais in northern France were subjected to a slightly more rigorous regime of predeparture scrutiny and examination. Although individual inspections and questions generally took no more than a few minutes per vehicle, combined they served to create traffic jams that extended over four miles.¹²

Second, the vetting of those working aboard ferries is ad hoc and partial, reflecting the seasonal and highly transient nature of these personnel. Background checks, to the extent that they occur, are generally aimed at verifying past employers and rarely embrace wider criminal investigations. Throughout much of Asia and Africa, it is unlikely that any consistent form of examination takes place, largely because owner-operators lack the means (and frequently the willingness) to do so, something that is particularly true for foreign nationals. Maritime experts generally concur that the absence of effective staff/crew scrutiny represents a significant point of vulnerability for commercial ferry companies, providing extremists with an ideal opening to covertly place insiders on board targeted vessels for strike and/or logistical purposes.¹³

Third, and in common with cruise liners, ferries sail along predefined routes according to set departure and arrival times. By definition, these schedules have to be made widely available to the paying public and, as a result, are easily accessed through a broad array of mediums and conduits, ranging from travel guides and port terminals to the Internet.¹⁴ Itineraries are, in short, both fixed and highly transparent, availing terrorists with a reasonably accurate cartographic picture that can be used to gauge the point at which vessels are most susceptible to attack and interception. The Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG) in the southern Philippines provides a good example of an organization that has conspicuously planned many of its maritime assaults around information of this sort.¹⁵

Finally, certain features in the specific construction of ferries serve to weaken their wider structural integrity and safety. This is especially true of vessels that transport vehicles. Colloquially known as ro-ros (roll on, roll off), these ships are deliberately built with large, open car decks to avail the efficient embarkation and disembarkation of cars, trucks, vans, and motorbikes. Unfortunately, this particular design format makes them acutely sensitive to subtle shifts in their centers of gravity, largely because they necessarily lack stabilizing bulkheads in their lower sections. Abrupt movements of automobiles that have been improperly secured or sudden accumulations of even small amounts of water¹⁶ could, under such conditions, realistically cause a ferry to list or even fully capsize.¹⁷

The ASG bombing of Philippine Super Ferry 14 in 2004 is a good example of the extensive human damage that can result from an attack against a passenger ferry. In this instance, 116 people were killed in an operation that involved a total planning cycle of only a couple of months and which was executed using a highly crude improvised explosive device—sixteen sticks of dynamite hidden in a hollowed out television set.¹⁸ Other good indicators of the potential loss of life can be derived from ferry accidents such as the 1994 sinking of the MS Estonia in the Baltic Sea (852 deaths),¹⁹ the 1987 MS Herald of Free Enterprise tragedy in Belgium (193 fatalities), and the 2014 MV Sewel disaster in South Korea (300 drowned, mostly schoolchildren).²⁰

Apart from passenger ships, concern exists that terrorists could seize a liquefied natural gas (LNG) tanker and detonate it as a floating bomb near an area of human habitation in what would amount to a maritime equivalent of 9/11. Channels feeding the LNG terminals at Everett, Massachusetts, and Elba Island, Georgia, in the United States are often highlighted as particularly vulnerable in this regard, as they respectively lie proximate to the major population centers of Boston and Savannah.²¹ However, as Martin Murphy notes, while LNG has the potential to cause a massive explosion, the mechanics of actually carrying out an operation of this sort are problematic at best:

If LNG is to be used as a weapon a series of steps need to take place, each one of which has to be successful even though each one has a significant chance of failure. The tank containing the LNG has to be breached. Sufficient liquid has to be released to form a pool. This must not be ignited immediately. Instead it needs time to warm and form a cloud that must rise and drift over an area where it could cause damage. Once this cloud hits a suitable ignition source it must be within the flammability range and that range must be maintained consistently through the cloud such that the flame can burn back to the pool, which is the fuel source, where it will form a pool fire.²²

Maritime Terrorism as a Means of Causing Economic Destabilization

Besides mass casualties, it has been suggested that the maritime realm offers terrorists a viable theater in which to execute attacks that are designed to trigger mass economic destabilization. This is seen to have particular relevance to the global al-Qaeda network, which has repeatedly affirmed that carrying out attacks that can deliver a crippling blow to the Western financial, commercial, and trading systems is the most effective way of waging jihad against the United States and its partner nations. This tactical bent was given concrete expression in 2004 when Bin Laden announced a bleed-to-bankruptcy strategy that was explicitly aimed at destroying the financial and commercial lifeline that underpins the current global capitalist system.²³

One of the most commonly postulated scenarios for causing economic destabilization is an attack designed to shut down a port or block a SLOC in order to disrupt the mechanics of the just in time, just enough international trading system.²⁴ Because very little redundancy is built into the modern global economy (for reasons of cost efficiency), even small delays in delivery could potentially have large-scale ramifications, particularly for strategic and perishable commodities. As Michael Richardson, a senior fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS) in Singapore, observes:

The global economy is built on integrated supply chains that feed components and other materials to users just before they are required and just in the right amounts. That way inventory costs are kept low. However, because these supply chains have no excess capacity, if they are disrupted, it will have repercussions around the world, profoundly affecting business confidence.²⁵

Certainly the closure of a major waterway such as the Suez Canal, the Panama Canal, the Strait of Gibraltar, the Strait of Hormuz, or the Straits of Malacca and Singapore (75 percent of world trade moves through one of these choke points) would have a serious effect on global commerce. In the case of the Suez Canal, for instance, rerouting Asian cargoes bound for Europe would result in a mammoth increase in fuel costs, compelling ocean carriers to add a special bunker surcharge of anywhere between US $200 and $500 per TEU.²⁶ For a cargo loaded off the Arabian Peninsula, the most viable alternative passage would be around the Cape of Good Hope. This would lengthen a vessel’s journey by around 4,700 nm, adding an estimated US $4 million to an average shipment in extra fuel costs.²⁷

That said, decisively disrupting the operation of the contemporary international shipping system through a campaign of terrorism would be difficult. With the exception of the Suez and Panama Canals, very few SLOCs are truly noninterchangeable and would require, at most, only 1–2 days extra steaming time in the event of closure.²⁸ Actually blocking a choke point would pose problems on several levels and even in the case of highly narrow straits would require several vessels to be scuttled at once—a formidable task.²⁹ Major ports such as Rotterdam, Vancouver, Singapore, New York, and Los Angeles are also largely immune to wholesale closure, both on account of their size and because of the rigorous security standards they enact. Even if a full suspension of all loading/off-loading functions did occur, ships could be fairly easily diverted (albeit at a cost) to alternative terminals, thus ensuring the continued integrity of the intermodal transportation network.³⁰

While long-term or widespread disruption to the global economy is unlikely, it is certainly possible that an act of maritime terrorism could cause temporary financial damage. The suicide strike on the MV Limburg in 2002 is a good example. Although the incident only resulted in three deaths (including the two bombers), it directly contributed to a short-term collapse of international shipping in the GoA; led to a 48-cent per-barrel rise in the price of Brent crude oil; and due to the tripling of war risks, premiums levied on ships transiting the gulf resulted in a 93 percent drop in container terminal throughput at the Port of Aden that cost the Yemeni economy an estimated US $3.8 million a month in lost anchorage revenues.³¹

Terrorists could also sabotage maritime critical infrastructure, such as offshore refining and drilling platforms.³² As noted in Table 2.1. Jama’at al-Tawhid wa’a-Jihad carried out such an operation in 2004, attacking the Khor al-Amaya and al-Basra oil terminals in Iraq, while strikes against rigs and pipelines in the Niger delta have been a consistent tactic of the Movement for the Emancipation in the Niger Delta (MEND), Niger Delta Vigilante (NDV), and Niger Delta People’s Volunteer Force (NDPVF). Again, however, these assaults have largely failed to cause long-term harm, either internationally or in terms of local production.

In sum, although maritime attacks have the potential to deliver a strategic blow to the global economy, the likelihood of this occurring is not high. At most, the effects would be localized and short term, as indeed they were in the case of the MV Limburg as well as the assaults on the Khor al-Amaya and al-Basra oil terminals two years later.³³ Moreover, it is arguable whether purely economically oriented attacks truly animate the minds of terrorists, their public rhetoric notwithstanding. In the absence of human fatalities, these strikes have little ability to satisfy the desire for immediate, visible effects—not to mention the bloodlust—that has become so intrinsic to militant extremist action in the post-9/11 era.

Terrorist Movement of Weapons and Personnel

Approximately 112,000 merchant vessels, 6,500 ports and harbor facilities, and 45,000 shipping bureaus constitute the contemporary international maritime transport system, linking roughly 225 coastal nations, dependent territories, and island states.³⁴ This expansive network, which caters for around 80 percent of commercial freight, has been the focus of considerable attention by maritime security analysts and intelligence officials, largely because it is widely seen to represent a viable logistical conduit for availing the covert movement of terrorist weapons and personnel. At least four factors underscore this perceived vulnerability.

First, the sheer volume of commercial goods and commodities that is moved by container ships effectively eliminates the possibility of comprehensive checks once cargo reaches its port of destination. Indeed, experts universally acknowledge that trying to inspect all incoming freight—or even a significant random sample—without unduly interrupting the contemporary dynamic of oceanic exchange is neither possible nor economically tenable given the number of boxed crates involved.³⁵ Even in terminals with advanced X-ray and gamma-ray scanning technologies, inspection rates remain minimal. In the United States, for instance, a mere 10 percent of the roughly 6 million containers that arrive in the country every year can be expected to have undergone some sort of scrutiny.³⁶

Second, the highly complex nature of the maritime conveyance supply chain creates a plethora of opportunities for terrorist infiltration. Unlike other freight vessels that typically handle payloads for a single customer loaded at port, container ships deal with cargoes from hundreds of companies and individuals, which in most cases are received and transported from inland warehouses characterized by various forms of on-site security. For even a standard shipment, numerous agents and parties would be involved, including the exporter, the importer, the freight forwarder, a customs broker, excise inspectors, commercial