In this week of port security issues that have suddenly entered the news cycle, it seems fitting that I have been reading Dangerous Waters: Modern Piracy and Terror on the High Seas by John S Burnett, which I picked up after reading The Outlaw Sea. Burnett’s book suggests a host of issues that makes the security of our ports all the more important.
Burnett began his investigation into modern piracy after he was attacked on his sailboat by a group of Indonesian pirates in the South China Sea. Over the course of researching the issue, he spent time on a VLCC (very large crude carrier – one of the largest ship types) as well as with the Malaysian authorities who attempt to stop piracy, and then on a smaller refined products tanker traveling from Singapore to Ho Chi Minh City, through the most pirated waters in the world.
It’s a fascinating book that takes the reader into a world that few of us who aren’t involved in shipping or blue water sailing ever consider.
Burnett captures the fear of piracy that many crews live with on a daily basis as they practice and engage in antipiracy defenses that are too often inadequate. He relates the tales of survivors of pirate attacks and tells the stories of ships that simply disappeared sometimes never to be heard from again and other times to be found flying new flags and boasting new names.
Two common themes emerge throughout the book: stealing a ship is easy and it happens all the time. Whether the vessel is a private sailboat, the largest oil and chemical tankers, or a container ship full of random cargo, it is very easy to climb aboard while the ship is moving slowly through narrow channels or even when underway on the high seas. Whole ships are stolen, the crews killed and tossed overboard or marooned on small islands. The ships are repainted at sea, their names changed and with new papers forged and new flags hoisted these phantom ships can deliver illegal immigrants, stolen goods, guns, drugs, or even a weapon of mass destruction to nearly any port in the world. A tanker full of volatile cargo could easily become a weapon simply by pointing it at a target, or it could be an environmental catastrophe resulting when a crew is tied up while being robbed thus leaving no one to steer the ship.
The second issue Burnett addresses is the frequency of pirate attacks, particularly in the South China Sea and in the Straits of Malacca that separate Singapore and Malaysia from Indonesia. It is distressingly common for ships of all sizes to be robbed – a frightening prospect when one considers the kinds of dangerous cargo some ships carry – and in many cases for them to disappear completely with no trace of the cargo, the crew, or the ship itself. Burnett focuses on the Southeast Asia region where the problem is particularly acute since so much of the world’s shipping travels those lanes, but it is increasingly occurring along the African coast, the Middle East, the Caribbean, and South America.
A quick check of the Kuala Lumpur based International Maritime Bureau’s Piracy Reporting Center’s weekly piracy report reveals the fact that not much has changed since Burnett wrote in 2002. Attacks are still occurring with great frequency and little public awareness. Where this issue becomes one that affects everyone is in the connection between piracy and terror. Pirates are motivated by greed, terrorists by ideology, but the techniques for stealing a ship are the same and the implications of a suicide navy composed of a fleet of phantom ships is truly frightening to consider.
If Burnett is right in his assessment of the ease of taking a ship and the lack of coordinated response by the world’s naval powers, then port security and the security of shipping in general is tenuous at best. Piracy in all of its forms from opportunistic fishermen who see the chance to mug the crew of a slow-moving ship to crime syndicates out to steal cargo or terrorists seeking to wreak havoc will likely continue until someone sinks a cruise ship, blows up a chemical tanker or detonates a bomb hidden in a container ship in a busy port, or runs a VLCC aground in a major shipping lane.
All of this highlights the need for increased port security, but more importantly for better security in the world’s shipping lanes. Port security is important but I wonder if securing the world’s shipping lanes might not be more important. By next week, there will be something else in the news and all this will be forgotten probably until it’s too late.
